Carolyn Byerly, a former communications professor at New York's Ithaca College and a lesbian, sued the school after she was denied tenure in 2000. Byerly, now a University of Maryland visiting professor, claimed her sexual orientation and feminism were key issues behind her tenure denial.
The school cited a small group of negative student evaluations that said she wasn't feminine enough and that she was too pro-gay-rights, she said.
Byerly said her experience wasn't an isolated case. "I know for a fact it's going on in other places," she said.
But the most often cited example of discrimination against LGBTQ professors is the lack of domestic partner benefits such as health insurance -- less than a third of the nation's colleges and universities offer such benefits. UNC does not offer domestic partner benefits, putting it at odds with benchmark schools such as University of California-Berkeley, UC-Los Angeles and Duke University.
UNC English Professor Tyler Curtain, who is gay, says he's lucky because his partner has a job with benefits. "There are a lot of gays and lesbians at this institution whose partners are out of work or work at a place that doesn't offer partner benefits," he said.
But as a public school, UNC can't offer domestic partner benefits without state approval.
According to Sue Estroff, chairwoman of the UNC Faculty Council, UNC's lack of domestic partner benefits -- especially health insurance -- makes the school less competitive in the eyes of LGBTQ professors. "We certainly aren't as welcoming as a lot of other places," she said.
Brenda Wrigley, a public relations professor at Michigan State University and a lesbian, said MSU's offer of domestic partner benefits and its anti-discrimination policy that includes sexual orientation were among the reasons she chose MSU. "That was the deciding factor," she said.
Classroom Politics
Even when institutions fully accept LGBTQ faculty, students aren't always so friendly.
Karen Booth, a UNC women's studies professor and a lesbian, distinctly remembers an incident in her fall 1998 "Introduction to Women's Studies" class.
After a lecture on lesbians, one student posted a homophobic comment on the class's online discussion board. Other students began posting to the board in agreement with the comment. "It was very difficult as a professor who was a lesbian, and I wasn't out then," Booth said.
To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.
Booth said she was scared. She had heard stories of out faculty who had been harassed, and she was afraid students wouldn't take her seriously as a professor if she were out.
That incident eventually subsided, but Booth said she's still hesitant to come out to her students. "It's a scary thing, and I don't know how my students are going to react," she said.
Some LGBTQ professors never mention their sexuality in the classroom. Others do. Some come out only to certain classes.
At MSU, Wrigley comes out to her students halfway through the semester. Although it makes her uneasy, Wrigley said she thinks it's the right thing to do. "I hope that by being honest about who I am, I can pave the way for others."
UNC political science Professor Pamela Conover said she tells her "Politics of Sexuality" class that she's a lesbian because it's relevant. But she doesn't bring up the topic in her 400-student Political Science 41 class. "It's not relevant in that context what my sexuality is," she said.
But some of Conover's Political Science 41 students think otherwise. She said that on past course evaluations, students have made derogatory comments about what they presume to be her sexual preference, about her presumed politics -- even about the way she dresses.
But Cecil Wooten, a classics professor who has been openly gay since he began teaching at UNC in 1980, said his students have never shown any hostility toward his homosexuality. "Quite frankly, I've never even sensed it," he said. "It's never been an issue."
Peer Pressure
Many LGBTQ professors don't dream of coming out to students -- they can't even come out to their colleagues.
McNaron interviewed one University of Nebraska professor who told her he had to stay in the closet because of his conservative work environment.
"He couldn't even tell (his colleagues) that he hadn't been to church that Sunday," she said. "He certainly couldn't tell them he was a gay man."
The reception of LGBTQ professors among their peers also depends heavily on the department, McNaron found. It's easiest for professors to be gay in the humanities, followed by social sciences, physical sciences and, last, engineering.
Although Curtain called his UNC colleagues in the Department of English warm and accepting, he said his research in sexuality topics is often seen as "outside the norm" and not appealing to those who award research grants.
"That's the next big push -- for our research to be taken seriously by the administration and the people who make the research funds available," he said.
People will sometimes brush off his research as uninteresting, Curtain said. "It's not that it's not interesting. It makes people uncomfortable."
According to Estroff, sexuality has long been studied as a part of other fields, like psychology, but hasn't been studied on its own until recently. "I don't think it's seen as not legitimate, but I think it's seen as a new area," she said.
At the same time, McNaron said numerous LGBTQ professors have told her they felt unable to reach their full research potential because they were in the closet professionally -- even when the research had nothing to do with sexuality.
"You wall off a part of yourself," she said. "They were partially present. The research that they did was only partial."
Looking Ahead
At a glance, the climate for LGBTQ faculty seems to be improving: More schools are offering domestic partner benefits, and outright discrimination isn't as common as it used to be.
But that doesn't mean that the tradition of discrimination is history.
Despite the liberal reputations of universities, most LGBTQ professors agree that they won't achieve full equality in the workplace until the entire LGBTQ segment of society achieves equality with its heterosexual counterpart.
Estroff is optimistic that the climate for LGBTQ professors will continue to improve. "It's going to become more and more of a nonissue," she predicted.
In the meantime, progress comes in bits and pieces.
In March 2002, more than 40 years after Smith College fired the three gay professors, the school decided to honor the men with a scholarship and a program on civil liberties.
But the school declined to issue an apology.
The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.
