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Thursday, October 27, 2005

Expulsion For Gay Comments: Where Has Freedom of Speech Gone?


I just noticed this article today about a student at Duquesne University who is being threatened with expulsion for some anti-gay comments that he made on a private website. Ryan Minor referred to gay people as "subhuman" at Facebook.com. The university is demanding that he write a paper about the Catholic Church and homosexuality. Minor says:
"If I write this paper, I'm going against my faith and my beliefs on the issue and topic of homosexuality within the university and the Catholic Church."

Let me first say that Mr. Minor could not be more wrong in thinking that homosexuals are subhuman. Orthodox Christian doctrine holds no such position. If homosexuals are subhuman, I suppose I am too. I find Mr. Minor's comments repugnant in every way.

That being said, I thought we lived in a country that allowed freedom of speech. It is a pretty shabby freedom if it involves only those things that everyone agrees with. Freedom of speech is primarily to protect that speech with offends others. If that isn't the case, what is the point of freedom of speech?

Even worse is that universities, of all places, are the few places in America that maintain draconian and Fascist speech codes. Aren't institutes of higher education supposed to be the places where anything can be questioned and where freedom of thought should flourish? University speech codes are an embarrassing relic of the late 80's and early 90's political correctness lunacy that needs to be fixed once and for all.