In an emotionally charged and sometimes tearful evening marked by protest, vigil and discourse, Voces Clamantium speaker Yvette Schneider addressed an often angry audience last night about her transition from homosexuality to Christianity.
Although Dartmouth's homosexual community and its heterosexual allies protested Schneider's message in a pre-speech rally, tensions ran especially high in the question and answer session that followed the address. After only three formally recognized comments from audience members, Schneider walked off the stage to the expressed chagrin of disappointed attendees.
"We ended the Q&A because it was becoming disorderly and disrespectful," Corrie Francis '01, president of Voces, said.
Over 400 students and community members attended the speech, a number so large that its location was moved from Dartmouth Hall to Collis Commonground in order to accommodate the unexpectedly large crowd.
Just before Schneider was introduced, two female students stood up and kissed each other, ostensibly to protest Schneider's position as a self-described "former lesbian."
In her speech, Schneider, a policy analyst for the Family Research Council, recounted what she referred to as her personal journey from a lesbian to a heterosexual life-style, drawing few conclusions for the greater gay community except to reference Biblical passages that dealt with homosexuality at the end of her address.
"When I read Romans I," she said," I knew that I had to abandon my homosexual life-style. I saw myself still eating crumbs off a dirty floor when God had a great feast before me."
Despite the controversy surrounding her invitation to the College, Schneider said that she was "surprised that [her presence] created such a ruckus" on campus.
Immediately following the speech, some audience members vocalized dissenting opinions, many of which drew spirited applause.
One audience member, Angelina Stelmach '02, accused Schneider of promoting hate crimes through her speech as well as of calling AIDS God's "supernatural intervention" intended to force homosexuals to deny their sexual orientation.
"I have never, ever, ever said that," Schneider said of the accusations, although Stelmach later told The Dartmouth that "regarding whether or not she [Schneider] said these things, they were on the [FRC] website."
Following the speech, the Dartmouth Rainbow Alliance and the Gay-Straight Alliance held a candlelight vigil on the Green which attracted over 130 participants.
The vigil, intended to provide support for closeted students on campus, involved a march through campus that culminated at the Top of the Hop. Despite campus outrage over the implications of Schneider's personal story, the speaker herself was reluctant to extrapolate upon her experiences.
Yet the queer community felt that the speech contained greater ramifications.
"When someone works for the kind of organization that Yvette works for then you have to take responsibility for the kind of implicit messages that go along with it," Office of Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Advocacy and Programming Coordinator Pam Misener said.
In her speech, Schneider described her childhood relationship with her parents as "extremely distant," adding that "it left a loneliness within [her]" that was not relieved until she realized her homosexual tendencies as an adolescent.
"I kind of felt like in the 'Wizard of Oz' when it goes from black and white to Technicolor," she said of her first acknowledgment of her lesbianism.
After her first homosexual experience, Schneider remembered feeling "very conflicted about it," especially after her parents told her that her actions warranted "extensive psychological help."
But over time she embraced that life-style, becoming a "militant" advocate for homosexual rights.
"I was basically out to everyone. I wore my pink triangle to work everyday," she recalled.
Yet the "loneliness within" persisted, and with two of her homosexual male friends struggling with AIDS, Schneider turned to the Bible for emotional support. In her quest for "the peaceful fruit of righteousness," she realized it was impossible to reconcile her sexual orientation with her new found faith, and thus exited the homosexual life-style.
Much of the anger from Dartmouth's homosexual and allied communities stemmed from their feeling that Schneider's message forces homosexuality and Christianity into two mutually exclusive categories.
John Brett '00 vehemently disagreed with this message, encouraging those at the pre-speech rally who identified as both queer and Christian to "realize that no matter what Yvette says or does or exemplifies can erase your relationship with God the Creator."
