Antigay speaker at MSU

EAST LANSING– As dark storm clouds gathered in the sky over Michigan State University on Tuesday night a group of about 100 students gathered in front of the Natural Resources building. They were dressed in white, or brightly colored t-shirts with the message “I have a story” emblazoned on the front.

Their story? That Ryan Sorba, a speaker brought in by the Young Americans for Freedom chapter, was speaking about the LBGT community without their participation.

“As members and friends of the LBGT community, we came to the lecture to bear witness and show our faces in response to the event,” said Rachel Loskill, a 22-year-old MSU student and spokesperson for the group of protestors.

Continued -Sorba, who has worked for the conservative Leadership Institute in Virginia, was at MSU to present a speech titled “The Born Gay Hoax.” The speech is part of a book he is working on, however he has not signed a publishing contract on the book. He said he two publishing companies were looking at the book, and he was also considering a self-publishing deal.

During the speech, and in the book, Sorba argues that the identity of being gay was not formalized until the late 19th century, and that the conception of being born gay was not used as a concept until the mid-90′s. His speech was littered with attacks claiming gay men are child molesters, and cites numerous studies since proven to be flawed.

During question and answer following the speech, when Sorba was confronted with a question he had no immediate answer to, he would direct members in the audience in a refrain-like manner to “email him.”

The event was advertised by YAF with a flier called “Gays Spread AIDS,” and uses a statistical pie chart of HIV infections of American men newly diagnosed with HIV in 2005. The statistical pie chart avoids the information about women diagnosed with HIV in the same period.

“I thought the impact of the words are extremely hurtful. They are the same rhetoric that the LBGT community hears every day and is the reason people don’t come out,” said Loskill. “It was extremely powerful to have people gather and say we will not tolerate this. We are not who you are saying we are.”

YAF has been the focus of intense controversy since November, when the Southern Poverty Law Center said it was investigating YAF MSU as a hate group. The student group, which is formally recognized and supported by MSU, was listed by SPLC in its annual hate group listing in April.

The SPLC is the leading expert organization on hate groups in the United States, and distributes its quarterly publication, The Intelligence Report, to some 50,000 or more law enforcement personnel and agencies all over the US.

A follow up discussion will occur Thursday at Room 441 of the MSU Union at 6:30 p.m. People who went to the counteraction at Sorba’s speech and the people who attended a separate event will meet to discuss how the actions worked and where the community will go from here.