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What Do Fashion Designers, Muslim Vocalists, and Christian Photographers Have in Common?
Well, they can all be cited under a Madison city ordinance if they choose to opt out of engaging in expression or helping to celebrate events or ideas that would violate their deeply-held beliefs. Seems like a pretty terrible law, yeah? Students on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus agreed. Well, until we got to the Christian photographer.
I have seen many comments lamenting the state of American higher education after watching this video.
I am actually more encouraged by how these conversations played out. They were civil and reasonably thoughtful. In the end, the students, who were confronted with their own logic (likely for the very first time), really struggled.
None of them reflux-ively broke out into “racist, sexist, anti-gay, guy with the microphone go away” Ephesus-riot-chants, which is more of what you’d expect in this post-Middlebury world.
So, struggling with what freedom means instead of vaporizing anyone who doesn’t scare-quote “religious freedom” (or anyone who does scare-quote “pregnant man”) is progress in the buckle of the Prog Belt.
Published in Law
Very interesting. Thank you. Maybe there is hope. We just need to do a better job of explaining things.
Greg,
Beautifully done. You get a 100%. This is Madison too the heart of progressive obsession. By bringing this issue out of theory and into simple reality you made these students realize there was another side to the story.
We do this over and over again until society starts making sense again.
Regards,
Jim
I find it discouraging that these students are thinking about this for the very first time and that they are struggling. Aren’t they supposed to have great critical thinking skills and aren’t they getting a great edjumacation? They may have been thoughtful but they are not thinking.
In related news, many academic faculty are hostile to free speech and few are enthusiastically supportive. (h/t Jonathan Haidt):
Wonderful. The very idea that these students are confronted with such obvious issues in their classes is disturbing and speaks ill of the University but Alliance Defending Freedom did excellent work here.
I’ve seen it argued before that the reason for businesses to only accept job applications from college graduates – regardless of what they studied – is because no matter what they studied, college teaches you to be a critical thinker. Real life has convinced me that this argument holds no water.
As the news gets out that these students are sheltered and narrowminded members of a monoculture, employers will get the message. They probably already have.
I wonder how it would have gone if you changed the order around? If you asked about the Christian photographer first would they have quickly agreed with the law and then only given it more thought when you got to the other groups?
I saw myself in that video. When I was 29 and in grad school I took an economics class. I started the semester as a progressive liberal, and ended the semester being a conservative. Day by day the professor took us through a similar thinking processes on different topics (rent control, minimum wage, affirmative action, government subsidies, corporate taxes, etc.). He didn’t tell us what to think, he just made us think. It works.
It was refreshing to see the wheels turn in those students heads. It gives me hope.
See my comment above. Better late than never.
Consider yourself very fortunate to have had this education experience. you are among a distinct minority!
Hail, Hail, to Ole Purdue…