MIchigan Tax Dollars at Work - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

sfloriII · #1 08-19-2003, 12:07 AM

I read this in the Washington Times today. I hope this doesn't create too much controversy and get shut down soon. I'm glad none of my tax dollars are going towards this.

'How to be Gay' course draws fire at Michigan
By George Archibald
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A course called "How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation," scheduled this fall, has reignited a culture war at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
A family-values lobbyist is leading public opposition to the self-proclaimed "uncompromising political militancy" of the professor who teaches "lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender."
The lobbyist, Gary Glenn, says professor David M. Halperin and the university "are guilty of perpetrating a fraud against UM students and the people of Michigan [with] propaganda statements about so-called cultural studies and academic freedom" as they promote "queer studies" at taxpayer expense.
Mr. Glenn, president of the Michigan affiliate of the conservative American Family Association, first criticized the "How to be Gay" courses three years ago. In 2000, the Michigan state legislature fell just four votes short of passing a measure to cut off all government funds for the courses.
Last week, he renewed his crusade against Mr. Halperin's classes, urging Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat, the legislature and the university's Board of Regents to "stop letting homosexual activists use our tax dollars to subsidize this militant political agenda."
The professor says critics misunderstand the "How to be Gay" class.
"It does not teach students to be homosexual," Mr. Halperin says in an interview. "Rather, it examines critically the odd notion that there are right and wrong ways to be gay, that homosexuality is not just a sexual practice or desire but a set of specific tastes in music, movies, and other cultural forms — a notion which is shared by straight and gay people alike.
"The reason these courses exist is not that homosexual teachers have hijacked the university for their own purposes; they exist because they convey the results of research which sheds genuinely new light on history, culture, society and thought."
However, in a course description on the university's Web site, Mr. Halperin says: "Just because you happen to be a gay man doesn't mean that you don't have to learn how to become one. Gay men do some of that learning on their own, but often we learn how to be gay from others."
The course description says students "will examine a number of cultural artifacts and activities" including "camp, diva-worship, drag, muscle culture, taste, style and political activism." Mr. Halperin's class explores "the role that initiation plays in the formation of gay male identity."
The emphasis on "initiation" into homosexuality is what appears to be most offensive to conservatives like Mr. Glenn.
"We don't know what [Mr. Halperin] does in the classroom," the state AFA president says in an interview. "It is outrageous that Michigan taxpayers are forced to pay for a class whose stated purpose is to 'experiment' with the 'initiation' of young men into a self-destructive homosexual lifestyle."
Mr. Glenn notes that Mr. Halperin has boasted in print about his success in advancing a homosexual agenda.
In a 1996 article in an academic journal, Mr. Halperin wrote: "Let there be no mistake about it: lesbian and gay studies, as it is currently practiced in the U.S., expresses an uncompromising political militancy. ... The emergence of lesbian and gay studies has brought about a far-reaching intellectual transformation in the disciplines of the humanities, arts and social sciences as well as in the social life of American universities and in the professional culture of American academe."
Mr. Halperin wrote that "lesbian and gay studies scholars" were leaders in lobbying universities and governments "to adopt and enforce anti-discrimination policies, to recognize same-sex couples, to oppose the U.S. military's anti-gay policy, to suspend professional activities in states that criminalize gay sex or limit access to abortion, and to intervene on behalf of human rights for lesbians, bisexuals and gay men at the local and national levels."
Robert M. Owen, the university's associate dean for undergraduate education in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, defends Mr. Halperin's course.
"This course is not about encouraging people to become gay, but about how individuals in our society create meaning and beliefs about gay culture from literature and the arts," Mr. Owen said in a prepared statement. Such a course helps students who plan to enter careers in law, social work or other fields where they will "encounter a large and very diverse clientele."
Mr. Owen said public criticism of Mr. Halperin's class stems largely from "the title of the course," and said, "The interpretation of that title is very troubling for some people."
The course is part of the university's "genuine search for intellectually interesting and sometimes provocative subject matters," the associate dean said. "The historic freedom granted to pursue this search is one of the hallmarks of higher education."
University officials have been "inundated" with AFA-distributed postcards objecting to the course, says university spokeswoman Julie Peterson. But she does not expect the postcards to affect the university's support for Mr. Halperin.
"He is a very popular professor," Ms. Peterson says, "and there is always a long waiting list for his courses. The list gets longer when stories like this happen."
Mr. Glenn argues that such a statement by a university official "mocks and even taunts Michigan taxpayers, reveling that the more taxpayers dare protest the use of their tax dollars to teach kids 'How to be Gay,' the more students will enroll in the class.
"Such arrogant dismissiveness toward taxpayers' legitimate concerns is all the more reason Michigan lawmakers should exact a greater degree of public accountability from UM officials."

anthonyb · #2 08-19-2003, 01:09 AM

I dunno, it sounds like somebody's way overstating what's going on. According to the course description:

Quote:

This course will examine the general topic of the role that initiation plays in the formation of gay male identity... In particular, we will examine a number of cultural artifacts and activities that seem to play a prominent role in learning how to be gay... One aim of exploring these questions is to approach gay identity from the perspective of social practices and cultural identifications rather than from the perspective of gay sexuality itself.

It sounds like it's basically a course discussing how culture defines what is "gay," as opposed to gay being just based on sexual orientation. If we were talking about African Americans, it would probably be a course on how hip-hop music and the image of gangster rap contributes to African American identity today.

-anthony

#3 08-19-2003, 01:26 AM

they're here, they're queer (or brown, AA, yellow, muslin, buddist, european, etc, or any other attribute thats not exactly like me), get used to it!

sfloriII · #4 08-19-2003, 09:52 AM

Thing is, however "vanilla" the course description has been written, there's an agenda here. After reading several of the professor's quotes it's apparent what his ultimate goal is.

While I disagree with the course material (for starters), I don't have the right to say it can't be taught (freedom of speech). But in this instance, with the use of taxpayers' money, it's a different case. If I lived in that state, I'd be fighting this tooth and nail.

sfloriII · #5 08-19-2003, 10:07 AM

I received this today via email. I'm posting it in case some may have read false information in the Chicago Sun-Times. It's an address given by the Bishop of Chicago defending the Pope:

>Dear Friends in Christ:
>
>I stand before you not as the celebrant of the Mass but as the Archbishop
>of Chicago, the pastor of this local Church, to use this pulpit of the
>Cathedral in a way that I have not used it in the six years that I have
>been Archbishop here. For those of you who are visitors, I ask your indulgence.
>
>I stand here to defend our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, against a false
>accusation made on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times last Friday.
>The headline reads: Pope Launches Global Campaign against Gays.The Pope,
>of course, did no such thing.
>
>First, what did the Pope do to invite this false accusation against him?
>The Holy Father, through the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith,
>approved a statement about the nature of marriage, a statement which
>repeats what every Pope has taught for two thousand years: marriage is the
>life-long union of a man and a woman who enter into a total sharing of
>themselves for the sake of family. This is not first of all a religious
>teaching, although Christ raised marriage to the level of a sacrament.
>This is an understanding of marriage from nature itself. Marriage predates
>our present government or any other and predates, as well, the founding of
>the Church. Marriage is not the creature of state or church, and neither a
>government nor the church has authority to change its nature. A government
>that claims such authority becomes totalitarian. What the Holy See
>concluded from the fact that there is neither biological nor moral
>equivalence between heterosexual marriage and homosexual unions is that
>there should be no legal equivalence either, in a well-ordered and
>wholesome society.
>
>It is this conclusion, evidently, which was represented falsely as a
>global campaign against gays.Because of a concerted campaign in movies and
>TV shows in recent years to shape public imagination and opinion into
>accepting same sex relations as normal and morally unexceptional, obvious
>truths now are considered evidence of homophobia. Because a morality based
>upon desires has largely supplanted a morality based upon the truth of
>things, a teaching which limits sexual self-expression of any sort becomes
>oppressive. In this context, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches
>that people of homosexual orientation should be treated with every respect
>and with compassion; but the Catechism also teaches the truth about the
>nature of Gods gift of human sexuality, a truth our bodies themselves
>proclaim and the lives of married couples attest to.
>
>Secondly, who is the Pope and why should Catholics take to heart false
>accusations against him? The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, and therefore the
>successor of the apostle who heard Jesus tell him: You are Peter, and on
>this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not
>prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and
>whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you
>loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.(Mt. 16: 18-19).
>
>The Holy Spirit invisibly anchors the Church in the truth of Christ.
>Truths of faith can be more adequately understood from age to age, but the
>Holy Spirit does not contradict himself. The Holy See, because of the
>personal office of the Successor of Peter, is a privileged and secure
>visible expression of the Spirits guidance of the Church. Catholics
>therefore reverence the Petrine office as a gift from Christ himself and
>have a deep respect for the person holding that office. Divulging
>disinformation about the Pope, engaging in anti-papal propaganda, attacks
>all Catholics and is usually, in history, a preparation for active
>persecution of the Church. The Holy Father makes up nothing that he
>teaches. His is not the opinion of the Vatican.His is the teaching of
>Jesus Christ, because he is the primary witness to the faith that unites
>us to Christ. In matters that are received over the ages and proclaimed by
>the Pope in ours, no person who disagrees to the point of denial can claim
>to hold the Catholic faith. Disdain for and hatred of the Pope are sure
>signs of anti-Catholicism.
>
>Thirdly, then, what does the printing of a false accusation against the
>Pope in a major Chicago daily say about anti-Catholicism here? This is a
>question I never believed I would have to ask. The Catholic Church was
>here before any newspaper, before the incorporation of the city of Chicago
>or the establishment of the State of Illinois. The Church has been the
>instrument used by Christ to make thousands of Chicagoans holy. She has
>preached the Gospel and made the sacraments available, she has educated
>and healed, served the poor and raised a voice for justice. We Catholics
>are sinners and, at this moment, we are especially shamed by the terrible
>sins of some priests and bishops; but the Church remains holy in her gifts
>from her Lord. If her moral teaching were honored in our conduct, there
>would be no sexual abuse of anyone, no rape or betrayal of marriage, no
>sexual promiscuity parading as freedom, no fraud in business or
>government, no false accusations or lies, published or unpublished. What
>the Church, which condemns all these sins, offers constantly is Christs
>forgiveness of sinners.
>
>The Pope is attacked for many reasons. In some Protestant circles, he is
>still regarded as the anti-Christ. Among secularists, his teaching office
>is a threat to human freedom. Among disaffected Catholics, the Pope must
>be discredited so that Catholics will be forced to change their faith. And
>the headline writers of the Sun-Times? I do not know their motivation. A
>bishop likes to presuppose good will, and what they did would find an echo
>in many places; but what I must say today is that a line has been crossed,
>and Chicago Catholics cannot ignore what has happened.
>
>I have written a letter of apology to Pope John Paul II. He has visited
>this city many times and always asks of it fondly. He does not think of it
>as a center of anti-Catholicism. For the first time in my life, I
>hesitated as I signed my title. Im ashamed that this false accusation
>against the Pope was made in our city. At the very least, it is unfair;
>and we pride ourselves on fairness. I ask you to pray for the Holy Father;
>pray as well for the enemies of the Church; and let us pray for one
>another, for strength in the present and perseverance in the difficulties
>to come.
>
>2c405c.jpg
>
>Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.
>Archbishop of Chicago