Senior Bruce Davis is your "ordinary" college student. He goes to class, is in a romantic relationship, interns at Bloomington City Hall and likes to go to the occasional bar or club on the weekends. \nYet Davis is gay. He's had the same boyfriend for two years and one of his favorite places to go dancing is Bullwinkle's Cocktail Lounge, \none of Bloomington's gay bars.\nThis friendly and animated guy loves IU and finds the entire town to be very open to the gay lifestyle, for the most part. He says he feels safe here, as opposed to more remote surrounding areas; recently, he got lost at night in a rural part of Indiana and says, because he was worried about unfamiliar people's reactions to his homosexuality, he was afraid to get out of the car to ask directions. He's faced his share of discrimination before. \nDuring his freshman year, he was mockingly called a "fag" by a pair of drunken guys in an elevator in his dorm. Once when he was out with a male friend at a local Steak 'n Shake, they received menacing stares from an older pair of what Davis calls "townie" men, who followed the boys out of the restaurant. Davis and his friend quickly got into the car and drove off, thankful the men didn't continue to follow them on the road.\n"That's the one time I felt physically endangered," Davis says.\nBut for the most part, Davis says he can't complain and is happy with the area in which he lives. He knows there is always room for improvement when it comes to acceptance of the gay community, even in a well-educated town like Bloomington. He still hears people making light of words like "fag" and "gay," using them in place of adjectives similar to "stupid," with negative connotations. And although this upsets him, he says he knows the usage mainly stems from ignorance, not outright intolerance.\n"I'd really like to challenge people's notions of homosexuality -- maybe get a few people to spend a day with my boyfriend and me so they can see that we're just normal people," Davis says thoughtfully. \n"And we're monogamous! We're not dirty people."\nAlong with Davis, many IU students interviewed for this piece feel that, overall, Bloomington is a friendly place for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender lifestyles.
Bisexual senior Michaela Martin-Almy is one of them. She believes IU's Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction has a lot to do with this embrace of sexual diversity.\n"Alfred Kinsey opened the door for sex-positive thinking, and the fact that the Institute is here at IU throws a certain light on the campus and the community," Martin-Almy explains. "IU seems to have more of an influence on the town than the town on the University, so it's no wonder that Bloomington has become more liberal than the surrounding area (of Indiana)."\nIt's true -- IU is a liberal place with a large campus and a good deal of diversity for a Midwestern university. Along these lines, organizations flourish that foster tolerance of the gay community by spreading awareness and giving gays the chance to connect differently than they might in a small, sheltered community.\nMartin-Almy, vice president of meetings for OUT, IU's gay/ lesbian/ bisexual/transgender Student Union, says although the group would always like to see more people in attendance, she considers current participation to be pretty good. She personally attributes this to the scandal involving Kelley School of Business professor Eric Rasmusen, who posted statements viewed as anti-gay by some Bloomington residents and members of the IU community on his IU Weblog, among them the sentiment that gays shouldn't be allowed to work as doctors or teachers.\nHomosexual graduate student Chris Pullman, like many others, haven't been so tolerant of Rasmusen's controversial views, likening Rasmusen to Bob Knight.\nMartin-Almy is among those who are similarly incensed. "I think the University could've done more in response, such as sending panels to the business school and trying to educate people," she says.\nThis is why Martin-Almy feels groups like OUT, the largest gay/lesbian/bisexual/ transgender group on campus, are so important in fostering understanding and acceptance. Yet a semblance of disjointedness still exists within the local gay community.\nHomosexual junior Eric Anderson feels his social circle of other gay friends is basically a clique of its own, totally separate from the rest of Bloomington's gay community. \n"You'd think an organization like OUT would be the catalyst for bringing the entire community together, but even then, there seems to be only a certain group that will involve itself. And sadly, I'm not as involved as I'd like to be," Anderson says.\nIt's also common for gay students in the Greek system to experience isolation when "outing" themselves to their house members. In 1996, grad student Shane Windmeyer approached Assistant Dean of Students, Pam Freeman, with the idea of wanting to express his positive experience in coming out to his frat as an undergrad outside of IU. They started a Web site, appealing for stories of men who came out to their fraternity brothers (The site has expanded but still deals specifically with sexuality in frats and sororities: www.lambda10.org). \nFreeman and Windmeyer received stories from frat brothers who's histories extended even as far back as the pre-WWII era. The accounts were compiled into a book, Out On Fraternity Row. It focuses on gay men's experiences of coming out to other members of the Greek community and the ensuing positive and negative aftermaths.\n"There are definitely gay people within IU's Greek system," Windmeyer says.\nFreeman is now a member of IU's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Anti-Harrassment Team and cannot say enough about accepting differences in sexuality in order to promote honesty, socially and academically. \n"It's so important that gay people are able to come out -- even so (heterosexual acquaintances) can benefit from knowing them more fully … If you liked someone before you knew they were gay, why would't you like them afterwards?" Freeman asks. \nPersonal relationships can be especially complicated for students with more fluid sexualities. As a bisexual, senior Amanda Stevens finds it hard to identify with a lot of gay groups since she is open to dating males and females.\n"There is an attitude on both extremes that you are a fence-sitter who just hasn't made up your mind or dealt with your true identity as gay or straight, or that you are trying to be trendy or you are just hypersexual," Stevens explains. "I think this keeps many people who identify as bisexual, or who find themselves in some other in-between place, from involving themselves in the gay community."\nMartin-Almy agrees. "The lesbian/bi community (in Bloomington is) a lot less visible," she says. "I've had lesbians tell me to my face that they refuse to date bi girls because they think bi people will cheat on them and try and date other people at the same time. And that's only when I'm lucky enough to find a gay girl I'm attracted to … I never, ever get approached by girls, so maybe it's not obvious."\nMartin-Almy doesn't mesh with the butch stereotype. She's not masculine, army-boots aren't her thing and she doesn't sport a crew-cut -- all traist often unfairly deemed characteristic of lesbian or bisexual women. \nBecause of her "femme" appearance and the fact that she hasn't dated any women during her stint in Bloomington, Martin-Almy says she hasn't been personally faced with any kind of bigotry or discrimination.\n"Feminine girls just fit into the straight crowd," she says, matter-of-factly.\nStevens tells a different story. \n"I have friends who have been 'queer-bashed' on the streets, had things like 'Dyke!' yelled at them," she laments. "There is also that weird religious group that occasionally shows up on Kirkwood -- with signs that say things like 'God hates fags' and 'AIDS kills fags.' I think Bloomington is considered a safe haven for (gays) by people who aren't gay because it makes them feel better." \nAlthough reports of harassment toward the gay population of IU has dropped steadily since 1998, there were still 61 such cases reported to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Anti-Harrassment Team from July 2002 to this past June. A majority of the harassment was male on male, occurred in the residence halls and involved the defacing of property.\nAnderson hopes that eventually stereotypes depicting gay men as "the bleached-haired, gym-bunny, drug-fiend and uber-hyper theatre fags" will disappear. He believes they've already begun to disintegrate because of the growing willingness of a diverse population of homosexuals to "come out of the closet" and show the world that not everything is as it may seem from a narrow viewpoint.\nBut when it really comes down to it, Martin-Almy doesn't feel sexuality should be a defining factor at all. \n"I'd like to see 'being gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered/queer/whatever' become a non-issue," Martin-Almy says. "I suppose that what I mean is that, in the future, I hope there is no longer a need for a gay community/culture. We're human beings just like every other person on the planet. There isn't a redhead culture, or a left-handed culture or a blue-eyed culture -- there's human culture"
