THE CHRONICLE
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2,2007 | 27
commentaries
letterstotheeditor Noia’s notion of marriage incomplete I agree that no one should be boasting about his or her sexual orientation, as Justin Noia writes in his Nov. 1 column “I don’t hate gays (and neither does God)I look forward to the day when sexual orientation is not a category by which to judge people. I do have some squabble about the view of marriage in Noia’s column, i.e. that marriage is primarily for procreation. In marriage, the bride and the groom are the most important, and not what comes after that. In fact, as far as I know, in marriage rituals, the vows are for the bride and the groom to love each other and be faithful to each other as long as they are alive. There is no mention of children at all. Children are important, yes, but they do not make or define a marriage relationship. In linguistic terms, children are not diagnostic components of the marriage relationship, but supplementary. If this is so, then there is room for a similar, meaningful relationship between those whose sexual orientation is other than heterosexual. Daniel Arichea,
Jr.
Bishop in Residence Duke Divinity School
Why the gays fight I enjoyed Justin Noia’s Nov. 1 column about gay pride. It mirrored a good deal of my ignorance about gay culture when I first came out. Then, last spring, in a casual chat with a professor, I was put on the spot: “Why do you think we are fighting for marriage rights?” I had taken Professor Erwin Chemerinsky’s class; I was ready to answer this question. But my legal citations and historical referents
were trite. There was a much better answer; “When your friends are dying from a medical condition that the White House won’t talk about and the National Institutes ofHealth won’t research, and lovers are denied access to hospital rooms because they aren’t—and can’t be—legally married, it catalyzes your politics.” Pride (or whatever you want to call this nebulous identity issue) does not come about without substance. Marginalized groups—and Noia admits gays are marginalized, even if he’s not personally afraid of us—create identity politics by identifying oppression and then fighting that oppression by taking it public. Jews cite the holocaust, blacks slavery, gays AIDS and the legal prejudices that have survived. So before pointing out the semantic flimsiness of a “pride movement,” remember the movement itself has its own natural progression, as do the individuals involved. Whatever it is labeled today, and however “unnatural” a demand is being made, people taking their identity seriously is not a unique or surprising phenomenon. Furthermore, a reductionist critique—lumping all non-straight couples together as “unnatural” —completely sidesteps the nuanced differences within the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community. The fight for marriage is more than just pride flexing itself, it’s a fight for social mobility and tangible benefits. This is not just a philosophical construct, it’s a social reality. So why is there pride? Because there is oppression. And oppression gets internalized quite easily. And in a society where we’re told daily that we’re free, it is hard to tell individuals coming out of silence to hush up and not identify with a greater cause.
Kyle Knight Trinity ’OB
Maybe those high-proteinLysol wipes werent the greatest idea When
Our relationship with medicine is almost as outrageous. Antibiotics cure strep throat, so patients hound their physicians with requests for powerful antibiotics to treat sniffly noses and coughs that are often viral. A related overuse of antibiotics has resulted in the evolution of terrifying antibiotic-resistant strains of staph and tuberculosis. Americans crave guarantees, antibacterial soap and entire diets made out of antioxidants. We have a habit of figuring that if one of anything is good, a whole bunch of them has to be better. Why else would there be warnings on bottles ofAdvil not to take more than six in a day? Of course, this is all a generalization. Not very Why? According to jaCCXIIi dctwilCf United States citizen pounds ibuprofen like candy, the operating hypothesis ilife. UfiSpefate eats no tfiing but beef jerky and bathes in Lysol. But employed by most health even in my own relatively moderate existence I went scientists, allergies may be caused by a lack of natural challenges to the immune through a phase where I eliminated almost all fats system in our excessively clean environments. So might from my diet. Right now I am probably growing a Frappendicitis, multiple sclerosis and violent outbreaks of esca-shaped tumor somewhere in my small intestine Salmonella and E. Coli, all either attacks by our own imfrom my three-a-day habit. mune systems or deficient immunities we should have deIn all our extremism, we seem to forget that, for the as children. most veloped by playing in crap part, we have existed pleasantly alongside dirt and Clearly we can’t respond to these threats by allowing bugs for as long as our species has been alive. While kids to bask in their own filth. We’d end up with higher humans were evolving, moderation in health and eatrates of illness, cranky neighbors and probably a social ing was often the only option because of the scarcity worker on the doorstep. of food and medicinal treatments. Now that most of No, cleanliness in itself is not the problem. Neither the dangerous diseases that tormented our forbears, is hand-washing or penicillin, per se. Our obsession with like polio, smallpox and the plague, have all but been hygiene —and the resulting increase in the incidence of eliminated, there’s really no reason to pull out the big allergies —is a symptom of an entirely different problem, guns for every little bacterium that strolls along. In one that crosses the borders of disease into child rearing, fact, strictly adhering to the vagaries of scientific progdiet and almost every facet of modem life. ress has only served to counteract millennia worth of We do not believe in moderation. evolutionary advantages, leading to hypersensitive immune systems, obesity and superbugs. The American diet alone is notoriously gluttonSo chill out on the antibacterial wipes already, only ous, but we’re just as extreme about the things we don’t eat. Months after the finding that dietary fat take antibiotics if they’re absolutely necessary, and for caused weight gain hit the news, the market was glutChrist’s sake, have a piece of chocolate with your baconted with fat-free cookies and chips that turned out wrapped-turkey-stuffed chicken breast. Just don’t pick to cause a host of other problems. A few years later, your nose and wipe it on me. That’s sick. carbs went out of style and carb-free menus offerJacqui Detwiler is a graduate student in psychology and neuing formerly verboten fatty fare popped up in restauroscience. Her column runs every Friday. rants under “healthy” headings.
I was a kid, I picked my nose. Sometimes I even picked my nose while digging potatoes out of die woods behind my house to throw at the neighbors. Afterward I often unloaded whole pockets full of sand into my poor mother’s shower. And as much as my mom probably wanted to toss me out to live in the yard like a dirty monkey, it may be why I’m more allergy-free than almost evk eryone I know. .
Crazie is as Crazie does As
I type this—wearing my K-ville Resident shirt from last year—l feel like a fraud. Coach K, ifyou’re reading this, I’m sorry. . I didn’tgo to the Blue-White scrimmage last Saturday. And to make things worse, I don’t even know the names of our new freshmen. I’m one ofthe worst Cameron Crazies ever, ifI am still worthy of that title. Now, I’m working hard to redeem myself. I validated for the Shaw game early on, and I purchased the tickets for the Barton game for my family in an attempt to convert them to Krzyzewskism. 3lllG VGTgOIZ But sitting here, looking at the Post-it note of work I with 3 3grain of Salt have to get done before my parents arrive in Durham for the weekend, I realize that I’ll probably have to unregister for Shaw. I didn’t go to the scrimmage because I spent the entirety of my Saturday in Bostock, translating the ancient works of Tacitus for my Latin class and desperately trying to understand the subtleties of linear algebra. Between conjugating verbs and augmenting matrices, I was forced to subdue my inner Crazie. But it wants out. I’m the girl who took the title of tent captain way too far last year and, to this day, still sends mass e-mails to her tent-mates. I’m the girl who has a supply of blue and white face paint in her drawer. I’m the girl whose Duke-blue Mardi Gras beads tremble on her windowsill, hoping to bounce in Cameron again soon. I don’t want to be the girl who says, “DeMarcus who?” or has to actually think about how to complete the cheer, “If you can’t go to college, go to State...” Ask some random guy on the street what he knows about Duke University, and chances are you’ll receive one of two responses: either something to do with impressive academics or something to do with a really sweet basketball team. And because of those annoying graduation requirements that involve taking classes and getting grades, as a student here, you undoubtedly experience those impressive academics (as painful as they may be at times). But as for that whole basketball thing, you can very easily go through your time here without setting foot in Cameron. And frankly, that’s just wrong. We have a well-established, well-respected basketball program—and that’s quite possibly the understatement of the century. We are extremely lucky to have it so readily available to us. So whether you live by March Madness or you couldn’t care less about the Final Four, you should take advantage of what Duke has to offer. Sadly, the Craziness seems to have died down a little in the last few years. We have had to resort to that cursed validation system this year because we as Crazies are not performing up to par. We shouldn’tallow ourselves to risk losing part of the student section because we don’t even bother to show up in Cameron. Now, I’m not saying you need to go so far as to sit down with a basketball schedule when you register on ACES (although, admittedly, I did so last year, and I strongly encourage it). I am saying, even if you can only show up at 6:59 p.m. for a 7:00 p.m. game, you should go. Even ifyou’re on the non-TV side. Even if you don’t have the best view of the court. Every single Crazie makes a difference. And I realize it’s a lot for me to ask, considering I’m the one who couldn’t get my butt out ofBostock on a Saturday to go to the scrimmage. But we all need to work together on this one. Because of Duke’s academic reputation, some of us will inevitably have exams to study for and projects to complete, so we need other Dukies to have our backs and to fill up Cameron. To maintain Duke’s reputation as both a top-tier academic and athletic institution, we need to find a balance. We need to live up to our title of Cameron Crazies. We need to be the sixth, and strongest, man. On a side note, I would like to thank all the folks in Campus Council and Duke University Union who made the Devil’s Eve T-shirt distribution run like clockwork. By 8:05 p.m. I was on my way home, unscathed, with a size small T-shirt in hand. Well done. ...
Allie Vergotz is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every otherFriday.