More From the President of the Gay/Straight Alliance: Ban Anti-Gay Marriage Arguments

Jessica Cushion, President of the Gay/Straight Alliance at Marquette, is rather unhappy about our post pointing out that she advocates the censorship of speakers opposed to gay marriage.

In doing so, she continues to show a fundamental lack of understanding of the notion of free speech, which she thinks should only be allowed people whom she is not offended at hearing.

Having labeled opposition to gay marriage “hate speech” in a previous post, she says the following:

I don’t really want to dignify his post with a response, but I do feel it necessary to point out this one simple thing -- did it ever occur to you that perhaps distinguished institutions of higher learning bring leftist speakers and further leftist agendas because they know it’s the right thing to do? Ever consider that? I know you love to attack me for not entertaining your side of the argument, Dr. McAdams, but you’re just as guilty as I am.

What Cushion fails to understand is that, if institutions can decide that support for a gay political agenda is “the right thing to do,” other institutions have an equal right to decide that it’s the wrong thing to do.

Indeed, if Marquette is going to decide that certain viewpoints are the “right thing to do,” it should follow the teaching of the Catholic Church. This would call for institutional opposition to gay marriage.

Cushion says she’s not willing to “entertain” our side of the argument.

Interestingly, we haven’t made any argument about gay marriage in this series of exchanges. We’ve only argued that both sides should be heard at Marquette.

But for Cushion, free speech simply doesn’t extend to arguments she believes to be “wrong.”

Cushion is, probably without knowing it, adopting the position the Catholic Church held for centuries, but happily abandoned at Vatican II: “error has no rights.”

Believing that arguments should be shut up because they are wrong, or because they are “offensive” to some politically correct minority, is all too typical of the campus left. They often get their way, largely because leftist administrators (in places like the Office of Student Development or the Campus Ministry) and leftist faculty agree with them.

That’s why college campuses are among the least tolerant places in American society these days.

[Update:]

Jess Cushion, in an apparent response to this post, repeats the same arguments yet again.

My point throughout this whole ordeal has been that Marquette would not allow hate speech on campus. Obviously. When interpreted properly, Christianity reads something like “we are all God’s children and should be loved and celebrated and cared for equally.”

Cushion interprets “cared for” as “you have to agree with my view of homosexuality, and you should be shut up if you don’t.” Needless to say, her interpretation of Christianity is very different from that of (say) the Pope.

In Cushion’s world, it appears that any disagreement with the political agenda of the gay lobby constitutes “hate.” And “hate” must be shut up and punished.