Get off my campus you dirty hippie

   Our country prides itself on our rights-freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and perhaps most importantly, freedom of speech. Those are rights that are enumerated in our Constitution and extended to all Americans. Many times freedom of speech has come into question; one example is the Supreme Court case Texas v Johnson, in which Gregory Lee Johnson was arrested for burning an American flag in protest of the Nixon administration. The court upheld Johnson's right to free speech, even in such an extreme circumstance.

   For those of you who were on the podium last Friday, you may have noticed a haggard looking hippie with a poorly-painted sign who was spouting anti-gay and anti-woman rhetoric, hence another extreme circumstance.

   His name is "Tom," and he was nice enough to list his views on a piece of paper and hand them out to people, along with his phone number. My suitemate was able to get one of these sheets and when I began reading I was astonished.  His sheet was titled, "Laws of Moses Political Party," and I would list the entire contents of the sheet in this piece, but I feel that doing so is a waste of space and that giving attention to such a far-flung ideology is counterproductive to society as a whole. I will, however, highlight some of the more offensive and ill-informed points of his rhetoric.         

   Law 10 states (I apologize for his grammar in advance, an illiterate ape could have written this smut better): "Create districts away from school zones or main streets for openly perverted ‘gay' establishments. Outlaw same sex marriage and open displays of affection. Keep risqué activity away from children."  

   Law 11 (shortened): "Keep positive male role models and supportive wives in government…establish dress codes in the private sector and special government affairs where: a woman must wear a dress (no trousers) a man must not shave (should have a beard)."

   Law 8: "Make computer-free schooling and college a right."  

   These points merely scratch the surface of this twisted ideology. I had the pleasure of calling Tom, seeing as he left his phone number on the sheet, and I figured since no one else would want to talk to him, I gave him a call to see if he could substantiate some of these beliefs to me. Some of what he said was highly offensive, and some was just so far past any sort of reasoning I think I may have killed brain cells trying to rationalize it.  

   First I asked him to explain his rule about the segregation of gays; when asked, he said, "Yes, gays are decaying our society and need to be placed in ghettos away from society where they can be gay and we normal people do not have to see it and cannot harm our children with their immoral and unnatural behavior. God did not want people to be this way."

   This was the first time of many during our hour long conversation that I nearly dropped my phone.  I had to inform him that there was a time in history when gays were put in ghettos-it was called the Holocaust-and that his entire argument hinged on what he considered to be "normal," which an opinion which is entirely subjective.

   Additionally, if he believes in God, whom he continually interchanged with Moses for his guiding influence (he continually failed to see the difference between a God and a prophet), and "who we need to obey," and he believes that God created all man, then by that logic God also created homosexuals. Continuing that thought, if God created all people and subsequently all homosexuals, then since God loves all of his children, God also loves homosexuals.  

   This type of logic flew past this moron faster than I pass state troopers on the Thruway. When asked about his views on women, and the need for "positive male role models," I posited the notion that there are a vast number of strong female role models, both publicly and within families (my Mom, for example).

    His response, paraphrased of  course for clarity, was something to the effect of, "Women need to stay home, out of the workplace and away from male children because they menstruate. Menstruation makes women unclean. If I am on a bus where a woman who has just menstruated is, I need her to move because she has soiled the area. I do not want my son around a woman who is menstruating, because who knows what that will do to him."     

   After I stopped chewing on my hand to keep from exploding, I informed him that menstruation is actually a cleansing of the female body, done on a monthly basis and that without that process his sorry ass would not exist. And the assertion that having a woman around your son will in some way damage him is dim-witted at best. Being around a woman who is menstruating does not mean your son will start to require tampons.  

   I mention these things here because it is important as a society to be mindful of the smut and trash that some people attempt to profess. Here is a man, who by his own account had used many drugs in his past, had a child out of wedlock, is unemployed and does not own a computer or read a news paper; yet in our country, this misinformed hooligan can stand on our podium and degrade gays, women, our school and himself all at the same time. If he had been preaching something that he could reasonably substantiate and give meaning to then I would totally support his spouting.

   But when some uneducated, scruffy, disorganized, delusional crack pot with a poorly-made sign and even more poorly designed ideology stands on our campus and spouts like that, someone needs to say something.