In the decades since the stirring successes of the 1960s civil-rights movement, opposition to discrimination has become a kind of benchmark social virtue, one embraced by all reasonable people of good will. Just as references to “human dignity” often seem designed to elicit cheers without the need for substantive argument, the proper response to discrimination is to shout (...)
Short Take
Discrimination
HOW DIRTY A WORD?
The remainder of this article is only available to paid subscribers. If you’re not currently a Commonweal subscriber in print or online, an online-only subscription costs just $34 a year. Click here for immediate access.
Duh. Are we arguing about angels on the heads of pins here? Are campus organizations that afraid of the free interchange of ideas? It seems to me that if their arguments are cogent, they would welcome the opportunity to employ them and the associated publicity they would attract. Small minds make small rules.
It does seem awfully small potatoes to be spending time and tax money in federal courts over.
But when society no longer shares important values, there's probably no alternative to paying lawyers and judges and administrators to spend long and expensive hours doing what in a better world no one should be forced to do.
But this isn't really fundamentally important stuff, is it? In the end, as Mike Evens suggests, isn't it just splitting hairs over the definitions of words and their relevance to various more or less applicable laws and regulations?