Letter to the Editor

There's been a lot of talk around campus in the last few weeks about Messiah's policy and practice regarding homosexuality. I just have one thing to say to all parties involved in this conversation: stop talking about it! That means you, Tim Mackie. This is one conversation Messiah College simply cannot afford to have. We've all lived together in a more or less peaceful homeostasis as long as I've been here, so please, let's not mess this up now.The best course of action for the homosexuality debate? Push it back under the rug. Keep the rule on the books, but never enforce it, or - God forbid - talk about it. It's a win-win-win situation! Gay students can keep sliding through under the radar, Conservative donors will keep forking over the green, and best of all, we can retain our homo-nervous (phobic?) base of incoming freshmen (or at least appease their parents). This last one is my personal favorite because it endows our college with the unique honor and privilege of "curing" many of these new students' world views with a grueling four year program of liberal theology and legitimization of secular art and thought. We're like a rehab clinic for conservatism, but shhhh, don't tell anyone or they'll catch on.

The other reason this must be stopped immediately is that the debate itself could be "subject to discipline" under the community covenant, which actually prohibits factiousness. And rightfully so. How dare we compromise the integrity of Messiah's image to outsiders with our petty quarreling? Did Jesus not commission us to be like a city on the hill? How dare we publish an article acknowledging our ongoing identity crisis with the full knowledge that campus would be flooded with prospective students and outsiders several days later. I trust that all Messiah students of good faith hid their copies of The Swinging Bridge that day (and, depending on their orientation, refrained from holding hands).

We need to remember that Messiah is a institution of higher learning, but it's also a day-care center. This is an image we should hold on to, and to do that we must realize that unbridled discourse like this can affect the quality of our applicants. What type of student are we trying to appeal to anyway? Ones that value an atmosphere conducive to free expression and challenging of the status quo? We need to put a cap on this fast. We need to stop this conversation and prop up an appearance of solidarity before we draw in too many more progressives, and eventually fall the way of Harvard and all those other once-great Universities.