Reading Professor Emeritus Rice's scatological op-ed piece ("Jenkins' statement a serious misstep"), I was left wondering when did one's personal religious beliefs become a warrant for hatred, homophobia and contempt of difference? His egregious refusal to understand ways of life other than his own is his own business, but to claim that the portrayal of women's lives in "The Vagina Monologues" or those of lesbians and gay men in the Queer Film Festival must necessarily be anti-Catholic is ridiculous. Can Rice not conceive that, in a plural and secular society, lives take place outside the ambit of his own limited social comprehension? His evident failure to recognize the value of gay men and lesbians, and of women secure in their non-Catholic identities, reveals the arrogance of the reactionary right, who seem to think they talk to God on the phone daily. Rice's article is another example of the special rights claimed by religious zealots worldwide - the right to intolerance.
Todd Nathan Thorpegrad studentApril
