LETTER: Pride! Alliance doesn’t deserve front page
Editor,
The time for honesty has come. I can no longer bear the lie. I must now reveal to those whose concern it is, (the USU community in general – whether they like it or not), that I am heterosexual.
It is OK to be heterosexual. I am just a person; my attraction to members of the opposite sex has not helped me to rush for 150 yards a game, to free Tibet, or to end world hunger. Nor has it kept me from being a social outcast.
It may however have kept me from being on the front page of The Utah Statesman April 5.
Kappa Delta sponsored its annual Star Search competition and I, your humble heterosexual songwriter, was deemed to be the most creative participant and rewarded handsomely by the sponsoring organization. Were my straining vocal chords and classical guitar on the front page of the next Statesman?
No.
Was it because the Polynesian Student Union Annual Luau made a better story?
No.
The luau wasn’t covered until the week after its glorious occurrence.
What then occupied the front page? Homosexuals. Why? Because they were homosexuals. Not, mind you, because they had accomplished anything. Similar phenomena often vex our paper.
Again on Monday of this week, said persons were allotted 109 sq. in. of the front page, while the Volleyball Team’s terrific victory got only five.
The front page of a newspaper ought to be reserved for stories about achievement, not simple existence. I have not made the front page for existing as a heterosexual or for being short, neither has Iosefa for being Polynesian, nor Dr. Joe for being Catholic. Have we been discriminated against for not being homosexual? Is that why Libero Taubi Neves was relegated to the sports section?
The lie referred to at the commencement of this letter, is the inference that the Statesman provides an accurate portrayal of the achievements of Utah State University and its students. This is not anti-homosexual rhetoric. I know and respect people of varied sexual orientation, which orientation does not entitle them to editorial favoritism.
Until the Pride! Alliance ends world hunger, or at least wins a ball game, they have no place on the front page.
Collin Robinson