A police chaplain says he was forced out of his post after criticising the Government’s plans for gay marriage on his personal website, MPs have been told.
Rev Brian Ross said he was summoned to a meeting with a senior officer and told that postings on his blog on the subject of marriage did not fit with the force’s equality and diversity policies.
Campaigners against same-sex marriage claimed that the case was “just the start of things to come”.
They said it backed up warnings that chaplains in hospitals, prisons and the armed forces as well as teachers and other public servants could be dismissed legally from their jobs if they take what they consider to be a stand on grounds of conscience over the issue.
Ministers have repeatedly insisted that no one should be sacked from their job for voicing opposition to same-sex marriage and have built in special “protections” for clerics into the Government’s Marriage Bill.
But in a written submission to a committee of MPs revising the bill in the House of Commons Rev Ross claimed that his case was “typical of the kind of situation that could, and would, arise” once gay marriage becomes law.
[…][Ross] went on: “Just before the summer, a particular senior officer in one of the divisions read my personal blog and objected to my expressed support for traditional marriage as, it was claimed, it went against the force’s equality and diversity policies.
“I was summoned to a meeting, the end result of which has been that my services have been dispensed with.
“This, I would emphasise, is before any legislation has been placed on the Statute Book.”
I recommend that Christians who like to blog on social issues blog under an alias, because this kind of thing happens more than you expect, and the consequences can be much worse than this. Depending on where you are, you might end up paying tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees as you go through a multi-year trial in front of some political correctness tribunal.
The head of a conservative student organization at DePaul University has been sanctioned by the university and could be expelled after he released the names of vandals who destroyed a pro-life flag display.
Kristopher Del Campo, the chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom chapter, was found guilty by the university on two counts – “Disorderly, Violent, Intimidating or Dangerous Behavior to Self or Others” and “Judicial Process Compliance.”
DePaul University did not return calls seeking comment.
Last January Del Campo and other pro-life students received permission from the university to erect a pro-life display featuring 500 flags. Vandals later destroyed the display – stuffing a number of the flags into trash cans.
The university’s public safety department launched an investigation and eventually identified 13 students who confessed to the crime. Those names were then released by the university to Del Campo.
On Feb. 5 the national Young Americans for Freedom organization posted the names of the vandals on their website. The posting generated negative comments directed at the vandals – and the university held Del Campo responsible.
Three days later, Del Campo was informed that he had violated DePaul’s Code of Student Responsibility. He was formally charged ten days later.
“Instead of supporting a student whose free speech rights were violated, DePaul University bullied Kristopher Del Campo for daring to expose the 13 vandals,” said Young America’s Foundation President Ron Robinson. “They put him through a Soviet-style show trial.”
Free speech and conservative groups said they are shocked that the university is punishing the victim of a crime.
[…]Del Campo said he is speaking out because he doesn’t want other conservatives to suffer through the ordeal he’s been subjected to.
“The dean told me not to fight,” he said. “He told me it wasn’t worth it – that I just have 13 weeks left at the university. But I’m going to fight this. This is wrong. This university has a problem with free speech rights and this time they met a challenger who is not backing down.” Kate Edwards, of YAF, said they are demanding that DePaul University drop all charges against Del Campo.
“His free speech rights were completely violated,” she told me. “They intimidated him. They threatened him. They placed a gag order on him.”
Edwards said the university even forbade Del Campo from contacting YAF and was not allowed to have any counsel during his tribunal.
“He couldn’t get a lawyer – he was completely intimidated,” Edwards said.
This story reminds me of Ari Mendelsohn’s book “Bias Incident”. I had to go through this as a student as well. Not only was our Christian club banned, but our pro-life club, too. It’s very important to understand what you are getting before you hand leftists your money. They have no qualms at all about using your money to impose their views on you, and hold you hostage by threatening you with expulsion or grading down.
Tonight, Washington Post’s Bob Woodward alleged that because he is sticking to his guns in insisting that sequestration was the brainchild of the Obama White House, that it was personally approved by Obama, and that bringing up tax increases now to try to resolve the current sequestration impasse is “moving the goalposts,” he has been threatened by “a very senior person” in the White House. Woodward said so on CNN’s Situation Room earlier today. What’s even more troubling is that Woodward told two Politico reporters the same thing yesterday, and that they appear to have sat on the revelation until this evening when the CNN interview forced their hand. Relevant portions of the CNN transcript and Politico column follow the jump.
This is from a rush transcript at CNN. Woodward was interviewed by the network’s Wolf Blitzer and Kate Bolduan (I checked the first portion of it against the video; there was no supporting video for the last line quoted below; bolds are mine throughout this post):
BOLDUAN: What do you make of the White House’s response to your article?
WOODWARD: Well, I think they’re confused. I think they’ve got this idea. I mean, they put out these long talking points and said, see, even Woodward’s book reports that Speaker Boehner said, let’s get $600 billion over ten years in revenue in the super committee. That’s exactly right. That’s not the sequester. And they’ve said – they have,as you know, I said, get somebody from the White House here, and we’ll debate.
BLITZER: We invited the White House to send someone here, to debate this issue with you, and they declined.
WOODWARD: Why? Why? Because it’s irrefutable; that’s exactly what happened. I’m not saying this is a moving of the goalposts that was some criminal act or something like that, I’m just saying, that’s –
… BLITZER: You’re used to this kind of stuff, but share with our viewers what’s going on between you and the White House.
WOODWARD: Well, they’re not happy at all, and some people kind of, you know, said, look, we don’t see eye to eye on this. They never really said, though – afterwards, they’ve said that this is factually wrong, and they – and it was said to me in an e-mail by a top –
BLITZER: What was said? Yes.
WOODWARD: It was said very clearly, you will regret doing this.
BLITZER: Who sent that e-mail to you?
WOODWARD: Well, I’m not going to say.
BLITZER: Was it a senior person at the White House?
WOODWARD: A very senior person. And just as a matter – I mean, it makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, you’re going to regret doing something that you believe in. And even though we don’t look at it that way, you do look at it that way. And I think if Barack Obama knew that was part of the communication’s strategy – let’s hope it’s not a strategy, but it’s a tactic that somebody’s employed, and said, look, we don’t go around trying to say to reporters, if you, in an honest way, present something we don’t like, that, you know, you’re going to regret this. And just – it’s Mickey Mouse.
… BOLDUAN: That line clearly has touched a nerve with folks at the White House. There’s no question about that.
Why would anyone think that the tactics of this socialist, big-government regime would be any different than other socialist, big-government regimes? They don’t like criticism. They don’t like questions. They don’t like being held accountable.
Hey, Bob, you can’t say we didn’t warn you. We knew this White House was capable of attacking even the great Bob Woodward for telling the truth.
You could have listened to Michael Barone. He saw it coming even before Barack Obama was elected. In October 2008, he penned “The Coming Obama Thugocracy.”
Schmaler’s story is typical of this gang. Her shouting, threats, and rants at reporters would have rendered her unqualified to serve in the press shop of a state department of agriculture.
Leftists have always been like this – the sense of moral superiority, and the dismissal of critics as immoral. The thuggishness is natural because they believe that their plans can never fail because of their innate moral superiority. If their plans do fail, (e.g. – high minimum wage produces higher unemployment), it must be because some group of people is undermining them, and those people must be purged. It can never be that their plans are wrong and don’t produce the results they want. They have good intentions, and how could that not produce good results? Leftists are the same everywhere.
WINTERY KNIGHT 