As part of a unique workshop on homophobia, Healthy Loving Week's keynote speaker urged Monday night's audience to recall their unprejudiced youth with the modified song "If You're Healthy and You Know It."

Jamie Washington, an assistant director of residential life at the University of Maryland, pointed to the unconditional love children display to others in addressing the 106-member audience.

"We need to create a healthy living and loving environment. We begin to do this by getting to know people," said Washington, also a consultant for Equity Institute, which designs presentations dealing with the "isms." He encouraged the audience to meet each other as part of the lecture.

Members shared painful moments of their childhood after Washington urged the audience to express their feelings about such experiences. He said getting in touch with pain is an important step to ending all forms of oppression.

"We cannot begin to create change until we start with the heart and start with the gut," Washington said of the exercise.

Washington told his own story of oppression: While walking to church one day, a group of young men told him "faggots" were not allowed on that street.

Such homophobic epithets and other forms of oppression occur when people want to feel in control of their own insecurities, he said adding that the audience could help end homophobia by valuing others.

"He obviously tried to make everyone feel what oppression was like," said Elaine Jurs, assistant director of health promotion and education for the University's Ritenour Health Center and Healthy Loving week organizer.

The presentation was different from other workshops on homophobia because it stimulated thought on the issue instead of just condemning intolerant actions, said Jeff McCarty, political co-director of the Lesbian and Gay Student Alliance.

Audience member Monica Rodriguez said Washington's use of audience participation was effective because it forced people to confront their attitudes toward sexual orientation.

Healthy Loving Week continued last night at the HUB with a lecture on self-esteem and a talk-show aimed on analyzing the roles of male-female relationships.

Lisa Manning, a graduate assistant, told a group of about 70 people that when a person puts all of his or her energy into one relationship while disregarding others problems arise.

"There isn't any one person that can be everything for you," she said.

Manning, who works at the Center for Counseling and Psychological Services, said doing things with friends outside of the relationship will help promote self-esteem.

If one person is constantly blamed for any problems in a relationship that person's self-esteem will be in jeopardy, she said.

Mary Anne Knapp, a clinical social worker at CAPS, said people should get feedback from their partner or friends to judge problems with self-esteem in a relationship.

In another Healthy Loving Week event last night, an "Oprah Winfrey" style discussion analyzed some roles of a male-female relationship and was sponsored by Delta Sigma Theta sorority and the National Pan-Hellenic Council.

Personalities portrayed by NPHC members included a female who will only date men of a certain color, a woman who expects her man to do everything for her, a man who thinks sex is a woman's sole purpose, and a man who will give his woman everything she wants.

"The panel over-emphasized personalities for obvious reasons . . . but they're out there," said Pamela Baldwin (senior-biology), a SHARP educator and one of 75 audience members.

Nadene Chambers (senior-health planning and administration) emphasized the need for anyone involved in a relationship to look inside themselves and find out what they really want.

The main problem in relationships of today, especially interracial ones, are in how they are viewed, said Leonard Jack, a former director of the Sexual Health Awareness Resource Program.

"You can't look at relationships in terms of status," he said.

Two people involved in a cross-cultural relationship must look at each other's qualities and accept the differences, Jack said. Problems arise when the individual's culture is stifled by the other, he said.

Chambers is an educator in SHARP and the Peer Counseling Education Program.

-- Staff writer Jim Duffy contributed to this report.