What do you know about gay friendly colleges, or ones, for a young lesbian, to avoid?

Gay friendly liberal arts college in or near Portland, OR? That would be Reed. But I don’t think they much of a music program there. Though Reed is very expensive and not for everyone.

Well, Mount Holyoke and Sarah Lawrence are (I hear) great for lesbians – tolerant, intellectually stimulating during the day, clit stimulating during the evening: in short, the perfect breeding ground for lesbians.

Yup – Sarah Lawrence would be great, also, Vassar or Bennington. On the West Coast, check out the Claremont colleges, Berkeley or Santa Cruz in Cali, Evergreen State in Washington. In the midwest, Oberlin would be great for gay-friendly and music..

I don’t specifically know any colleges that are notoriously gay-friendly, but you should be able to look on a college’s web site at their list of student organizations for a gay one. If it’s listed, then you can assume the college is cognizant of their gay students and allows them a voice.

Best of luck on choosing a good school.

Wellesley (outside of Boston) and Smith (in N. Hampton, MA) are superb academically and heavily lesbian. Both are women’s colleges but on the east coast. North Hampton is the lesbian center of the NE; Mt. Holyoke is nearby.

Mills College in Oakland, CA for exactly the same reasons eloquently stated by @papayalily (and lol4rl, might I add), UCSC, and Berkeley. Berkeley, Oakland, SF, and Santa Cruz are the most liberal cities/towns in California and very fun to be gay in. :)

This is 2010. They are all gay/lesbian friendly.

@Ben_Dover Didn’t they say that in 1998?

@papayalily Probably. It has been a law for at least that long. You cannot make gay/lesbian jokes nor attack a person for being gay or lesbian without the possibility of being arrested and prosecuted for a hate crime.
And rightly so.

@Ben_Dover You can make gay jokes, you can verbally attack them, you cannot physically attack them.

@papayalily You err my friend. Verbal assaults relating to the gayness of a person is cause for a court action.

@Ben_Dover What is your working definition of verbal assaults here?

@papayalily Like if someone were to attack you verbally and within the assault says, “You effing faggot,” or similar words.
With witnesses, you can have that person arrested and prosecuted for a hate crime.

@Ben_Dover I think there is a very big difference between a college or university being in more or less in compliance with the law, on paper, and a college or university being a gay/lesbian friendly campus. A big difference.

@lillycoyote Then they will lose their Federal funding.

@Ben_Dover No, you can’t. Just like you can’t have them arrested for saying “You effing n****r” or “you effing cu*t”.

@papayalily That’s funny. I know a guy doing community service right now for exactly this crime. Perhaps you are just a little behind the times. Do you live in Alabama, or Georgia, or another KKK state?

@Ben_Dover Then it’s because of a state law regarding hate crime, not a federal.

I dunno. I don’t hate people, and I certainly could care less about a person’s sexual preferences. How childish is that?

@papayalily

@Ben_Dover What?

@Ben_Dover Once again, there is a difference between colleges and universities merely complying with the law(s) regarding gays and lesbians and their actually being gay and lesbian friendly.

@lillycoyote @Ben_Dover And don’t forget, there’s a difference between what the individual laws are, what the overall code says since they often contradict, what the police choose to enforce, what will be necessary for a conviction, and then what society does.

@papayalily Now I’m confused. What side am I on?

Humboldt University is something she should look into. If you follow the link, it shows their special living communities. One is called “Gender Neutral,” for anyone who is LGBT.

This university also gives in-state tuition to anyone living in West Coast states, and it is fairly easy to get into from CC. I almost went there myself for the same aspects.

I believe their performing arts program is pretty good as well. Plus it’s in one of the best places in the world (very similar landscape as Oregon).

@lillycoyote Mine. But you made a good point, and I wanted to build on with @Ben_Dover

I have been sending the responses to my young friend. This is a wealth of information. Thank all of you so much. I’m new to Fluther, and really enjoying it. “It takes a village”. . .that’s what it feels like. Thanks again.

If it is now a federal offense to verbally abuse homosexuals, when is it going to be illegal to tell dumb blond female jokes or make abusive comments about women drivers.

All of these sorts of comments are annoying and insulting but I can’t imagine a law that would make them illegal. How the hell would you enforce it????

Removed by me because I should have been in bed at least 2 hours ago.

@rooeytoo It is really simple to enforce such laws. A witness is required. A report is made. The police issue a citation. A court appearance is required. Punishment is meted out.

@Ben_Dover You have no actual experience in legal matters, do you?

@Ben_Dover – so it is the word of the witness against the word of the alleged perpetrator and the word of the witness is automatically accepted as fact/truth. What happened to the innocent until proven guilty part???

@rooeytoo Indeed…whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty.

However, the fact remains, get a witness to back up a spurious claim of assault, either physical or verbal, and the police will be citing you and/or hauling your assets off to the slammer. If you don’t believe it, just give it a try.

@papayalily hahaha

Clark University in Worcester, MA is extremely gay friendly, not impossible to get into, and has a decent music program. Far from Oregon, though.

wait, isn’t harassment illegal?

@Carly In theory, yes, to a certain degree. But it’s generally low down on the list of priorities for police, and even lower down for ADAs. It’s pretty hard to get a conviction for harassment.

Then you have what goes on off-campus, which is completely out of the jurisdiction of the university. So, ‘tolerant of gays’ or ‘we have anti-discrimination policy’ and ‘gay-friendly’ are different things. Gay-friendly implies that it’s a comfortable environment in which to be gay, but it’s not gay-friendly if you get gay bashed once you leave school..

I would also like to point out that regardless of anti-discrimination policy, professors and students alike are pretty much free to espouse bigoted views, regardless of laws or policy. My ex went to Fairmont State and had professors openly saying racist and homophobic things in lecture, even using words like ‘towel-heads’ to refer to Middle Eastern people. This is wrong on so many levels, particularly when this kind of thing is not supposed to happen at all. My ex endured it for a while, couldn’t take it anymore, made a stink (or tried to), and then got so fed up of bloodying her head on the wall that she quit the school completely.

What if you have bigots throughout the college hierarchy? What if they blow off the outrage of one, lone student? Most students don’t have the means to pursue it legally.

@papayalily you can still get a restraining order though, right?

@Carly In order to get a restraining order, you need to show that you are in immediate physical danger. Otherwise, I’d have tons of restraining orders against various people.

Another point to the ‘gay-friendly’ thing is having a community support system. I’m gay and I have been to several different schools in different parts of the country. In Santa Cruz or SF, you have an active community of other gay people. Clubs, activities, basically a kind of ‘hey, we’re all gay, it’s cool!’ support system. Being gay is more than tolerated in these areas, gay people are accepted and it’s really no biggie if they want to have drag bingo or something silly.

Now, if you went to school in WV, like I did, you would find a totally different atmosphere. Yes, there was anti-discrimination policy. At the satellite school of WVU in Parkersburg, it would have been weird for me to be openly gay and I did not feel comfortable. No gay clubs, no community, kind of lonely. My Sociology professor LOVED me because I sat in front and was willing to give the ‘gay perspective’ to edumacate these kids who had never ever met a gay person before. It was so bad that I volunteered to be the lesbian on the sexuality panel he gave once a semester, where people could come and ask questions of GLBT people.

I transferred to WVU after completing pre-req requirements.. There was a, singular, gay club at the university. The atmosphere was slightly better, more tolerant and more knowledgeable, but still mostly not. I remember these two kids that I called Beavis & Butthead, who sat in front of me all semester, and who I pretty much wanted to smack in the back of the head at least once per class for being total dumbasses. It was Pride Week, the gay club was holding events, and there was a picture of drag bingo on the front page of the school paper. I caught the tail end of Beavis/Butthead’s conversation with the teacher, and the tone of the teacher’s reply caught my attention. He was obviously uncomfortable and disapproving with what B&B were saying. Beavis said, Pshhh.. gay pride? What about straight pride? I tried to bite my tongue, but I couldn’t contain myself. I leaned forward and said, No, that’s every other day of the year.

Do you know how often I heard the words ‘fag’, ‘faggot’, and ‘that’s gay’ (or ‘you’re so gay’)? Like, on a daily basis. And none of these kids even had an inkling that it was offensive. I developed a standard little 2 minute lecture I would spout whenever I heard this kind of language. I mean, they can think I’m a bitch or whatever, but at least someone has told them that sort of thing is offensive to people, you know?

Anyway, sorry.. apparently, I’m very rambly today.

@MissAnthrope I’ve been on my sister for years to stop calling people she doesn’t like (like people who cut her off in traffic) fags, and stop labeling things as “so gay”. I don’t think she’s really homophobic – she’s never been anything but accepting when i bring women home, but I hate the idea that in her speech, she’s saying there’s something wrong with who I love and who I am.
So far, I’ve gotten her to stop using it in front of me, although she whines about it all the time (the horror of being forced to use all the other millions of words in the English language…). I don’t know if she uses it when I’m not around, although I know her friends do, so probably.

@papayalily – That’s part of my lecture.. ”... thousands of words in the English language, hundreds of adjectives, at least; surely you can find another word?”

@MissAnthrope I realize that I’m only 24 when I say this, and that there are many around my age who are not this way (like @muppetish comes to mind) but seriously, kids today, amiright? God, I just can’t stand the idea that someone’s vocabulary is actually cut in half by eliminating slurs.