A One Medium Writer

Well, it's official. The 'Low Down will be my only writing outlet for the foreseeable future. I applied for a position on the features desk at the Utah Statesman, but was turned down, most likely due to a lack of experience. The Wednesday edition of the same Statesman featured two opinion articles by the new columnists that will represent the voice of the students for the rest of the semester. Their first articles were about the fact that homosexuals deserve the same respect as everybody else, and that a green campus is a happy campus, respectively. While I wholeheartedly agree with the fact that gays deserve respect like any other person, they do not deserve special treatment. If they want to be treated like everybody else, they need to be prepared with how typical people treat each other.
In many familiar situations, I find myself saying that something is gay. I do not mean it as an insult to the gay community, but rather use it as a word as that is all that it is. If gay people swear, do I not have the same right to be angry at them for using words that may be offensive to me or those around me? According to the concept of being politically correct, I cannot do anything to offend them, but they are free to say whatever they want. One particular paragraph that made me angry was when she instructed the readers to not refer to homosexuality as a lifestyle. She referred to being LDS or Muslim as living a lifestyle. One might argue that people raised in the Muslim world do not have much of a choice as to how they live their lives. In some occasions, their lives are even threatened if they do not live this "elective lifestyle" as she sees it as. You cannot tell me that living the stereotypical flamboyant "gay" way, having sex with other people and being constantly offended by those who do not accept you is not a lifestyle. Guess what else is a lifestyle? Pedophilia. It is a choice to be sexually active outside of marriage, and in my opinion it is a sin. I met a man on my mission that was openly gay, but recognized the importance of remaining chaste while still recognizing his role in this life. Anyways, that was not the point of this blog post. This was only one of the articles that I disagreed with, and am disgusted at the prospect of all the opinion articles following the liberal agenda. So we wait.
The second article written by the self-titled "Father Earth" was about the Blue Goes Green fee. There were a couple opinion articles in last years paper bashing the proposed fee. There was one article written by the news editor at the time. She has subsequently been promoted to editor-in-chief and hand picked all of the opinion columnists for this year. Her article was not news in the pure sense, and was surely not an objective article which would theoretically contain both sides of the argument. Instead it was the best piece of publicity that the proponents of Blue Goes Green could ever wish for. Naturally, the motion passed, and now "environmentally conscious" students will be using our money to promote themselves and their projects for a sustainable campus. To them, I ask this question. What can possibly be sustainable about a campus that is air-conditioned to a comfortable temperature throughout the summer despite the huge windows in most of the buildings, and heated to a toasty paradise during the frozen winter months of Logan? These students are going to spend their time and our resources to maybe throw up a couple solar panels or convince Facilities to raise the temperature a bit during the summer or spend money on marketing to encourage students to wear their jackets inside during the winter months. I believe their impact will be forgettable, but their legacy will be unduly praised as they proclaim themselves to be the wave of the future. If you really want to change anything, move to the equator and sweat through the heat to become carbon-neutral. Whatever makes you feel better about yourself.
Anyways, it appears that the age of differing opinions in the opinion section may be at an end. Gone are the days of the "Bright Blue Dot" competing with Justin the Libertarian, while staving off the conservative overtones in my own bi-weekly campus related rants. This week we reign in an era of a student government controlled by a "Mormon" fraternity, and a newspaper opinion section rapt with the liberal agenda. I will continue to read my beloved Utah Statesman, but it just won't be the same this year. I still have many friends on the staff, but will not have the pleasure of working with them. Change must come, naturally, but sometimes it is difficult to accept. So, there you have it. School is back, and there are plenty of things that I dislike, and I am more than happy to continue venting my opinion in whatever medium will accept me.