SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the debating-whether-something's-debatable dept.
It looks like anybody can be against academic censorship, as this opinion piece in the Washington Post shows:
Wisconsin's Supreme Court can soon right a flagrant wrong stemming from events set in motion in 2014 at Milwaukee's Marquette University by Cheryl Abbate. Although just a graduate student, she already had a precocious aptitude for academic nastiness.
On Oct. 28, in an undergraduate course she was teaching on ethics, when the subject of same-sex marriage arose, there was no debate, because, a student said, Abbate insisted that there could be no defensible opposition to this. (Marquette is a Jesuit school.) After class, the student told her that he opposed same-sex marriage and her discouraging of debate about it. She replied (he recorded their interaction) that "there are some opinions that are not appropriate that are harmful [...]
[...] McAdams, a tenured professor then in his 41st year at Marquette and a conservative who blogs about the school's news, emailed Abbate seeking her version of the episode. Without responding to him, she immediately forwarded his email to some professors. She has called McAdams "the ringleader" of "extreme white [sic] wing, hateful people," a "moron," "a flaming bigot, sexist and homophobic idiot" and a "creepy homophobic person with bad argumentation skills."
Because there is almost no Wisconsin case law concerning academic freedom that could have guided the circuit court, McAdams is asking the state supreme court to bypass the appeals court and perform its function as the state's "law-developing court." He is also asking the court to be cognizant of the cultural context: Nationwide, colleges and universities "are under pressure" — all of it from within the institutions — "to enact or implement speech codes or otherwise restrict speech in various ways."
[Post-publishing edit: An A/C below helpfully provides the following far more neutral reportage by Inside higher Ed titled Ethics Lesson which explains the situation with more light and less head. Thanks A/C - Ed. (FP)]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday January 09 2018, @03:13PM (4 children)
Governments certainly can and do get to define what marriage is. It is also civil commitment. Historically has paved the way for creating the next generation who will support the current one when it can no longer support itself, plus provide bodies to be ground up in war. Also, were it not a governmental matter you would not have the courts involved in divorces. (Or more appropriately, there wouldn't be specialized courts which deal in divorce but rather it would be considered a civil tort of "who gets what stuff now that it's over" and alimony could be unnecessary as both parties would jointly recognize the need to continue to support themselves individually during the marriage period.) You would not allow civil servants to officiate and/or sign off on the wedding documents. You would not allow for filing jointly on taxes to be different and we'd only have "married filing separately".
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @03:19PM (2 children)
That's what I've been saying all along. None of that stuff is the government's business. Separations, divorces, and marriages are the province of the church. Gubbermint got involved for the express purpose of eventually creating gay marriage. That was the plan, all along. The IRS was just one of the earliest instruments created to advance the plan.
(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 09 2018, @03:29PM
Who wants this as their .sig?
"The IRS was created for the express purpose of instigating gay marriage." - Runaway1756
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 09 2018, @08:42PM
Nice Poe. I modded you up because I'm sure this is going to make a few blood vessels burst in peoples' heads who are slower on the uptake than me :D
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday January 10 2018, @03:32AM
The 2018 tax bill [businessinsider.com] finally changed the brackets so 2x single == married up to $300E3/person, which should significantly benefit now-legal same-sex marriages, particularly dual-income ones. I wonder what the Republicans would think if they got letters of thanks from that demographic.