In the fight for gay rights, students should show outrage

This summer, Senator Bill Frist announced his support for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Watching him on television, I would have liked to react calmly and coolly, citing the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law, and denying that the Senator's Christian values should be imposed upon the rest of the country. I would have liked not to feel so angry and so hurt by what one man, with beliefs fundamentally different than mine, could say or do. But Senator Frist made his announcement only days after my one of my closest friends came out of the closet, and hours after another friend called in tears because his parents had suggested he go to a sexuality reprogramming camp. The Senator wasn't just talking about adding a few lines to an arcane piece of paper. He was talking about codifying discrimination, about denying basic happiness to some of the most important people in my life. Listening to him spout platitudes about the beautiful tradition of a man and a woman, I was angry. There was no doubt in my mind: politics is personal.

Ours is a tolerant generation. Almost all of us know men and women who are gay. They have come out to us. We've cultivated the right questions to ask and the right reactions to demonstrate our support. The improvement over ten years ago, or twenty, or thirty, is dramatic. But tolerance is simply not enough, not when there is so much more to be done. Homosexuals in this country cannot marry. In most states, they cannot adopt children. The stereotypes that have long surrounded gays and lesbians persist, embraced by popular culture and thus by the public. We ought to be outraged.

Unfortunately, outrage is hard to come by among young people. Here at Princeton, most of us will spend Pride Alliance Awareness Week talking about who wore what on Gay Jeans Day rather than what we can do to erode biases and overcome obstacles. A generation raised by antiwar protestors turned I-bankers, we have been taught to live with good enough, but when it comes to the lives of our friends, relatives, and peers, good enough will not do.

We would be up in arms if women or minorities were being denied the rights homosexuals in this country do not have. Why is it permissible, then, that my friends not be allowed to marry the people they fall in love with or become parents or fulfill their professional ambitions? Why should I, no more talented or deserving than any of the gay men or lesbian women I know, see a life unfettered by such obstacles? Because God created a man and a woman? Because that is how it has always been? I have seen my friends' faces as they talked about what it would be like to teach a child to read or to run for political office or to get married to their boyfriends or girlfriends. Religion and tradition are nothing compared with the desire and the right they have to lead the lives they choose.

If this all sounds angry, it is. Perhaps we could all do with a little more anger and a little less passive tolerance, the kind that lets us get by on political correctness. Politics is personal. The decisions being made, or avoided, by legislators and governors and the President himself will determine whether real people, people who are our best friends, brothers, sisters, cousins, and classmates, have all the opportunity to which they are entitled. Homosexuals in this country cannot go it alone in the fight for change. We will have to work towards a common goal, agreeing that the rights we've fought for in the past for African Americans and women apply to everyone, that we're all in this together. Times are changing, but the evolution of progress is too slow.

When Bill Frist stood before the nation and lent his support to an amendment that is fundamentally contradictory to the spirit of the Constitution, he underestimated the will of the American people, and of our generation in particular. We can take our tolerance and belief in opportunity and equality and use it to make life for homosexuals in America better. We can demand change. We can take the politics of gay rights personally.

Katherine Rielly is a Wilson School major from Short Hills, N.J.