California Professor Under Attack for Politically Incorrect Views on Parenting

From the (liberal) Huffington Post: the story of a professor (Robert Oscar Lopez) who favors traditional ideas about parenthood, and is under attack from a student who disagrees with him.

The persecution of Dr. Lopez began when an unidentified student complained about an October 2014 International Children’s Rights Conference called The Bonds that Matter, organized by Lopez. The conference featured noted speakers on divorce, third party reproduction, and adoption. The complainant alleges she was “coerced” to attend the conference that was held forty-minutes off campus at the Reagan Library. Lopez presented documentation indicating that none of his students had to attend the conference. It was one of two options offered to students in the course, and one that most students chose. The complainant further claims that it was triggering for gay and lesbians and caused her to break down “in tears, crying.”

Austin Ruse is president of the Center for Family & Human Rights, a New York and Washington DC-based research institute in Special Consultative Status with the UN Economic and Social Council. He is also a bi-weekly columnist with Crisis Magazine. According to Ruse Lopez’ accuser claimed that speakers at the conference explained that “all women who use sperm banks are evil” and that “gay people cannot be good parents.” She also complained about a brochure produced by the Ruth Institute she picked up at the conference aimed at the “victims of the sexual revolution” including those who tried the gay life and now want out.

Lopez says there was no mention of same-sex marriage or any “gay issues” at the conference and he presented video of all sessions to prove it. Ruse reports:

There was one exchange between Newman and one student who asked about gays and surrogacy, but the student turned out to be the complainant. So, the only person who brought up the gay issue at the conference was the student who complained the conference slammed gays.

Lopez was formally charged with “discrimination,” one of the few charges that can result in revocation of tenure and dismissal. However:

After a year-long investigation, the university returned a report to Lopez on October 16. The charge of “discrimination” had disappeared. In its place was a charge of creating a “hostile learning environment,” something that appeared for the very first time in this document, and the charge of “retaliation.”

The young woman charged that even though Lopez gave her an “A” in the class, he did not nominate her paper for an award because there was “bad blood” between them. There was no proof of such a assertion, only her word against his, but the university has determined that her credibility is superior to his and so they have found he is guilty of retaliatory acts and they are now considering what to do with him.

Lopez believes the student making the complaints had long been investigating him, reading his work in The Federalist and First Things and asking questions about him. She was likely also aware that three years ago Lopez wrote in an academic online journal The Public Discourse, revealing that he is bi-sexual and was raised by lesbian mothers. Lopez’s negative feelings about his own upbringing, and those of others unhappy with having been raised in same-sex households, are the impetus of his personal campaign against same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption and same-sex surrogacy.

Thus, one student who disagrees with Lopez has engaged in a jihad against him, and with the help of university bureaucrats, has put his career in jeopardy. The woman in question is a crybully, claiming such emotional fragility that she can’t bear to hear arguments with which she disagrees, all the while trying to punish a professor who disagrees with her.