A group of students at the University of Michigan are lobbying for a gender and sexuality course requirement. The Gender and Sexuality Course Committee wants to see all undergraduates compelled to devote 3 credits of coursework to the study of gender and sexuality (it takes 120 credits to graduate). The group claims that it is not motivated by an activist agenda because it is working within the university's formal procedures; that's a smokescreen, however. The group's stated rationale for why all undergraduates should have to take a course on gender and sexuality is unabashedly ideological:

A Gender and Sexuality requirement will create new dialogues, challenge hegemonic discourse, break taboos and stigmas, and open up realms of communication between all students.

To the groupís leaders, gender issues permeate everyday life, and part of a liberal arts education is to raise consciousness of these matters.

But recent political affairs have added a sense of urgency to their cause, group members said. Ballot initiatives and court cases concerning gay marriage and possible challenges to abortion rights have brought issues of gender and sexuality to the nationís forefront.

ìThose are the kinds of things that we think are very important today and that people should be educated on, like they are educated on race and ethnicity,î [a co-chair of GSCC] said.

Given the outcome of the gay marriage amendment in Michigan, there is an increased need to study these issues, group members said. ìYou can gain so much more insight into the way the world works,î [another co-chair of GSCC] said. ìI think they are essential to gaining a holistic liberal arts framework.î

But the passage of Proposal 2 banning gay marriage and similar unions in November may indicate that the public is not receptive to studying sexuality.

ìThe reason to be pessimistic is, again, this is a state school,î Malczynski said. ìWith the way the gay marriage proposal turned out, it showed a lot of homophobia and that people might not be willing to do this.î

Faculty members were concerned that the requirement would focus only on womenís issues. They also expressed concern that the requirement would overrun the small department with students who did not want to be there, sacrificing the intimate academic environment the program cherishes.

While Cederberg said these are valid concerns, the academic advantages offset any problems the requirement would cause. ìThese are not issues that pertain to just a small group of people who can study them,î she said. ìThis should not be exclusive.î

ìThereís a lot of education thatís mandated and required that you might not agree with at all,î Cederberg said. ìYou can take it or leave it in these classes, but people need to be exposed.î

My first response is, please erase the word "gender" from the English language. When this word appears, we know what we are in for. I refuse to use the word. I use the word "sex."

My second response is, this kind of crap sure beats working at learning something substantive, doesn't it? And, I think that that is really the point.

For an understanding of the logical fallacy behind this, I suggest the post entitled "Politicism: Civilization's Bane" at http://www.windsofchange.net/. The notion that politicization of our personal lives should be our first duty is the great moral and political error of the 20th century. The result was the slaughter of tens of millions of innocents.

The URL to the entire article regarding politicization that I referenced:

http://canisiratus.blogspot.com/2004/12/thumbnail-history-of-twentieth-century.html

When I was an undergrad at Michigan (back when the glaciers of the last Ice Age had just barely retreated), we were required (at least, in LS&A) to take (IIRC) 6 credit hours each of humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. All the rest could be filled in from our major (or the Choose Your Own Adventure major of General Studies). And the requirements were pretty loose at that. I took Linguistics for my Social Science credits, because I was taking a lot of heavy science courses and was concerned that the rumored 300-pages-a-week of reading in history would affect my grades in my majors classes. (There may also have been a language requirement; I don't remember. I do know I took one term of French - after enjoying it in high school - and never taking any more because of the supercilious and mean TA I had).

I would have really rebelled against a "gender studies" requirement, especially considering the laxity of the other requirements - I think in the natural sciences you only had to take one lab-based class, and even then, there may have been ways around that. (I remember taking a one-credit geology course on extinctions "for fun," and being shocked to find that most of the students there were taking it because it was a natural sciences class without a lab, and therefore was preferable to the lab classes - the general response was "I'm taking this because I HAVE TO take a science" said in a way so as to imply they wouldn't take a science class otherwise, even if someone paid them to).

(And yes, I realize my hypocrisy for having taken linguistics as the "easy way out" of the social science credits - in my defense, I will say I REALLY ENJOYED the classes, learned a lot, and got A's in both of them - and then complaining about people who did the same in natural sciences).

I see this as kinda like the public schools that turn out kids who can't read or do math, but have super-high "self esteem," thanks to all the psychobabbly happy fun stuff they do.

(And like college students don't already know too much about sex...considering the furore surrounding "I am Charlotte Simmons" you'd think people'd be calling for LESS discussion of sex on campus - well, maybe people other than the students themselves).

To the groupís leaders, scientific issues permeate everyday life, and part of a robust and realistic education is to raise consciousness of these matters.

But recent political affairs have added a sense of urgency to their cause, group members said. Ballot initiatives and court cases concerning science education and continuing challenges to rational thought have brought issues of medical research and evolution to the nationís forefront.

Sometimes, life is better in the alternate universes....

A small coment to Stephen, above:

I am a biologist and someone who studies developmental biology (cleft lip & palate). To biologists, sex and gender have very different, very specific meanings (that indeed, have been politically hijacked). Sex refers to chromosomes (usually genetic sex), and frequently secondary sexual characteristics (medically, as in utereus, or prostate gland, often called phenotypic sex). Gender is a partially a social consequence, and a matter of self-perception. Because there several (although not common) birth anomalies, where either genotypic or phenotypic sex is obscured, the concept of gender, to a clinician working with such a patient, is an important distinguishing factor or sign. There is work done to suggest that there is role of hormones in determining gender-identity (i.e. what a young child perceives themselves as, even before puberty).

The process of sex determination is biologically complex, and there are many places where the process can depart from the norm. For people with such medical issues, the idea of gender becomes critical.

From this perspective, it is a word worth keeping.

Maybe "gender" is like "volatile". To a chemist, a volatile substance is one that evaporates readily. In a newspaper article, a "volatile" substance is usually an explosive. You have to look at the context to get the meaning of the word.

I like the nerve of these people who decide that it is their mission in life to relieve others of their taboos and stigmas. Where did they get their special wisdom? If there is such a danger that most of the other students will draw wrong conclusions about controversial issues unless they are carefully taught, isn't it possible that those conclusions aren't really wrong? And who in the world can possibly need more exposure to ideas about sex?

By the way, rzg, we aquired a kitten this year and her markings looked to me like a map of embryonic development. I did some reading about embryonic dev. of cats and how their fur color is determined and so forth (love the internet!) and discovered that I was right. Interestingly, her lower jaw is white right up to her lower lip and her face is brown and black right down to her upper lip, except that there is a tiny white streak extending down from the side of one nostril. I wonder if that marks a fusion line and thus where she would have had a cleft palate if fusion hadn't occurred correctly.

I'm attracted to the idea of this stuff being a requirement, although not in this proposed form. Perhaps a general survey of world views on sexuality, including the postmodern / feminist, variety would be useful. No doubt 1/2 of college professors will take it upon themselves to promote some postmodern version over all other ideologies but whatcha gonna do?

I'd like if possible to turn the discussion to the article I linked to.

The notion of politics as the key to personal and social salvation underlies these students' attempts to change the curriculum. What if politics is not the key to personal and social salvation? What if, in fact, the politicization of our lives is the problem?

The notion of "homophobia" is particularly interesting in this regard. It literally means "fear of homosexuality" and the presumption is that those who oppose gay marriage fear homosexuality and are bigots. Politics is set forth as the solution. I've lived all my life close to the gay communities of San Francisco and New York City. I have no fear of homosexuality, but I still oppose gay marriage. I do so out of respect for societal and religious custom. Custom is a greater force than political intellectuals credit. Custom did not just happen. It is the result of thousands of years of human experience. You'll notice also the contempt of these students for the democratic process. Those who voted against gay marriage did not do so out of principled opposition. They are bigots (or idiots) by definition because they oppose the politicization of our lives and insist on honoring custom. Why, one wonders, don't these students consider that the electorate might be smarter than they are?

When we insist that politics is the arena of personal salvation, we quickly insist that the intellect must triumph over custom. Custom does not have the traceable lineage of intellectual argument. Thus, those who believe in politics as salvation argue that custom cannot be upheld.

And we are wrong.

"No doubt 1/2 of college professors will take it upon themselves to promote some postmodern version over all other ideologies but whatcha gonna do?"

Whatcha gonna do is don't make it a requirement. Let people stumble along in the quest for their own enlightenment. It's worked for several millenia now.

Laura, most of my classes have had a decidedly liberal bent. Probably greater than 1/2. My point was that this being the academic climate such is unavoidable. Do you propose we abolish college altogether?

I propose that a student be allowed to major in, say, chemistry, without being required to go through indoctrination into one side of controversial issues like gay marriage and abortion. Three credit hours, yet. Required of everyone. WHY?

"Do you propose we abolish college altogether?" If universities don't start to show less arrogance and more common sense, sooner or later there will be a reaction that will greatly reduce their influence in American life (and their share of the national income.) I can't predict exactly what form this reaction will take, but it is almost inevitable.

General Motors, IBM, AT&T, and U.S. Steel were also once in power positions that seemed unassailable.

Today I am taking a personal day and alternating between housework, getting ready for a trip out of town, cruising the net, and rereading Edith Wharton's delicious Twilight Sleep. Here is Pauline, a dogooder with the very best of motives: "I sometimes think you'd be happier if you interested yourself a little more in other people ... in all the big humanitarian movements that make one so proud to be an American. Don't you think it's glorious to belong to the only country where everybody is absolutely free, and yet we're all made to do exactly what is best for us?" By the end of the book Pauline learns some humility, the hard way. Interesting how that type of person keeps reappearing and having to learn the same lesson over and over.

Maybe instead of trying to brainwash people into not being "homophobes" they need to just leave them the heck alone, you think?

David Foster, you have a good point, which I'll fully address later (I'm on my way out the door).

Quickly, I'd like to point out that while those corporations are not what they once were, the megacorp as an institution still exists (albeit in a different form). The power of corporations has changed in its nature, but is still awesome.

It's the primary task of university instructors in the humanities to raise political consciousness via opening up realms of communication.

You've been purged from higher education because you are too bigoted to understand the deeper, more loving and culturally responsible meaning of the Humanities.

Annush, what a load. As a senior college student at a non-liberal arts school, I only had to have 12 hours of humanities, and you know what, other than "Political Philosophies", I don't think any of them raised my "political consciousness" an iota. What they did teach me was an finer appreciation of classical music writing experience from my Ethics class.

That attitude expresses the heart of what is currently wrong in higher liberal-arts education.

"Liberal Arts" wasn't meant to be a literal term.

PIMF,

There should be an "and" between "music" and "writing".

I don't like the idea of required college courses in general. But, I also think the wholesale denigration of the study of gender and sexuality which I see rampant here is intellectually dishonest. Many of the responses so far have opposed the requirement because they oppose this type of course in general.

I also don't think that a college course should indoctrinate students politically. But a balanced course on gender and sexuality could be an amazing experience. One commentator wrote earlier that s/he opposed gay marriage on the basis of respect for custom. So don't you think colleges should offer courses tracing the histories of these customs? The Western "opposition" to homosexuality might then be seen as variable and complicated as it truly is, from Greek man-boy love to the historical equation between marriage and protection of property rights. Or, on another burning topic, students might learn that the Vatican only recently (mid 19th c) opposed abortion.

One final anecdote. A student of mine recently wrote a defense of the traditional family (read: hetero, nuclear families), opposing gay marriage. When I asked if she'd oppose gay civil unions, she told me she didn't know what they were. When I asked if she thought gay couples should be extended similar legal rights, involving health care, visitation, wills and testaments, etc., as hetero marriages, she didn't realize that married couples even enjoyed these rights over non-married couples.

So while I oppose required classes, I do think college is a place where students *should* educate themselves in the issues of their day.

Annush...to whom is the comment "You've been purged from higher education" directed? I would think that if you are indeed a humanities scholar of some form, you would have developed a more precise writing style.

This obsession with indoctrinating students in homosexuality has been around for a long time. My professors and TAs were doing it in the 1960s.

In my college, the University of Illinois, the reason was pretty obvious. This was a way to separate one's self from the supposedly backward farmers who cultivated the countryside around the university. In other words, silly fashion. Outraging the farmers was all the rage. When I went home on the weekends to my farm town, I was always disappointed to discover that the farmers weren't even interested in our efforts to outrage them. They were too busy breeding cattle to notice.

This effort to indoctrinate and recruit students into homosexuality is... well, kind of dumb. While the authors of these efforts like to think of themselves as avant garde, they are in fact caricatures. In my day, you could identify the malefactors because they wore berets. Anything hinting at francophile tendencies was thought to be incredibly hip.

The reason homosexuality is constantly prosetylized is class snobbery. Breeding children is the lowest form of sexuality among this crowd. The farther one ventures from functionality, the smarter and more hip one is assumed to be.

I doubt that this silliness will ever cease. It is one of the more laughable aspects of college, but hey... a lot of it is foolishness.

So, if "liberal arts" wasn't meant to be taken literally--how was it meant to be taken? Can a word connote without having a denotation? A weird linguistics you propose! Isn't all communicable language comprised of a series of words which hold denotations and connotations simultaneously?

Anyway. My above comment which you describe as "a load," expresses for the majority who are actually teaching right now in higher education institutions (full-time, tenured positions) what is RIGHT in higher-ed liberal education.

And unfortunately for you and likeminded neo- or crypto-fascists, what is actually being practiced in higher education is what matters. What is practiced is not the hatred and bigotry which threads the margins of the entries on this site.

While you spin about hoping to implement your doctrine of lily-white eugenically-inspired hate (whilst being quite careful to circumlocute obvious hateful language), we are actually in academe, working hard each day and night to ensure students are exposed to a politics of diversity which serves the needs of the diverse body of students we teach. As for the occasional bitter white boy in the corner who winces at the thought of having to reliquish a bit of his birthright entitlement? Too bad for 'm.

Annush

So, if "liberal arts" wasn't meant to be taken literally--how was it meant to be taken? Can a word connote without having a denotation? A weird linguistics you propose! Isn't all communicable language comprised of a series of words which hold denotations and connotations simultaneously?

Anyway. My above comment which you describe as "a load," expresses for the majority who are actually teaching right now in higher education institutions (full-time, tenured positions) what is RIGHT in higher-ed liberal education.

And unfortunately for you and likeminded neo- or crypto-fascists, what is actually being practiced in higher education is what matters. What is practiced is not the hatred and bigotry which threads the margins of the entries on this site.

While you spin about hoping to implement your doctrine of lily-white eugenically-inspired hate (whilst being quite careful to circumlocute obvious hateful language), we are actually in academe, working hard each day and night to ensure students are exposed to a politics of diversity which serves the needs of the diverse body of students we teach. As for the occasional bitter white boy in the corner who winces at the thought of having to reliquish a bit of his birthright entitlement? Too bad for 'm.

Annush

Annush's remarks provide a great example of that "more loving meaning of the humanities" that he wrote about earlier.

I'm a she, mister! I'm sorry also about mistakes o' grammar! I tend to approach/understand blogging as an informal writing culture, rather than a formal (peer-reviewed/hard copy) culture, and thus don't spend lotsa time with proof/edit. Damn that concept of discourse communities, not me! ;) (And the "more loving" is reserved for those existing outside of this bloggy-hate culture. Radicals gotta get tough with hateful folks, ya know!)

"As for the occasional bitter white boy in the corner who winces at the thought of having to reliquish a bit of his birthright entitlement? Too bad for 'm."

You couldn't invent this farcical load of crap if you were Tom Wolfe. Why are our humanities loaded with such dunces? (Well, because the pre-requisite for employment is an empty mind and the willingness to parrot this idiocy.)

Yes, I'm the bitter white boy. My mother and father were non-union factory workers. My cousin died of heart disease acquired from living in an unheated shack in the midst of Illinois winters. My birthright entitlement was absolutely nothing. In fact, it's been a negative. I've been the whipping boy of the civil rights era. I've been told throughout my life to step to the back of the line to give the first shot to women, gays and blacks. Trouble is, my family was dirt poor.

Annush is living proof that you don't even need a functioning mind to teach in our colleges. All you need to do is master the comic book rhetoric. Got any more of that cant in you? I'll bet.

First of all, Annush - please speak only for yourself when you refer to "we in academe". I am a professor and I do not share your views about what is "right". In fact you seem to criticize people who claim absolute right and wrong (I think that's what you mean by "cryptofascist") and yet speak about your own views as "right". Try to employ the sort of tolerance you expect from others.

On to the article-

This article and some of the comments here show just how badly some people understand the liberal arts. The word "liberal" does NOT refer to a political leaning - it refers to a distinction made in the early days of higher education between the kinds of skills learned by tradesmen (vocational training) and the kinds of skills needed by free men - hence "liberal". These are summed up in the trivium -- grammar, rhetoric, and logic -- and the quadrivium -- arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. In other words, the liberal arts (at least as originally envisioned) are rooted in skills of analysis, communication, and persuasion.

In that light, although a course on sexuality could certainly provide an opportunity to employ the liberal arts (just like EVERY course could), it's hard to see how a liberal arts curriculum is incomplete without it, which seems to be the argument of the article.

Do you HAVE to study sexuality and gender in order to have a liberal arts education? If so, it's not argued here - at least not in the proper terms. If the proponents of the course were to do so, it would be an argument based on how failure to incorporate gender and sexuality amounts to a failure to teach students skills of general reasoning and communication. I personally believe the reason this argument doesn't show up in the article is that no such argument can reasonably be made.

And speaking of communication skills, people need to quit being so obtuse about the words "hate" and "fear". It seems anymore that anything less than total accomodation is now called "hate" or "fear" when it is more properly called "disagreement". I guess I "hate" or "fear" my 11-month old daughter because I don't allow her to eat cat hair off the floor, or I "hate/fear" my friends who are Democrats because they voted for different people than I did. Please.

Luther's got it right I think.

Stephen. Can you not tell when your chain is being pulled?

Luther: If you think the colleges ought to offer such classes if the students want them, but those classes ought not be required of any of them, then I think you are probably in agreement with just about everyone here.

I think that when it comes to *required* classes, for which students have to *pay tuition*, the schools ought to be very conservative about tacking a bunch of stuff on just because it's fashionable or whatever.

I wish more conservatives - or just reasonable people who can distinguish between education and indoctrination - would stop leaving higher ed. I understand the frustration... but you are needed here!

Stephen's post (the one before the one about Stalinist thugs) raises an interesting question. He said,

"I wonder how long the university system can continue to engage in political indoctrination before the public rebels and pulls the plug."

The question is, what are the alternatives to the university system? If there were some alternative to the institutions of higher ed today that the public would endorse over and against the current system, what would it be?

Many private christian colleges and universites employ conservatives, right?

Candy - true, although it sort of depends on the church affiliation of the school as to the balance of intellectual viewpoints. I spent four years at a Christian college and I honestly don't think intellectual diversity is better of there than it is in the state or secular colleges for the most part.

Let's be honest - "gender and sexuality" are Far Left code words for establishing academic reeducation campus according to the ideological agendas of radical feminism and homosexuality. First Amendment? Freedom of the Mind? Tolerance for the Diversity of Thought? These are no more important to the academic Left today than they were to Stalin's apparatchiks, Hitler's Brown Shirts or any of the rest of the totalitarians who think they can remake reality according to the dictates of their particular ideology.

Stephen whined:
"I've been told throughout my life to step to the back of the line to give the first shot to women, gays and blacks."

Stephen,
Please give me a concrete example of how preferential treatment of homosexuals has significantly affected your life.

Maybe I'm missin something, but it seems that in the abstract sense this class is needed. Awareness of gender issues is terrible. I can hardly start to discuss the history of sexuality with the average person because they both ignorant and afraid of it. We've got to start somewhere, these classes, maybe not in their proposed form, are needed.

Andrew, I think you're right. I still don't support *any* required classes. At the same time, I wish more universities offered courses in what could be called "the history of everyday life" -- that is to say, the history, or anthropology, of how family, marriage, birth, gender, sexuality, religious practice, cultural worldview, etc. have all intersected at different historical moments and in different societies.

The more the political right wants to legislate our private lives, the more important such academic work becomes. Ahistorical and baseless concepts like "the sanctity of life" or "the traditional family" have become more important than economics, jobs, health care, etc. for many Americans. For every university group that wants to establish a required course or a sensitivity training seminar, there are millions of conservative Americans who want to tell me what my family should be like, how I should think about my country, how I should relate to women, how I should relate to God, etc.

Does anybody have any idea what "hegemonic discourse" means?

They say:

"Ballot initiatives and court cases concerning gay marriage and possible challenges to abortion rights have brought issues of gender and sexuality to the nationís forefront."

I would argue that the only reason there are court cases and challenges "brought to the forefront" is that activists have been working overtime doing exactly that.

Presumably every course being offered by the university is seen as important by somebody. I see no reason why gender studies should be singled out. If they're really looking for classes where students will "gain...insight into the way the world works" gender studies classes aren't a particularly good choice. Political science, economics, or physics would be much more helpful.

Andrew and Luther, it sounds like you are both convinced that where your ideas diverge from those of the average person, you are right and they are wrong. Maybe everybody doesn't need your special insight. I can't see the average person having any great interest in discussing the history of sexuality. Especially if the conversation starts with your offering to bring them out of the darkness of ignorance and superstition.

You wouldn't like if it the religious right tried to force every student at U of M to take a course on why gay marriage and abortion are wrong. You seem to think that there is no controversy on these issues and that reasonable people have reached a consensus. There is no consensus on these issues. If people want to go to church to get one view, or take classes from some "enlightened" person to get the other, fine, but it's inexcusable to want to force your view on unsuspecting college students.

Laura -- Maybe you should actually read what I wrote before showing yr teeth. For the third time: I don't support *any* required classes.

Secondly, there's a difference between a "history of everyday life" course (cf, Michel de Certeau, the French Jesuit historian) or a "history of sexuality" class and imposing one's views on an audience. If the *facts*, historically, are that, say, the Vatican didn't oppose abortion until the mid 19th century, or that the Roman idea of family included slaves and male adults adopted to preserve property rights, then those are the historical facts. If the "average person" doesn't want to seek out historical facts or base his or her politics on historical reality, that's their problem. I won't be called elitest for disagreeing. Faith in the Bible does not trump historical fact.

I do think there's plenty of room for argument on abortion. Gay marriage is different, because allowing gay folk to marry will have no perceivable effect on my marriage or my life or the marriage or life of anyone else.

But I'll say it again: I don't think students should be forced to take any classes. Nor do I think only one view should be offered in any class.

And yes, Laura, most people believe that where their ideas diverge from those of other people, they are in the right. That's what's called conviction. I love it when conservative critics of "postmodernism" turn some weak version of relativism on those perceived as leftist thought-police: "You think the average person is wrong, you think you're right, and that makes you elitest." Oy vey.

Laura, I advocated bias free courses on the history of the topic. Such is infinitely better than no coverage of it whatsoever. I admitted that many courses would be tinged with bias. So be it. Better to have that, to at least open up some real, meaningful dialog, than to just stick with the status quo.

There's nothing about me wanting to indoctrinate my fellow man in my comments. I simply wish that people were willing to address these topics and that they had a baseline level of literacy in them.

I think it's vital that political science students know about communism, capitalism, neo-liberalism, mercantilism, every culturally important or promising ideology under the sun. The same goes for gender education.

Additionally, I'd appreciate it if you would stop putting words into my mouth and drop the needlessly hostile attitude.

Anyone not knowing that "Liberal" in "Liberal Arts" does not refer to current political Liberalism, just needs some more consciousness raising from Liberal Arts exposure, I guess.

Such arguments such as contained in the plea for required genderization of all students, or whatever this consciousness raising is, seem to rest on mystical effects similar to that implied by the "critical mass" [sorry,Erin] effect of the right number of black people upon white people, used to justify affirmative action at the college level, even accepted by Sandra Day O'Conner who wants to try it for another 25 years, proving that the mechanism does not work and is unconstitutional. Why stop at 25?

The critical mass effect is supposed to make white people understand how black people think, as determined by skin color somehow, and cure racism in one fell swoop. All so that we can get along in the real world unincumbered by our natural inclination to think the way we look. Adding the factor of our individual life experiences into the mix only makes it worse for the critical mass effect mechanism to work, and drives the theory into logical impossibility, since no one would be able to understand anyone.

I don't know what the thoughts are which the sex and gender studies would present, but there couldn't be very many of them, starting and ending with "everyone is a person", which if we don't know by the time we are 18, a dramatic reversal would be unlikely.

There is no such thing as gay thought or black thought. There is no such thing as thought of the oppressed, no matter how much interest groups and people who believe external moulding forces from culture, language, ethnicity, sex, economic status, religion, etc., cause differences in human capacities or systematic individual thoughts and beliefs insist. No one can predict what any particular person thinks, or what any individual gay, etc., thinks. So what would be taught in genderization therapy?

I don't know how academia ever derived this principle of mass effect of the "right" thoughts vs the wrong ones, much less what the correct thoughts are. It all seems to rely upon some para-normal mechanisms, at best.

I'm interested in seeing how academics think things work, because it seems they are verging into the realm of the cult at a startling rate, developing their own critical mass, which I have been exposed to enough to begin to understand. I suppose this supports the argument, except that these thoughts seem to have nothing to do with how one looks or their sexual proclivities. Maybe they have banded together in places such as Universities by choice, but avoiding their own critical mass exposure platitudes themselves?

There's a blog site just started by Liberal academics, supposedly with wonderful credentials - Left2Right - which just posted something stylisically erudite, claiming that segregation on the basis of thoughts and beliefs had reared its ugly head, as manifested by red and blue areas. Thus it is seriously proposed that forced integration might really be necessary, so that understanding would thereby be effectuated, but not in the case of academic departments in universities which had become politically imbalanced in like manner.

Again, the admittedly unbalanced are talking about themselves but not doing anything about it along the lines they reccommend to be imposed upon others.

And again the "mass effect" is presumed to be the solution to understanding. If we are just exposed to enough liberal or conservative or gay thought, action, and appearance, we will understand the other, and live happier ever after, in spite of the possibility that this has already occured producing the alleged segregation to begin with. I don't believe it, but, after all, doesn't choice matter? Can't we do with our bodies what we want, like move?

Arguments are given at Left2Right such as that we are much less likely to hate our neighbors than our non-neighbors. Say what?

I also must assume they believe in some kind of "blank slate" theory of mind, in which the capacity and automatic use of rational/ethical thought does not occur but rather must be "impressed" upon the slate to allow rational thought or to redress other, incorrect, impressions, etchings, or mouldings. Again, I presume these would-be neuroscientists - or whatever they would be - are talking about themselves. Does "dogmatic" ring a bell?

I think a class like this could be really helpful. Take it alongside a logic course and you'd get a full perspective on good and bad reasoning that semester.

I don't see what the big deal is. When I was an undergrad, we had over 60 credits of "core requirements," including (iirc) 12 foreign language, 12 math and natural sciences, 6 literature, 12 social science, and 9 humanities. None of these was allowed to overlap with courses taken to fulfill major or minor requirements. For this right-leaning poli sci major, switching some of those irrelevant geology and Shakespeare classes for a courses on gender and sexuality would have been a welcome relief - whether or not I'd have agreed with the perspectives presented, it would have given me something productive to do with my mind (i.e. think of ways to refute feminist arguments) other than fill it with useless facts about dolomite and iambs.

I think this kind of class can be dangerous--mostly for the knee-jerk, thinly veiled gay bashing responses it inspires. i am a moderate except when it comes to this issue. it seems to me that this isn't something that's controversial; it's about bigotry, plain and simple. some people want to exclude a group of people from participation in civil benefits. the basis for this exclusion is a difference. churches, being private organizations, have every right to say they won't marry gay people; however, i don't think that the state, which is supposed to represent all people should do the same.

how can gay marriage hurt our society? is it going to make the divorce rate go up? why don't the people against gay marriage attack the television programs that turn marriage into a game show?

as for the "religious" basis for this argument, i'll say this: don't these "christians" realize that Jesus said nothing about homosexuals?

custom? that's the worst excuse i've heard. our country has a wonderful custom of racism--does that mean we shouldn't change. consider this: the russian serfs were freed before our slaves. what kind of country would we be if we continued discriminatory practices because of custom?

i think any person, or professor, should encourage this discrimination to stop. it doesn't matter if one is conservative, liberal, or somewhere inbetween (perhaps i should say it shouldn't matter).

this doesn't mean you have to embrace homesexuality, discuss it, or even like it; i'm saying we shouldn't discriminate based on it.

btw, i also came from a poor white background and joined the marines to pay for college. i still had to get loans because i worked; i witnessed welfare cases wasting scholarships. i don't blame where i am on "minorities" getting unfair advantages. it appears there are stalinists on both sides of this issue.

Folks,

This thread has become a sorry exercise in mutual baiting. It's an embarrassment to be host to it. Knock it off. I'm deleting the worst of it. Further nastiness is not welcome, and will result in the commenter being banned from this site.

Stephen, Luther has not been sensitized to self reflection, although he's probably fully versed in Liberal Liberal Arts. Now he is getting the sensitivity training he wants, and proving it does not work. Nothing can cure defects in the blank slate, apparently.

Over at Left2Right, which has some good intentions - naturally - an academic, Elizabeth Anderson, posts as a blog topic:

"...Polling data suggest that the more personal experience people have with gays and lesbians, the more they accept them. It is possible that the causal direction runs solely from acceptance to experience (people who condemn homosexuality are less likely to befriend gay people), but I doubt that the causal arrow is unidirectional. Personal experience changes people's views.

"It's this dimension of personal experience, I suggest, that explains much of our partisan divisions, on both matters of principle and of antipathy. It's easier to morally condemn people who aren't one's neighbors, colleagues, and friends. It's also easier to despise, fear, and hate them. I agree with some of the conservative commentators to this blog that the antipathy runs both ways. Surely this has something to do with the fact that we live in increasingly segregated regions, as judged by partisan affiliation. As Steve Darwall notes, levels of racial segregation also remain high, in part due to the growth of virtually all-white exurban communities. Of course, gay people are not physically segregated in the same way. But closeting is a functional equivalent. Greater tolerance is both cause and consequence of more people being out of the closet.

"I have argued in my work on affirmative action that if segregation is a problem, then integration is a solution. Segregation along multiple dimensions is a problem for us, both for the ways it impairs the development of personal experiences we need to inform our moral principles and our competence at respectful interpersonal interaction, and for the ways it undermines democracy. Because the knowledge we lack is personal knowledge, in all senses of this term, there is no substitute for direct engagement with those whom we don't know, who come from different walks of life.

"I have made this case for racial integration. And I accept its implications for idelogical integration of the academy. So, contrary to David Velleman's view, if the representation of ideologies is wildly skewed in institutions of higher education, I believe this does give us a reason to seek more diversity, including of conservatives. I am completely opposed to external, politically imposed mandates of this kind. Nor are quotas or goals appropriate in this sort of case. Rather, departments should handle the distribution of ideologies on a par with the way they handle the distribution of faculty across and within subfields of a discipline. We already allow that a philosophy department loaded with Kantian moral theorists would do well to hire people who do moral philosophy in other modes--utilitarian, virtue ethics, ethics of care, etc. Seeking such ideological diversity does not impugn the merits of those hired, since they contribute to the merit of a department by expanding its range. We have good reasons to extend the same principle further, and positively seek out conservative moral and political theorists who otherwise meet a department's intellectual standards. (In other disciplines, where political and moral views are not an explicit subject of study, matters need to be handled differently. It depends on how such views bear on the subjects of study.)"

Posted by Elizabeth Anderson on December 8, 2004

Then she closes comments within 24-48 hours, again contradicting the principles of her own solutions - familiarity, or mass effect.

It's a riot, unfortuneately. My consciousness rises, out of control. It do me so good.

I wonder why you bother, Stephen. Your opinions mark you as the possessor of a second-rate mind (and here I am being generous...) who is too thick to comprehend what all freshmen composition students have no problem understanding: the rhetorical strategy of ad hominem attacks in place of constructive dialogue or encounter only shows you to be a bitter and timid man. Ah well. You obviously can't match the big boys in this discussion--the real men who actually understand that such rhetorical stupidity would undercut their salient points.

Goodness, you'd flunk my English 101 class! Perhaps I'll cut and paste a bit 'o this dialogue and design a powerpoint presentation to share with my advanced rhetoric students. It does such a fine job of illustrating how "those who can't" have to resort to fallacy. (And it illustrates what might happen if one chooses to make sowing the seeds of hatefulness life's primary directive). Yes. I think I shall!

It's too bad the honest, interesting communications posted on this site have to be punctuated with such nonthinky ugliness.

Ahem...to Luther and Jason--thanks for your kindness and wisdom. I am learning from both of you.

Um, maybe I wasn't clear. *Everyone* on this thread needs to lose the ad hominem ugliness. Quit the name-calling, the insults, the speculations about people's sanity and IQ and toilet training. If you can't stick to a civil consideration of ideas, then don't post comments on this site.

Jason - how are you? I am an active duty Marine, so of course, I am wondering what you did and where you were.

What a touchy subject this is! I have only had the opportunity to take evening classes at my local community college. It's slow, but going. My experience has been good, though I have nothing to compare it to. Last year I took a sociology class, and gender/sexuality issues were addressed. I remember thinking that a class like that really should be mandatory. Then I thought that the class should be mandatory at high school instead. (I'm also the guy who joked that people should be required to pass a test before they vote. I'm just not sure how much I was joking though.) My opinion is that many people's attitudes toward the subject are formed from ignorance, and I believe that there is much factual information that can and should be taught. I think people will probably maintain whatever viewpoint they had before taking such a class, but maybe a bit more tolerance could result. I understand that there is a rational, intelligent argument for most points of view on this subject, so why not explore them? And the school has (or should have) the right to make a class mandatory. I think a lot of the opposition to a class like this is irrational fear of some sort of mass assimilation into a liberal mindset. There is nothing to fear; I don't think that anyone's grade will be determined by his or her opinion at the conclusion of the class.

"There is nothing to fear; I don't think that anyone's grade will be determined by his or her opinion at the conclusion of the class." Andy

No, that won't happen. You will have already been kicked out of the University, so "no worries".

You think so?

Possibly related to my above post, the latest topic on the Academics' Left2Right site has already closed to comment. My sense of exclusion is immense, even though it was impossible for them to grade me, thank dog.

The Academics did not even let me in, though I was able to expose myself to them. Perhaps this is the point, to simply sit around absorbing truth and having my consciousness raised.

Let me know if I'm blathering - this is a test to see if anyone is even listening here. I'm beginning to feel oppressed, maybe gay, or perhaps I have Leprosy. Woe be unto me! [Job]

Yet in the spirit of the halow-ed integration, still, "I'm ready if I don't get to go." [Chi Lights]

I apologize, but take back none of it, following in Rather's hearty footsteps. O-K, I'm going to ban myself for a while.

I think most of us could agree that a balanced, unbiased, non-politicized overview of the history and practice of human sexuality would be beneficial to a lot of students. Despite the oversexualized nature of pop culture (or perhaps because of it,) most people do remain rather ignorant of the history and psychology of sex. And really, even a novice student of history could tell you that sex really does have a lot to do with how the world works.

The question, then, is whether the course proposed for the University would take this form or would instead be a politicized forum for making all students feminist gay rights activists (not that I am at all against equal rights for women or gays, I just don't think any college students should be forced to take a politically motivated class). I am somewhat suspicious of the group's motives, based on the timing of their proposal (Michigan, of course, just passing a gay marriage ban). The fact that they propose a required class tends to bring out the cynic in me too.

So, will it be The History of Human Sexuality 100 or Gender Issues 101? If it falls under the jurisdiction of the women's studies department rather than history or psychology, I'll be skeptical.

In any case, I'd oppose making it a requirement. U of M LSA students are already overloaded with prerequisites (over half the credits required for a bachelor's degree), including two levels of writing, math, natural science, two years of foreign language, and a "race and ethnicity" requirement. Fortunately, I'm a student of the College of Engineering, and therefore immune to most of the LSA requirements.

A shout out to Ricki- when did you graduate? Go Blue

Actually, there are a lot of decent courses concerning sex and gender here at the University, and I mean no discredit to the women's studies department. Obviously making this requirement would necessitate an expansion of the available courses, and my concern is that this would degrade ther quality and put the emphasis on more politicized issues. Also, I get a little worried when gropus start talking about "challenging hegemonic discourse" (We already had one Noam Chomsky lecture this year).

I would think that gender and sexuality issues are already being addressed, at some level, in courses such as Classical History, Medieval History, and Anthropology. The burden of proof should be on those proposing the new class to show why the topic would be better addressed in isolation than in the context of the other disciplines.

David: I'm sure certain gender and sexuality related issues are discussed in those classes. But a separate class could be justified for a series of reasons:

(a) to get a longer historical approach, one that crosses the rigid, arbitrary lines of demarcation held to by most undergrad history courses

(b) to get a cross-cultural comparative approach, one that would use, say, anthropology and sociology together (i.e., to study 19th century British and West African ideas of gender at the height of imperial contact)

(c) many undergraduate history courses -- those I took certainly -- still adhere to the age-old dates, dynasties, wars, and treaties model of teaching history. The history of private or everyday life is generally a small aside in such classes, and when they are given classes of their own, these tend to be upper-level courses with prerequisites or restricted to students in the major. So that a psych major who wants to take a class in the history of family in the West might find it difficult to take such a class as a non-major.

It think it might be more useful to think of such courses as crossing disciplinary boundaries rather than taking the issue "in isolation" or out of proper context.

Luther...thanks for a thoughtful reply. It seems to me that any course, by its very nature, treats things to some extent "in isolation"...it's just a question of on what dimensions the cuts are done. The boundary lines are there, but you're drawing them in different places.

To step back a bit; seems to me that the cases for/against a gender & sexuality course are similar to the cases for/against a "History of Technology" course. I'm sure that many of the relationships between society and technology (viz, the relationship between feudalism and the development of the vertical water wheel) are shortchanged in typical history classes, and certainly comparative analysis across different time periods will tend not to be done. One could learn a lot from a good "History of Technology" course, but should such a class be required of all students (as opposed to those who have a particular interest in the field)? There are probably dozens of subject areas that could make a claim for interdisciplinary focus, and if they all got it (in the form of required courses) the curriculum would be in ruins.

One big difference between a gender/sexuality course and a history of technology course is that the history of technology isn't nearly as controversial. It could be controversial, of course, but we didn't just have an election in which the effect of the Industrial Revolution on the Socialist movement figured in eleven states.

I'm skeptical of the possibility of "teaching" a subject on which there is no national consensus. There's some degree of consensus on how you do Calculus, what you will find if you dissect a shark, what constitutes a complete sentence, how to translate Cicero, what led up to the rise of Hitler, and so those things can be taught. I can see leading a discussion about abortion, for instance, but I can't see teaching it without the goal being for the kids to leave the class either pro-life or pro-choice, and I don't think that's an appropriate goal for a state institution to have.

I'm sorry about the truculence of my previous post. Apparently I was stressed out about an event that I didn't realized I was stressed about till it was over. I'll try to be nicer.

I have to respectfully disagree with Laura. But first, in response to David, let me say that I agree, a History of Technology course might play a similar role in relation to the disciplines and majors, and I think such courses are essential. Still, let me repeat once more, I do not support *any* required classes.

Now, Laura, you claim that we shouldn't teach topics on which there is no national consensus. Well, that pretty much leaves us without the humanities in general. There's no consensus on criminal justice issues; on sociological issues; most Americans have no ideas about world geography and history, so there's no consensus there; American history is totally a war-zone. Evolution would throw biology into disrupte. There's no consensus on what novels or poems or plays should be taught.

So what's left? As someone who teaches American national controversies every semester in a freshman comp class, I can say that the way you avoid taking a side is to avoid taking a side. I created a balanced syllabus of readings; most of the class time is spent in open discussion; and that discussion is spent in *analyzing* the readings: what's the thesis? What are the assumptions? What sort of evidence is used? Is that evidence convincing and reliable? Who is the imagined audience? How is the argument organized? Etc. Those questions are turned on every reading, whether it's Mike Davis on Los Angeles' war on the homeless or Hoff Sommers on feminists' war on academic freedom. My own lefty position is obvious, but that has never stopped my students from writing papers attacking gay marriage and abortion, supporting American wars abroad, criticizing the Guerilla Girls, or taking any other conservative positions. I evaluate these papers using the same set of questions: is there a thesis? What evidence is used? Is it reliable and convincing? Is the paper organized well? Does the thesis develop or repeat the same point over and over again? Etc.

It's actually quite easy to avoid acting as the "thought police" when teaching contentious issues. The trick is to follow certain procedures even-handedly; and more importantly, to allow the students to do most of the talking and thinking.

While no one disagrees that it's possible to have a fair and open discussion, the elephant in every classroom is the PC ideology that drives courses like this into being requirements in the first place. The individual execution is not so much what matters at a systemic level, rather it is the motivation for requiring the courses. Were I a college administrator I would consider substantive requirements such as -- Cognitive Science, Language Theory, Logic, et alia. I can easily make a case for these courses being more relevant than a gender and sexuality course. I obviously have a different vision of what is appropriate material for colleges to mandate, though.

As an outsider to the academic world but a paying customer of a liberal arts school (my son is a freshman) my reaction would be 'no way you are going there!' to a school with such a requirement. Those of us out the outside can spot indoctrination when we see it no matter what stripes got painted on it. I am beginning to think that those of us paying the bills, whether as tuition or taxpayers, need to put a stop to this kind of nonsense by the simple expedient of not paying for it. All of you in the academic world need to remember that with your vaunted academic freedom comes the responsibility to educate, not indoctrinate. If you can not find the responsibility the bill payers will sooner or later take the freedom away from you.

Luther, I think you're being disingenuous here. (Thanks for giving me an opportunity to use that word.) "There's no consensus on criminal justice issues." Please. Sure there are some controversies about why so many black men are in prison and so forth, but in general terms we agree that the guilty should be punished and the innocent go free. As to having no consensus about history because there are no ideas, that is the exact opposite of the lack of consensus on gay marriage because there are very large, thought-out, and loudly expressed ideas on both sides. (Full disclosure: I could probably teach this issue with the sure knowledge that I am not indoctrinating anybody, because I haven't been able to make up my own mind about it yet. Mainly I am very tired of hearing well-intentioned people on both sides being trashed.)

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, Luther, that you would not try to force your views on your students. It's very useful to have the opposition vet one's arguments, of course, if it's done in an honest way. But here's a quote from Erin's original post: "'The reason to be pessimistic is, again, this is a state school,' Malczynski said. 'With the way the gay marriage proposal turned out, it showed a lot of homophobia....'" They're equating opposition to gay marriage with hatred or fear of homosexuals. That leads me to believe that they are looking for the outcome of this required course to be a populace that supports gay marriage and the rest of these students' set of political views. Maybe these people don't envision the teacher's role in this course quite the way you do.

Wasn't the great student revolt of the 60s fueled by the mix of liberal students and overwhelmingly conservative faculty? I am wondering if history is about to replay itself on a smaller scale and in the opposite direction.

No, Laura, I don't believe I'm being disingenuous. Take criminal science again: should they never discuss capital punishment, because there's no national consensus?

Or history: should they never discuss the use of the atom bomb in Japan or discuss American interventions in Latin America because, again, Americans who know their history tend to disagree wildly on how to interpret and present these histories?

And the fact that different disciplines and the public at large have no consensus on issues of gender and sexuality suggests to me the deep need for dialogue and education on these issues.

But outside of the classroom, I'll say this: neither state nor central governments have a right to legislate private matters that affect no one but the parties involved. No one I've read or spoken to can tell me how gay marriage would affect anyone buy gay couples wanting to get married.

This is why I *do* believe that those who oppose gay marriage are, at some level, implicated in bigotry. No one can describe any real, material harm that would result from gay marriage. Instead, all we hear about is faith-based assertions about "the sanctity of marriage" -- which is code for "the abomination that is being gay." The idea of "protecting marriage" from gays necessarily implies that gay people would somehow devalue or taint marriage, which then implies that gays are of less human value or can some tainting nature. That's bigotry. Segregation once was justified as a way of protecting white culture.

Indoctrination into homosexuality? You cannot be serious.

To gloss another blogger on this point, the only way this kind of cant makes a whit of sense is if you believe, in your heart of hearts, that heterosexuality is a drag, and that once people try homosexuality, they'll discover a fun-filled Elysian fields of sensual pleasure and emotional fulfillment. Short of that sort of deep-seated belief, using the word indoctrination is simply anti-intellectual horse droppings. Honestly...I cannot for the life of me understand why all these self-appointed virtuecrats and semiprofessional scolds think that the sex they themselves claim to prefer is such a bottomless well of disappointment and disaffection. I could be catty and suggest that they must be doing it wrongly, but surely that's beyond the pale.

Thank you for the sterling example, MisterBS.

Luther, can you really not come up with another reason why anyone might oppose gay marriage? A person who wanted to teach it should really educate himself about the opposing viewpoints.

Look at your point about gay marriage not affecting anyone but the gay couple. I remember that President Clinton, at one point, stated that he was in sympathy with gay people who wanted to get married, but he couldn't support gay marriage because then he couldn't force employers to provide health benefits for spouses the way he wanted. It would cost too much. While that was a silly reason, designed to keep him from getting into the mire of controversy, it does point out that marriage is the government's way of regulating relationships. It isn't private, by its very nature. People can have private relationships all they want, but I can't see insisting that (1) the government recognize my relationship and (2) the government keep its nose out of my relationship, in the same argument on the same issue.

It's pretty clear that the government needs to get out of the marriage business all together. Everyone gets a civil union from local authorities. Let marriages be performed by religious authorities. One's marriage rights inhere to the civil ceremony anyway--why even pretend otherwise? Let the folks who need to be "married" in their religious tradition of choice have it, but don't give them any rights unless they have a civil marriage certificate. Churches won't have to marry queer folks, and I won't have to explain why I'm not interested in a church wedding. Brilliant.

And, Laura, for what it's worth, my intention was not to trash anyone. I really am sincerely interested in why those opposed to homosexuality (generally or particularly) go through pains to make it seem that it's only through a combination of iron discipline and ascetic self-denial that people "remain heterosexual" in the face of "recruitment and indoctrination". I don't buy it. I think it's ridiculous, mostly because I've never been the least bit tempted to "turn gay". I've never had anyone explain it to me, and for whatever set of reasons, nobody's seen fit to try. So, clue me in, if you can. If not, spare me the zero-content, sneering "sterling example" comments, please. Fair?

"I really am sincerely interested in why those opposed to homosexuality (generally or particularly) go through pains to make it seem that it's only through a combination of iron discipline and ascetic self-denial that people "remain heterosexual" in the face of "recruitment and indoctrination". I don't buy it."

I don't buy it either, never have, and don't know what you're talking about. Why do you want me to explain such nonsense? I've talked to lots of conservatives and I've never hear that tripe put forth.

The language of the proposal is certainly dispiriting ("challenge hegemonic discourse"--yech) and the committee's political goals are quite obvious. Still, it could be interesting if some prof or adjunct were to approach teaching such a course with a genuinely questing spirit.

I wonder what would happen if an instructor were to present evolutionary and biological evidence about gender and sexuality--for instance, the failed attempts to turn hormonally male infants with unclear genitalia into girls, or the cultural universality of labor division by sex--and not just ideologically-freighted cultural studies. I think discussions would be quite lively if students were presented with, say, both Judith Butler's "performative gender" idea and scientific evidence of biological determinism.

What's got people's hackles up (mine too) is the conviction--probably, in most cases, based on sad experience in academia--that such an investigative and apolitical approach is the furthest thing from the committee's agenda.

Hey, Laura, let's not free the slaves, because then HMOs will have to offer them healthcare!

I don't think that's a very convincing perspective on how gay marriage will affect other people; nor is it the perspective being offered by anti-gay-marriage-amendment supporters. By your logic, there is no private sphere at all. In which case, the personal really is the political, huh? When all those damned women joined the workforce, I guess that must have driven the cost of healthcare up too. Someone will always profit from the status quo; that's why it's the status quo. But cutting into a flawed system's profits is not the same as "affecting" other people. But then again -- and I could be wrong here -- I never saw medical insurance companies taking out ads supporting anti-gay-marriage amendments.

Sure sure, *any* legal change will have wider possible effects. But gay marriage will in no way affect straight marriages, while many conservatives insist otherwise. You admit that Clinton's argument was silly; don't you have a better argument?

I don't think the government should be in the business of "recognizing" anyone's relationship, straight or gay. But if it wants to offer legalized benefits and penalties on the basis of a marriage certificate that only it can issue, it needs to do so on democratic principles. No one's asking the government to "recognize" homosexuals. We're only asking the United States to, once again, live up to its promises and ideals.

One last point: I never said I "taught" the gay marriage debate. I do teach a few essays on different ways of looking at the family, and we do discuss if these essays present sound arguments, and I do ask my students to write arguments on this topic. But, as an English prof, I am in no way passing myself off as an expert on issues of sexuality, and my students know this. I do pass myself off as someone who can teach them how to write "the college essay."

But here's a great link to a news article about teaching defenses of slavery, in the name of being "even-handed," despite the textbook's links to recognized hate-groups:

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1913619p-8258411c.html

Yeah, we would never want to "indoctrinate" our children into thinking slavery was bad.

"By your logic, there is no private sphere at all."

No, that's not true. By my logic, you can have any kind of relationship you want, but marriage is a legalized form of relationship. You can't have marriage without government. You can live with somebody for 92 years without government regulation, i.e. marriage, if you want, nobody's stopping you.

I did think Clinton's excuse was irritating on at least two levels: one, it trivialized the issue, and two, it demonstrated his belief that micromanaging businesses was his privilege and duty. If he really thought the time for gay marriage had come and that it was a human rights issue, and he put it aside because it threatened his big-government agenda, that was really bad. But I think he was just making an excuse. I hope that was it.

So you've graded essays opposing gay marriage, but you can't come up with any reasons other than stupid or hateful ones? Interesting. I suppose you've had students who argued their points based on their belief in the Bible. Can you respect their point of view without sharing their belief? If they tell you that their opposition to gay marriage springs from their conviction that God himself is opposed to it, do you automatically put that motive in the ignorant or bigotted category? It's one thing to think someone you disagree with is misguided or mistaken; it's another to think they are evil or stupid.

Laura, one the first issue, I'll just repeat: insofar as it is a legalized relationship, it should be open to people of all sexual proclivities. Last I checked, that's called democracy. "All men are created equal," and so on. If "furries" can marry, if Bill O'Reilly can marry, if Newt Gingrich can leave his cancer-stricken wife in the hospital and marry his former teacher, gay folks should be able to marry.

And yes, I have had students support their essay arguments with Scripture. I always tell them that to rely solely or largely on such evidence will severely limit the audience of their writing. I also tell them that, like any quoted textual evidence, Scripture requires close reading and analysis attuned to historical context, cultural context, linguistic ambiguity, etc. I won't make a "special case" for Scripture by allowing its users to shirk the careful work of argument and analysis.

Otherwise, I try not to discuss their faith with them as such. But to anyone, student or otherwise, who simply says, "I oppose homosexuality because God does," I can say three things: (1) if "there is no man or woman" in God, then there probably isn't any "hetero" or "homo" in God; these are petty biological and social differences with no place in theological discussions of the eternal soul; (2) Jesus never discusses homosexuality, despite living under Roman authority and in a deeply hellenistic culture, both of which would have seen open man-boy love; what he does openly oppose is divorce, so straight Christians should stop getting divorces before they stop gay folks from marrying; (3) most of the biblical justification for opposing homosexuality comes from the Old Testament, and yet American Jews seem largely not to oppose gay marriage or civil unions. Why do Jews feel free to interpret Scripture, and what horrible hubris must motivate fundamentalists from throwing out the thousands of years of close textual analysis composed by rabbis?

Ultimately, I cannot "respect" such belief. Christian belief was not so long ago used to justify the enslavement of black folk. Maybe once the so-called "fundamentalists" begin following the *letter* of Christ's teaching I will begin respecting faith without analysis or reason.

What, really, is the difference between a religious person saying "I oppose gays because the Bible tells me to" and a Nazi who said, "I oppose Jews, gays, commies, and gypsies because The Party tells me to"? Or a slaveowner who said, "The Bible tells fugitive slaves to return to their masters"? Such appeals to authority are misguided and mistaken; if acted upon, they can be both stupid and evil.

Case closed.

Let me give you all a slightly different perspective. I am the father of a high school sophomore who is starting to think about colleges. What do I look for when I consider where to spend my $40,000/year in tuition? I guess I would consider any mandatory course in gender/sexuality a waste of time and money. I am a big believer in the liberal arts in the classical sense. I don't think that college (especially for kids who are eventually going to grad school) needs to be about job training. It should be an opportunity to get an overview of the essence of our culture and civilization and to study some difficult subject in some depth. I don't see how forced indoctrination on matters of current political debate has much to do with that.

DBL your heart is in the right place, but unfortunately that's not how it works. For the most part academia isn't responsive to what parents want. What happens is that after colleges put in requirements like the one we're talking about here, they suddenly discover there's only a handful of men on campus. So they put a few million dollars into the football team, (or the dorms, or the weight room), male applications increase, and they've solved the problem. Meanwhile the administrators who put in the program have moved onto bigger and better things., and the students and adjuncts get shortchanged even more than they were before.