Monday, May 20, 2013

Obama Admin Muzzles College Students' Moral Speech

Under the guise of Title IX and protecting female students from harassment, President Obama's education (DOE) and justice (DOJ) departments have teamed up to force a sweeping new mandate onto all public and private colleges and universities nationwide. Students will be forbidden from saying anything remotely or vaguely related to sex, such as asking for a date, telling common jokes, quoting from the Bible on morality (including homosexual behavior), etc.
“There’s likely no student on campus anywhere who isn’t guilty of at least one of these offenses.”
-- Greg Lukianoff, president of The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)
For background, read Ohio College Nixed Christian Speech, Now Admits Wrong and also read Univ. of North Carolina On Trial for Anti-Christian Bias as well as Florida College Drops Exclusively Christian Club

UPDATE 8/30/14: To Avoid Rape, Must Videotape — New California Law

UPDATE 8/24/13 - ObamaNation: Rating Colleges Based on Immorality

-- From "UM, city hire expert to evaluate changes to sexual assault response" by Martin Kidston, Missoulian 5/17/13

. . . the DOJ also released the findings of its investigation into how UM [University of Montana] handles cases of sexual assault. The agency said its agreement with UM will make the school a national model for Title IX rights while protecting women as they pursue their college education.

On Thursday, the News and Observer in Chapel Hill, N.C., reported that a task force working on the University of North Carolina’s own sexual assault and harassment policies will “look to a recent agreement between the U.S. government and the University of Montana over that campus’ response to sexual assaults.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, based in Philadelphia, called the agreement “a shocking affront” to free speech, and one that sets a “breathtakingly broad” definition of sexual harassment.

“The Department of Education has enlisted the help of the DOJ to mandate campus speech codes so broad that virtually every student will regularly violate them,” Greg Lukianoff, the group’s president, said after the DOJ concluded its investigation of UM.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Feds rooting out 'unwelcome speech' on campus: But what is that?" by Patrik Jonsson, The Christian Science Monitor 5/18/13

The failure of the University of Montana to respond adequately to rape and sexual assault allegations against popular football players has led to a broadening of how the federal government defines sexual harassment, causing free speech advocates to worry that the new policy will be used to punish “unwelcome” flirting and chill the right to speak freely on campus.

The new policy also suggests that harassment does not have to be “objectively offensive” to warrant complaints, and demands colleges take action against alleged aggressors even before judicial hearings are held.

The new federal rule “is part of a decades-long effort by anti-‘hate speech’ professors, students, activists and administrators to classify any offensive speech as harassment unprotected by the First Amendment,” writes Greg Lukianoff, author of “Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate,” in the Wall Street Journal. “Such speech codes reached their height in the 1980s and 1990s, but they were defeated in federal and state court and came in for public ridicule. Despite these setbacks, harassment-based speech codes have become the de facto rule.”

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Washington bureaucrats use force to suffocate liberty" posted at The Washington Examiner 5/19/13

. . . The Department of Education and the Department of Justice combined last week on instructions to the University of Montana to implement a breathtakingly broad speech code that is certain to violate thousands of students' First Amendment rights. Preventing sexual harassment on campus is the pretext for the policy, which the government says is its blueprint for codes to be adopted by all colleges and universities. Harassment is explicitly defined as including speech that isn't necessarily offensive to an "objectively reasonable person of the same gender in the same situation." In other words, it's sufficient that the listener is offended, regardless of intent or the particular facts of a given situation.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Watchdog group: Feds to force all U.S. universities to adopt unconstitutional speech codes" by Oliver Darcy, Campus Reform 5/13/13

Federal officials describe the new policy in the letter as a “blueprint for colleges and universities across the country."

According to FIRE, this new mandate even contradicts previous guidance provided to colleges and universities by the DOE. The organization says in 2003 the DOE defined harassment as contact that “must include something beyond the mere expression of views, words, symbols or thoughts that some person finds offensive.”

Neither the Department of Justice (DOJ), nor the Department of Education (DOE), responded to a request for comment from Campus Reform.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Free Speech Under Fire" by Mary Lou Byrd, The Washington Free Beacon 5/15/13

The Washington Free Beacon asked the DOE for comment. They responded, asking for guidance as to where the word “speech” appeared in their letter to the university. The Free Beacon referred them to the page of their letter that now defined sexual harassment to include “verbal conduct.”

After that email exchange, they did not respond to further requests for comment.

The DOE did not indicate in its press release on the matter the new broadened definition of sexual harassment. Rather, it touted the agreement as a positive step toward achieving student safety on campuses.

The new mandate now applies to every college that receives federal funding, which, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), is virtually every American institution of higher education nationwide, public or private.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

Also read President Obama Redefines 1st Amendment Freedom of Religion and yet President Obama Denies Leading War Against Christianity, and also read Religious Liberty & Anti-Christian Totalitarianism

In addition, read 'Gay Rights' Winning, Loss of Religious Liberty Documented - Washington Post writer demonstrates it's a "zero sum" game: Winning homosexual 'rights' means Christians must lose freedom of religion.