Word: catalanos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...organization to effectively undermine University non-discrimination policy, and to do so legally. As far fetched as this may seem, this is precisely what occurred at, and, until last week, was validated by, Tufts University. There, the Tufts Christian Fellowship (TCF) repeatedly argued that it denied student Julie Catalano a leadership position not because she was bisexual, but rather because she held the political belief that bisexuality is moral. Accordingly the TCF speciously claimed that it had not violated university policy which explicitly protects students from discrimination based upon sexual orientation...
...Tufts takeover of Nov. 28 was singularly wrong-headed. That morning, more than 20 Tufts University students occupied the undergraduate admissions office, remaining in Bendetson Hall for 36 hours until the university revised its policy on discrimination. The students were protesting the exclusion of senior Julie Catalano, who is bisexual, from a leadership position in the Tufts Christian Fellowship (TCF) last April; while discrimination based on sexual orientation is forbidden at Tufts, TCF countered that the decision was based on Catalano's refusal to view homosexuality as immoral. Unfortunately, both in medium and message, the protest ignored the central importance...
...many of the protesters hold that the distinction between discrimination based on belief and that based on a state of being, such as gender or ethnicity, is disingenuous. Catalano based her case on the idea that because she is bisexual, she should not be forced to consider that part of her identity immoral--that she should not be expected to give up her "self-acceptance of identity." By that logic, heterosexuals who disagreed with TCF's policy would be out of luck, since their opposition has nothing to do with their own identity...
...Such a position requires us to discern those beliefs that are central to identity and those that are not, which are essence and which accident--and who could tell a future Catalano that what she sees as her core beliefs are in fact changeable? Denying her the ability to define her own identity seems as monstrous as any type of belief-based discrimination, yet a campus that conflated identity and "self-acceptance" would require...
Throughout the several months of confrontation leading up to the takeover, TCF persistently claimed that it had not violated Tufts' non-discrimination policy, which protects students from discrimination based upon sexual orientation. TCF argued that it had denied Catalano a leadership position not because she was a bisexual, but rather because she interpreted Scripture on homosexuality in a manner that was inconsistent with the organization's beliefs. Like the protesters, we find this claim entirely specious. Any organization that forces an individual to renounce the morality of his or her own identity in order to gain membership or hold office...