Law Students

University of Illinois Fires a Professor for Teaching

By Pete

The PC-Police are really getting their paws into everything these days. This week, an adjunct professor of religion at the University of Illinois was fired for teaching about Catholic beliefs . . . in a class about Catholicism.

Howell said he taught the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality. He summed it up by saying, “A homosexual orientation is not morally wrong just as no moral guilt can be assigned to any inclination that a person has. However, based on natural moral law, the Church believes that homosexual acts are contrary to human nature and therefore morally wrong.”

To show how homosexual behavior would be considered under competing moral systems, Howell sent an e-mail to the students contrasting utilitarianism with natural moral law.  ”I tried to show them that under utilitarianism, homosexual acts would not be considered immoral whereas under natural moral law they would,” Howell said. “This is because natural moral law, unlike utilitarianism, judges morality on the basis of the acts themselves.”

I honestly don’t know what else to say. A student got offended because they were told that the Catholic Church doesn’t condone homosexuality, and the university actually took this person seriously. The first question that comes to mind: did this person not already know that most Christian religions are opposed to homosexuality? If not, how did such a person even get into a university? Second, the course is about Catholicism, what the hell did the person think they were going to be learning about?

Thank God I’m not affiliated with University of Illinois.

Full post as published by PeteHoliday.com on July 10, 2010 (boomark / email).