On letter regarding article on campus homophobia JPUnderstandingWhen I was 12-years-old, I was having dinner with my father, mother and a very good friend of the family, Michael. As we were eating, I referred to someone as being limp-wristed, a pansy. Michael seemed startled and said, "Oh, what do you mean by that?" I responded that I was referring to someone who is gay, a homosexual. He looked at me quizzically. Later that night, my father was driving me home from theater rehearsal and he turned to me and said, "You know, Joe, from now on when you say something, you may want to be more careful of who you are saying it to." At that moment, my dad's point hit me like a Mack truck. "Do you mean that. . .?" My dad cut me off: "Well, we're pretty sure that he is." I was lucky enough that, at such an early age, I was given the opportunity to learn about the realities of the world in which we live. Michael has always been like an older brother to me. he has helped me through hard times and has always given me very important advice, even regarding women, yes, women in my life. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Men hate each other, because they fear each other. They fear each other, because they do not know each other. The do not know each other because they do not communicate, because they are separated." Mr. Horn, we, as Princeton students, are lucky, because we are not separated and have the opportunity to discuss these issues in a mature and intelligent setting. If you expressed your views in hopes of achieving dialogue, the credit is due to you. If you gave your opinion with the assumption that it would be embraced, then you are sorely mistaken. In short, Mr. Horn, I hope you met someone like Michael very soon.
Joe Hernandez Kolski '96
Letter to the editors of the Daily Princetonian,
published on September 26, 1995.
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