A frightening MU snowball anecdote

A friend of mine recently told me a story about her Snowball dance experience at Marquette just a week ago (and no, it did not include alcohol).  She met a guy there and started dancing with him.  After a song, the two strolled over to the drinks and struck up a conversation.  She asked him what year he was in.  He said freshman. What happened next was quite appalling to me.  She asked him if he lived in O’Donnell.  He replied scornfully, no, that’s where all the gay people live.  Um, okay.  Like me, my friend was stunned, but thought she might probe him a little more to see if he was “just joking.”  Well, what if your brother was gay, she asked.  I’d hit him, he replied.  Startled, my friend continued her questioning—what if your son was gay?  I’d hit him too and wouldn’t let him be gay, he replied, as nonchalantly as any other *normal* conversation.

  She ended with the question, well what if you were gay?  He said his dad would never let him be gay.  Well, okay then.  That sounds healthy.  My friend strolled quickly away.  The dialogue between them ended there, but perhaps it should have continued.  These voiced opinions about homosexuality are probably not widespread on campus, but they do in fact exist as evidenced to my friend that Saturday night.   While Marquette would never support such cruel speech, I’d guess that heterosexist sentiments among students do exist here more than we’d like to admit, just like they exist in our nation at large.  I’d like to think of Marquette as a pretty peace-loving, anti-violence institution, but for one of its students to so casually advocate for violence towards homosexuals is utterly deplorable to me.  It doesn’t matter whether or not these thoughts are ever acted upon; the problem is that they exist.  Homophobia and heterosexism are serious problems facing our nation and Marquette’s community is not excluded from that in any way.  Marquette’s mission is to produce students focused on “entering into the struggle for a more just society.”  What part of a just society includes discrimination or prejudice based on one’s sexual orientation?  I’d like to see the Marquette student body, faculty, and administration more actively speaking out against heterosexism.   Someone please prove to me that the type of hate speech my friend witnessed at snowball is not a conversational norm.