University of Virginia Library

Colloquium

Fairy 'Mothers Watch O'er Political Right(s)

By TERI TOWE

Well, Mr. Christian Strelt
White IV and Mr. William
Henry Hurd are at it again.
They and their cohort Mr.
Alexander Simon, have gotten
their magic wands out of
mothballs and one again are
prepared to become our Fairy
Godmothers of "justice and
moral decency."

In the name of life, liberty,
the pursuit of happiness,
freedom of choice, apple pie,
and keeping fluoride out of our
drinking water, the Fairy
Godmothers of Charlottesville
are challenging a Student
Council allocation to a student
organization seeking to
champion the civil rights of a
not-insignificant group of
human beings who can quite
rightly be considered America's
last minority group.

Our Fairy Godmothers have
been active in moralist crusades
before. Only last spring Mr.
Hurd, in the name of free
speech, forcibly evicted
opponents of President Nixon's
foreign policy from a
pro-Nixon rally in a University-owned
building, and Mr. White
has sought to increase the
number of unwanted children
in this country through his
valiant, quixotic battle against
legalized abortion.

Mssrs. Hurd, White, and
Simon maintain that, "No one
should ever be forced to
contribute to an organization
whose activities violate his
moral, religious or political
beliefs." A worthy premise,
this; one which would cause
this nation to crumble into
dust within a year if it were
applied generally.

I doubt that the Fairy
Godmothers seriously believe
this statement, since I am sure
that all three feel that anyone
who withholds payment of his
income taxes in protest against

the war in Southeast Asia
should be prosecuted for
income tax evasion.

The Fairy Godmothers, and
those who sympathize with
their frenzied and virulent
attempts to force their political
and moral credos down the
throats of their peers, should
remember and carefully
consider the impact of Pablo
Casals's eloquent statement to
the United Nations in 1958:

"We ought to think that we
are one of the leaves of a tree,
and the tree is all humanity."

In paying his Student
Activities Fund fee, a student
tacitly accepts the fact that he
will be extremely fortunate if
none of that money is
allocated to organizations of
which he disapproves.

I must confess that I don't
particularly like the idea of
Student Council allocating
monies to the Monroe Rifles,
the Field Artillery and Saluting
Battalion, or the Jefferson
"Literary" Society, but my
tolerance and understanding of
my fellow human beings has
reached a high enough level for
me to accept the fact that
other people might have valid
and rewarding interests and
pursuits for which I,
personally, have absolutely no
use.

My refusal to protest the
allocation of funds to the
Monroe Rifles no more means
that I have agreed to permit
them to use me for target
practice than a refusal by the
Fairy Godmothers to protest
the allocation of funds to the
Gay Student Union would
mean that they would have to
submit to buggery by all the
GSU's members.

The fact that homosexual
acts of any kind are illegal in
the Commonwealth of Virginia
is not germane to the issue of
the allocation of funds to the
Gay Student Union. Such a
grant is no different from an
allocation of funds to a student
chapter of the ACLU, an
organization which for decades
has fought legal and social
injustice, often espousing
positions that at the time were
illegal.

The constipated, Victorian,
moralistic drivel that the Fairy
Godmothers have been handing
out lays bare their hypocrisy.
They claim that their positions
are libertarian ones and that
they defend everyone's right to
the basic freedoms guaranteed
by the United States
Constitution, yet they insist on
the absolute privilege to veto
any sane, just, and consensual
exercise of those rights by
anyone whose views and beliefs
they happen to find disgusting.

The Fairy Godmothers'
desire to patrol our bedrooms
and make sure that all are
heterosexual and chaste as well
(and perhaps chained to
narrow single beds as an
enforcement procedure) is
symptomatic of the
narrow-minded and socially
unrealistic attitude towards
sexual freedoms that so many
in authority espouse these
days.

As a result, I hope that the
Student Council's allocation of
$45 to the Gay Student
Union will become a cause
celebre, not to destroy the
Student Activities Fund (God
forbid that!), but to help drag
this University, this
community, this
Commonwealth, and this
nation kicking and screaming
into the 1970's and into an era
of social and sexual freedom.