Sent by e-mail at 9:45 pm Thursday, Sept. 4, 2003
Dear Professor Halperin,
We've exchanged "fire" indirectly for several years as the national news media has focused its spotlight on your class "How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation," most recently in a front page story by the Washington Times and in coverage by the Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and CNN, and a couple dozen talk radio shows across the nation of which I'm aware. Even read about it Hong Kong and Bogata newspapers as well.
You've correctly noted that AFA-Michigan has felt no need whatsoever to discuss the class directly with you. Frankly, I'm no more interested in your "spin" after the fact than you are in the concerns we've raised about the appropriateness of the class at a tax-funded university. Your writings before the spotlight turned your way were more than sufficient to inform our position.
However, an online discussion forum has published what the poster purports to be an e-mail he received from you, expressing your willingness to engage in a public debate with me regarding the merits of "How to be Gay."
The posted message, identified as being written by you, reads as follows:
"I'm happy to debate Gary Glenn, but I don't take seriously his offer to debate me, as he's never made it to me personally, nor in three and a half years has he ever made the slightest effort to contact me in order to find out more about my course. In any case, none of this fuss will do anything to stop the progress of queer studies, which is powered by its own intellectual gains and won't be impeded by those outside the university who don't even bother to do their homework! Glenn and the AFA have never had the slightest effect on the University of Michigan, and they aren't likely to do so now."
(Online at
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/966361/posts) If the above comments are in fact yours, you appear to have changed your position in recent days, at least based on what I was told by a dozen or so reporters who said you refused all requests for interviews on the subject following the Times story, including invitations for joint appearances with me on Good Morning America and The Today Show, among others.
If you have in fact reversed course, we should advise those shows and other media outlets that you are now "happy to debate Gary Glenn." They told me they only wanted to cover the issue if they could have the two principals (you and I).
If for some reason you remain unwilling to discuss the class in media appearances, but are in fact willing to do so in a more formal debate in a different forum, I am also happy to do that (though I can't imagine that a head to head debate in any public forum wouldn't generate considerable media attention as well). I wouldn't have it any other way. The more Michigan taxpayers learn of this abusive waste of their tax dollars, the more pressure will build for a political response from those who control the University's purse strings.
Regardless, assuming you did in fact author the message as posted, where and when do you propose we hold our debate?
How about getting a room at or near the State Capitol in Lansing, so that members of the legislature, news media, and general public have easy access?
In hopes that you'll take this proposal seriously, I'm making it on the record, with a copy of this message going to Ann Arbor, Lansing, and Detroit news media as well as the Washington Times.
Gary Glenn, President
American Family Association of Michigan