Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
A new survey of college students by the liberal-leaning Knight Foundation shows the future of the First Amendment doesn’t look so bright in America. It found 41 percent said “hate speech” should not be protected by the Constitution. Only 58 percent thought it should.
In fact, a 2017 survey out of UCLA found that out of 1,500 college students who were asked whether “hate speech” is protected by the First Amendment, only 39 percent correctly said yes. On campus today, it can be defined as “unsafe” to hear an opinion you don’t like. Unwelcome speech is compared to a physical attack.
Make no mistake. The Thought Police are gaining ground, dangerously.
The central question is what qualifies as “hate speech”? The standards can shift quickly. The Knight Foundation poll found that 68 percent of students believe the campus climate prevents students from expressing their opinions because of fears they might offend other classmates.
The irony is inescapable. So many of them support the censorship they claim to abhor.
We’ve all heard story after story about students protesting those horrible right-wing speakers like Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice for daring to set foot on campus. These same radicals regularly try to end the careers of professors found to be extremists for things such as seeing no problem in little white girls dressing as a Disney character “of color,” like Mulan or Tiana, for Halloween.
Yale University seems to be the new True North for political intolerance, and here comes yet another episode in an endless list of grievances from the $72,000-a-year-tuition oppressed. An LGBTQ advocacy group called the Outlaws is furious that Yale’s Federalist Society invited a lawyer from a so-called “hate group,” the Alliance Defending Freedom, to discuss the case of Colorado baker Jack Phillips’s refusal to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. For the record, ADF is one of the most respected organizations in the conservative movement today, which is why it qualifies as a hate group. In a sympathetic response, Yale Law School is creating a policy to stop providing stipends or loan forgiveness to students who work for organizations that defend traditional Christian views on sexual ethics.
So if you work for the ACLU or Planned Parenthood after college, you can receive some loan forgiveness. You can defend abortionists or terrorist suspects and Yale will love you. But support traditional marriage? The right to life? That’s beyond the pale.
Sen. Ted Cruz called the policy “transparently discriminatory” and is now investigating, noting that Yale receives lots of federal funding, and the Trump administration has made it clear it’s willing to deny federal funding to universities that curb freedom of speech. It’s about time.
“I think Yale law school is the canary in the coal mine,” Sen. Cruz says. “If they get away with this, we’ll see law school after law school after law school following the same pattern. And I’ll tell you, what the LGBT group demanded of Yale not just that they discriminate against Christians and financial aid. They demanded that they discriminate against anyone who believes in traditional marriage in admissions, that they not even admit anyone who believes in a biblical definition of marriage. That is profoundly dangerous, and we’ve got to stand up and prevent it.”
Yale officials told Sen. Cruz that its policy isn’t based on excluding a religion or ideology, which is false on its face. The LGBTQ ideology will not abide the expression of a biblical view of sexuality and marriage. It wants the view punished as “hate speech,” and it wants to begin blacklisting Christians for advocating their beliefs in public. To the libertine left, opposing “discrimination” means building an imposing border wall with barbed wire around the First Amendment. “Tolerance” demands no less.
Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.
The views expressed in opinion articles are solely those of the author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by Black Community News.
It is totally unbelievable that the LGBTQ that make up only 4.5% of the US population feel that they can control the other 95.4% of the country. When will we the people take back our country from the sodomites?
It’s time to replace all these weak politically correct politicians with legislators that will protect the majority.
I don’t care whether these people were LGBTQ or not! They’re bullies and should be confronted the same way you would any bully! I had a similar experience a few years back while enrolled in a nine-month summer program of self-improvement classes. This program was funded by a grant from the University of Arizona. The classes were interesting but everyone, including the teachers, were “Progressives”/“Liberals”! For the first couple of months everything was fine. There was no reason to even discuss politics. I had struck up a friendship with a gay man who was around my age (we were both in our 50’s). He was a great guy and we had a lot of fun until he asked me one day did I believe in gay marriage. I told him I was “a little too Conservative for that” but that I didn’t believe in beating people over the head with the Bible either—it’s counterproductive. I have my faith I respect other people. I won’t try to force my belief down anyone’s throat as long as other people don’t try to shove “Liberalism” down mine!
Well, from that day on, he stopped speaking to me and so did a lot of people—I found myself taking my classes in the Deep Freeze. There’s nothing even remotely “tolerant” about the “Party of Tolerance”! A few days later, one of the instructors came up to me and told me that I owed this man an apology because what I said “deeply offended” him. I told her that if a 51 year old man could get that “offended” because I gave him an answer to a question that HE ASKED ME, then that was HIS ISSUE, not mine. I asked her why should I change my beliefs because someone else has a problem with MY beliefs? If he doesn’t want to speak to me anymore, so be it. I’ll live. Over the next few days, other students and teachers started coming up to me and telling me the same thing—that I owed this man an apology. I told them I didn’t owe this man anything. HE stopped speaking to ME. I was the one hurt so he’s the one who owes me an apology! This back and forth went on for about 2-3 days. The following week, I found out that there was petition going around to get me to apologize to this man or have me banned from that class! Two instructors called me into their office to discuss this with me. They told me about the petition, told me that this man was deeply hurt, told me I had offended other students, told me other students said they could no longer attend the program if I was allowed to stay. Now I was angry. I told these two instructors that I’m not responsible for the actions and choices of thin-skinned crybabies! I told them other students can’t just kick me out of class and neither could they because if they could, they would have done so. The police would have been called to get me out of there a couple of weeks ago. I told them I’m not apologizing to this man, I’m not comprising my beliefs and I’m not going anywhere. I want to finish my classes. I told them I was tired of rehashing this BS. Me and this guy were not speaking and this should be the end of it, if I was harassed any further about this stupidness I was going to file a complaint with the University of AZ about this and the other things going on in these classes! – Well, I never heard anymore about petitions, getting kicked out, or apologizing to that guy. Not one word.
Other things they pulled on me in these classes were excluding me from class discussions or asking me a question when I would answer, I was told my answer “was offensive to others”. There were two other students, one was a young girl about 21-22 and the other a 68-69 year old woman. They were always getting “triggered” by discussions going on in the class and would start crying and the instructor would just abruptly shut down the discussion and change the subject. I called these two out and told them that TWO PEOPLE did not have the right to shut down a discussion for an entire class and stop everybody from learning about the subject simply because THEY were “triggered” by the topic! I told them was being selfish and were only doing this for attention! I told them if they were “triggered”, they were free to step outside the class because others had an interest in this class and had more questions on the topic! I asked the instructor why she allowed the SAME two people to control the class based on how the topic made them “feel”. That was not fair. 2 students shouldn’t be able to shut down a class topic based on their “feelings”!
I reminded the instructor that these two women cried all the time, in every class about one thing or another. The other instructors were also letting these narcissistic crybabies control their classes. This has to stop. I want to learn more about the effects of sugar on the body. I told these two women that they could stay or they could leave but they were not going to stop me or the rest of this class from learning. I went on to ask my questions, so did the rest of the class. Crybabies ran for the exits.
Being excluded from class discussions, scolded for giving “prayer” as a coping skill (I was told that “talking about God” was offensive to non-Christians), praying in the luncheon was also “offensive”. When an instructor told me that I couldn’t pray in the lunch room that “some people” find it offensive, she caught me on a bad day. I wasn’t feeling well at all. I told this instructor that I was brought up saying grace before meals and that there were no Hindus, or Muslims or other faiths in those classes. I told the instructors who didn’t think “prayer” was an acceptable coping skill, to not “knock it until they’ve tried it”. I continued to bring up God if the discussion called for it. As for praying in the lunchroom, there were no signs prohibiting it so ai told the woman who scolded me for it to “shove it” (I know, not very Christian response, but I was sick of these Liberals. It was always something . But I finished the program and graduated. I also attended some alumni classes—just to piss these Liberals off. It did too. I also didn’t get kicked out—they couldn’t without risking a lawsuit.
The Left are nothing but bullies—the authoritarians that they are always condemning. There has to be some pushback against that or they’ll just keep doing it. They couldn’t throw me out of feee classes. They just can’t make up the law as they go along. All I did to pushback, actually is just say “no” and “I’m not going anywhere”. If they could have thrown me out of class, I’m sure they would have. I guess they couldn’t. Try this on college campuses and everywhere else. You don’t have to back down if told you can’t pray in the lunchroom of your school. Research what is legal and what’s not when it comes of how much schools can do to force compliance with any rule from students. Don’t let them make it up as they go along. If you can’t go through Liberals, find a way to go around them! Good luck!