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Shaking
Campus Liberalism
How
Christian Students Defied the Pro-gay Faculty, and Won
by
Theodore
Winston Pike
Today,
higher education is dominated by secular humanism, which is another name
for that moral and political blight of the 20th century: liberalism. Yet
all too often, even Christian parents unquestioningly deliver their
precious children to this anti-Christian system when they send them off
to college. In fact, statistics reveal that evangelical Christianity
now loses 86% of its children to the world after high school graduation.
Awed by the prestige and intellect of professors on campus, most
Christian teens abandon the God of their fathers during college.
Truly, secular colleges and universities are the spiritual "killing grounds" of
Christian youth today.
But
it does not have to be this way. Recently, several families who are part
of our Truthtellers Bible Study group, whose children were about to attend
Mt Hood Community College near Portland, Oregon, determined, with my wife
and me, that we were not going to allow secularism on campus to take our
children from us. What right does a pro-abortion, pro-gay professor, who
we don't even know, have to the minds and souls of our children?
Yet
we wanted more than that. We wanted our children not only to survive
higher education, but also to triumph over it. Thus, from the beginning of
this experiment, both parents and young people in our group solemnly
committed ourselves to take every opportunity we could find to lift up
Christ, and Christian conservative values, as high as possible over
campus.
After
the first year, we had succeeded spectacularly, not only backing down a
pro-homosexual faculty agenda, but also emerging with battle-tested
Christian young people ready for more action as Christian activists.
Engaging
the Opposition
From
the beginning of the school year, it was clear to us where the greatest
opportunity and most resistance to setting high the light of Christian
truth would occur: the campus newspaper, THE ADVOCATE. Harmony Grant, age
17, daughter of my sister-in-law, Shelle, was a journalism major and soon
got into action. In a lively interview between herself and a retiring
faculty liberal, Rick Kotulski, she discussed duty to God, the purpose of
life, and the possibility of absolute truth and objective reality. Her
article was featured in the annual campus magazine, VENTURE, and widely
read and discussed on campus - even made required reading in a creative
writing class. This was followed by another column demanding tolerance and
freedom of expression for Christians in public schools - not just for
privileged minorities such as homosexuals. But she really collided with a
liberal faculty member in the following way:
Chris
Jackson, head of the philosophy department and prestigious evolutionist,
challenged Dr. Duane Gish, renowned creationist, to debate
creation/evolution. However, at the last minute, Jackson lost his nerve
and backed out, claiming unfairness on the Gish side. Harmony dramatized
his retreat by writing an accurate but telling article quoting both sides.
Jackson, angered, wrote a letter to The ADVOCATE, accusing Harmony of
distorting the facts. Harmony rebutted powerfully in print. When the dust
settled, Jackson, enraged, silenced by Harmony, told The ADVOCATE he would
never have anything to do with the paper again.
Soon
after, at my suggestion, Harmony wrote a column proposing that if the
smear-term "homophobia" can be applied to Christians who object
to homosexual perversion, then the term "Christophobia" should
be applied to liberals and homosexuals who fear and object to Christian
values. This saucy article prompted an angry response from The ADVOCATE
copy editor, who argued that preferential treatment of gays/lesbians was
societies due toward a beleaguered minority, persecuted for centuries.
Expose
of Child Molesters
Responding
to the copy editor's attack on Harmony, Harmony's brother, Sterling Grant,
age 19, wrote a powerful letter exposing homosexuals of the North American
Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) who promote seduction of pre-teen boys.
Published by The ADVOCATE, this well documented research article countered
the liberals' portrayal of homosexuals as a "persecuted
minority." Sterling proved that many homosexuals are actually the
source of oppression and victimization of adolescent boys.
This
was too much for the liberals on the faculty. Sixty-seven members of the
Mt Hood Community College faculty published a signed statement in The
ADVOCATE decrying Sterling's "anti-gay/lesbian " letter. This
gave Harmony the chance to humiliate in print the pro-gay faculty by
pointing out that the forum page of The ADVOCATE had been open for two
weeks following Sterling's article. Yet not one faculty member had the
courage to debate the issue in a public, rational way. Rather, they had
elected to merely dump on Sterling and Harmony an "avalanche of
prestigious names."
Although
we were bracing for faculty outrage at Harmony's rebuttal, we were taken
completely by surprise by what happened next. Within an hour of receiving
his copy of Harmony's article, Chris Jackson E-mailed the following letter
to all the faculty:
"I
want to personally apologize to the Mt Hood community for adding my name
to the list of names in last week's ADVOCATE. I believe that Ms Grant has
taught the teachers this time, and I hope that we will have the honesty
to admit it. Our list of names with absolutely no argument was merely
a bully ploy. I do think that our list was well intentioned: we do
support the right of gays/lesbians to be open about their sexuality
on campus. But I (and I hope we) equally support Sterling Grant's
right to his moral and religious beliefs and to his making these
public items of discussion. We should challenge his views, not attempt
to silence them.
Thank
you, Ms Grant, for having the courage to stand against us. In my view,
you are right - this time."
Yet,
recovering from his momentary penitence, Jackson, in a letter to The
ADVOCATE the following week, claimed that there was no evidence that
homosexual molestation was on the rise, or that homosexual seduction of
boys was even a significant problem today. He demanded more documentation
from Sterling.
Similarly,
a language instructor, Eric Tschuy, also gave our young people a position
of advantage by writing a letter misrepresenting their position, claiming
that they had accused homosexuals of "pedophilia" (sexual abuse
of children of both sexes) when, in reality, neither of them had ever used
the term.
Time
to Demonstrate
Responding
to Jackson's demand and armed with a much more extensively documented
600-word expose of NAMBLA, Sterling confidently submitted his article to
The ADVOCATE. The editors refused to print it. They said the article was
unfair to homosexuals, that Sterling had been published too much in the
paper (once that year), and that they did not have to print everything the
faculty requested. All five editors agreed that they would censor it, like
it or not...
Since
this was the last issue of The ADVOCATE for the school year, we were
troubled that the pro-gay faculty might get the last word. We decided to
protest. Late that night, part of our group made picket signs; the others
provided 500 copies of Sterling's letter with 'CENSORED' slanted across
the top. Beginning the next morning, we picketed for 5 1/2 hours on the Mt
Hood Community College commons, dramatizing our case for freedom of
expression. While many of the students may not have agreed with our
Christian stand against homosexuality, support for Sterling's right to
free expression was overwhelming. Both THE OREGONIAN (Oregon's largest
statewide daily) and the local Gresham OUTLOOK provided unbiased coverage.
Furthermore, having passed out about 350 copies of Sterling's censored
NAMBLA article to students and faculty, the remainder was placed in
faculty mailboxes.
Thus,
as God hardened Pharaoh's heart in order to create a greater victory, so
the editors' censorship caused Sterling's article and our demonstration
for free speech to become the talk of the campus. Word came to us that
faculty were discussing our protest in class and siding with us. In fact,
several faculty members who had signed the original protest against
Sterling and Harmony (including Chris Jackson) signed our petition in
favor of free speech. Members of the student Diversity Council told us
that the disrespect shown to the "diversity" of Christians such
as Sterling would be the top priority for discussion next fall.
Disgruntled students were even beginning to talk of starting up a rival
free speech newspaper, to be called THE AVACADO.
Spreading
the Word
With
the intellectual collapse of the liberal faculty and editors, we felt, as
the school year ended, that our experiment to hold Christ and truth high
over the secular campus was spectacularly successful. Yes, God powerfully
helped us, but at the same time, much of our success was due to the apathy
of both student and faculty liberals. Incredibly, during the 1999-2000
school year at Mt Hood College, with a student body of thousands, only two
letters or columns were submitted by students in favor of liberal ideas.
The total number of liberal writings published in The ADVOCATE by
students, or ADVOCATE staff and faculty were eight.
On
the other hand, students from our group, plus other Christians, published
sixteen pro-Christian, conservative letters or columns. An average of one
out of every two issues of The ADVOCATE contained a thought-provoking
piece in favor of Christian values. Although The ADVOCATE is a liberal
college newspaper staffed by predominantly liberal staff and editors, we
were able, because of our 1st Amendment rights, to help to create a
newspaper with a conservative, moral tone throughout the year.
Consequently, Christian issues constantly hovered over the campus, setting
the tone of discussion and debate. Although we did not have liberty always
to become fully evangelical, we were able to speak the whole truth in
darkness and thus fulfill God's command to "redeem the time, for the
days are evil." (Eph. 5:16)
The
Soft Underbelly of Liberalism
We
also discovered that, even when the liberal student editors objected to
what we had to say, they seemed virtually powerless to editorialize
against us or enlist letters from students and faculty. This is partly
because forty years ago, under liberal "progressive" education,
reading and writing went into decline. Result: having laid the groundwork
for moral relativism and sexual pre-occupation in the prime studying
years, such slack educational standards have left liberalism today largely
without passionate, articulate youthful defenders.
The
soft underbelly of decadent campus liberalism is, thus, the
public-supported student-run newspaper, wide open to weekly insertions
of truth and light from groups of Christians -whether the secular humanists
like it or not. This does not mean that Christian activists should
dominate or take over campus newspapers. It means that we can utilize our
full right to freedom of speech as provided by the Constitution and
empowered by a tax-supported, free press on campus. If the non-Christian
students or faculty do not have the scratch to utilize their full
potential for free speech, they do not have the right to cry "FOUL." They
have only themselves to blame.
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