Campus Heterophobia

April 20, 2006

Does anybody really think homosexual activists aren’t trying to push their lifestyle on America — as opposed to merely striving to avoid discrimination? A few recent news items shed some light on the subject.

Scott Savage, a librarian at Ohio State University at Mansfield, got a quick lesson in “tolerance” while serving on a committee responsible for selecting books for incoming OSU students to read as part of their “First Year Reading Experience.”

Savage, a devout Quaker, recommended that a number of conservative-oriented books be added to the list, to balance other books on the list, many of which reportedly had a liberal slant.

Savage recommended four books, “The Marketing of Evil,” by David Kupelian, “The Professors,” by David Horowitz, “Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis,” by Bat Ye’or, and “It Takes a Family,” by Sen. Rick Santorum. How dare he? Won’t he ever learn the proper lessons of selective censorship? The school had earlier investigated him for recommending other forbidden conservative books to freshmen students.

But I guess the request to place these dread screeds on a formal school list was just way too rebellious for anyone employed by an institution of higher learning priding itself in maintaining an environment of academic freedom and open inquiry. Three professors strenuously objected to Savage’s suggestions, describing the Kupelian book as “hate literature,” and “homophobic tripe.” The professors, two of whom are homosexual, said the inclusion of these books on the list made them feel threatened and unsafe on campus.

Now get this — if you haven’t already heard: The faculty voted to support the professors’ claims and the school began an investigation against Savage for sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment? We are talking about book recommendations here, not words or action against specific individuals. This complaint, on its face, was offensively absurd. You can’t have sexual harassment without a victim — without some form of mistreatment of specific individuals.

The homosexual community is the first to cry intolerance at the slightest perceived indignity, yet these professors refused to tolerate the innocuous recommendation of a few books whose message they apparently don’t agree with. They not only sought to suppress opposing ideas, but conspired to punish a man trying to present those ideas.

You have to be a semantic contortionist not to realize that any intolerance or hate speech involved in this episode emanated from the professors and their supporting faculty. Then again, conservative thought is obviously not entitled to the same degree of protection, if any, and anti-conservative propaganda is promoted in much of liberal academia. We can only imagine what goes on in these professors’ classrooms that we don’t hear about.

What these professors, then the faculty and school, did to Mr. Savage comes much closer to harassment than what he did to the professors, which was absolutely nothing. Apparently someone at the school finally figured that out because the malicious and frivolous charges against Savage were dropped.

But Savage’s attorney, David French, said that merely dropping the complaint doesn’t repair the damage to his client’s reputation and career. He is considering litigation.

I think he should seriously consider going forward with litigation against the people and institutions involved. Radical homosexual groups routinely characterize the utterance of opposing opinions — just as in this incident — as hate speech and seek to ban it. They frequently seek to have the expression of opinions running counter to their dogma, branded as harassment or bullying, to make it easier to stigmatize those daring to disagree. Well, in this case — if the allegations are true — the professors appear to be guilty of that which they were accusing Savage: harassment.

You have to be naive not to recognize that the radical homosexual lobby is pushing its lifestyle on American society and using intimidation tactics, such as we see here, to compel society’s acceptance of homosexual behavior as mainstream or normal. They say they just want to live and let live, but many of them want far more than that. They want to live free of harassment themselves, which I’m all for, but it doesn’t appear they want to accord similar respect to those not sharing their views.

If anyone doubts the aggressive intentions of the radical homosexual lobby, he should read the recent news report about a second-grade school teacher in Massachusetts reading to her class a fantasy book about two princes getting married. Objecting parents can’t even opt out their children from these experiences because same-sex marriage has been decreed legal by the high priests of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Here we see what radical homosexual activism fueled by radical judicial activism has wrought.

It’s difficult to understand how there can be so much apathy as we witness such ongoing assaults on our culture.

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