Keep on truckin'

Remember last summer, when the "Jade Helm" training exercise in Texas got a whole bunch of conspiracy theorists stirred up about how the military (acting under Obama's orders, of course) was about to take out the governor of Texas and institute martial law, complete with guillotining of innocent civilians?

And most importantly, how none of that happened?

Well, here we go again.

A couple of days ago, a guy named Jeff Stern was on a highway near Lexington, Virginia, and noted the presence of several military vehicles labeled "UN" on the road with him.  He took pictures, and posted them to his Facebook page along with the caption, "Can't begin to tell you how many of these I passed today on 81 near Lexington VA.  Interesting times ahead!"

And with that, we're off to the races.

[image from a Facebook screen grab]

Posts began popping up all over with many and varied hypotheses about what was going on with the trucks.  One claimed that these were trucks containing troops intended as peacekeepers during the Republican and Democratic Conventions, scheduled for later this month; another that it was the first sign of martial law being declared; a third said that they were heading south to put down an upcoming armed insurrection that was going to declare Texas to be an independent country; a fourth, predictably, that President Obama is up to something, probably in cahoots with his Muslim buddies; and the fifth and most popular one, that this was the precursor to an invasion by a coalition from the United Nations that was so completely sneaky and top secret that they rode around on an interstate highway in trucks labeled "UN."  

So naturally, every conspiracy theory site in the entire world was buzzing with what this could all be about.  And if you ever want to truly despair of the future of the human race, go to a conspiracy theory site and read the comments.  Because remember the fundamental rule of the internet: the comments section is always weirder, stupider, and crazier than the article to which they're appended.  Here, that sets the bar pretty high.  Take, for example, the following comment on the site Hidden Americans:

Nothing should surprise you as the Obama administration has almost revoked our constitution with the help of congress and the supreme courts [sic] insane decisions.  We can't be surprised at anything that is going down.  We are not going to be surprised if somehow this election is cancelled and Obama declares marshall [sic] law.

I thought Marshall Law had something to do with rebuilding Western Europe after World War II.  But I could be remembering wrong.

Fortunately, while the conspiracy theorists were busy having multiple orgasms over the latest Black Ops, a few people with some degree of common sense did some digging and found out what was really happening.  And it turned out to be... boring.  The actual story was broken in The Blaze, because the only thing that would make this whole thing more ridiculous is having a news site run by Glenn Beck be the voice of reason and common sense:

The U.N., an international organization that does not have authorities in the United States, was simply having their trucks manufactured in Virginia at Alpine Armoring, Inc, an international supplier and manufacturer of armored vehicles. 

A representative from Alpine confirmed to The Blaze that the vehicles were, in fact, purchased by the U.N. and were being delivered to a nearby port for use outside the United States. 

When the photos first made headlines, one person who commented on a post by Facebook user Jeff Stern, who shared the images, said, “These are manufactured in Danville. Thats why you saw them in VA. They were being delivered.”

Which, of course, had exactly zero effect on the conspiracy theorists, who immediately began to leap all over the story in The Blaze, claiming that it was TOO martial law, dammit.  Here are just a few of the comments I read before my prefrontal cortex cried "uncle:"

• ANY UN vehicle in the US is illegal AND a legitimate TARGET.  NO UN “resolution” SUPER-CEDES the US Constitution….
• Lock and Load, this is why the 2nd amendment exist
• the ones for our neighborhoods are unmarked.
• Sure, they were just manufactured in the U.S. and are being sent overseas.  Yeah, that’s the ticket and if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor and Benghazi was caused by some stupid video that a Jew produced.  When the anti-Christ takes over America, it will be like taking candy from a baby.

And then, there's my favorite one:

• Like they would tell you they are prepositioning equipment to seize control. lol They don’t even need to preposition just put in a large order and then drop the troops in them and take over.

I wonder how you "preposition equipment?"  "Of the tank, by the tank, for the tank...?"

So yeah.  I have to keep telling myself that the people who post these things are the loud, insane minority.  Because if I start focusing too hard on the fact that these people vote, I end up curled up in a fetal position under my desk for the rest of the day.

In any case, there you have it; this summer's answer to "Jade Helm."  Which will result in nothing, just as Jade Helm did -- no martial law, no executions, no overthrowing of state governments, no troops storming in and taking over small-town America.  In fact, the only thing Jade Helm seemed to accomplish was giving Alex Jones something to rant about for six months, which is probably what will happen again here.  But because the conspiracy theorists never seem to remember that they have a batting average that is so close to zero as to make no difference, the next time some odd-looking vehicle is spotted in Minnesota or somewhere, we'll start all over again from the beginning.

Because conspiracy theories are the gifts that keep on giving.

State-supported abuse

In the past few years, the religious right has cultivated an attitude of persecution amongst its followers.  It's worked; we hear over and over about the War on Christmas, how anti-discrimination laws are restricting the rights of the religious, even how the Evil Federal Government and Their Activist Judges are plotting to round up Christians and put them in jail for their beliefs.

And instead of being laughed into well-deserved obscurity, these ranting loons have actually convinced large numbers of apparently sensible people that Christians are a persecuted minority in the United States, despite the fact that 83% of Americans self-identify as Christian.  Also despite the fact that churches and church property are tax-exempt.

And also despite the fact that in many states, Christian private schools receive little to no oversight from state education departments.

I didn't realize the extent to which this can go awry until I read the exposé published last week in the online news source Alabama.  Written by Anna Claire Vollers, this article is entitled "Former Students Share Harrowing Stories of Life Inside Alabama's Worst Religious Private School," and was as gruesome and hard to read as the title would lead you to believe -- but I strongly urge all of you to read it, because it's brilliantly written and there is more to the story than the few details I have room for in this post.

Under the guise of providing religious guidance and education to troubled teens, the Restoration Youth Academy of Prichard (outside of Mobile, Alabama) was allowed for years to engage in practices that as an educator I can only describe as "destroying children."  Teenagers were shackled, beaten, put in solitary confinement for speaking up for themselves or others, deprived of food and clothing.  One 14-year-old was confined naked in an "isolation room;" a girl made to stand in front of the others while the leaders called her derogatory names.   The only curriculum provided was ACE (Accelerated Christian Education) which is an ultra-fundamentalist school curriculum that teaches young-earth creationism and that anything other than traditional gender roles is sinful.

Lucas Greenfield, who when 14 was locked into an eight-foot-by-eight-foot room with blank walls and a single bare light bulb, said, "When you're inside a tiny room where all you can see is four walls, you start – I won't say hallucinating, but you start going crazy.  All you think about is, what's the best way to kill myself?  Is there any way out of this?  This is ridiculous.  I hope I die...  This kind of program should not be allowed to exist.  All because you put a cross on top of a building and call it a Christian program, we're supposed to overlook all that happens in those places?"

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

There are stories of mandatory boxing matches, often deliberately pitting younger and weaker children against stronger and more aggressive ones.

"They'd have the bigger kid beat the shit out of the other kid," said Greenfield.  "They'd make us form a big circle. You can't get out and you can't get back in.  They would always have somebody, normally me, pray before we'd have the boxing match. Will [head instructor William Knott] told me to pray nobody got killed.  I was like, really?  You're the one making them fight."

Greenfield is one of the lucky ones.  He was freed in 2015, and has completed his high school diploma, and has plans for his future.  Others still suffer from PTSD and anger issues.  Many have dropped out of the public schools to which they were transferred after being released.  Several have retreated into drug abuse.

And all of this went on for years, with the state turning a blind eye.  Vollers writes:

Alabama law (Code of Alabama 16-1-11.1) says state regulation of any religiously affiliated school would be an unconstitutional burden on religious activities and directly violate the Alabama Religious Freedom Amendment.  State law also says the state has no compelling interest to burden nonpublic schools with licensing or regulation. 

While Alabama does have a few basic reporting requirements for private schools, it exempts those that are church schools in every instance.  Teachers do not have to undergo background checks and schools do not have to be inspected.  While many church-affiliated schools do choose to pursue licensing or accreditation by outside agencies, it's not a mandate in Alabama.

The good news -- if we can call anything connected to this nightmare "good news" -- is that Restoration Youth Academy has been closed, and its owner, Pastor John David Young, head instructor William Knott, and guidance counselor Aleshia Moffett, were arrested and charged with multiple counts of aggravated child abuse.  They are scheduled to stand trial this fall, and astonishingly, deny all wrongdoing.

What sickens me most about all of this is that these three monsters spent years overseeing the ruin of children's lives, and because they are a "religious institution" the state made no effort to check on what they were doing.  There are children who were imprisoned in RYA (yes, I use the word "imprison" deliberately, although people in prison are treated more humanely than this) who will never recover.

It's time that state and federal officials recognize that religious institutions, like any human-created and human-run endeavor, can be wonderful and life-enriching or sadistic and destructive.  There is no justification (and never has been) for the government giving carte blanche to places like RYA simply because they're afraid of being accused of a campaign of persecution by the religious.  

Giving proper oversight to churches and church schools and treating them as equivalent to any other organization aren't encroaching on "religious freedom;" it's doing what government should do, which is to protect the rights and safety of the citizens from the unethical, unscrupulous, and as is the case here -- the downright evil.

A win against hypocrisy

A couple of days ago, it was "Heterosexual Pride Day," which gave me an opportunity to reflect on the long, hard road I've had coming out and being accepted as a straight white cis-gender male.  A day to stand up tall and not be afraid to be who I am.

Or as the rest of the world calls it, every other damn day of the year.

I suppose the only cheering thing about this dazzling display of "I Don't Get It" is that it's indicative that we've made some strides in accepting that sexual orientation and gender identification aren't as either/or as the bigots of the world would like us to believe.  We're finally approaching a place where LGBT individuals have both recognition and a voice, which means that inevitably there's going to be some backlash.

The fact that we're moving forward, if too slowly for a lot of us, is supported by news out of (of all places) Mississippi, where a federal judge has blocked House Bill 1523, euphemistically called by its supporters the "Religious Freedom Law."  Because in some people's minds "religious freedom" apparently means "freedom to discriminate."  These are the same people who worship a figure who is described in the bible as socializing with (and caring about) prostitutes and tax collectors, and yet somehow they still think it's a sin to bake a cake for a gay couple.

Fortunately, U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves saw through this hypocrisy, and wrote sixty pages' worth of opinion tearing the claim to little shreds.

Judge Carlton W. Reeves [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Here is a bit of the actual opinion:

The Establishment Clause is violated because persons who hold contrary religious beliefs are unprotected – the State has put its thumb on the scale to favor some religious beliefs over others.  Showing such favor tells “nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and . . . adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.” Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290, 309-10 (2000)...  And the Equal Protection Clause is violated by HB 1523’s authorization of arbitrary discrimination against lesbian, gay, transgender, and unmarried persons... 

As the Obergefell majority makes clear, the First Amendment must protect the rights of [religious] individuals, even when they are agents of government, to voice their personal objections – this, too, is an essential part of the conversation – but the doctrine of equal dignity prohibits them from acting on those objections, particularly in their official capacities, in a way that demeans or subordinates LGBT individuals... 

In this case, moreover, it is difficult to see the compelling government interest in favoring three enumerated religious beliefs over others.  “[T]he goal of basic ‘fairness’ is hardly furthered by the Act’s discriminatory preference” for one set of beliefs. Edwards, 482 U.S. at 588.  It is not within our tradition to respect one clerk’s religious objection to issuing a same-sex marriage license, but refuse another clerk’s religious objection to issuing a marriage license to a formerly-divorced person.  The government is not in a position to referee the validity of Leviticus 18:22 (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”) versus Leviticus 21:14 (“A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, or an harlot, these shall he not take.”)...

Religious freedom was one of the building blocks of this great nation, and after the nation was torn apart, the guarantee of equal protection under law was used to stitch it back together.  But HB 1523 does not honor that tradition of religion freedom, nor does it respect the equal dignity of all of Mississippi’s citizens.  It must be enjoined.

To which I would only have added, "Booyah!"  (Illustrating why I did not choose law as a career.)  I think it was that second-to-last paragraph that I enjoyed the most; pointing out that the folks who would like to exercise their bigotry against LGBT people usually don't blink an eye about other things that are prohibited in the bible -- like divorced people remarrying, like eating shellfish, like women stating their opinions on religious matters.  (The latter was considered so important that it appears in two places, 1 Timothy 2:12 and 1 Corinthians 14:34 -- the actual quotes are, "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence" and "Women should remain silent in the churches.  They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.")

The upshot of it all is that we're making progress toward treating all people with dignity -- however slow the motion forward is, we are moving forward.  And to Judge Carlton Reeves, I can only say thank you on behalf of my LGBT friends.  It's about time someone in an official capacity stands up and calls out these "religious freedom laws" for the bigoted hypocrisy they are.

Vandals for god

When I wrote last year about ISIS's systematic destruction of the archeological treasure-trove in Palmyra, Syria, one of my readers stated, "And there you have one more difference between the Muslims and the Christians; you don't see Christians participating in this kind of wanton destruction."

After a brief exchange in which I at least got her to add the words "... any more" in the interest of historical accuracy, I let the matter drop.  Whether the aggressive proselytizing by Christian missionaries in the 20th century, especially in Africa, could be looked upon as accomplishing the same thing was a direction I didn't have the inclination to take the conversation.  In any case, arguments about religion rarely ever accomplish anything but hard feelings on both sides.

And to be fair, the scale on which ISIS and the Taliban have destroyed the cultural heritage of Syria and Afghanistan is far beyond anything similar we've seen recently.  But that doesn't mean the same sort of impulses don't drive some of the Christian fringe.  They just have less opportunity to exercise their crazy ideas.

Enter the Christians who are working in Mexico to destroy the iconic Mexican pyramids because they're "used for devil worship."

Authorities in the village of San Bartolo Tutotepec are investigating damage to the 7,000 year old pyramid of the same name, after Jehovah's Witnesses took credit last month for similar damage to the Makonikha sanctuary in Hidalgo.

"We are following the word of God," a spokesperson for the church told Mexican news source Telesur after the first incident.  "We believe that the sites are still used for traditional rituals that are not Christian and may involve devil worship."

The pyramid of San Bartolo Tutotepec [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

In fact, San Bartolo is used for religious observances by the Otomi people to worship and give sacrifices to their deities of earth and water.  But apparently there are those who follow the general scheme of "if it's different than what I believe, it's devilry," and think this equates to "worshiping Satan."

Mexican authorities have stated that it may not be the same people who participated in the earlier incident, and are also investigating some local villagers who have voiced the same opinions.  But whoever turns out to be responsible, it comes from the same motives; the idea that it's somehow virtuous to be vandals for god.

I think what galls me most about this is that these people, and others like them, think that the beliefs of others don't matter.  They are not content to follow the tenets of their religion insofar as it guides their own ethics and morals; they take the further step of claiming that god is directing them to control how everyone else lives.

Plus, of course, there's the tragedy of irreparable damage to a beautiful structure that has withstood 7,000 years of human use and natural wear and tear.  The idea that these people would think they had the right to walk and and vandalize it makes me feel a little sick.

I'm also amazed at how far some people will go to give the vandals a bye simply because they're Christians.  I was discussing this with a friend a couple of days ago, and he said, "You can see why they think it's devil worship.  You do know that those temples were once used for human sacrifice, don't you?"

Yes, well, they aren't now, are they?  If we were to tear down every structure that had ever been devoted to torture, execution, and man's general inhumanity to man, we wouldn't have much left.  Starting with the Tower of London and working our way outwards from there.

So I can't find any mitigating circumstances here.  I hope that the vandals get caught before they can do any further damage, and that "wait, it's my religion" isn't pulled out as some kind of Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.

Viral stupidity

My dad used to say that ignorance was only skin deep, but stupid goes all the way to the bone.

There's a lot to that.  Ignorance can be cured; after all, the etymology of the word comes from a- (not) and -gnosis (knowledge).  There are plenty of things I'm ignorant about, but I'm always willing to cure that ignorance by working at understanding.

Stupidity, on the other hand, is a different matter.  There's something willful about stupidity.  There's a stubborn sense of "I don't know and I don't care," leading to my dad's wise assessment that on some level stupidity is a choice.  Stupidity is not simply ignorance; it's ignorance plus the decision that ignorance is good enough.

What my dad may have not realized, though, is that there's a third circle of hell, one step down even from stupidity.  Science historian Robert Proctor of Stanford University has made this his area of study, a field he has christened agnotology -- the "study of culturally constructed ignorance."

Proctor is interested in something that makes stupidity look positively innocent; the deliberate cultivation of stupidity by people who are actually intelligent.  This happens when special interest groups foster confusion among laypeople for their own malign purposes, and see to it that such misinformation goes viral.  For example, this is clearly what is happening with respect to anthropogenic climate change.  There are plenty of people in the petroleum industry who are smart enough to read and understand scientific papers, who can evaluate data and evidence, who can follow a rational argument.  That they do so, and still claim to be unconvinced, is stupidity.

That they then lie and misrepresent the science in order to cast doubt in the minds of less well-informed people in order to push a corporate agenda is one step worse.

"People always assume that if someone doesn't know something, it's because they haven't paid attention or haven't yet figured it out," Proctor says.  "But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what's true and what's not."

[image courtesy of Nevit Dilman and the Wikimedia Commons]

The same sort of thing accounts for the continuing claims that President Obama is a secret Muslim, that Hillary Clinton was personally responsible for the Benghazi attacks, that jet impacts were insufficient to bring down the Twin Towers on 9/11 so it must have been an "inside job."  Proctor says the phenomenon is even responsible for the spread of creationism -- although I would argue that this isn't quite the same thing.  Most of the people pushing creationism are, I think, true believers, not cynical hucksters who know perfectly well that what they're saying isn't true and are only spreading the message to bamboozle the masses.  (Although I have to admit that the "why are there still monkeys?" and "the Big Bang means that nothing exploded and made everything" arguments are beginning to seem themselves like they're one step lower than stupidity, given how many times these objections have been answered.)

"Ignorance is not just the not-yet-known, it’s also a political ploy, a deliberate creation by powerful agents who want you 'not to know'," Proctor says.  "We live in a world of radical ignorance, and the marvel is that any kind of truth cuts through the noise.  Even though knowledge is accessible, it does not mean it is accessed."

David Dunning of Cornell University, who gave his name to the Dunning-Kruger effect (the idea that people systematically overestimate their own knowledge), agrees with Proctor.  "While some smart people will profit from all the information now just a click away, many will be misled into a false sense of expertise," Dunning says.  "My worry is not that we are losing the ability to make up our own minds, but that it’s becoming too easy to do so.  We should consult with others much more than we imagine.  Other people may be imperfect as well, but often their opinions go a long way toward correcting our own imperfections, as our own imperfect expertise helps to correct their errors."

All of which, it must be said, is fairly depressing.  That we can have more information at our fingertips than ever before in history, and still be making the same damned misjudgments, is a dismal conclusion.  It is worse still that there are people who are taking advantage of this willful ignorance to push popular opinion around for their own gain.

So my dad is right; ignorance is curable, stupidity reaches the bone.  And what Proctor and Dunning study, I think, goes past the bone, all the way to the heart.

Hotfoot

I am often stunned by the level of credulity exhibited by some folks.

Take, for example, the incident that occurred a few days ago at a four-day motivational seminar called "Unleashing the Power Within" hosted by speaker Tony Robbins.  According to the article, Robbins's seminars cost between $1,000 and $3,000 to attend, and the high point of the thing is that you get to walk barefoot on red-hot coals.

[image courtesy of photographer Jens Buurgaard Nielsen and the Wikimedia Commons]

Me, I'd pay $1,000 to avoid having to walk on red-hot coals.  But these people evidently thought this was a great idea.  And to be fair, apparently there are circumstances in which you can walk on coals and not get burned -- and a good, physics-based explanation of how that can happen.

The problem is, it doesn't always work out that way, and when it doesn't, major ouchies occur.  Which is what happened last week in Dallas, Texas...

... to thirty seminar participants.

Now I can see how one person could get burned, or two, or maybe even three.  But you'd think that when the 23rd person shrieked "HOLY FUCK MY FEET ARE BURNING OFF" that the remaining participants would go, "Okay, maybe not."  What did Robbins do, line the participants up in decreasing order of intelligence, or something?

So Dallas Fire Rescue was called in, and thirty people were treated for injuries.

"It felt like someone had taken a hot iron and pressed it against my feet " said seminar participant Paul Gold of West Palm Beach, Florida, who suffered second-degree burns on both feet.  "In hindsight, jumping off would have been a fantastic idea.  But when you're in the spirit of the moment, you're kinda focused on one task."

I dunno, I think I'd have to be pretty damn focused not to think of getting off a bed of hot coals when my feet are about to burst into flame.

Gold added that he thought he'd signed a hold-harmless waiver before participating.  He signed something, he was certain about that, but isn't sure what it said.

Which supports my contention that the firewalkers weren't chosen for their critical thinking ability.

Another participant, Jacqueline Luxemberg, said that part of the problem was that a lot of the participants weren't following the leaders' directions, but were concentrating more on taking selfies and videos.  So look for a rash of Facebook photos with captions like, "This is me just before my lower legs caught on fire."

Look, I'm all for facing your fears.  There is something pretty empowering about facing down something you thought you couldn't handle, achieving a goal you were sure you would never manage.  But there are far better ways to do it than tromping across a bed of red-hot charcoal briquets.  For one thing, whether you get burned or not has nothing to do with your mental state -- it's physics, pure and simple.  Second, there's a decent chance you'll end up with blisters all over the soles of your feet, which has got to make walking uncomfortable for a week or two thereafter.

And third, you're putting thousands of dollars into the hands of people who are trying to convince you that walking on hot coals is a great idea.  Myself, I can think of lots of other uses for a thousand bucks than giving it to Tony Robbins.  Add to that the woo-woo mystical trappings a lot of those people weave into their presentations, and I'll get my motivation elsewhere, thanks.

Taking offense

A few days ago, Neil Gaiman wrote the following perceptive words:

I was reading a book (about interjections, oddly enough) yesterday which included the phrase “In these days of political correctness…” talking about no longer making jokes that denigrated people for their culture or for the colour of their skin.  And I thought, “That’s not actually anything to do with ‘political correctness’.  That’s just treating other people with respect.” 

Which made me oddly happy. I started imagining a world in which we replaced the phrase “politically correct” wherever we could with “treating other people with respect”, and it made me smile.

You should try it.  It’s peculiarly enlightening. 

I know what you’re thinking now.  You’re thinking “Oh my god, that’s treating other people with respect gone mad!”

Which I agree with, for the most part.  Gaiman is right that people often use "political correctness" as a catchall to cover their own asses, to excuse themselves for holding opinions that are bigoted or narrow-minded.  To me, the phrase has come to be almost as much of a red flag as when someone starts a conversation with, "I don't mean to sound racist/sexist/homophobic, but..."

On the other hand, there is an undeniable tendency in our culture to equate "offensiveness" with "having our opinions challenged."  Witness, for example, the professors at the University of Northern Colorado who are being investigated for offending their students -- by presenting, and asking students to consider, opposing viewpoints.

One professor was reported for asking students to think and write about conflicting views of homosexuality in our society.  As part of the assignment, the professor had asked students to consider the following:  "GodHatesFags.com: Is this harmful?  Is this acceptable?  Is it legal?  Is this Christianity?  And gay marriage: Should it be legal?  Is homosexuality immoral as Christians suggest?"

Note that the professor wasn't saying that homosexuality is immoral, or that the answer to any of the other questions posed above was "yes;" (s)he was asking the students to consider the claim, and creating an evidence-based argument for or against it.  The student filing the complaint didn't see it that way.

"I do not believe that students should be required to listen to their own rights and personhood debated," the student wrote.  "[This professor] should remove these topics from the list of debate topics.  Debating the personhood of an entire minority demographic should not be a classroom exercise, as the classroom should not be an actively hostile space for people with underprivileged identities."

Because learning how to counter fallacious arguments with facts, and answer loaded questions rationally, somehow creates an "actively hostile space."

[image courtesy of photographer Fredler Brave and the Wikimedia Commons]

The second professor's case is even more telling, as it came about because (s)he had assigned students to read the famous article by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt called "The Coddling of the American Mind," which addresses precisely the problem I'm writing about in this post.  After reading the paper, the professor asked the students to consider the questions raised by the article, specifically the issues of "trigger warnings" for minorities such as homosexuals and transgender individuals in reading controversial material.

"I would just like the professor to be educated about what trans is and how what he said is not okay because as someone who truly identifies as a transwomen [sic] I was very offended and hurt by this," one student wrote in the complaint.

The university complaints office backed the student.  The professor was instructed not to interject opinions into his/her lessons -- including those of the authors who wrote the article.

So there's something to be gained by having students avoid all opinions that they disagree with?  If they think they're not going to run into those once they leave college, they're fooling themselves -- and if they haven't been pushed into thinking through how to respond to bigots and people who are simply ignorant, they're basically choosing to be intellectually disarmed adults.

Students should be forced to consider all sorts of viewpoints.  Not to change their minds, necessarily, but to allow them to think through their own beliefs.  I tell my Critical Thinking students on the first day of class, "You might well leave this class at the end of the semester with your beliefs unchanged. You will not leave with your beliefs unchallenged."

Now, note that I am not in any way trying to excuse teachers (on any level) who try to use their classrooms as a field for proselytizing.  I only have the one source for the incidents at the University of Northern Colorado, and there might be more to the story than I've read.  If these professors were using their positions of authority to press their own bigoted viewpoints about gender and sexual identity on their students, they deserve censure.

But I suspect that's not what's going on, here.  We've become a polarized society, with half of us lambasting the political correctness movement and simultaneously feeling as if their right to free speech makes it acceptable to offend, and the other half afraid to voice an opinion for fear of treading on some hypersensitive individual's toes.  What's lost is the opportunity for civil discourse -- which, after all, is one of the best and most reliable pathways toward learning and understanding.