Tag Archives: Free Speech

News

University of Kentucky pays $125,000 to settle anti-Christian discrimination suit

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From the radically leftist Washington Post. (H/T Evolution News)

Excerpt:

An astronomy professor who sued the University of Kentucky after claiming he lost out on a top job because of his Christian beliefs reached a settlement Tuesday with the school.

The university agreed to pay $125,000 to Martin Gaskell in exchange for dropping a federal religious discrimination suit he filed in Lexington in 2009. A trial was set for next month.

Gaskell claimed he was passed over to be director of UK’s MacAdam Student Observatory because of his religion and statements that were perceived to be critical of evolution.

Court records showed Gaskell was a front-runner for the job, but some professors called him “something close to a creationist” and “potentially evangelical” in interoffice e-mails to other university scientists.

“We never thought from the start that everybody at UK was some sort of anti-religious bigot,” said Frank Manion, Gaskell’s attorney. “However, what I do think this case disclosed is a kind of endemic, almost knee-jerk reaction in academia towards people, especially scientists, of a strong religious faith.”

A statement from University of Kentucky counsel Barbara Jones Tuesday said the school’s “hiring processes were and are fundamentally sound and were followed in this case.” The university does not admit any wrongdoing.

[…]After applying for the job in 2007, Gaskell said he learned from a friend at UK that professors had discussed his purported religious views. E-mails turned over as evidence in the case showed that university scientists wondered if Gaskell’s faith would interfere with the job, which included public outreach and education.

One astrophysics professor at UK told department chair Michael Cavagnero in an e-mail that hiring Gaskell would be a “huge public relations mistake.”

[…]Manion said documents and e-mail communications turned over by UK in the case showed strong evidence of religious bias, including a professor who surmised that Gaskell was “potentially evangelical.”

“The fact that somebody could say that without realizing the implications, speaks volumes,” Manion said. “Because all you have to do is substitute any other label – potentially Jewish, potentially Muslim. Nobody would say that.”

I think we should definitely de-fund these universities, put the money into the hands of taxpayers, and let the taxpayers decide where to send their children to college – or WHETHER to send their children to college.

News

Is the secular left repectful of academic freedom?

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A story from the Vancouver Sun. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

Since 2006, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has been targeting small, private, accredited, and invariably Christian, universities. Its method is to emit vague accusations that codes of conduct of such institutions somehow violate CAUT’s definition of academic freedom. It then appoints its own “commissioners” to “investigate” whether the schools are guilty as charged.

Last year, it used these tactics against Trinity Western University in the Fraser Valley. More recently, it has turned it sights on a Mennonite school in Manitoba, a Baptist academy in the Maritimes and similar Christian schools across Canada.

What’s risible about CAUT’s singling out of these Christian schools is that, by its own admission, it has absolutely no legislative or administrative authority to conduct such investigations.

CAUT has been around since 1951, primarily as a labour advisory body for academic staff. It also plays the role of equal opportunity foghorn on campus free-speech issues. Demonstrating classic mission creep, though, it has appointed itself Canada’s guardian of academic freedom and launched its campaign to root out attempts by universities to “ensure an ideologically or religiously homogeneous staff.”

The meaning of academic freedom is what CAUT says it means. A CAUT document has a footnote to give authority to what it calls the “conventional understanding of academic freedom” — and then cites itself as the authority.

CAUT’s campaign impugns the legal rights of faith-based institutions to require employees to conduct themselves in ways consistent with their affiliation to the organization’s religious mission. Settled human rights law and religious freedom rulings from the Supreme Court of Canada entitle such organizations — non-academic and academic alike — to do just that.

As Don Hutchinson, senior counsel for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, said recently about the case of Heintz versus Christian Horizons: “Christian institutions … have particular rights that permit them to engage in selective hiring, requiring their employees to agree with their mission, beliefs, and behaviours — provided the institution adequately explains … why they are essential to the performance of the individual’s work . . . .” Such rights are not, Hutchinson stressed, special exemptions or loopholes or simply sneaky ways to impose “Christian morality” within the academy. They are legal rights, straight up.

Sending unauthorized “commissioners” to snoop into entirely legal conduct is not just impudent. It offends the very fundamentals of freedom.

This is the kind of danger that needs to be on the map in Christian circles. Is it?

News

Belgian archbishop targeted by gay activists over AIDS remarks

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Another example of speech critical of homosexuality being threatened with legal sanctions, reported by Life Site News. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

The new archbishop of Brussels, Andre-Joseph Leonard, is being targeted by homosexualist groups, and has been condemned by the country’s prime minister, after he said that AIDS is a consequence of risky sexual behavior, including homosexual sexual activity.

Homosexualist groups have accused Archbishop Leonard of “homophobia,” after he pointed out in a book released in October that “AIDS at the beginning multiplied through sexual behaviour with all sorts of partners or else through anal rather than vaginal sexual rapports.”

“When you mistreat the environment it ends up mistreating us in turn,” he continued. “And when you mistreat human love, perhaps it winds up taking vengeance.”

“All I’m saying is that sometimes there are consequences linked to our actions. I believe this is a totally decent, honourable and respectable stance.”

A lawyer acting on behalf of a homosexualist lobby group has filed a formal complaint against Leonard for “homophobic statements” and “violating an anti-discrimination law.”

[…]Recently a man ran up to the archbishop during a service at the Brussels cathedral and shoved a cherry pie in his face, apparently in connection with the controversy.

Here’s a CDC study that discusses whether certain types of sex are more risky than other types.

Here’s a refresher on some of the violence directed against supporters of the Prop 8 pro-traditional-marriage amendment.

And in Canada, an evangelical TV show has just been pulled off the air, also for disagreeing with homosexuality.

Note that comments to this post will be strictly filtered in accordance with Obama’s law restricting speech critical of homosexuality.