What Do a Kansas City School Teacher And a Gay Grad Student Have in Common? They're Both Former Editors of Peninsula

For a few weeks in November 1991, a bombastically conservative student journal called Peninsula dominated discussion in Harvard's dining halls and class discussion sections.

A little more than eight years later, few students have more than a vague recollection that such a publication ever existed. After its brief but intense period of notoriety, Peninsula languished, losing writers, financial backers and ultimately its own charter. After seven years in print, it fizzled out altogether in the fall of 1997.

But current campus figures--conservative and liberal--still debate what legacy Peninsula left on the campus political spectrum and whether a similar incarnation could re-emerge.

November Rage

In a special issue distributed on November 12, 1991, Peninsula dedicated most of its 56 pages to articles on "why we think homosexuality is bad, and what we would do about it."

The issue, whose cover featured an exploding pink triangle--interpreted by some as a threat of anti-gay violence--drew immediate and widespread criticism. Editorials weighed in on the controversial issue, and the then Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian and Supporters' Alliance (BGLSA) held eat-ins and protests.

At a BGLSA protest on November 15, two senior faculty members--Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Rev. Peter J. Gomes and then Professor of English and American Literature Barbara Johnson--said publicly for the first time that they were homosexuals.

The Peninsula fired back, holding that the journal did not hate gays and aimed only to help them change. The issue was produced with "absolute charity for everybody," maintains former editor Robert K. Wasinger '94.

One Peninsula writer called for Gomes's resignation as Memorial Church preacher, saying that the preacher's acceptance of his own homosexuality was incompatible with Christianity.

Daily letters and editorials in The Crimson accompanied by anti-gay graffiti in Adams House soon after Gomes's self-outing added fuel to the fire. For a brief moment, Peninsula was on the tip of everybody's tongue.

Decline and Fall

But the firestorm of debate would stand as Peninsula's watermark.

"There would never again be as successful an issue as the homosexuality issue," remembers Brian Malone '96, a former Peninsula editor.

According to Malone, the original Peninsula editors graduated, and the journal saw its recruiting efforts net "fewer and fewer far-right social and religious conservatives."

"By the time it got to me," says Malone, "the magazine was really on the downward spiral."

To make matters worse, said Malone, financial backers like the Collegiate Network and the Heritage Foundation--who give conservative journals start-up money--stopped contributing funds. And Peninsula, with its penchant for radical views, never attracted many advertisers.

But since Peninsula was able to keep getting donations from wealthy conservatives like Walter Annenberg, the publication's main problem was that it was starved for writers.

Daniel A. Lyons '00 was ostensibly one such writer. The April 1997 issue of Peninsula--dedicated to a defense of imperialism--listed Lyons as one of the journal's "Auxiliares." But Lyons--who considers himself more a libertarian than a conservative--had attended a single meeting and never wrote anything.

By the time of its collapse, said Lyons, Peninsula only had about four people working on it.

This is a far cry from the Peninsula Wasinger remembers. According to Wasinger, he passed on a thriving journal with 30-odd staff members to people like Malone. Wasinger--now a Kansas elementary school teacher--says he does not know where the new editors went wrong.

One of Peninsula's founding members, Sean P. McLaughlin '91, also a Crimson editor, says the magazine naturally "died out by its own success."

According to McLaughlin, a "polarization of the issues...brought people out of the woodwork."

"It was a free-for-all," he says of public homosexuality on campus in 1991. "People kissing each other, feeling each other's nuts, doing wacky shit." Such an atmosphere, says McLaughlin, spawned conservatives "with fire in their belly."

Peninsula, he says, succeeded in starting a debate that moved people away from the far left. After a couple of years, the magazine was no longer necessary, and campus conservatives lost the fire necessary to keep up a high quality publication.

So McLaughlin and other editors cut off the journal's alumni charter, preferring to keep its $20,000 in the bank for a rainy day when Peninsula is again needed--and when worthy conservatives are there to pick up its banner.

When will that day come?

"Good question," says McLaughlin, now a software executive living in West Roxbury with a wife and three children. "It might be when my kids are at Harvard."

A Changed Campus

While Rev. Gomes would disagree with what McLaughlin says about homosexuality, the two men do agree on one point: Peninsula, or something like it, will be back some day.

"These things never entirely go away," says Gomes, who is also an historian. "They have their seasons and their cycles."

But every time through the cycle, Gomes says, the framework of debate shifts. Eventually, the question of social equality for gays will "go where the race question has long since gone."

Peninsula, in its heyday of the early '90s, was in some ways emblematic of its times. Gomes alluded to "a sort of political fever in the country," typified by the "culture wars" of soon-to-be presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.

Harvard, too, was swept up in controversy. Late 1991 Institute of Politics speakers included white supremacist David Duke and black supremacist Leonard Jeffries.

The Harvard of today, by contrast, is a rather tame place.

"Discourse is more civil and more gentrified," says former Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III. "The College tries to maintain an environment where any expression is welcome. Intolerance is discouraged."

Particularly, offered Epps, the campus "is more tolerant on the question of sexual orientation" than it was in the past.

Gomes agrees, saying that "flash-points" of debate like ROTC arise regarding homosexuality, but that there

are no "raging subterranean debates."

Roman Martinez '01, editor emeritus of the conservative Salient, sees things a bit differently.

Martinez says he does not have a moral problem with homosexuality and even supports gay marriage. But he objects to the direction that campus discourse has taken.

According to Martinez, there has been a reversal of roles since the Peninsula published its homosexuality issue. Now, he says, those on the right are trying to make reasoned arguments about gay issues, while leftists are "looking to inflame passions."

Martinez perceives that on the left there is "not really a willingness to listen" to critiques of homosexuality. "If you disagree with the BGLTSA line, you're labeled a bigot," he says.

BGLTSA co-chair Michael K. T. Tan '01 says new campus conservatives are missing the point with their criticism of the BGLTSA's refusal to debate the merits of homosexuality.

"To engage in that kind of debate is antithetical [to what we believe]," says Tan, saying that he denies the very "suggestion that there is a reasonable critique of homosexuality."

Tan says he is pleased with the increased tolerance of gays at Harvard but he adds that while the new conservatives are "more polished than Peninsula," Peninsula's ideas have remained on campus.

One place where Peninsula's ideas have not remained is in the mind of Brian Malone. Malone says since leaving Harvard and becoming a University of Virginia graduate student, he has decided to come out of the closet. He is gay.

Once "rabidly anti-gay," he now considers himself a liberal.

"I'm pretty ashamed of having worked for the magazine and for what I did in college," said Malone.