College conservatives are a thing of joy and beauty

It must be a good gig, being a young Republican on a college campus. Not only are you not required to think too hard for yourself, you get to feel put upon by anyone who dares intrude on your right to brainlessly regurgitate the cliches and prejudices that pass for "reason" amongst conservatives these days. When I saw that The Daily Texan would be running stories on events for Coming Out Week, I couldn't wait for the tedious, cliched letters to start pouring in, asking to be mocked. College conservatives never fail me. (Last letter, by the way.)

Let me begin by saying it is unfortunate that people would be violent or abusive to somebody because of their sexual preference. Furthermore, it needs to be acknowledged that this does indeed happen, and again, there is no excuse for it.

It's traditional to start your apology for homophobia by suggesting that there is no connection between homophobic rhetoric and gay-bashing. Remember kids, it's okay to hate people as long as you have some class about it. Beating people up is messy and unfortunate--not only is heaping shame and legal penalties on them classier, it's more effective.

For a community that does not want to be "labeled" or "stigmatized," however, it seems like the homosexual movement goes out of the way to make sure that happens.

Labeling something is the same as stigmatizing it, apparently. That's why we are working to rid the world of nouns.

By drawing constant attention to their sexual preference, these GLBT groups are by default defining themselves as homosexuals first and everything else second.

For someone who loathes the labels, he sure is familiar with the lingo. Whenever I hear straight people whine that they don't hate gays they just think that your sexual preference should be private, I'm the first to agree. If you feel sexual preference is a private matter not to be spoken about, I expect that you will agree with me that Hooters, cheerleaders, bridal magazines, wedding rings and having children are gross, in-your-face displays of heterosexuality that should be banned.

Whether or not people think it is wrong to be homosexual, I would be willing to bet that most people do not have to be reminded that gay people are part of the UT community, or the US population at large. Even if we were to forget, The Texan editors are sure to publish an op-ed about "the gay vote" written by someone who is not even a student at UT.

Don't anyone tell him that gays already have the right to vote.

I respect people based on many different metrics

Probably a typo, but I thought I would link to the definiton anyway in case I'm missing something here.

and sexual preference is not one of them, nor should it be. Once again, the left is focusing on something arbitrary like sexual preference, much like its constant fixation with skin color.

What will the left think of next? You would think that people were discriminated against because of their skin color or sexual preference or something. Silly liberals! What's that, you say? Something about his first paragraph....ah yes.

Let me begin by saying it is unfortunate that people would be violent or abusive to somebody because of their sexual preference. Furthermore, it needs to be acknowledged that this does indeed happen, and again, there is no excuse for it.

Well, just because we acknowledge that gay-bashing is a problem doesn't mean that liberals didn't just make it up to bug us.

All of this is a misguided attempt to find some utopian "diversity." A university (and its newspaper) should focus on a diversity of ideas and an informed intellectual discourse, not how many people happen to like to have sex with other people of the same gender.

You see, having people from many different backgrounds can only hurt the diversity of ideas. No one has ever learned anything by being exposed to new people and new ideas, and where would you get the idea that they would?

Kidding. I think being exposed to different people is a good thing--if I wasn't exposed to this young man, I would have never had the opportunity to consider if people have "metrics", or if sexual preference is a "merit", depending on if that was a typo. Either way, I'm richer for it.