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Tuesday, February 22, 1994
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
新
VIEWPOINT
Homosexual community should reject pedophilia
Recent attempts by homosexual organizations to distance themselves from the North American Man-Boy Love Association are positive steps. NAMBLA advocates loving relationships between men and boys, relationships the group says have existed since ancient Greece.
In January, the Stonewall 25, a New York group, said no to NAMBLA's desire to march with the group in its international march on the United Nations on June 26. The Stonewall 25's march commemorates the 1969 uprising at the Stonewall Inn, a New York gay bar.
In addition, the International Lesbian and Gay Association is considering breaking off its relationship with NAMBLA. The ILGA will vote on NAMBLA's status in July.
The attempts are by no means universal, but they are a start. Though the annual gay pride march in Los Angeles excludes NAMBLA, marches in San Francisco and New York have allowed NAMBLA to participate.
What NAMBLA really represents is pedophilia, and a world of difference exists between homosexuality and pedophilia. The former involves two adult men who understand their sexuality. The latter involves adult men who attempt to impose their sexuality on individuals who are too young to know what sexuality means.
Psychological research has found, in fact, that for the most part pedophiles have no adult sexual orientation and that those who do are largely heterosexual.
Too many people view homosexuality with disgust and therefore equate homosexuality with everything they find disgusting. By distancing themselves from pedophiles, gay groups are emphasizing that those equations are false.
NATHAN OLSON FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Nuclear threat still alive in North Korean gesture
Though a noble gesture on the part of the North Koreans, limiting international inspectors to only seven of nine nuclear program sites is inadequate. North Korea should allow international inspectors to inspect all of the sites.
Some people are praising North Korea for finally submitting to the wishes of the international community. After months of talks with North Korea, some including members of the Clinton administration say this is a positive outcome. "This appears to be a step in the right direction," said Dee Dee Myers, White House press secretary.
But it's hardly a step in any direction. North Korea is acting like a student who invites the resident assistant into the student's room to check for alcohol, saying to the RA, "You can check anywhere — except the refrigerator."
After the inspectors look over the sites and presumably find nothing, can the international community be assured that North Korea is not building nuclear weapons? The answer is a disappointing no.
Though it sounds good that North Korea is allowing inspections, not allowing all sites to be inspected mitigates the show of good faith. Who is to say that the North Koreans aren't hiding something in the sites at which they aren't allowing inspections?
By allowing international inspectors access to all of the sites, the North Koreans can put the international community at ease. It will be a genuine step in the right direction and will give the international community real hope for better relations with North Korea.
DAVID ZIMMERMAN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
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Letters should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words. They must include the writer's signature, name, address and telephone number, as well as affiliated with the University of California at Berkeley.
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'Schindler's List':history lesson taught effectively by Spielberg
Steven Spielberg's epic about the Holocaust, "Schindler's List," has finally made it to Lawrence. Everything you have heard about this movie is true. Go see it. See it not only because it has received a record twelve Oscar nominations, nor only because of its deep moral content. See "Schindler's List" because it is good history.
To understand the heights to which Spielberg has risen, keep in mind the depths to which Hollywood has sometimes fallen. Compare "Schindler's List" with the premier symbol of bad movie history, Oliver Stone's "JFK."
"JFK" was a well-crafted thing, with all the verve and flash of a rock video. But Stone's undeniable talent as a filmmaker was put to the service of legitimizing a crackpot conspiracy theory, which held that President Kennedy had been killed by the CIA and the defense industry because he had wanted to pull out of Vietnam. For Stone, history was made completely clear and understandable by a simple, tragic fair tale: Kennedy was
history as therapy, a part of the twelve-step recovery program for Stone and the rest of his damaged generation.
the virtuous white knight of Camelot who was killed by the bad guys, and America has been falling apart ever since.
Unfortunately for Stone, there was no conspiracy to kill Kennedy. But truth wasn't really the issue in "JFK." Rather, Stone turned the Kennedy assassination into a titanic myth of good-and-evil because this invested history with psychological meaning for him and many others who came of age during the 1960s. It felt better to think that Kennedy had been a heroic casualty in the fight for justice rather than the unlucky victim of one tortured lunatic with a gun. "JFK" was
"Schindler's List" is a wonderful contrast to "JFK." An entirely different spirit animated Spielberg. Unlike Stone, he was not interested in simplifying the past with dubious theories, and he wasn't trying to heal inner wounds.
Much has been made of the fact that "Schindler's List" was not filmed in color. In Spielberg's hands, black-and-white film becomes a subtle way of communicating the unknowability of the Holocaust and history in general. The film often seems blanketed in a blurred haze, with backdrops fading away into grainy monochromes. Unlike "JFK", with its silksly crafted and false clarity, "Schindler's List" speaks to the mystery of the past, its mute unknowability that defies easy explanation. History offers hard lessons, Spielberg is saying, but not the false security of certitude.
Spielberg is no trying to make anyone feel better about themselves in
"Schindler's List." The film makes no simplistic moral judgments. Oscar Schindler is a hero in that he saves some people from the gas chambers of Auschwitz, but his story is shot through with ambivalence and confusion. One thinks of a particularly poignant scene in which Schindler is shown relaxing in a plush apartment recently confiscated from a Jewish couple. While he admires his new home, the former owners are spat upon and reviled in the streets below. "Schindler's List" is not a cartoonish morality play like "JKF". Rather, it is the story of one flawed man's difficult journey in a landscape of obscenity, atrocity and evil.
"Schindler's List" is a an expression of respect for the complexities of history, offering a welcome contrast to Oliver Stone and others who would make the past a vehicle for their own dibious purposes. It is above all a sign of hope that Hollywood can, on occasion, get it right.
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Appearance spurs thoughtless questions
Sometimes ifI'm bored (or ifI'm just feeling malicious), I try to embellish
Hi. I'm a *Homo sapien* from Earth, the Blue Planet third from the Sun. I hope this sufficiently answers the two questions with which I have been bombarded all too often: What are you, and where are you from?
Now I know that Kansas is not especially known for its cultural diversity. I also realize that I don't look as native as the swaying prairie grass. People are usually curious about the "hearty chunks" in the melting pot. I appreciate genuine interest about my background, but I usually choose to answer tactless, crass questions with something to the effect of, "I am a mutant android relation to Data of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation.' Caution, human, I breathe fire."
Upon meeting me, most people see the color of my skin and make the brilliantly tacful statement, "You don't look like you're from around here." This is followed by the ambiguous, "Where are you from?" or the infamous, "What are you?" Both questions are accompanied by the Zoo Look. People look at me and wait expectantly for me to break into a tribal dance or to throw myself on a blazing funeral pyre. Sorry, folks, but I only do that for private audiences.
What I really get a kick out of is people who think that they're being culturally sensitive and are quite proud of themselves for being so. These are the people who eye me, paste on the Pat Sajak smile and enunciate, "WHERE... ARE... YOU... FROM?" (long pause, bigger smile) "DO... YOU... SPEAK... ENGLISH" A self-satisfied emulsifier as we wait for me to spew forth foreign dialects while I perform a ritualistic dance on a bed of hot coals. I simply smile back with a confused look on my face until they scream the questions at me (enthusiastically). Then I tell them the dirty, unglamorous truth. "I'm from Sweden. I just tan easily."
my fairly innocuous past. Once I convinced someone that I was a Moroccan princess in the Witness Protection Program, and could he please keep it quiet or my father would be assassinated.
I am proud of my heritage. My parents are natives of India, but I was born and raised in the United States. I
Some people get violent when they find out that I was not born overseas. Once a guy asked me if I spoke Turkey because I looked like I was from there. Given his mental capacity, I decided to be straightforward and said that no, I didn't speak "Turkey" and that I was from Los Angeles. He thought that I was making fun of him because I obviously didn't look like I was from "around here." He apparently sprang forth from the very soil itself, judging from his filthy vocabulary.
I have been mistaken for many ethnicities and nationalities: Native American, Hispanic, Puerto Rican, Italian, Iranian, Pakistani, French and Persian, to name a few. The man who thought that I was Persian was crest-fallen to find out that the country no longer exists.
enjoy sharing what I know about my Indian culture with people who are genuinely interested. I do not like, however, being dehumanized and scrutinized by people who just want to know who the "foreigner" is.
The best question I have ever been asked came from a lady who was shopping in the clothing store where I worked. She said, "You have such striking coloring. May I ask what your ethnic origin is?" I didn't have to puzzle out if she wanted to know where I was born, where my ancestors were born, where I moved from most recently or who I was in a former life. I found out that she was half French and half Lebanese and that she had lived in Florida for many years with her husband, a native Texan. We had a lovely conversation about multiculturalism, and we both left feeling that we'd learned something.
Now lest you get me wrong, I'm not on some sort of PC trip. I'm just advocating common courtesy and civilized manners. And for the record, I only breathe fire for special occasions.
Allisha Aorra is an Overland Park freshman in biology and English.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Gun-control proponents ignore idea of 'rights'
In your most recent article concerning "Victim Disarmament" legislation and in Ann Blackhurst's letter to the editor, some of the most basic issues have again been ignored.
1. The right to keep and bear arms is one of the civil rights guaranteed under the Constitution. The Second Amendment is no different from the right to free speech or any of the other amendments to the Constitution that form the Bill of Rights. In the American Heritage Dictionary
of the English Language, "bill of rights" is defined as "a formal summary of those rights and liberties considered essential to a people or group of people." Considering the definition, it is no surprise that the "Victim Disarmament" advocates try to separate the Second Amendment from the rest of the bill of rights. In separating it they try to remove the protections afforded other rights to the end of denying people one of their most basic civil rights: the right of self-protection.
2. Another principle that the "Victim Disarmament" proponents violate is that rights are neither granted nor taken away at anyone's whim.
Jeffrey W. Deane Lawrence graduate student
3. Gun control is no different from free speech control (i.e. censorship) and has no place in our free society. Make no mistake that freedom is easy. In the words of French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), "Evil is easy and has infinite forms."
Rights are guaranteed, regardless of how much easier it would be on the government without them and regardless of which right it is. On the other hand, privileges (i.e. driving) can be taken away by the government for any reason.
Who has right to decide
what is speech or trash?
Brian Dirck's column on Thursday stated that universities were not "a landfill for unsubstantiated verbal garbage." He proposes banning speech when it "ceases to be an expression of an idea and becomes mere refuse."
Who gets to decide when these conditions have occurred? Mr. Direc? Or majority vote?
Scott Hattrup
Overland Park law student