Homophobia at West Virginia University, 1989

This archival highlight comes from a slightly different vein of my work. Exploring censorship of queer stories has led me to exploring LGTBQ activism in education in various forms. One of these is college groups. Queer people have, of course, long been a part of university life, as Patrick Dilley’s Queer Man on Campus demonstrates, but they were an unwelcome part. Gay men and lesbians were monitored and expelled when discovered.

Gay student organizations were one means of combatting this. The first was founded in 1967 at Columbia University - Eric Cervini has made a collection of material available. Gay and lesbian student groups spread rapidly across public universities (and more than a few private ones as well). These groups served a number of functions. This could include the typical social functions of holding dances - and gay dances were enormously controversial for a time - or parties. They were also spaces where gay activist politics were debated and contested, with many members going into various political and social activism after graduation. Additionally, the groups were sometimes the only gay organizations in their areas and thus provided a variety of social services to the queer community more broadly. This might include a list of gay inclusive businesses, roommate finding services, a library of materials one couldn’t find in the public or university libraries, and help lines staffed by student and community volunteers.

While it seems likely the vast majority of gay student groups in the 1970s and ‘80s were allowed to form without hassle, or too much hassle, a significant number of universities sought to prohibit them. The rationales included claims that a gay student group was equivalent to a sex club, that they encouraged illegal conduct as most states still criminalized sodomy - which in nearly all states applied equally to straight people but that was ignored - and that the group would infect otherwise normal, straight students with homosexuality. In an impressive string of litigation wins, the federal courts repeatedly held that public universities could not prohibit a gay and lesbian student group consistent with the First Amendment. The list of precedent is long but here is one early example.

By the end of the 1980s, public universities were probably the most welcoming institutional spaces for gay and lesbian people in the U.S. I should stress that this is all pretty relative. I’m not saying that all universities were accommodating or supportive of queer students. But in a time where the Reagan Administration and Republicans happily cheered the spread of HIV/AIDS, which they understood as a gay disease, where almost no business gave queer couples benefits, marriage equality was a distant dream, where people were fired or evicted for being LGTBQ without any legal recourse, and police abuses that were still prevalent, universities were the most supportive environment young gay people encountered.

This brings me to today’s specific archival find. I discovered it in a collection of materials on colleges in the 1980s in the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force archives. The Gay and Lesbian Mountaineers (GLM) of West Virginia University produced a report on homophobia in December 1989. Many gay student groups did this at the time. As they were usually the only support for queer students, they tended to collect a significant number of examples of homophobia that were never reported elsewhere. After all, as the GLM report noted, reporting bullying, harassment, or assaults to the university or police risked being outed. Many of these students would have been closeted off campus, especially to family still. Further, there was the widespread assumption that institutions didn’t care and wouldn’t do anything, which was also likely true.

In some ways the GLM report illustrates the mundane nature of homophobic harassment. For example, fliers were pretty much destroyed the minute they were hung, allegedly at times by staff members, and the GLM helpline received hundreds of prank and harassing calls. This was the kind of everyday low level harassment that most groups seem to have shared at the time. Then there are what GLM labels the “bizarre” such as the student government candidate referencing a group of “Satan-worshipping lesbian baseball players.” That’s a story I want more of. The GLM report is lighter on issues of violence, noting one example at a gay bar. Gay bashing was on the the rise in the 1980s, fueled by Republican and Christian Right discourse, and this one incident was likely the tip of an iceberg.

“I’m not giving any contributions and support a bunch of faggots in spreading AIDS. I hope you all realize that you’re going to hell and that would be getting off easy.”

“I object most strongly to you queers using free campus mail to send your materials. Faggot activity is against God’s law and the natural order as well as against W.V. State Law.”

For me the institutional homophobia is more interesting, I am a college professor after all. The report notes that the GLM was excluded from the new student orientation view book. For those born into the internet age, this might seem silly but back in the day these books were how you found everything on campus as a new student. So leaving out the GLM was a pretty big signal of who was acceptable and who was not - it was also unconstitutional but fighting those battles takes resources. The admissions director admitted that the general homophobia of the state was the reason for excluding them. This is supported by the faculty’s overt homophobic statements in the report, a few I’ve noted above. My students are usually shocked by this display. Sure the comments are anonymous, but for college faculty to just be this homophobic is something most never expect. I usually have to point out there are more than a few of my colleagues who I guarantee you think these things, but agree they would be less likely to do it even quasi-publicly.

In the end, the GLM report is an interesting snapshot of the late 1980s. Public universities knew they had to allow gay student groups to organize and did so probably on a spectrum from supportive to grudgingly. I’m guessing WVU was the later as it continued to put restrictions on the group in the form of the view book. But the group existed and almost certainly gave gay and lesbian students their first opportunity to be themselves, the first place where it was safe to explore their sexuality and place in the world. GLM clearly was an active group that offered support and programs for students and community members. Unfortunately, I cannot say what, if any, response came from the university. I haven’t tried to dig into it yet. But my guess is not much. Probably a meeting or two with midlevel college administrators and maybe some of the library recommendations were implemented, as they are relatively low visibility and easy. Honestly, few universities at the time were interested in doing more. I like to think we have improved dramatically in subsequent decades, even if progress is uneven and incomplete.

“Report on Homophobia at West Virginia University.” 6 December 1989. National Gay and Lesbian Task Force records, #7301. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Box 74, Folder 39.