The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, known more colloquially as "Virginia Tech," has unleashed a storm of controversy over recent actions by its governing board. As the Washington Post reported, Virginia Tech's board voted to (1) end race-based preferences (i.e., affirmative action) in admissions, hiring, and financial aid, (2) eliminate a policy of barring discrimination based on sexual orientation, and (3) bar advocates of extreme political views (that is, who espoused breaking laws) from speaking on campus, in the wake of a controversial talk by a militant "Earth First" activist.
Not surprisingly, most liberal groups have condemned the board's actions -- although if a conservative speaker had triggered the ban on espousing extreme views, I somehow doubt these groups would have found that to be unwarranted.
Some of us, however, happen to oppose both discrimination based on sexual orientation and all discrimination based on race, including the "reverse" discrimination of race-based preferences. Thus, we break with both the pro-preference liberals and the anti-gay right in arguing, consistently, that individual merit or need, and not group membership, should be what matters.
As kind of an odd twist that shows how things aren't always so black and white, or straightforward, or (gee it's getting hard to find a nondiscriminatory metaphor), Virginia Tech's board, at the same time it eliminated its anti-discrimination policy for gays, announced the hiring of a lesbian professor, Dr. Shelli Fowler, to fill a one-year position at the university. This comes less than a year after the board declined to approve Dr. Fowler's contract for a permanent faculty position. The case is a bit convoluted, since Dr. Fowler's original job offer was tied to the hiring of her partner, Dr. Karen DePauw, as a graduate dean. This then triggered anonymous anti-gay e-mails to board members, leading to the revoking of Dr. Fowler's job offer -- whew.
Virginia's statewide gay lobby, Equality Virginia, put out a press release that praised the hiring of Dr. Fowler but criticized the ending of Virginia Tech's affirmative action program. At least as posted on the group's website as I write this, there is -- remarkably -- only criticism of Virginia Tech's ending of its affirmative action program, and no mention of its eliminating the anti-discrimation policy based on sexual orientation!
Savaged Again.
While a number of people have disagreed with my criticism of the
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's strenuously
lobbying advertisers to keep off MSNBC's "Savage Nation" talk show,
hosted by controversial conservative Michael Savage, I was glad (so
to speak) to see that the Washington Blade's Chris Crain penned
an editorial that also raised questions about GLAAD's action.
He writes:
It's one thing to pressure a network to keep dangerous "expert" misinformation off the air, it's quite another to use "political correctness" to silence a loud-mouthed foe. -- The best response to simple-minded bigotry of the type spouted by the "idiot Savage" is more speech, not less.
Some, of course, contend that GLAAD is simply informing advertisers about Savage's past comments so that they can choose not to advertise. Grow up! The threat to label advertisers as "anti-gay," or even to organize "the GLBT community" to boycott their products, is behind the ad cancellations. If you want to defend intimidating advertisers, fine, but let's be honest about what's happening here.
Conservatives Coming to Terms.
Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg writes in
his syndicated column about his meeting with leaders of the
Human Rights Campaign, the large Washington-based lesbigay lobby.
Says Goldberg:
For many conservatives, there's a no-surrender attitude toward anything remotely gay. Some religious conservatives write off gays as abominations with the same gusto that some gays invoke bigotry. But even among more secular conservatives, the right has its own version of "don't ask, don't tell." Conservatives don't see and don't hear. "
[C]onservatives rightly criticize male promiscuity." But at the same time, we tell homosexuals that the only universal institution successful at civilizing men in this regard -- marriage -- is forever closed to them. Talk about a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't scenario. This is why I favor some form of civil union for same-sex couples".
This, I"d argue, is an example of how -- slowly -- progress gets
made through dialog with conservatives.
--Stephen H. Miller
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