Tag Archives: Offended

News

Australian doctor forced off of diversity panel for opposing same-sex marriage

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What happens when someone on a diversity committee has a different view? Are differences welcomed for the diversity advocates?

Consider this article from the Sydney Morning Herald. (H/T Matthew)

Here’s our protagonist, a psychiatrist who stated publicly that children do best with a mother AND a father:

Professor Kuruvilla George, who is Victoria’s deputy chief psychiatrist, has signed a submission to a senate inquiry calling for a ban on same-sex marriage.

He is among a group of doctors, who in a letter to the marriage equality inquiry, say limiting marriage between a man and woman “is important for the future health of our nation”.

“We submit that the evidence is clear that children who grow up in a family with a mother and father do better in all parameters than children without,” the Doctors for the Family group says.

His view is supported by evidence. What do the diversity czars think of his evidence?

Victorian opposition attorney-general Martin Pakula said Prof George needs to explain to the government and the community why he should remain a board member on the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (VEOHRC), given his views.

“The equal opportunity commission are regularly asked to deal with matters where people are alleging discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and I don’t know how Prof George can properly deal with those matters given the sentiments he’s expressed,” Mr Pakula told reporters.

The diversity elites do not have evidence – but they are very offended by views different from their own.

And here’s how it all ended:

Professor Kuruvilla George has resigned “due to time constraints and personal reasons”, Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission chairman John Searle said today.

[…]The resignation does not affect Prof George’s other role as Victoria’s deputy chief psychiatrist.

It comes less than 24 hours after Deputy Premier Peter Ryan defended Prof George’s right to sign the submission in a private capacity.

Mr Clark had also defended Prof George’s right to free speech.

What do I learn from this? Well, what I learn is that qualifications do not matter to the secular left. It doesn’t matter what you know about a problem, or how familiar you are with the evidence. What matters is whether you have the right answer – their answer. It’s not competence that matters to the secular left – it’s unanimity of thought. In order to serve on the diversity panel, there must be no diversity of opinion however much it is rooted in evidence.

News

How the left uses “bullying” to restrict free speech that offends them

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From Hans Bader at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Full text: (links removed)

A school superintendant has labeled a column in a school newspaper thatcriticized homosexuality as “bullying.” (The Shawano High School newspaper decided to run dueling student opinion pieces on whether same-sex couples should be able to adopt children; the student article that was labeled as “bullying” answered the question “no.” The school district also publicly apologized for the column, and said that it is “taking steps to prevent items of this nature from happening in the future.”)

Whatever the wisdom (or lack thereof) of featuring something like that in a school newspaper, it seems strange to argue that a viewpoint in a student newspaper is “bullying.” (The Shawano School District’s bullying policy provides that “bullying” may lead to “warning, suspension,” “expulsion,” etc.) A conservative Christian who thought that homosexuality was immoral successfully challenged a school “harassment” code that punished students with such viewpoints in Saxe v. State College Area School District(2001), a case in which a federal appeals court ruled that there is no “harassment” exception to the First Amendment for speech which offends members of minority groups. Speech cannot be banned simply by labeling it as violence, either: for example, in Bauer v.Sampson, another federal appeals court ruled that a campus newspaper’s illustration depicting a college official’s imaginary death was protected by the First Amendment, even though the college declared it a violation of its policy against “workplace violence.”

But schools and anti-bullying activists have adopted incredibly overbroad definitions of bullying. The anti-bullying website NoBully.com, and schools like Fox Hill and Alvarado Elementary, define even “eye rolling” and other expressions of displeasure or hostility as bullying, even though doing so raises First Amendment problems.

The Obama administration claims bullying is an “epidemic” and a “pandemic.” But in reality, bullying and violence have steadily gone down in the nation’s schools, as studies funded by the Justice Department have shown. The Obama administration’s StopBullying.gov website defines a vast array of speech and conduct as bullying: it classifies “teasing” as a form of “bullying,” and “rude” or “hurtful” “text messages” as “cyberbullying.” Since “creating web sites” that “make fun of others” also is deemed “cyberbullying,” conservative websites that poke fun at the president are presumably guilty of cyberbullying under this strange definition. (Law professors such as UCLA’s Eugene Volokh have criticized bills by liberal lawmakers like Congresswoman Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) that would ban some criticism of politicians as cyberbullying.)

It’s very important to understand what liberals mean when they say “bullying” and how they use it to silence those who might offend them. It’s using government power to force individuals to accept the morality of the state. There’s a word for that.

News

Rick Santorum helps liberal college students to understand the logic of marriage

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If you do a search on this, you will find most of the mainstream media talking about how the students booed Santorum. Apparently, neither the college students nor the media are capable of understanding that if you can marry anyone you want, then that means that there can be no prohibition of polygamy. And, of course, this is exactly what is happening in countries that have embraced same-sex marriage, like Canada.

Excerpt:

Canada’s decision to legalize gay marriage has paved the way for polygamy to be legal as well, a defense lawyer said Wednesday as the two leaders of rival polygamous communities made their first court appearance.

The case is the first to test Canada’s polygamy laws.

Winston Blackmore, 52, and James Oler, 44, are each accused of being married to more than one woman at a time. The charges carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison, British Columbia Attorney General Wally Oppal said.

But Blackmore’s lawyer, Blair Suffredine, said during a telephone interview that marriage standards in Canada have changed.

“If (homosexuals) can marry, what is the reason that public policy says one person can’t marry more than one person?” said Suffredine, a former provincial lawmaker. Canada’s Parliament extended full marriage rights to same-sex couples in 2005.

Actually, law professors at Queen’s University are already demanding that polygamy be legalized.

Take a look at this post from the Vancouver Sun.

Excerpt:

A Queen’s University law professor says that polygamy should be legal in Canada.

Queen’s issued a news release on the day that a polygamy reference opened in British Columbia, where the government is seeking a legal opinion on whether Canada’s 128-year-old ban on multiple marriage violates the freedom of religion guarantees in the Charter of Rights.

Bev Baines, head of the Department of Gender Studies and a constitutional law expert, argues that Canada is a multicultural country and it is therefore unconstitutional to criminalize people for their marital relationships.

“The law achieves nothing,” Baines said in the release. “We’ve had the law on the books since 1892 and we had no prosecutions in the last 60 years aside from a  failed attempt last January. We don’t stop polygamy by having a law.”

What I find disturbing is that the media and the college students are unable to follow the logic that legal scholars in Canada are now following. Are they not aware of what is happening in nations that have legalized gay marriage? Or can they only understand who is booing who? The journalists certainly think that booing a Presidential candidate is more appropriate than the use of reason to evaluate moral arguments. Sometimes I wonder if journalists learn anything at all in college except how to accuse conservatives of SIXHIRB – sexism, intolerance, xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, bigotry.

Here’s a previous post I write making the secular case against gay marriage.