I am incensed at the culture of intolerance that the ASUO is propagating. The cartoons in The Insurgent displaying Jesus as a homosexual in a graphic state of sexual arousal are bad enough to offend many people, myself included, but the comments from the staff of the paper as to their agenda to offend people is even more disturbing. Student editor Jessica Brown’s comments on the legitimacy of angering people, just for the fun of it, angers me.
As a Christian, in the same sense of tolerance and fairness that has been allowed my faith, where are the depictions of Muhammad sitting on the toilet or having sex with a woman, or a picture of a homosexual in a negative light, or any other valued individual or core belief? Fair is fair, right? Of course, I would be offended if any cartoons were printed that showed the above situations, but it is obvious that the same sense of fairness and tolerance is not present at your esteemed university. Where is Michael Savage, and why the crackdown on anti-gay and lesbian rhetoric? If speech is free, is it not free for everyone?
The obvious intentional proliferation of the culture of anti-Christianity is appalling, and the Christians offended deserve an immediate apology from The Insurgent.
In this era of “political correctness” and tolerance for everything except Christianity and its ideals, it is sad but revealing as to the agenda and double -standard of this university and its leaders. President Frohnmayer: Everything rises and falls on leadership, even yours. Your refusal of an apology solidifies and confirms that opinion.
With every freedom comes responsibility – responsibility to society and the community at large to respect each other’s beliefs and value systems. When a particular set of accepted (by society at large) core values and ideals are attacked maliciously, the society that engenders those values is threatened. While everyone’s speech is to be considered free and uninhibited in our country, it is egregious to use this tool at will to proliferate a specific stated agenda to the exclusion of all other voices: “… working towards a society free from oppression based on class, gender, sexual orientation, race, species, and free from the threat of ecological collapse” (excerpt from The Insurgent online edition). Of course the interpretation of a society “free from oppression” is subject to each person’s definition. My idea of oppression may not be the same as yours, but when a small body of people are allowed to decide the meaning of the “oppression” for everyone and then speak their definition as the only one in existence, the freedom of speech for everyone is injured. Conversely, it is just as offensive to defame one ideal at will without defaming all others the speaker or writer feels allegiance to. Where is the tolerance when one side is promulgated and the other is silenced or publicly derided? Tolerance is both neutral and comprehensive. It can’t be all from one perspective or it is not tolerance at all – it’s fanaticism and bigotry.
It is so sad to see this university producing this type of intolerant, offending atmosphere and leaders who consider it “fun” to anger people, discriminatorily. David Goward, I pray that I and my children are not around if and when your agenda to drive Christianity and its principles out of our culture should ever finally succeed. This will be a sad, bad little world.
Stan Denman
Fort Worth, Texas
Political correctness applies to all groups but Christians
Daily Emerald
May 22, 2006
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