The following is the text of  a statement a made at a rally today at Rutgers in response to the recent tragedy, where a freshman student took his own life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge after two Rutgers students used a web camera to show him engaged in same sex acts in his dorm room and then put this on the Internet, subjecting him to humiliation.

The rally was also part of National Coming Out Day and many of the speakers dealt with their own experiences.  As a heterosexual whose consciousness about Gay Rights/Gay Liberation was raised forty years ago, I spoke to what I saw the larger issues.

I first learned about this in an emergency email from Garden State Equality  before I was to teach a class in the culture of the 1960s.  It was a good email, one that made the relevant points about understand what had happened in terms of a culture of bullying, I would say a culture of hatred abuse, and doing something about in terms of policy, in terms of legislation that would protect everyone.  I then received an email from the President of the University which spoke of compassion nd empathy and said little that was concrete about what to do
 
We are being told about civility at Rutgers, which has merit, but this is not about civility but about living in a civilized society. 

 We are being told about the right to privacy and the new technologies , which also has merit, but this is really about civil rights and human rights. 

 Anti-Gay hatred, discimination, and prejudice, ideological and institutional, remains "normal" for large sections of the society,  Ministers denounce gay people in ways that if they said similar things about African-Americans or Jewish Americans(and those like them once did)  they would be rightly considered KKKers or Nazis. 

Respectable conservatives smile at these people, their allies, and crusade against Gay Marriage(marriage itself after all, a conservative institution).

  In a way, this makes sense.  The traditional enemies of civil rights and human rights are scrambling to deny that this is a civil rights issue.  Those of us, who have rejected anti-gay hatred as we have rejected  racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia  must stand up and demand that the university first and then the state act and act now to protect the civil rights of gay men and women.  It is really our responsibility, just as it is the responsiI bility of men who are not sexist to fight sexism first, the responsiblity of white people who are not racist to fight racism first, and also the responsible of  Christians and Muslims to fight anti-Semitism and Christians and Jews to fight anti-Muslim prejudice in  this country. 
 
As an historian I can tell you a great deal about the history of the struggle for Gay Liberation and its relationship to the struggles of oppressed nationalities, minorities and women in this country and the world.  Because that is the real story--not what conservatives call the politically correct story and the closet conservatives in positions of power who do nothing ignore.  

 I could also speak about the  creation of an economic jungle, the glorification of cut throat competition, the development of cliques that exclude and pick on people from an early age, kids who are taught at home and by mass media to snicker at civil rights and human rights and deal with there own fears of exlusion and abuse by excluding and abusing others.  But all of that would only go so far.  Telling us about "the other" means nothing unless we understand that what happens to the "other" in the larger sense happens to us.  Except for a small number of people who have great wealth and power, we are all "the other."
 
We need action and action now.  We should be discussing in groups what to do.  I have spoken to many people at Rutgers  and a number have suggested a minimum program.  Something Rutgers can do.  He should establish a policy of immediate and permanent expulsion of any student or students who use the Internet or photographs or audio for that matter to humiliate and degrade any Rutgers student, faculty or staff member in this way.  This is the least we can do and we should do it. 

There is much talk about the general problem of bullying, subcultures of bullying in mass media.  Let me say that there is a truism about bullies that I have always found to be right.  Bullies are cowards, although dangerous cowards, especially when they are in packs or have fans rooting them in.  This policy would help to frighten both the bullies and those who live vicarously through them.  It would help to isolate and defeat them

et me conclude with a statement that Adlai Stevenson made athe United Nations about Eleanor Roosevelt, , the most distinguished American women of the 20th century, at her death in 1962 I She would rather  light one candle than curse the darkness  The statement supposedly derived from an old Chinese proverb and was the motto of the Christopher Society.

 Eleanor Roosevelt  lit  candles of action and policy that  would lead people forward, not candles of morning. for victims These are the candles which we should be lighting at Rutgers, in New Jersey, and in the U.S.

Thank you for having me.  But it is Richard McCormick, the president, and Philip Furmanski, the academic Vice President, those who make the big bucks here at Rutgers, who should be speaking to you today, who should be showing leadership on this issue