title: OVER 100 COLLEGES WILL HOLD SEPARATE GRADUATION Ceremonies For Gays As Part Of A “Cultural Celebration”
text: A Bi-Product Of Obama s Divided America The LGBT community has been fighting a decades-long culture war to be included in the fabrics of American society   and it s winning.Yet when it comes to their graduation ceremonies, it seems they d prefer exclusivity.More than 100 colleges and universities this spring will be holding separate graduation ceremonies for the LGBTQ population and their allies, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). This includes Georgetown University, Duke University, Harvard University and Boston College, among others.The graduation ceremony is called the  Lavender Graduation,  signifying  pink triange that gay men were forced to wear in concentration camps and the black triange designating lesbians as political prisoners in Nazi Germany,  according to HRC.The special ceremony was started in 1995 at the University of Michigan by Dr. Ronni Sanlo, a Jewish lesbian, who said she was denied attendance at her children s graduation because of her sexual orientation. These events provide a sense of community for minority students who often experience tremendous culture shock at their impersonalized institutions,  HRC says on its website, explaining the need for such ceremonies.  For many students they are the payoff for staying in school, and friends and families find the smaller, more ethnic ceremonies both meaningful and personal. They deem it a  cultural celebration,  that  recognizes LGBT students of all races and ethnicities  it acknowledges their achievements and contributions to the university as students who  survived the college experience.  Via: Washington Times