US Professor suspended for upholding right to support traditional marriage

A political science professor in the United States has been suspended for supporting a student’s right to oppose same-sex marriage.

Prof McAdams, of Marquette University in Wisconsin, raised objections after reports that a teaching assistant had told one of her students that opposition to gay marriage is ‘offensive speech’. After writing a blog criticising the assistant’s actions, Professor McAdams was suspended with pay.

In the blog, Prof McAdams wrote that the teaching assistant was “using a tactic typical among liberals now. “Opinions with which they disagree are not merely wrong, and are not to be argued against on their merits, but are deemed ‘offensive’ and need to be shut up”.

He cited political commentator Charles Krauthammer, who has described gay marriage as “the newest closing of the leftist mind. To oppose it,” he says, “is nothing but bigotry, akin to racism. Opponents are to be similarly marginalized and shunned, destroyed personally and professionally.”

Prof McAdams concluded: “How many students, especially in politically correct departments like Philosophy, simply stifle their disagreement, or worse yet get indoctrinated into the views of the instructor, since those are the only ideas allowed, and no alternative views are aired?”

Back home, the Government has said that the Equality Act and human rights laws make it unlawful to penalise an individual or an organisation for their beliefs about marriage. Such assurances have been of little help to those who have found their reputation and livelihood attacked for standing by those beliefs.

People like Peter and Hazelmary Bull, ordered to pay £3,600 in damages because their B&B had a policy of only allowing married couples to share a double bed.

Or Adrian Smith, demoted and given a 40 per cent salary cut for saying gay weddings in churches would be “an equality too far”.

Or Lillian Ladele, pushed out of her job as a registrar at Islington Council for asking her managers to accommodate her belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

Or Bryan Barkley axed as a volunteer by the Red Cross for holding up a sign saying ‘No Same Sex Marriage’.

Or the McArthur family, owners of Ashers Baking Company in Northern Ireland being taken to court in March by the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland for declining to decorate a cake with the slogan ‘Support Gay Marriage’.

The comments of McAdams and Krauthammer are the reality in the UK right now. This is why C4M exists.