Posted on 03/07/2006 9:53:55 AM PST by presidio9
Students at DePaul University in Chicago, the largest Catholic university in the United States, can minor in Queer Studies through their College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as of this year. While DePaul has set an example for other Catholic institutions, administration and students say this minor probably won't appear at Marquette.
"The minor is in response to student demand and also because of an increase in academic demand from faculty to teach the subject," said Gary Cestaro, assistant professor of modern languages at DePaul. He is the program director of the new minor and was part of the six-person faculty group that spearheaded the minor's creation.
Cestaro said that Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Bisexual, Queer (LGTBQ) Studies is a grounded interdisciplinary academic field that emerged in the 1980s. DePaul has been increasingly offering individual LGTBQ courses for the last 10 years, Cestaro said.
He said this is the first year the minor is established. The only new addition is the minor's mandatory introductory course, offered for the first time this quarter, which ends next week.
Barbara Speicher, chairwoman of DePaul's communications department, said the Queer Studies minor has received a generally positive reaction. Not everyone at DePaul approves of the Queer Studies minor, however.
"It has certainly faced some disagreement, as one would expect," Speicher said. "But it hasn't been anything too awful."
Speicher said DePaul has always been open to new minors.
"We are viewing it as it is, an academic course. The university has always been open to new innovations, not putting up blocks."
Critics and supporters alike wonder what this means for other Catholic universities, such as Marquette.
Director of University Communication Brigid O'Brien Miller said she is not aware of any proposal for a Queer Studies minor at Marquette.
Heather Hathaway, associate dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, said she does not see a Queer Studies minor in Marquette's future.
"It is unlikely that Arts & Sciences would develop a major or minor in the field, but not because we see it as necessarily contradicting the message of a Catholic university," she said.
Money, not message, restricts this minor, according to Hathaway.
"We simply lack the financial resources, or the money required to hire faculty experts in the field, that would be necessary to create a cohesive and substantive major or minor," she said.
Hathaway said that because a Queer Studies field focuses on subjects such as literature and art produced by gay men and lesbian women, gay and lesbian history and the social constructions of gender, it is too broad to attempt at Marquette.
"Ignorance breeds injustice," said Jess Cushion, a junior in the College of Communication and president of Marquette's Gay/Straight Alliance. "I applaud DePaul for taking the step to fuel acceptance of the lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual community by educating people about discrimination and hate that homosexuals endure on a daily basis."
Cushion said that LGTB issues are often ignored at Marquette.
"I feel like the administration goes out of its way to come up with excuses for excluding (LGTB) issues. It's always 'We don't have the budget,' or 'It's not the right time,' when in reality it's 'This is Marquette, and if you're gay, we're going to silence you as best we can,'" she said.
Cushion said she would like to see a Queer Studies minor at Marquette.
"There might not be a demand for such a minor here, but it would be extremely beneficial," she said. "We have minors surrounding the studies of other racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. What makes (LGTB) issues any different?"
It was a joke. Now I'm mad. Dude calls me a Du'er because I make an obvious connection between "queer studies" being taught in a catholic school and queers in the priesthood?
You need to get your facts straight. "Pedophilia" refers to prepubescent children, who were involved in fewer than 1% of incidents. The fact that over 80% of the victims were male clearly makes this a homosexuality scandal, but the facts do not imply pedophilia.
Yeah, Women's Studies covers a larger demographic. That makes Queer Studies less useful. There are more women than homosexuals of any gender.
Dude, it was there. This is a Catholic school teaching Queer Studies in the midst of an ongoing homosexual pedophilia scandal in the church. Like I said before; you can't make this stuff up.
over the weekend it was reported that Yale U officials said about recruiting the Taliban ..."we lost one already to Harvard and we'll not let that happen again...."
I would like to know what was the name of the terrorist recruited by Harvard...
DePaul is a Catholic school like John Kerry is an American patriot.
How do you explain the Catholic church offering a minor in queer studies
The people who run DePaul are not "the Catholic church" any more than I am. A good bit less, actually.
Have you ever heard of Ex Corde Ecclesiae? It's the encyclical of the last Pope on what a Catholic college is supposed to be. At DePaul, they might as well use it for toilet paper, for all the attention they pay to it.
Yes, it was a joke, but in poor taste. And now you're descending into self-parody. Lighten up.
So was he a "wonderful man of God," or wasn't he?
Smart parents don't let their children be alone with any unrelated males, and most related ones. And females don't rate a whole lot better. Any adult who wants to "hang out" with your kids and isn't being paid to do it is highly suspect. That's just common sense.
God help us. My church is going to the dogs in a wicker basket!
Actually, they Catholic Church just said gays can not become priests, so, no, it wasn't "threre." You must be thinking of the Anglican Church.
Hey, I didn't say it was a good joke.
And you've seen this report?
Compared to the response my other examples would get, I'd say Party Animal's response was pretty tame.
Yes, there are gay priests. Yes, there are Bishops that covered for them. Now’s where you have to use your head – are these cases the rule or the exception? Repeat the lie often enough and it becomes the truth. You fall right into the groupthink. Congratulations and welcome to DU.
By the way, stop with the “asshole” and “stuff it up your butt” comments. You’re really creeping me out.
Then the Catholic church should pull their accreditation as being a Catholic school. If they are not a Catholic school (as a lot of people here are claiming) then the Catholic church should say so, and stop them from claiming it. Until then, it is a Catholic school teaching queer studies, which just so happens to leave the Catholic church wide open to ridicule.
What part of "an abomination before the Lord" don't they understand? More importantly, why in the world are people defending it?</p>
Now we agree. The Church has done this to other colleges that are similarly heretical and should do so in this case.
I didn't ignore it at all. I said, in no uncertain terms, that I am not a catholic, and I do not go to church. I do not go to church because I do not like the hypocrisy of some of those that do. I do not like a preacher saying "with hard work and perserverance, you may some day be as righteous as me", only to find out that he is a wife-beating scumbag (that happened, by the way).
As I am not a Catholic, I have no personal interest in cleaning up the Catholic Church. However, when members of the priesthood are involved in homosexuality and pedophilia, I will not hesitate to point it out. I will not hesitate to attack the hypocrisy of their behavior, or the evilness of their actions.
It is up to Catholics to clean up their own mess. They have been ignoring the problem for decades. They made the mess, they clean it up. A little personal responsibility goes a long ways. If they do not clean it up, it is only a matter of time before lawyers take every dime that the Catholic church has, and it is only a matter of time before high-ranking members of the priesthood go to prison for conspiracy.
If people continue to think that it is not a problem, then the problem will persist until the Catholic Church is destroyed. I do not want that. Do you want that?
And that sort of thing is exactly what's being discussed in Rome.
Apparently, you don't know me very well. I do post my outrage in threads regarding pedophilia in the public schools. I do it all the time.
I do not hate the Catholic Church, I never have hated the Catholic Church, and I am not singling them out. Pedophilia disgusts me, and people or organizations that allow pedophiles to prey on children, even to the point of moving known pedophiles from place to place to hide their behavior, really piss me off. The Catholic Church has been organizationally and systematically complicit in covering up gross acts of pedophilia by members of the priesthood. They need to clean it up. Badly.
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