permit themselves to voice the oldnvalues of biblical religion. No tolerancenwas shown to Harvard undergraduatenSumner Anderson, ’92, president ofnthe Republican Club, whose remarks,nprinted in the Harvard Crimson,ncaused outrage. Anderson’s assertionnthat homosexuality is a disease that isnrepulsive and “just totally abnormal,”nallegedly generated general outrage onncampus. His expressions, “repulsive”nand “abnormal” are not stronger thannthe Hebrew word to’ebah, abominationn{e.g., Leviticus 18:22).nThe battle of words continues unabated.nUnfortunately, those who takenwhat we might consider the right position,nnamely that of upholding biblicalnnorms, often do so in ways that areninappropriate to win sympathy. Thusnthe Harvard Lampoon, no standardbearernof biblical religion, intensified itsntraditional campaign of supposedly humorousnvilification against the consistentlynpro “gay” Harvard Crimson,npublishing not one but three parodynissues last year, and in the processngarnering complaints of being racist,nPrincipalities & Powersnby Samuel FrancisnAnd the bogeyman will get ya, if yandon’t watch out,” sang James WhitcombnRiley in one of his most popularnand most insipid poems. The bogeymannis still out there, it seems. Sometimesnhe’s Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi;nsometimes Syria’s Hafez Assad, or IdinAmin, Yassir Arafat, the Ayatollah Khomeini,nAbu Nidal, or any of a smallnarmy of other characters who seem tonbear more resemblance to the kinds ofnvillains that Sax Rohmer used to makenup than they do to any real humannbeing. Late last summer the bogeymannshifted his shape once again, this timenbecoming Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Henwas going to get us — if we didn’t watchnout.nEven before Mr. Hussein decided tontop off his summer vacation by swallowingnKuwait in a midnight snack, U.S.nNews & World Report dubbed himn”the most dangerous man in thenworld,” a sure signal that the bogeymannwas about to change his addressnonce more. What exactly Mr. Husseinnsexist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic.nCommenting on the Lampoon/nCrimson imbroglio. Dean of StudentsnArchie C. Epps III said, “I thought itnwas very vulgar and in poor taste, andnin my opinion, the people who preparednit don’t belong at a place likenHarvard.” (But what about those whonengage in to’ebah. Dean Epps? Donthey belong there?) Epps was oncenunceremoniously thrown out of hisnUniversity Hall office when it wasn”occupied” by protesting students innthe course of the student revolts of thenlate 60’s, and perhaps he is now skithshnabout attempting to stand against popularnstudent will.nHarvard was originally founded tontrain Congregational (Calvinist) ministersnfor the Massachusetts Bay colony,nand until relatively recently HarvardnCollege, at any rate, saw itself as actingnin loco parentis towards its students,nmost of whom were minors before thenage of majority was lowered from thentraditional 21 to 18. Harvard’s DivinitynSchool and Memorial Church still bearnwitness to the school’s origins, but itsnhad done or even contemplated doingnto merit this appellation remains unknownnto me. It’s perfectly true thatnthe dictator of Iraq is not the sort ofnfellow that English lady mystery writersnwould use as one of their heavies. Hiscapacitynfor brutality, cunning, andnmendacity far transcends the very limitedngrasp of human evil that AgathanChristie, Dorothy Sayers, and theirnsisters displayed. But why he was anynmore dangerous than a host of othernmalefactors — including a number ofnutterly unscrupulous and repulsivenAmerican politicians — was nevernclear.nBut once Mr. Hussein had smashednKuwait, the monsters of a thousandnslasher films seemed to leap from thencelluloid, expropriate his sullen puss,nand cast their torches toward our templendoors. Rotgut liberal columnistnMary McGrory, assuring us that then”beast of Baghdad” was “capable ofnanything,” advocated doing just aboutnanything to get rid of him. NeoconservativenPaul Creenberg called for annAmerican onslaught against Iraq. ProfessionalnNegro Jesse Jackson intonednnnrelationship to historic Christianity hasnbecome tenuous, to say the least. Pluralismnat Harvard and other once-Christianninstitutions no longer means sympatheticnacceptance of other greatnspiritual traditions, or even of the reversenspiritualities of agnosticism andnatheism, but now requires the abolitionnof moral norms.nThe exclusion of sexual moralitynfrom the range of moral issues that isnimportant to the university says, inneffect, that sexual conduct has no moralnsignificance and that what used to benconsidered moral development has nonplace in intellectual development. It isnpossible, of course, to adopt the positionnthat Christian morals have nothingnto do with the academy or the life ofnthe mind, but in order to do this onenmust repudiate not only Christian andnJewish morals but most of the moralnand ethical reasoning of human societiesnthrough the centuries. It is sad thatnthe nation’s oldest university is apparentlynnot merely a willing but even anneager participant in this repudiation.n— Harold O./. Brownnthat the United States must be ready ton”use military force, multilaterally ornunilaterally,” to drive Hussein backninto his lair. Leftist Senator ChrisnDodd opined that “obviously, the oilnreserves pose an immediate, major securitynthreat.” And before the weeknwas over. President Bush and the Pentagonnwere dispatching some two hundrednthousand U.S. troops in the largestnforce to go abroad since thenVietnam War to the Arabian desert,nthere perhaps to die for the security ofnthe House of Saud and to save the clannof Sabah from the cruel fate of munchingncaviar on the Riviera for the rest ofnhistory.nNot even the Ayatollah Khomeini’snattack on the U.S. Embassy in Tehrannin 1979 provoked the kind of unanimousnconsent to commit mayhemnagainst the aggressor that the Iraqininvasion of Kuwait incited, nor didnterrorist attacks against Americans ornthe Soviet massacre of Korean AirnLines Flight 007 in the 1980’s. Andnyet Hussein had done absolutely nothingnto the United States itself or itsncitizens or their property. All he want-nNOVEMBER 1990/9n