Posted on 07/27/2009 9:18:14 PM PDT by Maelstorm
NYU will be short one professor this fall. Thio Li-ann, a professor at the National University of Singapore and a member of that country’s Parliament, was scheduled to teach a course on human rights in Asia and a seminar on constitutionalism as a visiting professor at NYU’s Law School. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, she cancelled her plans last week in response to campus protests of her comments in opposition to homosexuality.
More than 740 people have signed an online petition saying that, by hiring Thio, the law school was “acting in opposition to its own policy of nondiscrimination and undermining its commitment to advancing human rights worldwide.”
In a statement published in The New York Times, the law school’s dean, Richard L. Revesz, said Thio, “explained that she was disappointed by what she called the atmosphere of hostility by some members of our community towards her views and by the low enrollments in her classes,” when she withdrew from the position. Revesz told the Chronicle that NYU would not have asked Thio to step aside — because NYU students ”benefit greatly from a diversity of perspectives, not from hiring only people who share the same views.”
Had Thio taken the position at NYU, students would have learned from her diverse perspective that, “While we cherish racial and religious diversity, sexual diversity is a different kettle of fish.”
In 2007, Thio spoke to Singapore’s Parliament, arguing against the proposed repeal of s377A, a law criminalizing homosexual sodomy. “You cannot say a law is ‘regressive,’” she argued, “unless you first identify your ultimate goal. If we seek to copy the sexual libertine ethos of the wild wild West, then repealing s377A is progressive. But that is not our final destination. The onus is on those seeking repeal to prove this will not harm society.”
She concluded that sex between two consenting adults can be a sexual perversion equitable to pedophilia and bestiality if they are both male, and that as such, it is harmful to society.
In response to those arguing that adults have the right to make their own choices in the bedroom, Thio, a human rights professor, scoffed: “homosexual activists often try to infiltrate and hijack human rights initiatives to serve their political agenda, discrediting an otherwise noble cause to protect the weak and poor. You cannot make a human wrong a human right.”
And so it goes. NYU students are intolerant of Thio’s intolerance of homosexuality, but NYU values Thio’s “diverse” opinion that sexual diversity should not be valued.
As Thio has argued about homosexuality, being out of the mainstream does not automatically make something a valuable commodity. Diversity is neither inherently good nor inherently bad.
Words like diverse and tolerant are empty without context. We are not expected to be tolerant of cockroaches in our kitchens, and we would rather not have diversity in frappuccino quality from Starbucks to Starbucks.
Thio’s comments are more hateful than helpful. She discounts human autonomy, saying that a majority’s moral aversion to the private decisions of adults gives it the power to eradicate those choices, whether or not they affect the majority.
Thio says the people calling her intolerant are demonstrating their own intolerance. Her claim is similar to someone who refuses to shower, complaining that no one wants to learn personal hygiene from them. That approach to hygiene would be different, but not something to strive for.
In the same way, NYU students should not be expected to learn human rights from a woman who has worked to oppress those rights. Her unique opinion is not one that should be passed.
Some good comments from Mrs/Miss Thio. Homosexuals try to mask their cause in the garment of racial prejudices of the past (and sadly, still of the present) -- but the fact is that these are 'choices' that are noxious to decent society (as is bestiality and pedophilia). The homosexual is not helped by telling him/her that all is well when they are marching off to hell. And society is not served by creating 'rights' for 'wrongs'.
It doesn’t matter, fads change, civilizations fall, and only the truth remains. Be true to yourself and history will remember your bloodline as noble.
At this rate it’s only a matter of time until pedophilia is viewed as a human right.
They will say: How can you be so intolerant towards the pedophiles? Don’t they deserve sex just as much as the rest of us? Keep your morality out of peoples’ lives!
The Daily Texan is the newspaper of the University of Texas at Austin. To put it nicely, Austin is the blueberry at the center of the cherry pie of Texas. :-)
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