To the editor:

I appreciated The Hoya’s recent editorials in support of the LGBTQ community, especially [“Ally, Not Adversary” (The Hoya, Oct. 2, 2009, A2)](https://www.thehoya.com/opinion/ally-not-adversary/), chiding The Catholic University of America for its refusal to recognize the LGBTQ student group on that campus.

Coming out as a local college student in the 1980s and then joining the Georgetown faculty in 1996, I participated in a similar struggle for LGBTQ recognition at Georgetown, and am now able to celebrate our very recent triumph over shame, denial and invisibility. Change is indeed possible – here’s Georgetown feeling smug enough to call CUA out!

But as CUA’s administration digs in its heels, I’d like to remind administrators there that being the last school in town to treat all students equally is surely no righteous distinction, even when such action masquerades as righteousness. Using faith-based strategies to exclude and isolate an otherwise vibrant community did not justify centuries of church-sanctioned anti-Semitism; it does not erase the living memory of Georgetown’s own waffling on this recognition of our humanity; it does not excuse CUA’s ignorance now.

Bonnie Morris

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies

Oct. 6, 2009

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