I was heartened to see that college students are continuing to exercise their freedom of speech by heckling dubious speakers who are invited to their campuses. It gives me hope for the future.
If we accept those rules of engagement, we accept the premise that the humanity of the people they degrade is up for debate. It is not. There is nothing to debate. Case closed.
At Yale last month, guest speaker Kristen Waggoner was the target of a well-deserved disruption organized by some law students on campus. Waggoner serves as general counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because it “works to develop ‘religious liberty’ legislation and case law that will allow the denial of goods and services to LGBTQ people on the basis of religion” and for its “regular defamation of LGBTQ people.”
Indeed, on the ADF website, there are several statements such as, “Marriage ensures that more children are raised in a loving, stable home by both their mother and father. . . . That’s why Alliance Defending Freedom remains committed to promoting the truth that marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman.”
There’s also, “Redefining marriage is the first step in creating a new society based on a new perception of morality. We’re already seeing glimpses of this redesigned society today: A person’s biological sex is increasingly becoming interchangeable; sexual freedom is more valued than religious freedom; and culture is more concerned with personal desires than a commitment to others.”
ADF claims that the Biden-Harris Administration is pushing a “radical agenda” that is “focused on threatening women’s rights, restricting religious freedom, silencing speech, and embracing a far-reaching gender ideology that disregards biological distinctions between the sexes.”
ADF boasts about its involvement in court cases that challenge the rights of LGBTQ+ people in the name of religious freedom.
So when Waggoner showed up at Yale, there were an estimated 120 students in the room jeering and brandishing protest signs. After they were warned to leave the room by the moderator of the panel, nearly all of them left. The event went on, but there was a great amount of noise in the background as the protesters chanted and shouted loudly from the hallway.
And, of course, ADF was all huffy and indignant about what happened. On its website, it says, “A mob overran a campus event to shut down a civil conversation.”
So let me get this straight: Waggoner is a major player in an organization that fervently believes there should be no such thing as same-sex marriage, and transgender people should be banished to the closet. And the belief of ADF, and those of its bent, is that when people who think like that appear in our sphere, our proper response should be to engage them in civilized discourse?
But if we accept those rules of engagement, we accept the premise that the humanity of the people they degrade is up for debate. It is not. There is nothing to debate. Case closed.
So when people who espouse such oppressive stances come our way, the only proper and productive response is to resoundingly declare that they are not welcome. This is more than just exercising our free speech rights: It’s doing our civic duty.