The Rice Thresher, Vol. 90, No. 4, Ed. 1 Friday, September 13, 2002 Page: 3 of 16
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THE RICE THRESHER OPINION FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13,2002
Generic column title
. 11 anniversary
A few hours after the 5 p.m. sub-
mission deadline for the opinion
section, I realized that I, opinions
editor, had nothing to print about
Sept. 11. It seemed a topic
especially appropriate to
9 this week, so I made it my
duty to write a column on
Sept. 11. At first I was ex-
cited; I had so much to
write.
My excitement turned
to nervousness and soon
* all I wanted was to leave
this space blank. It's not
that I don't have anything
to say. It's that everything
I could think of has al-
ready been said.
Normally, in this situation, I
wouldn't write anything at all. But I
• felt an overwhelming demand to cre-
ate a column that would express
grief, garner hope, answer questions
and create insights all at the same
time. It wasn't a demand I put on
myself. It is a demand Americans
have been putting on each other.
^ Many argue the uniqueness of
Sept. 11 calls for commentary. Had I
not printed an opinion on Sept. 11,1
expect that others would accuse me
of being callous, rather than respect
my desire to say nothing, if I choose
not to run a column.
^ I have many feelings on Sept. 11,
but if I choose not to share them,
should I be criticized?
Sept. 11 was tragic day with which
Catherine
Adcock
Americans are still coming to terms.
It was a national event that must be
dealt with on a personal level. Should
a trauma occur in my life, such as
my mother's death, I
would grieve on my own
terms.
Likewise, everyone
impacted by Sept. 11,
2001, must grieve on their
own terms. There isn't
one "right" way to grieve.
Throughout the past
year, the differences in re-
actions to Sept. 11 have
produced many tensions.
When Kinko's printed
signs that read "Proud to
be an American" and they
began to appear throughout cam-
pus, I and many of my friends felt a
little naseaus at such brazen patrio-
tism. While I felt hurt and saddened
by the attack on my country, I didn't
find relief in championing my na-
tionalism.
More significantly, the plans for
the former World Trade Center site
in New York are proving to be a
delicate matter. It will likely be im-
possible to please everyone with an
interest in it. It reminds me of the
planning for the Vietnam M*emorial
in Washington, which was embroiled
in controversy.
This past week, the tensions
brought on by personal reactions to
national events have run underneath
the surface, but they are still there.
I, myself, felt pressure to act a cer-
tain way.
At the North Servery on Wednes-
day, I turned down, rather uncom-
fortably, a black ribbon to be worn
for mourning. Sept. 11 was little more
than a typical Wednesday to me. I
also knew, my decision to not run a
remembrance of Sept. 11 in the opin-
ion section this week could be con-
sidered controversial.
No matter how united we are as
I have many feelings on
Sept. 11, but if I chose
not to share them,
should I be criticized?
Americans, we are still very differ-
ent as people. A test of our unity has
been and will continue to be toler-
ance how others remember Sept. 11.
Learning this kind of tolerance
can be a difficult lesson, especially
when people seem apathetic to the
sadness Sept. 11,2001, brought with
it. However, It's a critical lesson if
we are to prove the unity we claim to
have.
Catherine Adcock is a Martel College
junior and opinion editor.
Guest column
* Intolerance plagues many more than far right
When my church's senior minis-
ter wrote in a letter last January that
he had a personal announcement to
make to the congregation the next
week, my family, in its
typically irreverent way,
took five-dollar bets on
what the news might be.
My vote was that he
was going to announce
his personal beliefs to be
irreconcilable with those
of our church, which in
recent sermons had
seemed to be the case.
Mom thought he had can-
cer, and only Dad voiced
a little halfheartedly that
he might be coming out of the closet.
Dad won the bet. But we were all
wrong about one thing: We assumed
that whatever the news was, it would
prompt our minister to leave the
church.
On the contrary, Dr. Landis didn't
even glance at the door. This left the
church with two homosexual minis-
ters —our associate pastor is an open
lesbian — and a whole lot of grum-
bling.
Months went by, the congrega-
tion split down the middle and the
local press got involved. Landis
wisely realized that however close-
minded members of the church were
being, and however unfair that was,
he was probably doing more harm
than good by remaining as minister.
He officially resigned Sept. 1.
I learned something about hu-
man beings in those eight tumultu-
ous months of my church's life. But
the lesson wasn't that some people
are too set in their ways to accept
other lifestyles. I knew that already.
Instead, I discovered that those
who claim to be "opeivminded" are
sometimes just as bigoted as
homophobes or racists. And if that's
true universally, as I fear it is, our
"tolerant" society is more likely to
move backward than move forward.
The major difference between
those at my church who were "toler-
ant" and those who were anti-gay
was that while each camp stooped
lower than what the Bible would
condone, the "open" group stooped
a little bit lower still.
For example, some "tolerant"
people suggested that the
homophobes should either accept
Nathan
Black
reality or leave the church — a
church that for some of these anti-
gays had been a part of their lives for
40 years. As far as I know, those
against homosexuality
never issued such a bra-
zen mandate.
And when Dr. Landis
announced his upcoming
resignation in June, some-
one sent an e-mail of a list
of names of people who
were "smiling" at the ser-
vice to a good portion of
the congregation, saying
they had broken God's
covenant. The situation
was reminiscent of witch
trials, which an antededent of my
denomination conducted in the 17th
century.
Although the anti-gays had done
their share of audible muttering dur-
ing church services, their response
to this e-mail was fairly subdued.
They simply stated their steadfast
view of the sinfulness of homosexu-
ality and wished the rest of us luck in
"discovering the truth."
to move humanity forward; attack-
ing a person is a great way to disen-
franchise a friend, put him on the
defensive and thus cause him to steel
himself against any further changes
in ideas. Yeah, that does a lot for
progress.
The "open-minded" in my church
should have challenged their oppo-
nents on an ideological, not a per-
sonal basis. They should have insti-
gated a respectful, bilateral debate,
instead of an accusatory witch hunt.
This probably wouldn't have brought
agreement over whether two homo-
sexual ministers belonged at our
church, but it would have at least
fostered reasonably healthy dia-
logue.
Instead, my church is fractured,
offended, disillusioned and literally
praying for a new minister who can
help sort things out. Here's to hop-
ing the open-minded can do better.
Nathan Black is a Lovett College fresh-
man.
Support the dominant paradigm
Articulate abortion debate
gets stuck in language trap
When polemic ensues, lan-
guage is typically the first casu-
alty of the battle. Words that once
seemed concrete become more
muddled than Enron's
accounting books, fash-
ioned into whatever the
participants desire.
When the definition of
the word "is" consti-
tutes a legitimate point
of debate, language is
effectively dead.
The abortion debate
appears to be the most
archetypal in this re-
gard, ever since the
landmark 1973 case
Roe v. Wade started the entire
mess. It's as if most people get
their worldview on abortion by
reading clever, but ultimately va-
pid, bumper stickers. The situa-
tion is always at its worst when
the media gets involved, which is,
judging from major coverage,
roughly 99.99% pro-choice.
Leading the herd has been
none other than The Associated
Press. On March 12 the U.S.
House of Representatives passed
the Born-Alive Infants Protection
Act, which as the title suggests,
would provide legal protection to
infants born alive during an abor-
tion. Immediately, the AP re-
leased a story that began by stat-
ing, "The House voted Tuesday
to define a fetus that is fully out-
side a woman's body as having
been 'born alive,' which would
give the fetus full legal protec-
tion."
Alas, the English language dic-
tates that a fetus cannot exist out-
side a woman's body. It's like
magma; once it sees the light of
day, the designation changes —
magma becomes lava; a fetus be-
comes a child. This is not a diffi-
cult concept to understand, yet
somehow nobody in AP's Wash-
ington bureau detected the error.
This leaves us with two possi-
bilities: Either the AP's bias got in
the way of objective reporting, or
they're dumber than a box full of
hair. In both cases, AP doesn't
come out looking clean, but un-
fortunately for us, they're hardly
alone.
The Los Angeles Times, for in-
stance, requires its contributors
to use the phrases "pro-choice"
and "anti-abortion" when discuss-
ing the opposing sides of the abor-
tion aisle. This policy is accepted
on a de facto basis among the
Owen
Courreges
foremost news outlets, and while
it may not be inaccurate, if s hardly
equitable.
Fetal rights proponents don't
care for the label "anti-
abortion" any more
than pro-choicers favor
being pigeonholed as
"pro-abortion." It's an
oversimplification to
begin with and is cat-
egorically not the pre-
ferred terminology of
the movement's adher-
ents.
I'm hardly the only
one to have noted the
problem. In a recent ar-
ticle in the Columbia Journalism
Review, Senior Editor Mike Hoyt
lamented that throughout delib-
erations over partial-birth abor-
tion "The New York Times, The
Washington Post, the Los Angeles
Times, and National Public Radio
simply repeated the abortion-
rights advocates' version, with-
out attribution, in news stories."
Hoyt was particularly referring
to the widely reported myth that
partial-birth abortions are extraor-
dinarily rare. He observed, The
evidence indicates that the proce-
dure is not so rare and is most
often used on healthy mothers
with healthy fetuses."
Cool heads may disagree on
the subject of abortion, but when
the word "rare" is applied to a
widespread procedure, the sys-
tem of linguistics, which all de-
bate is founded upon, invariably
begins to decay.
Certainly some might disre-
gard all of this as nitpicking, but it
should be intuitive that words are
significant. Even the smallest
nuance can tilt the national dis-
course in any given direction.
Once a word infects the national
dialogue, it commonly inflicts
havoc, even if it is based upon
something as seemingly trivial as
the fine distinction between "pro-
life" and "anti-abortion."
John Adams once noted,
"Abuse of words has been the
great instrument of sophistry and
chicanery of party, faction and
division of society."
Truer words were never spo-
ken, and yet sadly, he didn't even
know the half of it. You see, he
never debated abortion — not in
21st-century America.
Owen Courreges is a Will Rice
College junior.
Our claim to accept
marginalized groups
makes us no better than
anyone else.
I didn't think the sinfulness of
homosexuality was a truth to be dis-
covered. I did, however, discover
truth of a different kind: Our claim
to accept marginalized groups
makes us no better than anyone else,
especially if we refuse to accept a
newly-marginalized group of close-
minded people.
In fact, it's clear from my experi-
ences with my church that the self-
righteousness of the "tolerant" made
them behave even more inhumanely
than those who disapproved of ho-
mosexuality.
As future shapers of society, we
— the young — need to recognize
that though some ideas in the world
are not worth respecting, such is not
the case for people.
Attacking a belief is a great way
the Rice Thresher
Rachel Rustin
Editor in Chief
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Rustin, Rachel. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 90, No. 4, Ed. 1 Friday, September 13, 2002, newspaper, September 13, 2002; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth443041/m1/3/?q=%22Education+-+Colleges+and+Universities+-+Rice+University%22: accessed July 10, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.