WorldNetDaily: 'Gay' Orthodoxy Prevails In Academia

WorldNetDaily: 'Gay' Orthodoxy Prevails In Academia
WorldNetDaily ^ | June 2, 2002 | Jon Dougherty

Posted on 06/01/2002 11:11:52 PM PDT by L.N. Smithee

By Jon Dougherty

The former co-editor of a respected law review journal says pro-homosexual bias is not only prevalent in academia, but those with more traditional views are purposefully silenced.

Ty Clevenger, who served as a co-editor of the Stanford Law and Policy Review for a 1999 project, said the publication's editorial board rejected articles critical of key aspects of homosexual life because of the stories' "non-conformist" point of view – meaning, they weren't "pro-gay" – and instead published only articles that promoted the homosexual agenda.

Clevenger, in an article for the Regent University Law Review, says that while serving as co-editor for the Stanford Law and Policy Review in 1999, "a left-leaning friend and colleague" proposed the journal publish a symposium on "gay rights," an idea accepted by the editorial board.

Describing himself as "one of the few visible non-leftists" on the Stanford campus, Clevenger – who currently serves as a law clerk for Judge Morris Arnold of the 8th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals – said in his SLPR role he was asked to recruit more "traditional" viewpoints regarding homosexual rights, while his colleague looked for authors who supported expanded rights for "gays."

But by the time the project was completed, Clevenger said he was met with a surprise.

"In the fall of 2000," he writes, "the editorial board, without warning or prior consultation, informed me that it would publish only the pro-gay articles. The stated reason for this decision was that the rejected articles did not meet the academic standards of the journal."

He says he found that explanation "suspect," mostly because SLPR has always published "symposia that are a mix of traditional law review articles and commentary outside the traditional law review format."

Clevenger also said that professor Kathleen Sullivan, dean of Stanford Law School, and professor Barton H. "Buzz" Thompson Jr., vice dean of the school, "stated that they were not particularly impressed with the substance of the articles on either side of the issue."

"The deans suggested, and I concurred, that the symposium be delayed until the quality of all the articles could be improved or until new authors could be recruited," he said.

But "the editorial board declined the suggestion," Clevenger wrote, and only published academic papers sympathetic or supportive of homosexual rights.

The episode taught him that, contrary to denials by a number of prominent law reviews and other professional journals, bias toward promotion of homosexual rights is prevalent in academia.

"Those who discount the effect of systemic bias and political correctness in academia … are willfully ignorant, if not dishonest," he said.

Specifically, Clevenger cited professor Mary Coombs of the University of Miami Law School who, he said, has argued that "only pro-gay articles are published in academic journals because the other side is so bereft of substance."

"While that notion may suit her intellectual vanity," Clevenger wrote, "it overlooks mounting evidence to the contrary."

Coombs was contacted for this story and repeatedly offered the opportunity to refute Clevenger's allegations, but she refused to be quoted.

Other academics, however, echo Clevenger's belief that indeed the "mainstream" higher education establishment is decidedly pro-homosexual in its viewpoint and that opposing views are rarely tolerated, much less solicited.

Dr. Ben Kaufman, a clinical psychiatrist and professor at the University of California-Davis School of Medicine, told WorldNetDaily his articles were frequently turned down by "liberal academic publications" because, he says, they differed from pro-homosexual orthodoxy.

"It's been pretty much impossible to get anything into the academic press," Kaufman said.

How many times has his work been refused?

"So much so that I don't even submit work for publication anymore," said Kaufman. Liberal academicians "immediately write me off as a homophobic bigot, out to trash homosexuals."

He says the opposite is actually true.

"We want to get our point of view out so that families who have kids who declare themselves to be homosexuals can respond to that with some sort of informed data," said Kaufman. As it is, families and kids only have a "uniform" – read singular – pro-homosexual point of view.

Dr. Richard Williams, professor of psychology at Brigham Young University, and Dr. Robert Spitzer, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, were enlisted by Clevenger to review an article critiquing homosexual parenting.

The two scholars supported publishing the article. But a third solicited by Clevenger – Dr. William Byne, a psychiatrist at Mt. Sinai Medical Center – opposed publishing it, not because of flaws in the article but because of the author's alleged "anti-gay" viewpoint.

Spitzer is perhaps best known for his role in removing homosexuality from classification as a mental disorder. But in the fall of 2000, "he announced preliminary results from research on reorientation therapy – i.e., therapy to change homosexuals to heterosexuals, wherein he found evidence that change was possible, at least in some cases.

After publishing his results, he was attacked by pro-homosexual groups.

The communications director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, "whose scientific expertise consisted of having worked as a newspaper reporter," Clevenger wrote, "intoned that Spitzer's work was 'snake oil' and 'scientific bunk.'" Meanwhile, The Human Rights Campaign accused Spitzer of having "anti-gay views, close ties to right-wing political groups, and [a] lack of objective data." Also, a psychologist at the Lesbian and Gay Service Center said she "cannot believe Columbia [University, in New York] would allow any of its professors to do anything like this."

"The greater threat to individual liberties," Clevenger said, "comes from gay activists themselves, many of whom seem to view the slightest deviation from pro-gay orthodoxy as something akin to religious heresy." He said the work of Spitzer is an example.

Spitzer also explained that it's easy for staffers at pro-homosexual journals to scuttle "non-conforming" articles simply by assigning them to "hostile reviewers."

Clevenger agrees.

"Similarly, private and government funding agencies, which ostensibly found research on scientific merit, can be subverted merely by assigned biased reviewers to the funding committees," the former SLPR editor wrote.