Dear NGLTF Policy Institute,

A few months ago, I came across Surina Khan’s article “Calculated Compassion: How the Ex-Gay Movement Serves the Right’s Attack on Democracy.” Khan’s analysis of the ex-gay and Christian Right’s campaign to destroy healthy, gay self-affirmation put into words many of the ideas that trouble and confuse me about anti-gay sentiments and organizations. It also addressed a very personal aspect of my life because shortly after I came out to my parents in the spring of 1998, my mother began espousing the hateful, anti-gay rhetoric of the Christian Right when she never had anything to do with Christianity before. It has been about a year since I received in the mail a letter from my mother containing a clipping of a Newsweek article about the ex-gay ads and her plea to me to change my misguided ways. While this very personal introduction to the ex-gay movement hurt me terribly, it only strengthened my resolve to continue my work with queer organizations.
 
“Calculated Compassion” revealed for me the seductive tactics of the ex-gay movement in preying on most Americans’ fears of queer sexualities. What impressed me most about Khan’s analysis, though, was its linking of the specific ex-gay rhetoric to a larger ideology of theocracy and the related roles of other aspects of the Christian Right. I have always wanted to work with gay and lesbian groups in confronting homophobia, but I have never been entirely sure what actions would be most effective to take in this struggle. Increasingly, I am coming to understand that it takes all sorts of action-from public demonstrations to letter-writing campaigns supporting or challenging proposed legislation. Yet, the importance of understanding the basic issues and the larger picture that comes from policy analysis must always be the foundation of our actions. This realization has led me to explore opportunities for research into gay and lesbian issues.
 
I am interested in the work of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force as a leading grass-roots organization that takes action against anti-gay campaigns and the general homophobia of an uneasy American public. As a Fellow at the Policy Institute of the NGLTF, I would love to dive into research and policy analysis as a means of understanding what drives anti-gay initiatives as well as determining what policies are most effective in counteracting the hate and ignorance fostered by these initiatives. I hope to gain valuable research/analysis experience from working with the staff of the Policy Institute. If nothing else, in researching and writing about these initiatives and policies, I want to help eliminate the silence around gay and lesbian lives that presents the most serious challenge to gay and lesbian affirmation and liberation.
 
The [writing sample] I have enclosed is adapted from a letter to the editor of The Yale Daily News that I wrote in April in response to a troubling incident of anonymous, anti-gay flyers on campus. While the YDN never published my letter, it reached the eyes of my friends (in one case sparking a heated discussion) and many other people through e-mails and newsgroups. This particular experience has also made me realize the importance of communicating research and analysis to the public. It was disheartening to be at the center of the debate over the anti-gay flyers, yet to see that the newspapers on campus were providing inadequate coverage of the ideas/issues at stake. What was a clear example of anti-gay rhetoric became a free speech issue, with the anonymous posters becoming martyrs of a gay and lesbian conspiracy to silence all speech antithetical to queer existence. Within the insulated campus, to whom could students turn for a fuller understanding of the effect of the flyers if the YDN refused to publish a variety of letters in response to their editorial? And though insulated and isolated, it seems that the students of Yale are no more or less informed than the general public on issues of gay and lesbian rights because major newspapers seem to take a similar stance in presenting single-sided analyses of queer issues.
 
I hope to be given the opportunity to work with the Policy Institute in addressing these problems. I will be available thirty hours a week from September 7, 1999, to December 17, 1999.
 
Below is the contact information for three references:
 
Thank you for your time in considering my application.