Delta Lambda
Phi's rush week began with coffee Monday night in Boulder,
Colo., and ended with a home-cooked lasagna dinner in the
fraternity president's living room on Friday. In
between, pledges of the University of Colorado's only
gay fraternity joined for a movie night, a bowling
trip, and an outing to a gay dance club in Denver.
CU's chapter of Delta Lambda Phi received its
charter last year and has about 15 members in the
fraternity, which advertises itself as being for "gay,
bisexual, and progressive men." Seven men participated in
this semester's recruitment week, which marked the
fraternity's third formal rush.
Cole Stalnaker, a CU student who is president of
the fraternity, said he always had wanted to be part
of the brotherhood offered by Greek life. He rushed
Delta Lambda Phi after transferring to Boulder from a
community college in Kansas. "I wanted to be a part of
a fraternity, but I didn't want to feel that I was
going to be judged or [misunderstood]," said
Stalnaker, a 23-year-old senior who is studying
integrated physiology.
A few months after he graduated from high
school, Stalnaker came out to his friends, some of
whom he had known since first grade. None of them
accepted his coming out.
When Stalnaker's
former high school in southern Kansas formed a
gay-straight alliance last year, the Reverend Fred Phelps
brought his antigay camp there to picket the school
board. Phelps, whose church is in Topeka, Kan., rose
to national prominence after picketing the funeral of
gay murder victim Matthew Shepard in 1999. "Back there, it's
not OK to be gay," Stalnaker said. "It's very
dangerous to be out. You get a lot of hate."
Stalnaker said members of the local chapter of
Delta Lambda Phi give similar reasons for joining to
make new friends and become more involved in the gay community.
Fraternity members went to Aspen Gay Ski Week
together last month and are planning a spring break
trip. Members also network with on-campus and local
LGBT groups, and they organize fund-raisers. Last year Delta
Lambda Phi organized a drag show to raise money for
the Boulder County AIDS Project.
Still, Delta Lambda Phi faces obstacles in
recruiting new members and debunking myths about gay
fraternity life, Stalnaker said. Not all gay and
bisexual students want to be so public about their
sexuality. Also, the fraternity doesn't have a
long-standing history on campus, as do traditional
Greek organizations, he said.
The fraternity is clear that it is not a network
for dating or sex. "You say the word 'gay,' and I
think automatically a lot of people jump to the word
'sex,'" Stalnaker said. "It's not like that at all.
It's a stereotype that's reoccurring."
Members of the fraternity are not allowed to be
in relationships with one another, unless the pairings
existed before pledging the fraternity. There are
about 20 chapters of Delta Lambda Phi nationwide. CU's is
the only chapter in Colorado, said Jeremy Charles,
national executive director of the fraternity. Charles
said gay and bisexual men often are not comfortable
rushing traditional Greek houses. (AP)