Politically Correct Marquette Faculty Rally Behind FemSex

From the Marquette Tribune, an open letter from faculty who support the FemSex workshop, from which Marquette recently pulled support.

The letter engages in the standard blather about how great the workshop was. It further makes a few absurd claims, such as:

By affirming the worth and importance of female desire and fostering people’s understanding and appreciation of their bodies and sexuality, the curriculum also cultivates a campus climate in which the sexual assaults that brought Marquette under public scrutiny two years ago can become less likely.

How this would supposedly happen is a mystery. How writing pornographic stories, or coloring pictures of female genitalia (both part of FemSex at Marquette) might prevent rape is something only a feminist could imagine.

But what is interesting is the list of faculty who signed the letter:

Eugenia Afinoguenova, Lauren Applegate, Tara Baillargeon, Danielle Beverly, Amy Blair, Omega Burckhardt, Gerry Canavan, Roberta Coles, Ed de St. Aubin, Eric Dunnum, Ellen Eckman, Jenn Fishman, Leah Flack, Kristen Foster, Stephen Franzoi, Melissa Ganz, Barbara Glore, Beth Godbee, John Grych, Angelique Harris, Steven Hartman-Keiser, Heather Hathaway, Heather Hlavka, Jim Holstein, CJ Hribal, Andrew Kahrl, Astrida Kaugars, Laurieann Klockow, Lezlie Knox, Christine Krueger, Robert Lowe, Timothy McMahon, Jodi Melamed, Dawne Moon, Sameena Mulla, Kristy Nielson, Rebecca Nowacek, Debra Oswald, Tony Peressini, Anthony Porcelli, Sareene Proodian, Krista Ratcliffe, Heidi Schweizer, Mary Anne Siderits, Angela Sorby, James South, Peter Staudenmaier, Meghan Stroshine, Theresa Tobin, Robert Topp, Sarah Wadsworth, Elizabeth Wawrzyniak, Amelia Zurcher

This is pretty much a Who’s Who of the politically correct secular caucus on campus, full of the names of the people who wanted to hire aggressively lesbian dean candidate Jodi O’Brien. Among the signers is a psychology professor who demeaned the Bible as “sexist” by ripping a passage out of context.

Then there is a philosophy professor whose class was approvingly described by a student acolyte:

I just finished up an entire class on how patriarchy controls every structure in our society and how women are systematically prevented from being equal to men (Capitalism and Catholicism are among the most guilty parties).

Then there is James South who, as chair of the Philosophy Department tore down from the door of a graduate student a quote from humorist Dave Barry of which he disapproved!

This, in other words, is part of the “we don’t really like Catholicism, and want to undermine it when we can” lobby at Marquette.

Daviel Maguire: Dissing the Pope as Usual

Dan Maguire is doing his usual thing, bitching about the Pope and the teaching of the Catholic Church with which he disagrees. Happily, the New York Times, which sought out a comment from him, also printed several letters from loyal Catholics lauding the Pope.

In an e-mail to Theology Department faculty and graduate students, Maguire goes further:

Yesterday morning, I was invited by The New York Times to submit a letter on the pope’s departure. When I spoke to the editor about my letter, she asked about Matt. 16:19. People are interested in theology when they see its effects unfolding in public life. I told her, as Hans Kung puts it that “the famous saying about Peter as the rock on which Jesus will build his church” that “strikingly has no parallels in the other Gospels, is not a saying of the earthly Jesus but a post-Easter construction…” probably coming from the Palestinian community and inserted into Matthew’s Gospel.

Maguire, of course, is doing what liberal theologians typically do when faced with scripture they find inconvenient: they dismiss it as bogus.

The fact that there are no parallel passages in the other gospels proves nothing, since many of the things Jesus said appear in only one gospel. Of course, Maguire doesn’t believe that what Jesus said has any authority anyway, since he is, at most, barely a theist and certainly not a Christian.

Maguire has every right to whatever religious views he wishes to hold, but he shouldn’t pretend that those views trump the views of people who are really Christians, and he certainly should not pretend that his views and those of like-minded theologians trump those of the bishops.

New York Times Prints Anti-Catholic Ad, Rejects Virtually Identical Anti-Islam Ad

From The Blaze:

The New York Times has rejected a full-page anti-Islam advertisement that mirrored a scathing anti-Catholic advertisement the newspaper published on March 9.

According to The Daily Caller, a March 13 letter sent by the Times to the parody’s sponsor, activist Pamela Geller, said the $39,000 anti-Islam ad was rejected because “the fallout from running this ad now could put U.S. troops and/or civilians in the [Afghan] region in danger.”

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, accused the Times of having a double standard and told DC that The Time’s was based on “either [anti-Catholic] bigotry or fear [of Islamic violence], and they’ve painted themselves into that corner.”

Here is the anti-Catholic ad:



And here is the anti-Islam ad:



It’s tempting to say that the Times is guilty of cowardice. It’s tempting to suggest they would show more respect for Catholics if Catholics might bomb the New York Times building.

In fact, we think cowardice has very little to do with it, and ideological bias is everything. The liberals at the Times, like liberals generally, hate social conservatives. But are’t Muslims social conservatives too?

The simple fact is that it’s Christians, and not Muslims that liberals have to fight for control of American culture and American politics. Muslims are hardly fans of gay marriage, but it’s Christians who turn out in large numbers to vote down same-sex unions.

Indeed, Muslims vote Democratic.

Muslims also serve as yet another victim group to whom liberals can show solicitude, and they are thus every bit as useful as blacks, “women” and gays. Further, Muslims tend to oppose U.S. intervention in the Middle East, and thus have the same views (but for rather different reasons) as liberals, who instinctively tend to sympathize with America’s enemies.

Amanda Marcotte: Unrepentant Anti-Christian Bigot

From Salon.com, some insight into the worldview of Amanda Marcotte, the Catholic-hating blogger who ended up resigning from (or was fired from) the John Edwards campaign.

(You will have to click through an advertisement to see the entire article.)

Some key passages:

What I also failed to understand was how much [Melissa] McEwan and I would stick out. I was aware that I didn’t exactly fit the image people have of bloggers who join campaigns -- the stereotype being 30-something nerdy young white men who wear khakis and obsess over crafting their Act Blue lists. I wasn’t aware that not fitting the image would attract so much negative attention. In fact, I mostly saw this all as a baby step in the direction of diversity, since McEwan and I differed from the stereotype mostly by being female and by being outspoken feminists.

[. . .]

The right-wing noise machine’s favorite trick, possibly its only trick, is to select a target and start making a fuss, hoping that by creating the appearance of smoke, just enough people will be fooled into thinking there’s a fire. Unfortunately, it works.

[. . .]

Looking back, the detail that astonishes me the most is the sheer amount of ink, air time, and energy devoted to keeping this phony scandal going until McEwan and I felt we had to resign. One question that’s hard to avoid is how much of the venom had to do with the fact that McEwan and I were young women entering into a field (Internet communications) that’s viewed as almost monolithically masculine.

[. . .]

Regardless of its motive, the result of the smear campaign was to send a loud, clear signal to young feminist women. It tells them that campaigning for Democratic candidates, and particularly doing so in positions that would help the candidate connect with young feminist communities like the one that thrives in the blogosphere, is a scary, risky prospect.

[. . .]

Whether or not it was the intention of the right-wing noise machine to throw more obstacles in the way of Democrats who want to play to their pro-choice, pro-gay rights feminist constituents -- it’s also plausible that the right-wing noise machine was working on pure misogynist emotion -- the episode has had a chilling effect on the future of Democratic outreach to feminist communities, particularly the younger ones that flock to computers for political information as earlier generations flocked to television sets and newspapers.

[. . .]

In response to what happened to Melissa and me, Garance Franke-Ruta has written a post on the American Prospect’s Tapped blog wagging her finger at liberal bloggers and warning us that unless we are willing to ape the language and habits of the D.C. insider crowd, we can expect never to be allowed through the gates. She probably has a point that bloggers can expect this sort of pushback from the establishment. Blogs are popular because they provide space for everyday citizens to engage in politics, in the language and manner that is comfortable for us, if not for the establishment. To my mind, however, it would be a terrible thing if bloggers did heed the advice to mind our manners and ape our betters if we want in, since this is supposed to be a democratic system that respects the right of everyday, common people to participate in politics. While there’s a chance that the crusade to separate McEwan and me from the Edwards campaign was just a singular happening, the possibility lingers that this was just the first sign that the established media and political circles will not be letting the blog-writing rabble into the circle without a fight.

Readers unfamiliar with the things Marcotte actually wrote on here blog should look at the quick summary here.

Marcotte’s apologia raises the question: is there anything particular about her hatred of Christians (particularly Catholics), or is it simply a distilled version of rather conventional feminist doctrine?

Having acted irresponsibly, she can’t concede that she did anything wrong.

Rather, she plays the gender card and claims it’s just those evil “misogynist” attitudes (translation: any opinions that feminists don’t like) that did her in.

Her writing is a window into a world where there are no legitimate differences of opinion, only “progressive” attitudes versus “misogynist” and “homophobic” and “reactionary” forces.

It’s a world were it is acceptable -- indeed good -- to hate those on the other side of the political issues one cares about.

Unfortunately, a lot of college students won’t need that window, because those attitudes are what they have imposed on them every day.