Marquette University “Likes” Tweet That Calls for Shutting Down Opposition to Gay Marriage

Here is a tweet from a certain Aaron Jay Ledesma, taking issue with an article in the Chicago Tribune by Diana Rickert, defending this blogger’s academic freedom at Marquette.

Here's my response to @Diana_Rickert's @chicagotribune article regarding former @MarquetteU professor John McAdams. https://t.co/5rJHAgPtt1

— Aaron Jay Ledesma (@aaronjayledesma) April 13, 2016

(You have to be signed in to Twitter, and click on the text of the tweet to see who liked it.  At the moment, Marquette is there.)

The article tweeted explicitly says that opposition to gay marriage should be banned at Marquette. Quoting it:

I disagree [with Rickert]. This is a classic response from people who feel entitled to share their disagreement with gay marriage. They can’t stand it when people tell them to keep their bigoted, unsolicited opinions to themselves. The instructor [Cheryl Abbate] did not ask for feedback. This student was out of place. This student wanted to engage in a debate about gay marriage. The professor who had the decency to prevent it was publicly bullied for doing the right thing. Bullied by colleague.

I believe both McAdams and Rickert are wrong. They don’t understand Marquette like I do. They think because it’s a Catholic university, it should allow students to voice their opposition to gay marriage in any way they want. Hateful, ignorant opposition is not the Catholic way.

That’s not what Catholicism stands for.
That’s not what Marquette stands for.
That’s not what America stands for.

Marquette is a place of excellence, faith, leadership, and service. All of this is pursued for the greater glory of God and the common benefit of the human community. Therefore, it makes sense that Marquette, similarly to Pope Francis, respects all people no matter their race, religion, creed, gender or sexuality.

Of course, for Ledesma, respecting people seems to mean protecting them from opinions they dislike. Even if they are at a supposed Catholic university, and the opinions are Catholic teaching. And he seems to have no respect for people who differ from him on marriage.

And of course, Pope Francis has not retracted the teaching that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Ledesma adds that:

• Abbate has every right to shut down racist, homophobic, and discriminatory language in her classroom.
• More people should take Abbate’s stance and say, “NO. This language will not be tolerated in institutions of learning.”
• It’s about time society take a stand against hate speech, which is not the same as free speech.

This appears to be just the routine intolerance of politically active gays (not all gays, but a troublingly large portion of the politically active ones).

But the kicker is this: Marquette University “liked” the post!

Just in case Marquette finds a way to retract the “like” comment, here is a screen capture showing the “like.”



This is the first official statement we have seen from Marquette asserting that certain opinions about marriage should be shut down.

Rogue?

At the moment, we don’t know who controls Marquette’s Twitter account, and maybe somebody went “rogue.” We will query Marquette about this, and update this post with their response.

But there can be no doubt that the attitude that Ledesma expresses is widely supported at Marquette.

Update

Brian Dorrington, official spokesman for Marquette, has not responded to our e-mail and phone call. If Marquette fails to distance itself from this tweet, the only inference is that Marquette has endorsed the Ledesma article.

Harassing E-Mail About FemSex Debacle

Dear Sir,

I am surprised that you hold such contempt for gay and lesbian people and yet pretend to be educated. This is completely at odds with the treatment I was assured when I chose to attend Marquette. It is contrary to the promises the University continues to make to those students that pay your salary. Do you really expect anyone to believe, after reading your posts, that you treat all your students equally?

As a gay student at Marquette, your recent ravings about “gay student and faculty activists and their liberal allies” demonstrates the exact type of intolerance that continues to plague the bigoted conservative movement on Marquette campus and elsewhere. Clearly, you are behind the curve in terms of academic progress and have contempt for those who don’t adhere to your own conservative world views.

Your blog clearly lacks any actual basis for knowledge. Instead you rely on the musings of conservative political interests and your own biased conjecture rather than the actual experiences of those who hold personal knowledge. Thus, you have chosen not to conform yourself to the important academic tradition of speaking from fact rather than bigoted opinion. Your opinions on why Gender and Sexuality are important to the University are “of course,” just opinions. The fact that you can’t come up with another explanation for why gender and sexuality issues are important beyond a conspiracy of the gay agenda just shows how out of touch you are. I, for one, am SORRY that I chose to come to a campus that on the one hand promotes bigoted ideals like yours while shutting down alternative views that empower woman and their personal freedom. That probably makes you happy as I can tell from your post that you don’t think that gay and lesbian people’s opinions should be on campus at all.

I can only hope that the recent exposure that your bigotry has gotten via the Journal Sentinel will yield the campus wide disgust that you would heap upon “gay student and faculty activists and their liberal allies”. I question whether you are really capable of discharging your duties in a manner which shows respect and acceptance of all those in the Marquette community, even those whom you clearly feel are less worthy than former members of the Republican student’s organization. It seems you are more interested in fostering an environment of hate.

I shall be doing my best to promote your bigotry to the Marquette administration and encourage them to look in to your student/faculty relationships. I certainly will reach out to the “gay activists” at the undergrad level and encourage them to warn their members about taking your classes.

Sincerely Yours,

Justin L. Singleton

Candidate for Juris Doctorate - 2014

Email: Justin.Singleton@marquette.edu

Phone: [redacted]

No comment required. It’s terribly convenient when somebody, thinking they are attacking you, illustrates the points you have been making all along.

Anti-Gay? It’s Fine Coming From Pet Democratic Groups

From Mark Steyn, writing about the intolerance of the left in the face of comments from Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy opposing gay marriage.

Meanwhile, fellow [Boston] mayor Tom Menino announced that Chick-fil-A would not be opening in his burg anytime soon. “If they need licenses in the city, it will be very difficult,” said His Honor. If you’ve just wandered in in the middle of the column, this guy Menino isn’t the mayor of Soviet Novosibirsk or Kampong Cham under the Khmer Rouge, but of Boston, Massachusetts. Nevertheless, he shares the commissars’ view that in order to operate even a modest and politically inconsequential business it is necessary to demonstrate that one is in full ideological compliance with party orthodoxy. “There is no place for discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail,” Mayor Menino thundered in his letter to Mr. Cathy, “and no place for your company alongside it.” No, sir. On Boston’s Freedom Trail, you’re free to march in ideological lockstep with the city authorities — or else. Hard as it is to believe, there was a time when Massachusetts was a beacon of liberty: the shot heard round the world, and all that. Now it fires Bureau of Compliance permit-rejection letters round the world.

Mayor Menino subsequently backed down and claimed the severed rooster’s head left in Mr. Cathy’s bed was all just a misunderstanding. Yet, when it comes to fighting homophobia on Boston’s Freedom Trail, His Honor is highly selective. As the Boston Herald’s Michael Graham pointed out, Menino is happy to hand out municipal licenses to groups whose most prominent figures call for gays to be put to death. The mayor couldn’t have been more accommodating (including giving them $1.8 million of municipal land) of the new mosque of the Islamic Society of Boston, whose IRS returns listed as one of their seven trustees Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Like President Obama, Imam Qaradawi’s position on gays is in a state of “evolution”: He can’t decide whether to burn them or toss ’em off a cliff. “Some say we should throw them from a high place,” he told Al Jazeera. “Some say we should burn them, and so on. There is disagreement. . . . The important thing is to treat this act as a crime.” Unlike the deplorable Mr. Cathy, Imam Qaradawi is admirably open-minded: There are so many ways to kill homosexuals, why restrict yourself to just one? In Mayor Menino’s Boston, if you take the same view of marriage as President Obama did from 2009 to 2012, he’ll run your homophobic ass out of town. But, if you want to toss those godless sodomites off the John Hancock Tower, he’ll officiate at your ribbon-cutting ceremony.

As is often the case, liberals are entirely knee-jerk when one politically correct group (say, gays) is in opposition to a politically incorrect group (say, Christians).

But pit one politically correct group against another, and they become very inconsistent.