As Vice-President of Stonewall Kats, I have been very proud of our organization, the past year especially. We celebrated Homecoming with quite a flare, and we are also leading our first two panels at the Diversity Leadership Conference on-campus later this month.
Of course there is also the Annual Drag Show that we host every Spring, that raises money for the Houston AIDS organization. Through all of this, we have been heartened by the positive response shown by the general Student Body. But, with the appearance of Mr. Smock (I refuse to use the honorific “brother” or “preacher” in reference to that man), it seems like all the steps forward we took were for naught.
It wasn’t him practicing “free speech” that upset me, but it was how he played the entire Student Body, and even had the audacity to sit back and watch his handiwork.
How he worked each group up to such a pitch that they turned on each other, one group exhibiting their passions through physical intimidation and violence. That day, I was a bit afraid to walk to my car. The next day, I found out that I was not the only one that was a bit shook up about the student on student confrontation. My safety and that of my friends was put in danger. After naming this campus my home for three years, I was angry that I now had to resort to looking over my shoulder.
Addressing Mr. Buck from Tuesday’s paper. I would like to say, myself included, that some of us “sodomites” had at one time or another, called a church our home. We invested our faith and our lives into this building of brick and mortar only to have those that we considered our fellow brothers and sisters turn on us because of how we “chose” to live.
We then picked up the pieces of what was left from our experiences and melded a new belief system. One not built on concrete and semantics, but on a simple core value system that we considered the most important points. I consider this true Christianity (in my own experience), not man-made religion over-concerned with regurgitated opinions and prejudices.
You condemn us for not accepting this “Christianity”…but you got it wrong. This “Christianity” didn’t accept us.
-Rayne Hudzietz