The front page of the next day’s campus newspaper contained another sex and booze story about a bar named The Hawk (the school’s mascot is the "Jayhawk") which is struggling to recover its lost liquor license privileges. A skeptical neighbor was quoted expressing concern "... with issues regarding the location of the bar, noise, lewd conduct and parking." The bar’s attorney assured neighbors that the owner: "... had taken several steps to control The Hawk’s patrons, including hiring more bouncers and installing a system that scans identifications to verify patron’s ages."
In the same issue, an unrelated front page article was headlined "Cops in shops to check ID’s of alcohol buyers." The story quoted an indignant student:
Brian Buck, Kansas City, Kansas, freshman, questioned the effectiveness the program would have in keeping minors from drinking.
‘People are going to drink if they want to, and I don’t see what cops in liquor stores can do to stop that,’ he said.
Buck also said he had some questions about what the police could, or couldn’t do.
‘Say I walk into a store with a fake [ID] and ask the guy if he’s a cop. Can they lie to you? Or if you ask, do they have to tell you the truth?’ he asked.
As our president might say, "That depends on how you define ‘truth.’" Mr. Buck lies about his age while insisting that an undercover cop be truthful about his identity. Never underestimate Bill Clinton’s influence on education. This country now demands the right to licentious sex, covered up with lies (told even under oath) and abortions. The fervency of America’s devotion to "privacy" suggests a people with much of which to be ashamed.
And with all this campus press coverage of sex and booze, it should come as no surprise that the front page of the Wednesday, September 23rd Kansan, would feature a story about a speaker warning students of "date rape." Some 900 undergrads heard a talk by Katie Koestner who, as a student, was raped by a date who had been drinking.
Nor were the week’s "sex and violence" stories confined to the heterosexual realm. Tuesday, September 22nd’s issue of the Kansan published a front page story about a student whose "gay pride" flag was burned as it hung from the side of the house in which he and gay companions reside. The Lawrence paper reported that local police classified this malicious act as a "hate crime" (a related story the following day covered a lecture on "queer identity politics" by Professor Steven Seidman, whom a KU graduate teaching assistant described as "... the most prominent and engaging queer theorist in sociology today ...."). Marvin Decker, treasurer of "Queers and Allies" was quoted by the Kansan as expressing surprise that a "diversity flag" would be burned in Lawrence, which he termed "... a pretty open and tolerant community."
But flag burning is hardly the worst mistreatment to which homosexuals are subjected, and some advocacy groups now argue that gays and lesbians have been targeted for "genocide." The deplorable murder of a gay student at the University of Wyoming is cited in support of this proposition. But other groups have sought to extend this notion even further. The Universal Way (www.universalway.org) and Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance (www.religioustolerance.org), for instance, contend that this "genocide" is encouraged by Christian denominations which condemn homosexual behavior as Biblical sin. They assert that such "intolerance" derives from "homophobia" which creates a "climate" conducive to hatred and mayhem and erodes the self-esteem of gays and lesbians, thus driving them to higher rates of suicide. In the November 9, 1998 issue of U.S. News and World Report, columnist John Leo notes an even more hysterical "genocide/climate" argument:
The Nation magazine published the most overwrought of all ‘climate’ editorials. Written by gay playwright Tony Kushner, it said that Pope John Paul II ‘endorses murder’ of gays. Kushner went on to say that the pope and Orthodox rabbis are ‘homicidal liars,’ and the Republican Party, by purportedly endorsing antigay discrimination, ‘endorses the ritual slaughter of homosexuals.’
If, as some argue, there is a genetic component to homosexuality, it will certainly be detectable in genetic testing of unborn babies who will no doubt be aborted in huge numbers. CBR will oppose the killing of these babies just as adamantly as any other.
The homosexual group Act Up (www.actupny.org) now says inadequate appropriations for "AIDS prevention" is "genocide." To dramatize Act Up’s demands for increased funding of AIDS research, U.S. News & World Report (June 15, 1998, complete with color photo) says the group recently transported the emaciated body of their deceased leader, Steve Michael, to Washington, D.C. and paraded his open casket around the White House. But stranger still is the fact that many liberals accept all this as reasonable, while simultaneously denouncing our use of mere photos (not actual bodies) to validate the claim that genocide be defined to include the death, by systematic torture (not random disease), of 37 million American babies since 1973!
And "denounce" the KU community did. The Tuesday, September 22 Lawrence Journal-World headlined its lead story "Anti-abortion display creates unrest at KU" with a sub-head which read "For a second day, a graphic anti-abortion display at KU stirred hostility and stopped passersby cold on campus." The article began:
Guarded by a metal gate and flanked by graphic photographs of aborted fetuses, racial lynchings and the Holocaust, Gregg Cunningham stared through his gold-framed sunglasses and tried to calmly tell flabbergasted Kansas University students why abortion is genocide.
* * *
[The] president of [the] Black Student Union and a student senator, said the campus has enough racial tension without pictures of lynchings and death camps.
KU senior Tiffani Cunningham -- no relation to Gregg Cunningham -- agreed.
‘It’s just highly insensitive, especially at this time of year (Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year)’, Cunningham said. ‘This is for shock value, and they definitely got that.’
* * *
KU police spokesman Sgt. Troy Mailen said the [police imposed security] precautions were not typical of campus demonstrations.
* * *
Many students walking by did not stop. One said, ‘I don’t even want to look.’ Others like KU freshman Brooke Axtell, quietly absorbed the images away from the pandemonium.
‘This is reality, no matter what your beliefs are,’ Axtell said.
* * *
Bio-Ethical Reform center workers Trudy Ledbetter and Andrea Lee, who traveled to Lawrence to help present the display, said the reality and the horror of abortion keeps them going.
‘Abortion is killing a child, period,’ said Ledbetter ... [an unmarried] 20-year old Butler County Community College student who two years ago ignored the advice of those around her and gave birth to a baby girl. ‘To me it comes down to taking responsibility for your actions.’
The article ends with the following assurance from CBR:
The signs will be taken down briefly on Wednesday, when area grade school children will be bused by the area on the way to Murphy Hall for a theater matinee.
We additionally followed our customary practice of placing warning signs along each avenue of approach to the exhibit to permit sensitive viewers to take alternative routes or avert their gaze.
Some black student leaders seemed unaware that there is even greater tension between KU students and their unborn children than there is between the races -- and this latter tension is producing more violence and bloodshed than any racial animosity which ever existed -- on his or any other campus. Neither did some seem to understand that the abortion rate among the non-white population is more than twice the white rate -- 56 vs. 23 per 1,000 -- (see, The Abortion Factbook (The Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1992)). Our hearts are especially grieved by the deaths of these defenseless black babies.
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