You said -- "A deaf cult has taken over Gallaudet University. The prevailing ideology there right now is that deafness is not a disability, but a culture/nationality/religion."
Now, that's funny! Considering that Gallaudet University is for deaf people -- your usage of "deaf cult" is really a "laugh-a-minute".
Being deaf does absolutely put you into a *different culture*. No matter how hard you try, you will never get a "deaf person" to become a "hearing person with a handicap". That's the problem with other people (on the outside) understanding this. It will never work.
What works is to accept the culture and work within it and understand the differences. To say that it's not a culture and they are simply "hearing people" who happen to have a "hearing deficit" is missing it totally. In fact it's of no good to that deaf person.
Being deaf is perhaps the only handicap that puts a person into a *different culture*. It creates different perceptions, it makes for different reasoning, it causes different understanding, it makes for much misunderstanding in the hearing world, it isolates, it's forces a sub-culture (through no choice of their own).
If you don't know that -- then you know nothing about being deaf.
Regards,
Star Traveler