Is This Who We Are? - Editorial
Last Friday, the local chapter of Turning Point USA, a nonprofit that advocates for conservative politics and values, held an event at Cape Cod Community College called “Academia Under Attack.” The featured speaker was a man named James Lindsay, who does have a background in academia but has spent recent years railing against conservative boogey monsters, like Critical Race Theory and Gender Ideology being taught in public schools.
In case no one else has pointed this out yet, allow us to the be the first: virtually no one is doing or teaching these things in public schools. Mr. Lindsay, whose authored books include apt titles like “Counter Wokecraft,” “Race Marxism” and “The Queering of the American Child,” appears to have made a career traveling around the nation to warn his constituents of the horrors that are waiting to snatch up their children.
None of this, however, is grounded in reality. It is fear mongering at its best and, at worst, is a dog whistle for extremists who have shown us that they can—and will—take these matters into their own hands.
In Mr. Lindsay’s most-recent book, he and his co-author assert that “kids are no longer learning to read, write, or do math, but they are learning how to be ‘radical gender activists.’” He defended his stance earlier this year during a winter visit to the University of Pittsburgh, where he was met with student and alumni protesters standing in staunch opposition to the university providing a platform for the event.
In a letter to community members ahead of last Friday’s event, the president of Cape Cod Community College addressed concerns that had been raised. He wrote that the college does not condone the messages of any external organization that uses its facilities through the rental process—as an educational institution, 4Cs has a commitment to free speech, so Turning Point USA has every right to organize these events and to rent local facilities to do so.
At the same time, however, the college does have a commitment to its students, to upholding its values, and acting in the best interest of both of those things. The president acknowledged that many of the messages put forth by Turning Point USA “do not align with the mission and values of 4Cs,” particularly the college’s support of the recently arrived immigrant population and the LGBTQ+ community.
Local media reported on Mr. Lindsay’s visit to the University of Pittsburgh, where he spoke on the same topic covered last Friday in Barnstable. Notable sentiments from that event include “queer theory opens the gates to hell,” “queer theory is a religious cult,” and “queer is not a real identity…it is a political position against the normal, legitimate, and dominant.” Although “queer theory,” at least in this context, is (conveniently) definitively ambiguous, these messages are explicitly harmful and distressing across the board, and put LGBTQ+ individuals in direct danger.
So now, we turn to you: is this truly who Cape Cod is? Is this the messaging we want to champion, with its salacious rhetoric and weaponized morality that creates an exclusive mentality of “us” in order to feel better about making broad attacks against anyone deemed as being “them?”
Cape Cod may not be as friendly for LGBTQ+ individuals as some of us once thought. The promise of Provincetown, hailed as one of the safest towns for queer people in America, feels far more distant and disjointed in the context of recent anti-LGBTQ movements that have reared their heads right here. Just recently in the Town of Sandwich, there was an act of violence against an LGBTQ couple camping in Shawme-Crowell State Forest and, before that, a student at the high school was subjected to vitriolic bullying in which students used anti-LGBTQ slurs.
In the context of these incidents of hate, is it not then reasonable to be concerned about the direct effect that such hostile anti-queer rhetoric will have on our communities, our neighborhoods and our children?
There is an old saying that we as humans fear the things that we do not understand. We judge these things as evil and we attempt to control them, to bend them into submission as the omnipresent “we” sees fit. And when all else fails, the saying goes, we attack.
But perhaps now is a good time to pause, to think. Human nature is to fear what we do not understand, yes; but ask yourself: have you really tried to understand in the first place? Have you ever asked why and, more importantly, stayed quiet long enough to hear the answer?
If we, as a community, quit busying ourselves with compulsive “othering” and took the time to hear our neighbor out, to see the humanity in one another, we might realize that there is far more that connects us than divides us. It is time to take a long, hard look in the mirror. Cape Cod is better than this.