Ignorance unbound

The Georgia legislature is not known for operating with intellect and rational thinking, but I thought perhaps we had moved beyond the days of rampant ignorance. Apparent not so.

Last week, Representative Calvin Hill (R-Canton) created quite a stir by spreading the titillating misinformation that Georgia universities were teaching classes in oral sex, male prostitution, and queer theory. Another colleague joined him by speaking out on the House floor against having taxpayer money used to pay for this.

It turns out that Hill mistook a GSU guide to its faculty members' individual expertise, prepared for use by journalists and policy makers seeking expert advice -- Hill thought he was looking at a catalogue of classes offered to students.

Two of these experts met with a House committee yesterday to explain. One professor, a Viet Nam veteran, said his expertise on male prostitution and its effect in the spread of HIV had been sought by the CDC in forming its policies to combat the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s; and he pointed out that Georgia has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the nation, hinting that maybe we do actually need some expertise in that area.

Another professor's work is a serious sociological study of patterns of sex among teens. She specifically addresses the increasingly common practice of oral sex among teens as "casual and socially acceptable." Remember the flap about whether oral sex is really sex, when Bill Clinton said he did not have sex with that woman, and it was revealed that many young people do not equate oral sex with "having sex."

As as for "queer theory," that is the completely accepted term in academia these days for studies not only about gender but about moving beyond the binary distinctions in classifying people's identities. All of the better universities have divisions of "Queer Studies."

It's not the same thing that people of Rep. Hill's generation sniggered about in the boys' bathroom in elementary school. Queer Studies is not about "how to be a queer" but a challenge to the idea that people have to be pigeonholed into one category or another. Admittedly, the title is provocative to those not in the know; but in academia it signals an attitude of individual freedom to be who you are without labels or stereotyped images, as well as studies of the pernicious effects of stereotyping and prejudice.

So, you might think Rep. Hill would have been embarrassed to have his ignorance exposed. Not so. First he blamed the media for blowing it out of proportion. Then he argued that, in a time of budget cuts, universities should not offer classes that do not help students find jobs.

Here is a legislator who sees no value in education itself, only job training. Is he really advocating that we turn our universities into trade schools? I find that even more appalling than his using sexual titillation to stir up political opposition.

Ignorance is alive and well in the Georgia State Capitol.

Ralph