"What would you do if your best friend was gay?" Shane Windemeyer asked a crowd of Dartmouth fraternity and sorority members in Rollins Chapel yesterday.
According to Windemeyer, the answer to this question probably saved his life when he came out to his best friend as a Phi Delta Theta brother at Florida State University in the early nineties.
"If it were not for his acceptance of who I was, and the support that I later received from my other [fraternity] brothers, I might have slipped further into depression and possibly suicide, as many young gay men do," he said.
"Whether or not you think there are no gay, lesbian, or bisexual brothers or sisters in your house, it doesn't matter, because there are," Windemeyer, founder of the Lambda 10 Project, said in his speech "Out and Greek: Being Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual in a College Fraternity."
He described Lambda 10 as a "national clearinghouse for gay, lesbian and bisexual Greek issues," which fosters "communication between out and closeted Greeks at different schools over the Internet."
Windemeyer's speech was much anticipated by Dartmouth Greeks and independents alike.
According to Windemeyer, fraternity brothers often maintain a faade of masculinity to compensate for their feelings of sexual insecurity. "I used words like 'fag' and 'faggot' just as much as any of my other brothers," he said.
In an attempt to "shatter stereotypes" and "dispel myths" about gays, lesbians and bisexuals, Windemeyer had straight volunteers from the crowd enact the "z-snap," a hand motion associated with homosexuals.
Volunteers also played a game entitled "Gay Point Average," in which contestants answered trivia questions such as "What color flag traditionally represents the gay community?" and "Name three television or movie actors who are gay in real life, or have played a gay character in the movies or on television."
Windemeyer incorporated humor and seriousness into his presentation throughout the program which attracted a sizeable crowd of approximately 50 people.
