My last post, related to charges of hate speech being fostered,
or at best encouraged on “liberal” (although that term isn’t specifically used)
Public and private college and University campuses. Reflecting on that blog
post, I began thinking about the other side of the story. By that I mean institutions
where resistance to societal norms and extreme restrictive codes of behavior
inculcate behavior like Huckabee-Sanders blind adherence to her lord and
savior, Donald Trump. The sad reality here is that the same fanatical devotion
offered in religious worship seems to be easily transferred to earthly idols
simply if that idol mouths the right platitudes, Trump being the ideal example.
There can be little doubt that there is
room enough in Trump’s psyche for any God other than Mammon and Self, yet Ultra
conservative Christians bend to his whims.
I thought it might be useful to look at
Colleges and Universities which, rather than teach students to think,
experiment (even if it isn’t always to a good result) and form opinions based
on life choices and experiences vice blind adherence to (not the Bible) dogmatic
strictures made and enforced by men.
Free Speech?
Not at Liberty University! The founder, Jerry Falwell (Teletubbies are gay?) and his son proclaimed freedom of expression,
but…. In 2016, Falwell himself censored an anti-Trump column in Liberty’s
student newspaper, preventing publication of criticism of the Access Hollywood
tape where Trump made grotesque comments about grabbing women. This censorship
came only a week after Falwell released a statement celebrating Liberty’s
commitment to free expression. Administrators evidently find no shame in
espousing rhetoric about free speech while simultaneously silencing their
critics on campus. In 2009, Liberty “derecognized” the school’s chapter of
College Democrats because the national Democratic Party is pro-choice, and
dares to “promote the LGBT agenda.”
It gets worse.
Meet Pensacola Christian College, which requires a staggering 2.0 GPA to
enroll, but readily grants waivers to the devout sub-intelligentsia. Students are,
required to swim only with same sex groups, date only with a third party present,
and should the unthinkable happen, such as a sexual assault, here’s how it can
play out in two examples: this is the
outcome of one reported rape: “Instead of listening to her, however, they
accused her of lying and told her that she was the one truly responsible for
her boyfriend’s assaults. At the end of their meeting, the dean of women looked
at Whitney and said that she was a “dirty vessel, and God can’t use a dirty
vessel. He is done with you.” Expelled that afternoon, she tried to commit
suicide twice in the following month.
Bad, huh? Here’s
another: “One night in May, however, she was grabbed, dragged into a
construction area, beaten, restrained with bungee cord and duct tape, and then
raped. As he was leaving her there, she recognized him as her boyfriend. A
campus security guard discovered her, still restrained with the cord and tape,
and took her to the campus clinic to file a report. In the next 24 hours, she
went to the hospital, reported her attack to the police, and stayed the night
with her parents. However, when she arrived back on campus with a black eye and
a broken arm, her family was confronted by the dean of women and told that Beth
was being expelled “because she is a fornicator.” PCC took no action against
Beth’s boyfriend, who graduated with honors and is now a pastor.
Examples like
this from other Christian colleges abound. A common thread is gender credibility
discrimination, gender- based wage discrimination for students who work on
campus (an only option in a lot of cases) and extra-legal codes of conduct and
disciplinary options, etc. Another, more lasting, result is that they foster
attitudes which build the willingness to proffer hate speech and discrimination
at others over simple philosophical differences. Many are also absurdly priced relative
to the value of the degree obtained.
In all, there
are about 140 US religiously affiliated colleges and universities which hold
title IX exemptions, allowing them to discriminate against a wide range of
student-oriented activities, including LGBT sanctions, political speech bans, racial-dating
restrictions, and much else, even to, as in Pensacola Christian, disallowing
same sex swim parties at a public beach! Many of these schools are affiliated
with one or another Baptist groups, predominately The Southern Baptist Convention.
Mormon run schools are a close second in restrictiveness.
The saddest
part of all the above is that these kids, many in deference to their parents’
making decisions for them that should be shared, leave post-secondary education
as closed, judgmental, people who somehow have been gulled into believing that
what they’ve been taught or forced to believe, remotely resembles anything
connected to even the strictest interpretation of the Biblical Jesus. They shun
the “other” believer, avoid the “worldly,” are largely incapable of critical
thought, and discriminate against those who are different in any way. Hate speech,
however parsed, is still hate speech.
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