Cradle for the Conservative Mind: Why SexPowerGod and Brown University is Good for Your Brain

The conservative minded student should not shrink and run from SexPowerGod, condoms on dorm doors, sociology professors with socialist sympathies, or any of the other myriad idiosyncrasies of this liberal institution. He should embrace these experiences and the University that offers them as a proving ground for his dearest beliefs and convictions, discarding those that are sustained merely by prejudice, and preserving those that are founded upon the solid truth.

There is a fundamental difference between indoctrinating students with a copy of the value system that one derives from conservative thought and the tortuous yet ultimately more fruitful process of forging a true conservative mind, capable of independently evaluating the difference between right and wrong, truth and fiction, and armed with the tools with which to translate that judgment into action.

Every true conservative should fight tooth and nail to preserve the conditions which make it possible for this second type of education to flourish, because it is this sort of day to day encounter with the strange and the unfamiliar which forces each individual to look her beliefs in the face and confront and refine her understanding of the world and her place in it. It is not difficult to look at the choices and beliefs of other people and say: this is right; that is wrong. But it is never easy to examine one’s own choices and beliefs with the same exacting honesty. This sort of honest reflection is the lifeblood that sustains and ultimately strengthens our own understanding of our most cherished principles.

Confronted with a University event like SexPowerGod, each individual student has the opportunity to decide whether or not to attend and the responsibility to hold himself accountable for that choice. This provocatively-named party thrown by Brown’s Queer Alliance is embraced by some and rejected by others, but it is ignored by few. SexPowerGod provides attendees and non-attendees with the opportunity to think and to choose-the chance to examine our deepest beliefs and our prejudices. SexPowerGod is not the average fall ball. Even its name, an amalgamation of the obscene and the profane, is intended to be a provocation. But beyond its ballyhooed reputation, there is something more that this party represents to a small community of men and women at Brown University. For all but a few of the most “out” gay students, this is one of the only events in the year where it is possible to behave openly and honestly on the dance floor next to heterosexual peers. It is this factor that sets SexPowerGod apart from the dozens of other provocatively-themed parties hosted by various fraternities and student groups on Friday evenings.

If a member of the campus community vehemently attacks SexPowerGod and the Queer Alliance on the grounds of moral principle but says nothing in the face of provocatively-themed alcohol-fueled frat parties that dot the Brown campus, then what—or who is he really attacking?

True conservative thinkers should not allow the lexicon of our value system to serve as camouflage for open bigotry. Men and women, conservatives and liberals alike, ought to be known and to be judged for the merit of their ideas and for the actions they pursue, not for who they claim to be.