Pride Alliance Co-Chairs Share Thoughts on Article

By Ben Masters and Shizrae Mallick

Dear friends,

Every Tuesday, we have the pleasure to hear one of the members of Pride Alliance read our Safe Space Statement as a way to remind ourselves of our vision to be intentional in creating a safe space for all students to flourish. In particular, Pride Alliance is a place for students who are denied space to flourish because of their society’s rejection of them on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity and expression. We gather together to discuss the substance of our lives because the majority of the people in our society dismisses us, denying our identities as incapable of being good, fulfilling, true, and sacred. We come together once a week not only to enjoy each others’ company or gain a deeper perspective on this or that issue, but to affirm each others’ integrity—our journey to be true to ourselves.

On Monday, April 28th, we opened the Broadside and encountered an opinion editorial written by Michael Gryboski entitled “Homosexuality is a Mental Illness: Political Correction Interfering with Reason.” The author described how political pressures had apparently swayed the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness and how it would still be possible to re-classify it as such.

We reeled. We were hurt. We were reminded that members of our society, after more than thirty years, deny our lived experiences of a full life. We were frustrated that the student newspaper published an opinion piece that assumed that a certain form of heterosexual intimacy and sexuality is the only possible mode of being that is mentally healthy. We and all of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identified family were told once more that there is no space for us.

However, we and our allies are making space for ourselves. Although our society assumes that only heterosexuality is valid and avoid dialogue with persons of non-heterosexual identities, by the grace of history we are witnessing against these attitudes through our friendships, our romantic relationships, our human service, our families, our faith, and our creative expression. Even while we are charged as being mentally ill, together we are healing from societal wounds, including those inflicted by this article.

Along with our striving for justice and accountability, our hope for Pride Alliance is that the welcome we strive for will be wide enough to offer relationship to the author of the opinion piece. We both deeply value our mutual celebration and connection of all our sexualities, genders, orientations, and expressions, and we would love to share this with Michael Gryboski. We hope that he would want to share it with us and our siblings in Pride Alliance.

Peace,

Ben Masters and Shizrae Mallick, two of the Co-Chairs of Pride Alliance