The uproar over the Collegian's front-page photo of same-sex smoochers raises two questions about the role of journalism in mediating cultural conflict:

Should the newspaper have published the photograph?

Should the newspaper have published a letter writer's vehemently anti-gay denunciation of the photograph?

The photograph first: Imagine a society where homosexuality is considered a normal part of life.

In such a society, a "Flaunt Your Sexuality Kiss-Out" would serve no purpose.

A news photographer looking for a Valentine's Day photograph would find same-sex couples engaged in public displays of affection neither more nor less newsworthy than heterosexuals engaged in public displays of affection. Readers of the newspaper would find a photo of gay PDAs neither more nor less offensive than a photo of straight PDAs.

That society already exists in some urban areas.

It appears to be where the rest of the western world, including State College, Pa., is heading.

We're not there yet. But defenders and detractors are in perfect agreement that the Collegian's Feb. 15 photo of a woman kissing a woman and a man kissing a man may have been a local milestone on that journey.

"Most people have no problem with gays," one detractor wrote, "but they don't want it staring in their face that they should be accepting it."

Members of oppressed minorities know that attitude well: They're acceptable as long as they're invisible.

The Collegian made the sexuality in homosexuality visible in a way that perhaps it had never been before at Penn State.

That sounds like advocacy: Instead of reporting on social change, the newspaper was nudging it along. Remarkably, though, the same writer quoted above predicted that "it'll probably be another generation until society is okay with open gayness."

If even opponents of homosexuality acknowledge that we are moving toward full acceptance of it, then it makes no more sense for the Collegian to continue to treat the acceptability of homosexuality as an open question than it made for the newspapers of a generation or two ago to continue to treat the equality of blacks as an open question. Putting it another way, journalistic neutrality is only tenable if the harm that bigotry does to the victims of bigotry more or less matches the harm tolerance does to the bigots.

But it seems clear that bigotry harms its victims more.

This being the case, the sooner the news media promotes tolerance over bigotry, the better.

After all, no one expects journalists to remain neutral on the subject of violent crime or genocide.

As for Chris Kovalchick's denunciation of the kiss-out photo, let's be clear about how the First Amendment applies.

Obviously, Kovalchick can rant all he likes. Somewhat less obviously, the newspaper is under no legal obligation to print his rants.

The First Amendment protects both Kovalchick's right to speak and the Collegian's right to print or not print whatever it likes.

Of course, legal obligations are one thing; ethical obligations are another. Like most newspapers, the Collegian believes that it should serve as a forum where all may speak.

In deciding what to do with a letter like Kovalchick's, the Collegian must also consider that some speech can do great harm. But the outpouring of responses to Kovalchick has done the LGBTA community more good than harm.

The photograph made them visible; Kovalchick's letter has made them - and their supporters -- and the bigotry they face -- even more visible.

In 1998, some white guys in Texas chained a black man named James Byrd to the back of a pickup and dragged him down a country road until his body came apart.

Editors were pretty sure this was not the kind of story people wanted to read with their morning bran muffin.

But they published it anyway because they thought that when hate crimes are committed in America, people ought to know about it.

By speaking outrageously, Chris Kovalchick has provoked outrage.

He did the LGBTA community a favor.

From where this referee sits, the Collegian's editors made the right call in publishing the kissing couples' photo and then in publishing the response to it