Maggie_T
03-09-2001, 02:16 PM
WarLady1
Owner/Op/Moderator
posts: 790
(1/25/01 12:09:59 pm)
Reply
Are Pro-Gunners Losing 1st Amendment Rights?
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frontpagemag.com/archives...-25-01.htm
I AM ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR of geology and geophysics at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. In March of 1999, I was charged with sexual harassment after sending a letter to the editor of the campus newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily, which some people found offensive. My letter was written as a rebuttal to a gun-control column by Yale Daily News columnist Joni Kletter which had recently been reprinted in the OU paper. Ms. Kletter wrote that "easy access to a handgun allows everyone in this country....to quickly and easily kill as many random people as they want." My reply was terse. I pointed out that Kletter’s "easy access" to a vagina enabled her to "quickly and easily" have sex with "as many random people" as she wanted. I furthermore said that her possession of an unregistered vagina equipped her to work as a prostitute and spread venereal disease. I closed by expressing the hope that Ms. Kletter was as responsible with her equipment as most gun owners are with theirs.
My letter appeared on a Monday. By the end of the week, I found myself facing formal charges of sexual harassment. These specious charges have now been dismissed, thanks to the efforts of the Center for Individual Rights, Edmond, Okla. attorney Andrew Lester, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Furthermore, the university administration has agreed to review the sexual harassment policy. However, this outcome occurred only because the right to free speech at OU was defended by groups and individuals from outside the university.
My colleague in the OU geology department, John Castagna, was the only one of 1,122 full-time faculty members on the OU campus who publicly spoke out against misuse of the sexual harassment process. Naturally, I didn’t expect anyone to come forward and say they approved of my letter. That was not the point. However, I would have expected some comments along the lines of "I don’t agree with what Deming said, but he has a right to express his opinion." The OU faculty evidently did not understand some simple truths. Inoffensive speech never needs protection. When the rights of one faculty member are attacked, the rights of all faculty members are attacked. If an OU faculty member can be punished for making a political statement in a public forum, then academic freedom in the classroom has been shredded. Every college library in the country contains highly offensive material. If my persecution had been successful, in very little time the same people who filed sexual harassment complaints against me would have sought to pull books off the shelves of the university library and burn them on the campus green.
The faculty handbook of the University of Oklahoma contains the official policies of the university. In the section on Academic Freedom and Responsibility, it states: "Faculty members have responsibilities to their colleagues, deriving from common membership in a community of scholars. They shall respect and defend the free inquiry of their associates."
Not only did the faculty fail to come to my defense, at least one of the people who filed a sexual harassment complaint against me was publicly identified as a faculty member. The prevailing attitude amongst OU faculty was perhaps exemplified by the attitude of a man who has been a close friend of mine for several years. My friend holds a named chair and is a tenured professor. He is as insulated from political pressure as any faculty member can be. I never asked my friend for a support statement, but he volunteered to me that he had to remain silent, because, well, "What would people think?" My liberal friend is also a dues-paying member of the ACLU. Later that summer, the ACLU announced that it was going to court to defend the First Amendment rights of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, an organization of pedophiles whose sole purpose is the promotion of sex between men and boys.
The press also failed to speak out against the misuse of the sexual harassment process. Only a few months before sexual harassment charges were filed against me, the OU student newspaper editorialized in favor of free speech. In an editorial dated October 4, 1999, the newspaper objected to the city of New York cutting funding for a museum which displayed a painting of the Virgin Mary splattered with elephant dung. In this case, what was important was not that many people found the painting to be profoundly offensive. What was important was that "one of our country’s greatest qualities is freedom of statement."
The same month that the OU campus newspaper was defending the right to splatter the Virgin Mary with elephant feces, a banner put up by the OU Gay and Lesbian Student Association to celebrate "National Coming Out Day" was vandalized. Former United States senator and current OU president David Boren immediately condemned the action and stated that the right to free statement at OU must be protected. Boren was quoted in the campus newspaper as saying, "When the rights of free speech and free statement for any members of our community are violated, we are all diminished."
Of course, many religious conservatives in Oklahoma find homosexuality and its promotion on the OU campus to be offensive. But that didn’t stop the OU president from making a strong statement of moral principle. When I was put on trial, however, Boren remained silent and did nothing to stop my persecution. He later wrote me and said that his primary concern now was "restoring civility to public debate." The OU administration later abruptly stopped the proceedings against me. As reported in the Norman Transcript on May 6, 2000, they had a sudden revelation that my letter was protected by the First Amendment when they learned my attorneys intended to file a lawsuit against them in federal court.
One might have expected that august group of faculty members, the faculty senate, to express concern over the misuse of the sexual harassment process to abridge a faculty member’s right to free speech. I’m a member of the faculty senate, and I can tell you that the topic never once was mentioned in any public deliberation. The primary concern of the faculty senate that semester was condemning the Oklahoma State Textbook Committee for recommending that biology textbooks be required to insert a disclaimer. The disclaimer stated that evolution was a "controversial theory" and, amongst other things, admonished students to "study hard and keep an open mind." It was condemned by unanimous vote. In the last meeting of the OU faculty senate that semester, it became clear what was uppermost on the minds of most senators. In a bizarre spectacle, one member of the executive committee sang "Faculty Raises, Forever!" to the tune of the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel’s Messiah.
A few years ago, the administration of the University of Oklahoma announced that the new mission of the University was to attain "excellence," a goal which heretofore had been more commonly associated with companies which manufacture small kitchen appliances. For hundreds of years, it was universally understood that the mission of our universities was to pass on the core values of western civilization through liberal education. The most important of these values are freedom of speech and thought; without them, no scholarly pursuit or education is possible. My experience seems to indicate that these values are now foreign to the University of Oklahoma. That is unfortunate.
Dr. Deming is an associate professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Oklahoma and an adjunct scholar of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (ocpathink.org).
What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? --Thomas Jefferson (Memo to Ted Kennedy)
Edited by: WarLady1 at: 1/25/01 12:10:57 pm
Keith J
Gold Star Member
posts: 137
(1/25/01 8:13:59 pm)
Reply Re: Are Pro-Gunners Losing 1st Amendment Rights?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HCI is attacking sites they feel threatening like AR15.com, AK47.com and thefiringline.com.
The only site that is actively fighting this crap is thefiringline.com.
AR15 forums are down and have been for 2 weeks. The homepage hasen't seen a refresh in six months. It getting bad out there.
Go visit and help our "brothers in arms"
www.thefiringline.com/for...forumid=13 (http://www.thefiringline.com/for...forumid=13)
BEST45CAL
Gold Star Member
posts: 71
(1/27/01 9:14:56 am)
Reply
Re: Are Pro-Gunners Losing 1st Amendment Rights?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I sorta have a problem with his argument in that this woman he's talking about doesn't have a choice as to whether or not she has a vagina. I mean, I get his point, but the fact that she was born female is purely accidental. She had no control over that. I would have used a different item to base my argument upon, such as a baseball bat, a kitchen knife, or a claw hammer. Those items do not require registration and are readily available.
If he had based his argument differently, then I doubt that he would have gotten into so much trouble.
True, the sexual harassment charges against him were at best specious, but I would have made a different argument.
As far as "pro-gunners" losing their First Amendment rights is concerned, I would have to say that yes, we are, as "pro-gunners," truly are having our First Amendment rights infringed upon because the restrictive gun laws currently on the books prohibit me from expressing myself as a true American.
That's the argument I would have made.
"Wise men learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise."
Owner/Op/Moderator
posts: 790
(1/25/01 12:09:59 pm)
Reply
Are Pro-Gunners Losing 1st Amendment Rights?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
frontpagemag.com/archives...-25-01.htm
I AM ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR of geology and geophysics at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. In March of 1999, I was charged with sexual harassment after sending a letter to the editor of the campus newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily, which some people found offensive. My letter was written as a rebuttal to a gun-control column by Yale Daily News columnist Joni Kletter which had recently been reprinted in the OU paper. Ms. Kletter wrote that "easy access to a handgun allows everyone in this country....to quickly and easily kill as many random people as they want." My reply was terse. I pointed out that Kletter’s "easy access" to a vagina enabled her to "quickly and easily" have sex with "as many random people" as she wanted. I furthermore said that her possession of an unregistered vagina equipped her to work as a prostitute and spread venereal disease. I closed by expressing the hope that Ms. Kletter was as responsible with her equipment as most gun owners are with theirs.
My letter appeared on a Monday. By the end of the week, I found myself facing formal charges of sexual harassment. These specious charges have now been dismissed, thanks to the efforts of the Center for Individual Rights, Edmond, Okla. attorney Andrew Lester, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Furthermore, the university administration has agreed to review the sexual harassment policy. However, this outcome occurred only because the right to free speech at OU was defended by groups and individuals from outside the university.
My colleague in the OU geology department, John Castagna, was the only one of 1,122 full-time faculty members on the OU campus who publicly spoke out against misuse of the sexual harassment process. Naturally, I didn’t expect anyone to come forward and say they approved of my letter. That was not the point. However, I would have expected some comments along the lines of "I don’t agree with what Deming said, but he has a right to express his opinion." The OU faculty evidently did not understand some simple truths. Inoffensive speech never needs protection. When the rights of one faculty member are attacked, the rights of all faculty members are attacked. If an OU faculty member can be punished for making a political statement in a public forum, then academic freedom in the classroom has been shredded. Every college library in the country contains highly offensive material. If my persecution had been successful, in very little time the same people who filed sexual harassment complaints against me would have sought to pull books off the shelves of the university library and burn them on the campus green.
The faculty handbook of the University of Oklahoma contains the official policies of the university. In the section on Academic Freedom and Responsibility, it states: "Faculty members have responsibilities to their colleagues, deriving from common membership in a community of scholars. They shall respect and defend the free inquiry of their associates."
Not only did the faculty fail to come to my defense, at least one of the people who filed a sexual harassment complaint against me was publicly identified as a faculty member. The prevailing attitude amongst OU faculty was perhaps exemplified by the attitude of a man who has been a close friend of mine for several years. My friend holds a named chair and is a tenured professor. He is as insulated from political pressure as any faculty member can be. I never asked my friend for a support statement, but he volunteered to me that he had to remain silent, because, well, "What would people think?" My liberal friend is also a dues-paying member of the ACLU. Later that summer, the ACLU announced that it was going to court to defend the First Amendment rights of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, an organization of pedophiles whose sole purpose is the promotion of sex between men and boys.
The press also failed to speak out against the misuse of the sexual harassment process. Only a few months before sexual harassment charges were filed against me, the OU student newspaper editorialized in favor of free speech. In an editorial dated October 4, 1999, the newspaper objected to the city of New York cutting funding for a museum which displayed a painting of the Virgin Mary splattered with elephant dung. In this case, what was important was not that many people found the painting to be profoundly offensive. What was important was that "one of our country’s greatest qualities is freedom of statement."
The same month that the OU campus newspaper was defending the right to splatter the Virgin Mary with elephant feces, a banner put up by the OU Gay and Lesbian Student Association to celebrate "National Coming Out Day" was vandalized. Former United States senator and current OU president David Boren immediately condemned the action and stated that the right to free statement at OU must be protected. Boren was quoted in the campus newspaper as saying, "When the rights of free speech and free statement for any members of our community are violated, we are all diminished."
Of course, many religious conservatives in Oklahoma find homosexuality and its promotion on the OU campus to be offensive. But that didn’t stop the OU president from making a strong statement of moral principle. When I was put on trial, however, Boren remained silent and did nothing to stop my persecution. He later wrote me and said that his primary concern now was "restoring civility to public debate." The OU administration later abruptly stopped the proceedings against me. As reported in the Norman Transcript on May 6, 2000, they had a sudden revelation that my letter was protected by the First Amendment when they learned my attorneys intended to file a lawsuit against them in federal court.
One might have expected that august group of faculty members, the faculty senate, to express concern over the misuse of the sexual harassment process to abridge a faculty member’s right to free speech. I’m a member of the faculty senate, and I can tell you that the topic never once was mentioned in any public deliberation. The primary concern of the faculty senate that semester was condemning the Oklahoma State Textbook Committee for recommending that biology textbooks be required to insert a disclaimer. The disclaimer stated that evolution was a "controversial theory" and, amongst other things, admonished students to "study hard and keep an open mind." It was condemned by unanimous vote. In the last meeting of the OU faculty senate that semester, it became clear what was uppermost on the minds of most senators. In a bizarre spectacle, one member of the executive committee sang "Faculty Raises, Forever!" to the tune of the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel’s Messiah.
A few years ago, the administration of the University of Oklahoma announced that the new mission of the University was to attain "excellence," a goal which heretofore had been more commonly associated with companies which manufacture small kitchen appliances. For hundreds of years, it was universally understood that the mission of our universities was to pass on the core values of western civilization through liberal education. The most important of these values are freedom of speech and thought; without them, no scholarly pursuit or education is possible. My experience seems to indicate that these values are now foreign to the University of Oklahoma. That is unfortunate.
Dr. Deming is an associate professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Oklahoma and an adjunct scholar of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (ocpathink.org).
What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? --Thomas Jefferson (Memo to Ted Kennedy)
Edited by: WarLady1 at: 1/25/01 12:10:57 pm
Keith J
Gold Star Member
posts: 137
(1/25/01 8:13:59 pm)
Reply Re: Are Pro-Gunners Losing 1st Amendment Rights?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HCI is attacking sites they feel threatening like AR15.com, AK47.com and thefiringline.com.
The only site that is actively fighting this crap is thefiringline.com.
AR15 forums are down and have been for 2 weeks. The homepage hasen't seen a refresh in six months. It getting bad out there.
Go visit and help our "brothers in arms"
www.thefiringline.com/for...forumid=13 (http://www.thefiringline.com/for...forumid=13)
BEST45CAL
Gold Star Member
posts: 71
(1/27/01 9:14:56 am)
Reply
Re: Are Pro-Gunners Losing 1st Amendment Rights?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I sorta have a problem with his argument in that this woman he's talking about doesn't have a choice as to whether or not she has a vagina. I mean, I get his point, but the fact that she was born female is purely accidental. She had no control over that. I would have used a different item to base my argument upon, such as a baseball bat, a kitchen knife, or a claw hammer. Those items do not require registration and are readily available.
If he had based his argument differently, then I doubt that he would have gotten into so much trouble.
True, the sexual harassment charges against him were at best specious, but I would have made a different argument.
As far as "pro-gunners" losing their First Amendment rights is concerned, I would have to say that yes, we are, as "pro-gunners," truly are having our First Amendment rights infringed upon because the restrictive gun laws currently on the books prohibit me from expressing myself as a true American.
That's the argument I would have made.
"Wise men learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise."