I’m writing a new story about the LGBT sexual frontier. If anyone was unhappy with my LGBT dating article, and would like to make a contribution to my next article to further better it, please contact me at jreiss@bu.edu.

With regard to the former, I always feel a moment of pride when I see PDA between same-sex couples around campus. But, with regard to the latter, I agree that there is still a stigma on our campus with being a member of the LGBT community.

I can only speak for my personal experiences as a gay man on campus; and while friends joke that “40% of the campus is male, 50% of those are gay,” the reality is that it doesn’t seem so widespread at all. Most whom I talk to lament that the gay men seen around campus are a celebration of a stereotype, which hides the number of gay men who act more heteronormative. This leads to the problem of identifying someone’s sexuality and to “turning” (which is not exclusive to lesbian culture).

“Turning” is its own interesting topic that could probably get an article all to itself, but it is not as rampant as your friend makes it seems nor is it seen wholly positively.

I guess my problem was that this took a couple individuals’ perspectives and used them to generalize about the group. It’s important to remember how diverse the LGBT community is and how difficult society still makes it to be an out member of it. The LGBT community at BU is larger than people in involved with Spectrum (or Marsh Chapel’s LGBT Ministry).

I would disagree that “he presence of LGBT students on campus is obviously ubiquitous” and that “straight students remain unaware of the gay dating world by getting wrapped up in their own melodramas and romances.” They’re unaware because it’s not “obviously ubiquitous” and because of the underlying heterosexism in our society-everyone is assumed straight until proven otherwise. Heterosexual privilege acts to prevent some or most people from noticing/caring about LGBT issues.

The section about lesbians turning straight girls gay is offensive and not true. You are generalizing one person and saying that other people act the same way. The example of your 21 year old “extroverted friend” is the same. Just because he only meets people through friends does not represent the entire gay community.

I appreciate that you address LGBT issues at BU, but you need to take a broader look around and not generalize. Being gay at BU actually does have a stigma as it is not widely discussed. I hope that the next article published in this magazine about the LGBT community puts a little more emphasis on the broader issues instead of focusing on just a few people.