Let's just mail them a course catalog

It seems that some legislator wants to know about University of Kansas 
courses that deal with homosexuality. The inquiry is anonymous, perhaps 
cravenly so, leading a number of people to speculate that this time it´s 
the right wing´s turn to attempt to abridge academic freedom. I haven´t 
seen the document in question, but published reports keep using phrases 
like ³courses which directly address homosexuality.² There has been no 
little hand-wringing about how to handle this situation. My solution is 
simple: comply completely. That is, send over a listing of virtually 
every course in the humanities and social sciences divisions, 
supplemented by the dozens more courses in the sciences, in journalism, 
in law, in medicine, which ³directly address homosexuality,² even if for 
only a few minutes per semester. I have seen no indication that the 
legislator in question is limiting his or her search to core content, so 
the University ought to respond accordingly. 
For example, Plato almost certainly engaged in behavior we would now 
call homosexual. Even if we ultimately decide that the sexual mores of 
fifth-century Athens had no influence on who is included in and who is 
excluded from the Republic, we need to directly address homosexuality to 
make that determination. Does Western Civilization I directly address 
homosexuality? It had better. Similarly, no Renaissance English drama 
course can possibly avoid homoerotic themes, which are explicit in Lyly, 
Marlowe and Jonson, and implicit in Shakespeare. And so it goes through 
virtually every course in the division. 

I teach acting. Do I directly address homosexuality? You bet I do. It´s 
not a core issue of the course, but I´ve assigned several heterosexual 
students to work on gay or lesbian characters, as well as homosexual 
actors to work on straight characters. I directly work with students to 
help them to lay aside preconceptions and stereotypes, and simply to 
play the role. To me, the ability to view the world through the eyes of 
someone with different life experiences is essential not only to good 
acting, but to a liberal arts education and even to adulthood. 

So let´s send over the complete catalog. Of course, I am fully aware 
that this is not what the legislator in question had in mind, but I´ve 
been telling students for years that I grade their papers based on what 
the say, not on what I think they meant to say. Should we have lower 
standards for state legislators than for first-term freshman? Surely 
legislators, of all people, ought to know the importance of precision in 
language. 

If the sound we hear is really the forces of ignorance pounding at the 
door, we can confront them now or cower in a corner and hope they´ll go 
away. I don´t think they´re leaving, though, and I for one have never 
been very good at cowering. 

Rick Jones
Lawrence graduate student