Schools Hold "Separate but Equal" Graduation Ceremonies for GLBT Students

Schools Blasted for Holding Separate Graduations for Homosexual Students

By Jim Brown
May 25, 2006

(AgapePress) - USA Today reports that a growing number of colleges and universities are holding so-called "lavender graduations" to honor their "gay," lesbian, and transgendered graduates; but one campus watchdog group spokesman says schools should not be making ideological statements by sponsoring these separate ceremonies.

At the lavender graduations, students are often given awards and typically receive rainbow-colored tassels to put on their mortarboards during their commencement activities. But while these ceremonies are often touted as celebrations of cultural diversity and equality, Jason Mattera with the Virginia-based Young America's Foundation (YAF) feels these exercises actually turn true equality on its head.

"I thought the homosexual agenda was just 'Leave us alone,' right?," Mattera observes. "That's what they're saying: 'Oh, we don't want the government involved in our lives. We just want to be treated normally.' Well, here is an obvious example where they're looking for special treatment."

But rarely, the YAF spokesman points out, does any group of students get its own graduation ceremonies as a separate class. "Imagine," he says, "if the Christian club at any of the schools mentioned -- let's take the University of North Carolina -- if the Christian club gathered together and said, 'We want a separate ceremony in which we were going to read passages from Leviticus and passages from Rick Santorum's It Takes a Family.'

"Not only would they have been probably flogged by the diversity deans and multicultural deans on the college campus," Mattera asserts, "but they would be [charged with] hate speech incidents. They would be reported to the human resource department."

In any case, the conservative campus watchdog adds, the idea of lavender graduations is not a very inclusive one, since the schools that hold these separate ceremonies are in effect promoting segregation. Nor, he asserts, do such ceremonies truly respect homosexual students by honoring their achievements.

"I would even think the homosexual students on these campuses should be offended," Mattera says. Homosexual students should consider these separate ceremonies to be a slap in the face, he contends, because the "honorees" are not being rewarded for their academic merits but for their sexual behavior.

Ultimately, the YAF spokesman believes the lavender graduations that are being held by schools like Duke University, UCLA, the University of Georgia, and the University of Washington are rooted in anti-Christian hostility. But even if they are, as some homosexuals claim, simply celebrations of equality, he feels these ceremonies fail on that level as well.

If these and other colleges and universities are truly interested in equality, Mattera suggests, they could show it by doing away with race-based preferences and special rights for certain classes of students. And instead of trying to ring in a new, so-called "civil rights era" for homosexuals, he says, schools need to stop segregating people on the basis of sexual behavior.

Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
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