by Ben Shapiro
• M197D Creating Queer Performance Art: “Performance artist and comedienne Monica Palacios helps you create your very own piece of queer performance art.”41
Campus administration treats gay couples just like straight ones. The UC Regents voted unanimously in May 2002 to give full-pension benefits to same-sex “domestic partners.” “Families with children and their partners need the secure sense that their personal lives they spent years to plan will come through,” explained Thomas Wortham, chair of the English Department at UCLA.42
Same-sex “domestic partner” benefits are also available at Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University,43 Carnegie Mellon University,44 University of Pennsylvania, all the Ivy League schools, Stanford University, MIT,45 and scores of others.
Gay professors’ views of the world are superior to those who are straight, or so they claim. Dr. Rose Maly of UCLA said, according to TenPercent, that “the relative ease with which professors can be open about their sexuality is due in part to the positions of power they hold within a very liberal environment . . . she feels that her homosexuality has helped her to relate better to the marginalized populations she studies, like the elderly.”46 Are all elderly people gay, or is there some other reason only a gay woman can relate to them?
Professor Arthur Little of the UCLA English Department said that being black and gay has helped him “gain deeper perspective on his scholarship,” according to TenPercent.47
“Transgendered folk are perhaps the people that have the most to teach us about the relationship between gender and sexuality because they endure a tremendous amount of pain to be truly who they are, and I think that is very admirable. They have a lot to teach us about courage,” says Professor Peter Hammond of UCLA, who teaches a course on same-sex erotic behavior in foreign cultures.48 I disagree with the professor. Courage is saving a child from a burning building; getting your genitalia surgically altered is merely strange.
SEX WITH CHILDREN
Many professors excuse and even encourage pedophilia—sex between adults and children.
“Though Americans consider intergenerational sex to be evil, it has been permissible or obligatory in many cultures and periods of history,” says Professor Harris Mirkin of the University of Missouri. Mirkin uses “intergenerational sex” as a euphemism for pedophilia in order to imply some similarity between the coupling of a sixty- and thirty-year-old and sex between a twenty-year-old and a ten-year-old. “Children are the last bastion of the old sexual morality,”49 he declares. According to the Kansas City Star, Mirkin believes “there needs to be a more real, open discussion of pedophilia and adult-child sex, not just emotional reactions that call all such relationships ‘evil.’”50
“The category ‘child’ is a rhetorical device for inflaming what is really an irrational set of attitudes” about pedophilia, concurs Professor Gilbert Herdt of San Francisco State University. Herdt is also co-author of a book called Children of Horizons: How Gay and Lesbian Teens Are Leading a New Way Out of the Closet.51 Of course, Herdt is wrong. The category “child” is not a “rhetorical device”; it describes those in a lower age range, incapable of fully giving consent. And it is not “irrational” to want to stop adults from molesting children—it’s called basic human decency.
Still, there is no “inherent harm in sexual expression in childhood,” states an article released by the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco.52 Those who oppose pedophilia are motivated by “self-imposed, moralistic ignorance,” says Professor John Money of Johns Hopkins University.53
Professor Bruce Rind at Temple University agrees. Negative effects on the child-victims of pedophilia are “neither pervasive nor typically intense,” he said in a study published by the American Psychological Association.54 This is the highest form of evil. To rip away the purity and innocence of childhood is the most brutal of acts; to excuse it intellectually is a sign of moral depravity so low that it boggles the mind.
Professors also see statutory rape as normal and acceptable, just another way of “expressing love.” Statutory rape is generally defined as sex, consensual or otherwise, between a minor aged twelve to eighteen and a person over eighteen years of age. It is considered a felony, and carries with it heavy jail time. Professors don’t think that’s right.
Professor Philip Jenkins, formerly of Pennsylvania State University, believes that society should draw a distinction between pedophilia and what he calls ephebophilia, or love of teenagers. He thinks ephebophilia is fine; according to the New York Review of Books, he also advocates that “statutory rape laws should not outlaw such youth-love, since there is nothing in nature (as opposed to local custom) to deny the power of consent to even very young teenagers.” Jenkins also believes that such acts as pedophilia, incest, and rape are “social constructs.” Jenkins’ idea of ephebophilia, or sex with teenagers, is often used to justify cases of man-boy sex in the Catholic clergy.55 It should be legal for a fourteen-year-old girl to have sex with a thirty-year-old man? These children are damaged for life. Is that acceptable to Jenkins?
In 2001, the movie Tadpole premiered. It is a film about a fifteen-year-old boy who is sexually attracted to his stepmother; he ends up having sex with his stepmother’s best friend. Conservatives attacked the movie as morally corrosive. According to Professor Gerald Baldasty of the University of Washington, the conservative uproar over the movie’s exoneration of statutory rape was over-the-top: “The media are pretty conservative in many ways . . . [conservative antagonism amounts to] a Chicken-Little-the sky is falling attitude.”56
At the universities, the sky is falling.
STRANGE, STRANGE BEHAVIOR
A few professors have interesting perspectives on bestiality as well. It’s fine, as long as you’re not too cruel to the animal.
Ugh.
The strangest of the strange is Professor Peter Singer of Princeton University, who wrote an essay for Nerve Magazine in which he lauded that noblest of human activities, bestiality. “Sex with animals does not always involve cruelty,” writes Singer. “Who has not been at a social occasion disrupted by the household dog gripping the legs of a visitor and vigorously rubbing its penis against them? The host usually discourages such activities, but in private not everyone objects to being used by her or his dog in this way, and occasionally mutually satisfying activities may develop.”57 Um . . . what?Maybe Professor Singer thinks it’s “mutually satisfying” to make mad, passionate love to Fido, but we in the real world call that disgusting.
And there are many more who do more than walk their dog. Harvard Professor Marjorie Garber, director of the university’s Center for Literary and Cultural Studies, wrote an entire book on puppy obsession, entitled Dog Love. “Animal contacts . . . have had a long and honorable history in sexual fantasy life,” Garber notes. “Behavior that appears (in practice) as a primary violation of boundary between humans and animals turns out to be (in figure) foundational to received notions of ‘culture’ and ‘civilization.’”58
With the “honorable history” of bestiality in mind, Garber gleefully recounts literary and real-life cases of bestiality in her chapter “Sex and the Single Dog.” Perhaps the most egregious example is her account from Laura Reese’s Topping from Below, describing a “love scene” with a Great Dane.59 Every woman’s fantasy—making out with Marmaduke. Revolting? Disgraceful? Absolutely. But what else should we expect from Professor Garber, the author of such great works as Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life and Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety?
PROMOTING PROMISCUITY
College is supposed to be a learning experience. And there’s no better learning experience than sleeping with everyone in sight, right? The universities think so. They’ll try as hard as they can to make sure that everyone reaches a minimum quota of one hundred sexual partners. Just make sure you use a condom, okay?
The fun’s not restricted to Berkeley. At Mount Holyoke, a small, supposedly straight-laced school, similar action is taking place. Professor Susan Scotto teaches a non-accredited stripping course on university grounds. Scotto, married with two children, enjoys stripping at nudie bars in her off-time. She’s been stripping since her college days, when she was putting herself through school. As Salon.com describes, “The girls got into it immediately. A few started to slowly gyrate their hips, raising their arms over their heads belly dancer-style. . . . The next song that came on was faster, with a sexy bass beat. A few of the girls had loosened up enough by then to take off a few pieces of clothing. . . . Within the next fifteen minutes, all but a few of the girls had shed their outer layers of clothing and were wriggling around in their underwear.”61 Ah, the benefits of a quality education.
During the 1999-2000 school year, Wesleyan students enjoyed the sexual titillation taught by Professor Hope Weissman. She taught College of Letters 289, a course on pornography as a political and cultural practice.
From the course description: “The pornography we study is an art of transgression which impels human sexuality toward, against, and beyond the limits which have traditionally defined civil discourses and practices . . . Our examination accordingly includes the implication of pornography in so-called perverse practices such as voyeurism, bestiality, sadism, and masochism.”62 Course reading material included the Marquis de Sade, Susan Sontag, and Hustler Magazine.
The final course assignment was, in Professor Weissman’s own words, “Just create your own work of pornography.” And so the students did. A student who earned an “A” on the final filmed a male masturbating; the background music was a recording of Ella Fitzgerald. One female student videoed a man’s eyes while he masturbated. Another female student acted out a scene of sexual bondage before the class, wearing black pants, harness-like leather straps that left her nearly topless, and calling for a male to whip her with a cat-o’-nine-tails. “I think [Weissman is] a very brave woman,” says Professor Constance Penley. Sick is more like it.
Kansas University has its own version of Professor Weissman: Professor Dennis Dailey. Dailey’s class, entitled “Human Sexuality in Everyday Life,” shows students three hours of “explicit” videos; most of the videos graphically depict heterosexuals, gays, and lesbians in the act of sex.
When State Senator Susan Wagle (R-Wichita) asked to see the videos to determine whether Dailey’s class was a useful way to spend tax dollars,63 KU faculty immediately demonstrated their support for Dailey and his highly educational class. KU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLA&S) posted a letter on its Web site backing Dailey. The signatories included Kim Wilcox, the dean of the CLA&S and thirty-seven associate deans, directors, and chairs of various academic departments. “We the undersigned . . . join our colleagues in the School of Social Welfare in expressing our unreserved support for Professor Dennis Dailey,” the letter read. “We deplore Senator Wagle’s relentless attack on the teaching, the professionalism, and the character of one of KU’s most highly regarded teachers. . . . We are also disturbed by the wider implications of Senator Wagle’s efforts to impose a form of censorship on what is taught and how it is taught at the University, with legal and monetary punishment for noncompliance. The principle of academic freedom exists precisely to protect those engaged in the pursuit and exchange of knowledge . . . from the arbitrary external imposition of belief and ideologies held by individuals and groups in the larger society.”64 The moral relativism here is stunning. Instead of condemning a professor for showing pornography in the classroom, professors attack a state senator for opposing the use of tax dollars for the perversion of students. Incredible.
Wesleyan and Kansas University aren’t alone. Emerson College, New York University, Northwestern University, Arizona State University, and several campuses in the University of California system all offer classes on pornography. “To not study pornography is to ignore an absolutely pervasive phenomenon in our culture,’’ explains Professor Linda Williams of the University of California at Berkeley.65
Professors are major advocates of “sexual experimentation,” which includes “hooking up” - no-strings-attached sexual encounters ranging from kissing to sex. Professor Lyndall Ellingson of California State University-Chico, says that college students should have lots of sexual partners and avoid long-term relationships: “That’s what they are supposed to be doing, experimenting and risking and finding who they are.”66 Dr. Ruth Westheimer of New York University, told a crowd of students at Brown University to become sexually literate, explore their bodies, and avoid limiting their sexual habits.67
It’s working. Research conducted by the Institute for American Values’ Courtship Research Team shows that 40 percent of undergraduate women had “hooked up” at least once, and 10 percent had “hooked up” six times or more.68 So much for the purity of youth.
GETTING IN ON THE ACTION
For obvious reasons, professors oppose university bans on teacher-student sex. Such bans restrict rights of sexual expression . . . and well, why can’t the professors have fun too?
“In the olden days when I was a student (back in the last century) hooking up with professors was more or less part of the curriculum,” writes Laura Kipnis of Northwestern University. “Whether or not it’s smart, plenty of professors I know, male and female, have hooked up with students, for shorter and longer durations.”69
Professor Barry Dank of California State University at Long Beach feels that he has the God-given right to sleep with his students. Dank founded a group dedicated to preserving this crucial liberty: Consenting Academics for Sexual Equity. He calls restrictions on such relationships “an attack on young women,” and claims that if universities ban student-teacher playtime, young women will lose the “freedom to decide what they want and what they don’t want.”70 Dank married one of his former students, twenty years his junior.71
At William and Mary College, student-faculty relationships were finally prohibited after two incidents. First, a former creative writing teacher wrote an article for GQ claiming that he had an affair with a married student, whose husband committed suicide after finding out. A few months after the GQ article, an anthropology professor resigned his position after allegations surfaced that he had impregnated a student who worked for him; the professor then made a series of threatening phone calls to the student after discovering her pregnancy.72
Many students oppose a ban as strongly as do professors—after all, how else can they pull up their grades? “It might not be the classiest thing to sleep with a teacher to improve your grade,” explains University of California at Santa Barbara political science major Andrea Bravo, “but I’d definitely say that there are far worse things that go on at this campus.”73
SEX-EDUCATION PREDATORS
“The majority of young people coming to . . . college have no basic sexuality education, even human anatomy, how to protect themselves, let alone what’s the meaning of sexual practice,” says Professor Gil Herdt of San Francisco State University, which offers a master’s degree in human sexuality.74
Universities feel “obligated” to teach students about sex. To that end, they teach about intercourse with members of the opposite sex. They teach about intercourse with members of the same sex. They teach about int
ercourse with children of either sex. They even teach about intercourse with members of a different species. And they say everything’s natural. This is what they’re teaching. And they’re doing it on our tax and tuition dollars.
6
SAVING THE EARTH
Professors have a mission, one so dangerous and terrifying that Superman would flinch: They’re out to save the world—with environmentalism. And not the wholesome, green-thumb brand of environmentalism that encourages conservation, but the extremist environmentalism that calls for bans on SUVs, blames American enterprise for all pollution, and tries to prevent all lumberjacking (as if that would prevent forest fires). As Professor Robert Nelson of the University of Maryland says, environmentalism is a “secular religion” to the professors.1
Professors teach that every environmental problem is a crisis. Global warming will burn us all to a crisp. Drilling for oil in Alaska will kill every caribou on Earth. Use of pesticides will create giant superbugs that will rise up and rule the planet. Biotechnology will create new and more horrible problems, like people with nine arms. And so on.
It filters down to the students. A Gallup poll conducted in 2000 shows that 80 percent of college students feel that the environment is already deteriorating.2 I can’t even count the number of times I have spoken to classmates on the subject and been screamed at for suggesting that the environment isn’t in terrible shape.
It’s a terrifying thought, but there it is. The professors are creating a whole new generation of Ralph Nader clones, who will see the Earth as a wonderful place, except for man, the scourge of the universe. Man creates pollution; man promotes environmental degradation; man is greedy, corrupt, and evil.
“You should be friendly to the microorganisms—it’s really their world,” said a UCLA biology professor in one Life Science class I took. “We’re just interlopers.”3 And this is how professors feel—man should live in a mud hut, drink rainwater, and eat vegetables so as not to harm his “natural environment.”