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posted by FatPhil on Tuesday January 09 2018, @07:27AM   Printer-friendly
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)]


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Wootery on Tuesday January 09 2018, @04:35PM (5 children)

    by Wootery (2341) on Tuesday January 09 2018, @04:35PM (#620070)

    governments don't get to define marriage - the churches have far more right and authority to do so

    This isn't a question of your personal ideology, it's a question of what the word commonly means. Generally, when people say 'marriage', they mean the government institution, they do not mean religious ceremony.

    Would you agree that 'marriages' resulting from religious ceremony, but without registration with the state, aren't real marriages? We've had this issue here in the UK where Islamic wedding ceremony is followed, but it's not made official. [bbc.co.uk] This results in people going around saying they're married... but they're not, and it bites them when it comes to hospital visitation rights, 'divorce' proceedings, etc.

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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:22PM (2 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:22PM (#620093) Journal

    No, when someone thinks you got married, they think you had a wedding, with a priest/pastor and the whole nine yards. The idea that marriage is divorced from any religious connotations, is laughable. While a couple going to the Justice of the Peace and getting it all legal without a ceremony, probably isn't uncommon. A Civil Marriage isn't what one typically thinks of when one thinks "Marriage". Though, one would want to make it legally official, for various reasons you have listed, etc.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Wootery on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:58PM

      by Wootery (2341) on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:58PM (#620120)

      when someone thinks you got married, they think you had a wedding, with a priest/pastor and the whole nine yards

      When someone says We're married, everyone who hears it assumes they're legally married. It's certainly not only ceremony.

      The idea that marriage is divorced from any religious connotations, is laughable.

      In the UK, it's very often a secular affair. We generally assume that Christians will hold their wedding in a church, sure.

      A Civil Marriage isn't what one typically thinks of when one thinks "Marriage".

      Sure, but again there are acid tests we can explore. The fake Muslim marriages I mentioned, really are just fake marriages. If you have the ceremony and no papers, you aren't really married. On the flipside, if you file the papers but don't bother with any ceremony, you are considered to be married. No-one is going to tell you it doesn't count because you never went to church.

      It's the government institution of marriage that really matters to people. Ceremony and religion are incidental.

    • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday January 09 2018, @09:21PM

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday January 09 2018, @09:21PM (#620222)

      A Civil Marriage isn't what one typically thinks of when one thinks "Marriage".

      It is where I live.

  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 09 2018, @06:03PM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 09 2018, @06:03PM (#620125) Journal

    In Islam, a divorce is pretty simple. "I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee." May or may not be followed by the beheading of the ex-wife.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @09:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @09:08PM (#620215)

      Per _The Princess Bride_: "If you didn't say it, you didn't do it!"