Tag Archives: Freedom of Speech

News

Court rules university violated conservative professor’s freedom of speech

Leave a comment

From Campus Reform.

Excerpt:

A jury has concluded that the University of North Carolina-Wilmington retaliated against one of its professors for his outspoken conservative views.

The battle for his First Amendment rights is finally over for Mike Adams, a criminology professor who asserted the university denied him a promotion to full professor in 2006 because of his conversion to Christianity and subsequent vocal conservatism.

Today, a jury in a U.S. District Court in Greenville, N.C., agreed.

“We are just grateful that the jury saw what we’ve long known what was the case, that Dr. Adams was an incredible scholar,” Alliance Defending Freedom(ADF) attorney Travis Barham, who represents Adams, told Campus Reform.

“This is an incredibly important victory for the First Amendment,” Barham said. “To be able to speak freely without retaliation is a principle that should be a reality on campus and the jurors reassured that.”

The university hired Adams in 1993; at the time, he was a self-described atheist. After his conversion to Christianity in 2000, Adams adjusted his political and social views and spoke publicly on conservatism, including through his column at Townhall.com. From then on, Adams was subjected to “intrusive investigations” and “baseless accusations” according to an ADF press release.

“They retaliated against me for exercising my First Amendment rights in my column and other outlets,” Adams told Campus Reform after the trial. “I’m unbelievably thrilled [at the verdict].”

The case was originally filed in April 2007 and the trial was granted by a federal court last year.

Well done, Alliance Defending Freedom! And congratulations, Mike Adams, for the win! There’s probably no conservative professor in the United States who is more hated than Mike Adams.

However, there is definitely a warning for conservatives here. If you are thinking that the university campus is fair to Christians and conservatives, you really need to re-think that. On the modern secular leftist campus, you can expect to have your views ridiculed and attacked, not just by the professors, but by the students, too. After a little indoctrination, the students are just as likely to ridicule and attack you as the professors are. It’s not a place for free speech and rational discussion, especially outside the sciences. Young Christians and conservatives headed to the university – BEWARE.

News

Gay activists pressure comedian Bob Newhart to cancel show for Catholic group

2 Comments

Mark Steyn’s previous column, which I blogged about, drew a response from the National Review editor who urged Mr. Steyn not to upset gay activists by being “derogatory” and “puerile” in our defense of free speech. Mark Steyn replied to him, and in that reply he linked to this article from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

Famed comedian Bob Newhart has canceled a headline show at a conference for Catholic business leaders after a homosexual activist group ran a campaign portraying the organizers as “anti-gay.”

After learning of the 84-year-old comedian’s scheduled appearance at the Legatus Summit in Orlando on February 6, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) began urging him last week to back out.

[…]The homosexual activist group launched the campaign in a December 12 post titled “Bob Newhart, don’t become the next Kirk Cameron!”

[…]“Personally, I’m choosing to believe that he just doesn’t know and that this booking is the result of bad advice,” wrote author Jeremy Hooper, GLAAD’s special projects consultant. “GLAAD is reaching out to Mr. Newhart’s representatives to let them know how, exactly, an appearance at this event will come across to LGBT people and allied voices.”

“I am hoping that I am right, and Mr. Newhart doesn’t want to go down that path,” he added. “He can still express his Catholic faith in a way more consistent with the rest of American Catholics, by loving and supporting his LGBT friends and family. GLAAD is urging him to do the right thing.”

Isn’t that nice that the gay activists are going to allow Catholics express their moral convictions in a way that is consistent with their gay agenda? When Jesus said that marriage is between a man and a woman in Mark 10, he was just being being a hateful bigot. GLAAD could have straightened Jesus right out with a little intimidation, shaming and coercion. Then he would have been a lot better as a religious figure. Fortunately, the helpful gay activists at GLAAD are here to straighten out the rest of us today. By any means necessary, because it’s for our own good to have correct views on what the Bible teaches about sin.

I was talking to a friend about this whole Mark Steyn dust-up and I think my core conviction on this issue is this. When I sin, I don’t run around using threats, vandalism and violence in order to force others to celebrate and participate in my sinning. When I sin, I call it a sin and I don’t use worldly power to force others to affirm my sin. I don’t ask people to subsidize my sinning and pay for my medical bills. I don’t demand that people who disagree with my sinning to be fired from their jobs. I don’t vandalize people’s churches and businesses. And I don’t commit acts of domestic terrorism, like the gay activist Floyd Lee Corkins did.

Commentary

Mark Steyn on the intolerance of the gay activism movement

1 Comment

Dina found this article in by the Canadian national treasure in National Review.

Excerpt:

Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson, in his career-detonating interview with GQ, gave a rather thoughtful vernacular exegesis of the Bible’s line on sin, while carefully insisting that he and other Christians are obligated to love all sinners and leave it to the Almighty to adjudicate the competing charms of drunkards, fornicators, and homosexuals. Nevertheless, GLAAD — “the gatekeepers of politically correct gayness” as the (gay) novelist Bret Easton Ellis sneered — saw their opportunity and seized it. By taking out TV’s leading cable star, they would teach an important lesson pour encourager les autres— that espousing conventional Christian morality, even off-air, is incompatible with American celebrity.

Some of my comrades, who really should know better, wonder why, instead of insisting Robertson be defenestrated, GLAAD wouldn’t rather “start a conversation.” But, if you don’t need to, why bother? Most Christian opponents of gay marriage oppose gay marriage; they don’t oppose the right of gays to advocate it. Yet thug groups like GLAAD increasingly oppose the right of Christians even to argue their corner. It’s quicker and more effective to silence them.

As Christian bakers ordered to provide wedding cakes for gay nuptials and many others well understand, America’s much-vaunted “freedom of religion” is dwindling down to something you can exercise behind closed doors in the privacy of your own abode or at a specialist venue for those of such tastes for an hour or so on Sunday morning, but when you enter the public square you have to leave your faith back home hanging in the closet. Yet even this reductive consolation is not permitted to Robertson: GLAAD spokesgay Wilson Cruz declared that “Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil’s lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe.” Robertson was quoting the New Testament, but hey, what do those guys know? In today’s America, land of the Obamacare Pajama Boy, Jesus is basically Nightshirt Boy, a fey non-judgmental dweeb who’s cool with whatever. What GLAAD is attempting would be called, were it applied to any other identity group, “cultural appropriation.”

Make no mistake about this. There is a totalitarian impulse in the gay agenda. Their morality-free view of sexuality is not compatible with the Judeo-Christian values that ground Western civilization. It’s not OK with them that you disagree with them. They are up for using any and all means necessary up to and including violence (as we saw in the domestic terrorism attack against the Family Research Council). Their goal is to stop you for publicly defending marriage. They are at war with the idea that anyone can use their freedom of speech to tell them that what they are doing is wrong.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn follows up here with more examples of gay activists bullying their critics.