Teaching Tolerance
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on the Web, April 17, 2005
New York Medical College, a private institution in Valhalla, has 1,600 students from many states and countries, and thus a varied array of campus clubs and organizations, including one that condones ardent physical activity among its same-sex members that some people find distasteful and disturbing.
But enough about the rugby team. The college seems perfectly willing to tolerate that group, as well as clubs for devotees of ballroom dancing, chamber music,
a capella singing and other extracurricular endeavors. What the school cannot stomach, to its great discredit, is a group called Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People in Medicine.
It is a shame that any institution of higher learning would ban a student club over issues of sexual identity, even a school like New York Medical College, which has direct connections to the Roman Catholic Church, whose doctrinal positions on homosexuality are neither in the cultural mainstream nor open to debate.
The college is run by a corporation whose members are appointed by New York's archbishop, and declares itself to be "in the Catholic tradition."
That, so far at least, has been its justification for banning the gay student club, whose activities it says are "inconsistent with the values" of the college.
The college's ban has caused a stir in Westchester, with consequences that are regrettable and so far thoroughly predictable.
Cries for inclusion and tolerance from aggrieved supporters of the gay group and its president, Joshua Sahara, have had no success; the school is private and not subject to such coercion from outsiders.
On an official level, the county executive, Andrew J. Spano, has issued scolding news releases and vowed that the county would not work with the college on future projects.
But that is about as far as it goes. The county's Human Rights Commission has concluded that the school's private status exempts it from county antidiscrimination law.
It seems clear that further pressure -- assailing the decision as shortsighted and counterproductive, say, or warning that the school will become an academic pariah, an outlier even among its Catholic peers
-- is likely to fail in the short run. Critics of the college have repeatedly pointed out that other Catholic institutions, like Iona College and Fordham University, have found it possible to accept gay student groups without fearing the compromise of their religious identities.
The most disheartening fact in this sorry situation is that the banned club at New York Medical College operated under a different name
-- the Student Support Group -- without problems for several years. Only after it took on the more explicit name chosen by Mr. Sahara last fall did it lose its financing and meeting space, suggesting that college officials were moved more by semantics and their own queasy feelings and emotions rather than by simple decency and good sense.
William O. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has suggested to The Journal News, unhelpfully, that those who do not like the school are free to go somewhere else.
Perhaps there is a better solution -- through the good-natured evocation of the sort of tolerance and compassion espoused by Christ in the New Testament.
We suggest that Mr. Sahara form a club called Pharisees, Tax Collectors, Prostitutes and Sinning People in Medicine, with membership open to all, if only to see how the good people of New York Medical College could possibly object.
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