New political student organization advocates GLBTQ civil rights

“’Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere,’” said Matthew Johnson, quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.

Recognition of this decades-old wisdom, spoken at a time of sweeping social change in the United States, drove Johnson and others to form Out Rights, Tech’s first and only political organization focused on the advocacy of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning (GLBTQ) rights.

They seek the same thing King and others spoke and fought for throughout his era: civil rights.

“We felt that it was very much needed to have some type of group that’s just working on the civil rights aspect of the GLBTQ,” said Scott McKee, president of Out Rights.

McKee said the organization is fundamentally different from the PRIDE Alliance, Tech’s current GLBTQ student organization, in that PRIDE is not expressly a political group.

PRIDE tends to avoid political issues, as it is not technically a political organization—but, as McKee noted, this became a freedom of speech issue. “Georgia Tech needs to let everyone have their own freedom of speech,” McKee said, adding that he and others saw the GLBTQ community as a group of students without an outlet dedicated to enabling them to express their views on the politicized issues of civil rights.

Out Rights has become that outlet.

McKee and Johnson, Out Right’s secretary, noted several perceived injustices at Tech that the organization seeks to address. Among the most notable examples of these is the nationally politicized issue of gay marriage.

McKee said, however, that this may be a misnomer, adding that the contention focuses on rights and responsibilities denied to same-sex couples (more than 1,138, according to McKee). He said that he thinks people may feel threatened by the idea of marriage changing, and that rewording the proposed change of laws could help.

The organization is particularly focusing on more Tech-specific issues.

According to Johnson, Tech is, on the whole, “not too bad, and fairly accepting.”

However, he added, there are many cases of injustice.

For example, he noted that there are sometimes roommate issues for some GLBTQ students. He said that currently, the main recourse is moving out, and that Housing is accommodating to such situations. “But it’s mostly lack of understanding on the part of the roommates,” Johnson said, saying that education is needed to help students in roommate situations.

Other issues included unequal employee benefits from ROTC and blood donation ineligibility, according to Johnson.

The organization arose in part from the free speech issues raised by conservative columnist Mike Adams in his www.townhall.com articles last fall. Students realized that Tech lacked an organization that served as a forum for expression of views about GLBTQ political issues.

However, McKee said that this type of organization would have formed regardless, adding that the article likely served only as a catalyst.

[Stephen Baehl also contributed to this article.]