Few candidates were brazen enough to declare themselves abjectly “anti-gay”, but buzz words such as “traditional family values” and “activist judges” were rampant.

The term, “activist judges,” coined by a 2004 State of the Union speechwriter, has taken on such a ubiquitous cultural connotation that it is appearing everywhere.

Politicians use it when they want to communicate their anti-LGBTIQ sentiment, without making that leap into bigotry.

Most of the right-wing conservatives and even the more politically moderate who remain in support of the ambiguous concept of “traditional family values,” seem to take comfort in being able to focus on the shapeless rather than the personal.

Notions such as “activist judges” are easier to lambaste than the actual humanized denial of rights to specific individuals. These are the same people who refuse to consider the possibility that anyone who plays a significant role in their life could ever personalize for them the meaning of the LGBTIQ community.

In mid-October I was part of a Safe Zone training panel, in which three of my peers and I shared our various reflections on our LGBTIQ identities with a group of allies-in-training. At one point a middle-aged man raised his hand and interjected, “Yes, but why should I care how you identify?”

After struggling for a moment to make sense of the inquiry, I realized something particularly significant about the question ? at that moment he was unable to understand the difference between the mere acknowledgment of some displaced LGBTIQ community member and the acceptance of the idea that each person he interacted with on a daily basis could be an LGBTIQ-identified individual.

It is clearly much easier to deal with our feelings, whether theoretical tolerance or utter disgust, for a group of people we believe to be a mere idea or a media sound byte who are irrelevant to our personal existence. This realization is what hung over me as I left that Safe Zone training and saw a preacher delivering a diatribe against the “homosexual lifestyle” in the Pit. It prompted me to wonder, had this man ever had a conversation with someone he thought might not be straight-identified?

That question is what led me to strike up a conversation with “Bible Greg.” After ten minutes of exchanging our impressions of the University, I offered him my hand and said, “By the way, my name is Sarah and I’m the co-chair of the LGBTIQ group here on campus.”

Now despite my enunciating each of those letters much more carefully than usual, the confusion that shot across his face urged me on. “The lesbian, gay, bisexual...,” I faded off. “Oh! You’re a lesbian,” he cried not with disgust but rather sheer astonishment. “Well no, Bible Greg,” I countered. “I actually use the term queer for myself.”

So began one of my most entertaining and satisfying interactions of recent memory, from explaining the basics of queer theory to why I would suggest he dedicate more time to preaching against disobeying one’s parents (the punishment of which is also death according to Romans 1:24-32). I firmly believe that for those minutes the respect and interest in each other’s thoughts were weighted equally between us.

Whatever the case, as I shook his hand upon leaving, his words, “It was a real pleasure, Sarah,” certainly felt sincere.

I’m not going to claim to understand most of those who identify with the right, either politically or religiously, but I can’t help but notice a pattern. If we look who on the Bush administration has the least fundamentalist views on LGBTIQ rights, it is of course Dick Cheney, father of a lesbian. Is there any other issue that pushes Cheney even remotely back towards the center? Of course not. But here more than ever, the political has become personal, and staunch hatred just will not do for him.

While there may perhaps not be enough LGBTIQ children for each rightwing zealot, we still must do what we can to make ourselves visible in the most personalized of ways.

I am calling on us to make those who spew the most hate face us, knowing who we are, and repeat what they wrote in their “Live Journals” or whispered to a friend. And if nothing else, what’s the harm in making conservatives uncomfortable?