Pro-life students at Marquette, a Catholic, Jesuit college in Milwaukee, applied for and got permission to mount an anti-abortion display on campus for 48 hours. Three times during that period the display, consisting mostly of small pink and blue flags representing unborn females and males, was vandalized by campus feminists and their allies.
Pro-life messages were covered up and coat hangers were thrown around. The administration, not known for standing up to Social Justice Warriors on campus, issued a vapid free -speech statement but took no action.
The Feminist campus group Empowerment put out a statement claiming that 1) their right to free speech justified defacing a display they disagree with, 2) they have “‘a deep respect and appreciation for our differing beliefs…” and the necessary healing among groups, but the pro-life display “directly undermines this healing by further stigmatizing abortion. Rather than fostering discussion and understanding, the display is damaging to the mental health of students and a disturbing act of public shaming.” (A new argument: Disagreement damages mental health, something the Founders forgot to put in the First Amendment.)
Rather than fostering discussion and understanding, the display is damaging to the mental health of students and a disturbing act of public shaming.” (A new argument: Disagreement damages mental health, something the Founders forgot to put in the First Amendment.)
Final point: a number of the vandals objected strongly to the pink and blue flags, apparently because such flags re-enforce the gender binary and therefore fail to support the transgender agenda.
Now, the New Red Guard: “a fanaticised student mass paramilitary social movement” mobilized, not by Mao Zedong…at least not directly, but rather by the burgeoning success of the so-called Progressive Left agenda of early 21st century America…
Blazing into national prominence with the forced removal of Missouri’s president & chancellor in 2015, the meaning & intent of our New Cultural Revolution was first given voice by Harvard’s Comrade Korn in February, 2014, (her article entitled, “The Doctrine of Academic Freedom”, subhead: The Red Line…). In ringingly strident tones she proclaimed and accordingly asked: “No academic question is ever “free” from political realities. If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, WHY SHOULD WE PUT UP WITH RESEARCH THAT COUNTERS OUR GOALS SIMPLY IN THE NAME OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM?” Instead, with revolutionary fervor, she “propose(d) a more rigorous standard: … “Academic Justice”. And what was and will be “Academic Justice”? Her answer was abundantly clear: “WHEN (WE) OBSERVE RESEARCH PROMOTING OR JUSTIFYING OPPRESSION, (WE) SHOULD ENSURE THAT THIS RESEARCH DOES NOT CONTINUE.”
More than two years later we see proof of the Cultural Cleansing everywhere. Here, at Marquette –formerly a Catholic / Jesuit college…formerly “committed to the unfettered pursuit of truth under the mutually illuminating powers of human intelligence and Christian faith. “… formerly supporting “Catholic beliefs & practices” (including, of course, the belief that abortion was a grave evil & mortal sin) — pro-life displays are now joyously & righteously defaced & removed as we celebrate the New Freedom!
“Yes,” Comrade Napoleon, of the feminist group ‘Empowerment’ affirmed, “of course those Capitalist, Imperialist, Catholic Dogs have the right to Free Speech. And yes, we have “a deep respect and appreciation for our differing beliefs”… but truly our wondrous New Red Guard is all about “healing among groups”, and the pro-life display directly undermines this healing by further stigmatizing the murder of unborn infants.”
““No one believes more firmly than we do that all animals are equal. …and I would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you Revisionists, you Royalists, you backward thinking Catholic Czarists might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”
Where indeed…