Gay Awareness Week, which begins today, is a student and former student pay rolled mockery of responsible education and open discussion. Disregarding the health, psychological and moral implications of unequivocally promoting homosexual behavior on impressionable students, Texas A&M departments have gone further than ever before in sponsoring such activities and harassing those that would stand in their way. Those administrators behind the persecution of Christian faculty should be reprimanded by A&M.
This year, the relatively benign requests for “tolerance” and “acceptance” by the A&M homosexual community have been replaced with demands for “promotion” and “celebration” of the homosexual lifestyle. On Feb. 4, the Faculty Advisory Committee to Dr. Jane Conoley, dean of the College of Education and Human Development, drafted a statement calling for the “celebration and promotion of all forms of human diversity, including sexual orientation and domestic partnerships.” Conoley then invited faculty input.
In response, a group of professors in the Department of Health and Kinesiology submitted a letter to the FAC objecting to the statement based on their religious convictions and their obligation to look out for the welfare of their students. “We do not hold ourselves up as people without sin or moral fault. But Christian love neither demands of us nor permits us to celebrate and promote a sinful lifestyle. To do so would be to compromise our moral convictions and deny our faith.” Sexual orientation is not a federally protected class, and homosexual “marriages” are not recognized in Texas.
Conoley responded in an e-mail by mocking the Christian belief of “loving the sinner while hating to sin” as an “empty, rhetorical gesture at best and a cover for persecution at worst.” She in particular ridiculed Dr. Steve Crouse, a professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology, as being inexperienced and for employing his religious beliefs in his professional life, comparing the Christian faculty’s objections to promoting homosexuality to racism. She ended her response by claiming that the Christian faculty “misinterprets” the Bible. Interestingly, Conoley might get the chance to spread her religious intolerance to a wider audience. Conoley has been named as one of two finalists in the search for A&M’s next provost. Conoley must not be given this power.
Dr. Patrick Slattery, a member of the FAC and a professor with sexually explicit material on his Web site — www.coe.tamu.edu/~pslattery/ — attacked signatories of the HLKN letter. “I propose that the professors who signed this statement be censored. I also would like to propose that Steve Crouse be immediately fired from his position as an assistant dean of the College of Education. His hatred is an insult…there is no place for bigots in our leadership.” Apparently, the tolerance policy is a courtesy extended to those who engage in sexually deviant behavior, but not principled Christians. Coming from someone who plays fast and loose with the First Amendment for its protection of protest, it appears hypocritical of Slattery to want to quiet the Christian faculty.
This is not the first time the feigned innocence of the campus gay movement has been lost. Last October a representative of the University’s Gender Issues Education Services department wore a shirt that read, “Every time a Republican dies, a queer angel gets their wings.” A “Day of Silence” included in the festivities is meant to represent the harassment suffered by the gay community. This theorized oppression of homosexuals appears to be a charade when contrasted with the threats of firing leveled against Christian faculty.
In a Feb. 26 e-mail to staff and faculty, Conoley stated the official CEHD operating policy in regards to homosexuals. “Their minority status gives them special access to protection and support because as a group they are subjected to unjust harassment and insensitive and inhumane treatment. They also suffer from pre-judgment as a group of people and so decisions of promotion, tenure, other resource issues made about them deserve heightened scrutiny.” This is little more than an unsubstantiated charge of discrimination against members of the College of Education used to justify a policy of discrimination in favor of homosexuals — a guideline that is legally dubious.
Gay Awareness Week will conclude with a display of the AIDS quilt to remind students of those killed by AIDS. However, the true tragedy represented by the AIDS quilt is the deaths of students resulting from poor choices and, in some cases, homosexual encounters. Aggies must demand that their money not be spent on programs that student dollars have no business promoting, and that may harm their fellow classmates. University officials should stand behind their Christian faculty, and keep individuals who would belittle the religious beliefs of a majority of students and instructors out of critical University positions.