Once members of a silent, closeted minority, gay students in
the '80s are seeking increased political power and expanded
rights. And they are doing so at a time when the mood on
college campuses across the country has shifted from a
liberal to a distinctly conservative bias, spawning a spate
of hard nosed, conservative student newspapers and rallies
held not to liberate the repressed but to push religious
ideals and right wing values (Manegold and Phillips 1984).
Only 47 universities bar discrimination on the basis of
sexual orientation (as does only one state, Wisconsin).
Admittedly, lesbian and gay studies are offered at about 30
schools, and there are nearly 300 lesbian and gay student
organizations. But many of these groups function under a
cloud of controversy, and most exist without the official
recognition necessary for office space and funds (Bendet
Its frankness, even more than its extraorinary range of
services and education programs, is waht sets the Columbia
Gay Health Advocacy Project apart from other campus AIDS
organizations. Few of its counterparts elsewhere would dare
say they exist chiefly to serve the medical and emotional
needs of homosexual students and employees. Fewer still
would admit to having any kind of political agenda much
less an agenda that unflinchingly links improving the health
of gay students with fighting homophobia. "We're very
overtly political, in a way," says Laura Pinsky, the three
year old project's founder and director, who is a therapist
in the mental health division of Columbia's health service.
"The more tortured people are about their sexuality, the
more trouble they have practicing safer sex" (Biemiller
These citations vividly sugge...