You just knew the ADF was going to be all over this. In yet another attempt to proclaim intolerance of anti-gay bigotry a violation of free speech, a man is suing a Los Angeles community college because the man’s professor wouldn’t let him ask a hate-filled question:
In the suit filed last week in a Los Angeles federal court, student Jonathan Lopez said that midway through his speech when he recited a dictionary definition of marriage and recited a pair of bible verses, professor John Matteson cut him off, called him a “fascist bastard” and would not allow him to finish.
. . . Lopez and his attorneys are seeking financial damages and also seek to strike down a code at Los Angeles City College forbidding students from making statements deemed “offensive.”
Lopez made the speech last November days after the passage of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.
“He was expressing his faith during an open-ended assignment, but when the professor disagreed with some minor things he mentioned, the professor shut him down,” David J. Hacker, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization based in Scottsdale, Ariz. that is representing Lopez, told the Los Angeles Times. “Basically, colleges and universities should give Christian students the same rights to free expression as other students.”
The thing with this argument from the Religious Right is that it’s so slippery. Why shouldn’t a Christian be able to speak his mind about his religious beliefs? To me, the answer lies in another question: Why shouldn’t Christians be able to give public speeches that tell Jews they shouldn’t have equal rights because Judaism doesn’t correspond with Christian views?
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