Earlier this week I had the pleasure of sitting in on a lecture given by Dr. Richard Baer, professor emeritus of environmental ethics and education, at an event hosted by the Cornell Republicans.
Baer spoke at length about how, in their rush to ensure that they’re not promoting religious values, state-run and other “non-sectarian” schools actually end up promoting a dangerous brand of secular humanism that effectively acts as a religion in which one worships one’s self.
The double standard is astounding. Never mind that schools spend plenty of time – rightly, in my view – promoting values like racial and gender equality; when it comes to issues of, say, sexual morality, sixth graders should really hear both sides and form their own conclusions.
While I encourage you to listen to Baer’s argument yourself (the MP3 of a 1994 lecture in which Baer makes roughly the same larger points is available here), he essentially contends that by making the decision not to promote morality, both our public schools and institutions of higher education actively discourage moral behavior.
This is certainly true of Cornell. In fact, this coming weekend my university is hosting “Filthy/Gorgeous,” its annual celebration of sexual promiscuity headlined by “Chi Chi LaRue,” a DJ that dresses in drag whose day job is producing pornography. While I’m thankfully not privy to the more graphic details of what the event entails, you can pretty much get the idea from the promotional materials (warning: link NSFW) and the innuendo in the event’s tagline – “Come Filthy. Come Gorgeous. Just Come.”
This event is held in a University-owned recreation center and its nearly $30,000 price tag is paid for by numerous student organizations, most prominently the LGBTQ Student Union, that receive funding through the mandatory $229 student activity fee that this state-supported institution levies on all students.
But to be fair, organizers also raised money this year by getting sex toy and lubricant manufacturers to cosponsor the event, so students are only responsible for about $13,000 of the event’s expenses.
I’m not entirely disheartened though, as I think there is a largely silent majority of more modest students on campus who are similarly disgusted with the University-sponsored assault on morality.
In fact, one of these students seems to be Nate Treffeisen, the current LGBTQ representative on the Student Assembly, who bravely told the student newspaper in 2010 that he found the event “personally offensive” because it “reinforces gay stereotypes in the sense that the name ‘Filthy/Gorgeous’ does not necessarily reflect the way every gay person goes about their daily life.” Treffeisen proves that the promotion of promiscuity doesn’t square with the values of any community and that those behind events like “Filthy/Gorgeous” do everyone on campus a disservice.
This extreme example of a university offering its explicit endorsement of values outside of the mainstream even for relatively liberal college students is, unfortunately, rapidly becoming the norm.
Given the proliferation of events like “Filthy/Gorgeous” on college campuses across the country (Yale’s “Sex Week” is one of the more infamous), the administrators of liberal academia are going to fight to keep you from pushing your values onto students . . . by pushing their values onto students.
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Science, statistics and Scripture stand in unified evidence against the ‘anything goes’ culture.
I recommend the book, ‘Unprotected’ by Miriam Grossman, M.D, a psychiatrist who served at a California university until she wrote that well-documented book outlining the damage to mental and physical health due to sexual and relational promiscuity on campuses. Dr. Grossman has written another book now, “You’re teaching my child, WHAT?!?” and she has a website.
Evidently, from her experience, university administrators get some kick-back from Planned Parenthood and the very profitable birth control and abortion industry…or they are irrational ideologues of the worst sort. From a 2008 Thomas Sowell interview (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGvYqaxSPp4) it is obvious, that the latter is true…and that does not exclude the possibility of the former being true also.
Don’t or can’t any of these people, statesmen, academicians, APA groups and some parts of the church, really think rationally or care about our society and our children?
This is another reason why we should not have public schools.
You are showing your age professor. Believe it or not students were promiscuous before these college nitwits started this nonsense. Eventually kids settle, I have seen it over two decades of teaching college students – its sort of like the heavy drinker – he either shuts it off at age thirty to assume a regular life or drinks himself to death by forty five.
Unfortunately the advent of HIV/AIDS has changed the rules. No longer is it possible for a student to engage in reckless sexual behavior during college (or even high school) and not be facing a life long result from that behavior. The CDC estimates that 50% of ALL college students suffer HPV which is incurable and can have serious ramifications during pregnancy. Unlike experimental drinking, which can be ended with relatively few ramifications, HIV is forever (although students have drank themselves to death on one occassion marathon via alcholol poisoning).
College students have been studying “human sexuality” courses for as long as I can remember. Back in the ’70’s, a UTMB professor would shock his class on the very first day with the porm movie “Deep Throat”, explaining to them that as physicians, they should never show shock at what their patients told them. There was a purpose behind that tactic since physicians also deal with human sexuality in their profession.
But what is the point of encouraging behavior on campus that most parents would not allow in their own homes? And how would these academic leaders responde if a group of students wanted to promote abstinence only/no children out of wedlock/Christian values in such a way? They would be screaming to the roof tops that there is a separation of Church and state, but seem to have no problem separating their students from the views of Antonio Gramsci.
What is happening on our college campuses is a clear attempt on the part of the gay lobby to make homosexuality the norm, not the abnormal. This is cultural Marxism, designed for no other purpose than to eliminate sociatal norms to be replaced with their philosphy. A moral people cannot be led. Think back to the progress of the homosexual movement; from a “right to privacy”, to a right to behavior in public, to educating young minds that homosexuality is a normal biological behavior and consequently should be taught as such to even grade schoolers. Pure Gramsci/Frankfort Marxism.
The purpose of higher education is to equip young adults to be employable, not how to destroy any sense of moral values.
By the way, HPV has been linked to throat and mouth cancers. Apparently there has been an increase in oral sex and those cancers. Some participants prefer oral sex as a way to decrease the risk of pregnancy. Instead, they just expose themselves to something else.
Exellent observations, retire05. Although, isn’t higher education not just about making people employable, but in making them better people?
‘What you do in secret will be made known in public.’ is still true.
Making “better people” would require a certain adherence to moral values. The left will tell us how much better off we are now that we have shed the shackles of old moralities, yet we cannot seem to produce another George Washington, John Adams or anyone remotely close to the men of those times.
That alone, should tell you where we are heading.
retire05 — I see what you mean. But it’s not just insensible, generalized morale decay. We are being attacked from within. This is being done on purpose by those who wish to destroy the United States as a society that produces free, independent-thinking, moral citizens.
The federal government and the unions stole control of our schools.
Federal bureaucrats and the unions are largely controlled by those who secretly follow the Alinsky – Cloward-Piven – Frankfurt School model of destabilizing and demoralizing the United States.
If we return control of each school to the parents, teachers, principal and local school board, that would practically assure the return of good moral examples in the schools. The parents, teachers, principals pretty much universally want good for our children.
For the shocking story of what the Frankfurt School (I had never heard of such a thing until last year) has to do with this, Bill Whittle is a good place to start. http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/video-bill-whittles-talk-in-newport.html Bill Whittle – “OUR PROGRESSIVE NIGHTMARE” – Newport Beach, California
retire05, what I would love to see is schools that teach our children and care about their moral development, not as part of some religious framework, but in the traditional American spirit of fair play, the Golden Rule and growing upright. These are values that any society needs if the children are to grown up strong and true. I think we agree about that.
The original Laura Ingalls Wilder books (did you know that people have re-written and “re-imagined” them? be careful when you buy them — get the originals) —
anyway, the original LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS, LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, BY THE SHORES OF SILVER LAKE are examples of what I mean.
People are taught in their families to be upright, and the example and expectation is also in the schools, because the upright behavior is just expected.
In “THESE HAPPY GOLDEN YEARS,” out on the prairie, starting before she is 15 years old, Laura is a school teacher in small prairie schools. Built by the local communities for as few as five children and a few months at a time of school. The moral development is concomitant with the education.
retire05, you know that IMO we have produced something remotely close to Washington and John Adams. Something historical may be happening. I pray that it is. We are trying to set the stage for a restoration of all that we hold dear.
All is not lost. There is hope. We have a way forward to a much, much, much better future. I pray that enough people will see this.
Hope Change, I had a long discussion with someone who is running for Texas State Board of Education just a week ago. Their contention is that the educational system of the ’40’s or ’50’s would not work today because children are different. I soundly reject that opinion. It is not the children that have changed, it is their social surroundings that have changed. 14 year old boys are still biologically 14 year old boys with the same emotions, intellect level and development as in the ’40’s. Human nature has not changed, just what has become acceptable public behavior.
And no, Hope Change, we, this modern generation, has produced nothing or no one even remotely close to Washington or Adams, no matter how much you wish it to be so. There is no one who is willing to ram the walls, taking on what they know is wrong. Instead, we have created generations who spew rhetoric about the “common good” as they try to figure out how to gain the most for themselves, paid for by those they abhore. Sandra Fluke is simply a symptom of the over all illness of this nation.
I suggest you read Gramsci. He was fully aware that in order to create a society that was loyal only to the government, you had to get rid of anything else that would demand a person’s loyality; religion, faith, family, and when you broke down those institutions, and indoctrinated the young, could you fully implement Marxism. Gramsci disagreed with Marx in the use of violent revolution and believed that the “change” could be brought about non-violently by destroying first the Churches, then the families, then social morals. The only thing left in a person’s life would be Marxism, and only it would demand loyality.
Some friends, and I, are working on trying to develope a program that will allow low income working parents to have the advantage of home-schooling by funding their books and letting their children join with other parents and children in the home-school process. Children should not have their potential held back because we have designer education based on teaching to the lowest common demoninator. We need to encourage parents to do with less so that they can find a way to see one parent stay home with their children, and take them out of the public schools. Oddly enough, the parents that are interested are most Hispanic, who want their kids to get a good education more than they want a new car or a closet full of cheap clothes.
“But what is the point of encouraging behavior on campus that most parents would not allow in their own homes?”
Making money. Always.
This is cultural Marxism, designed for no other purpose than to eliminate sociatal norms to be replaced with their philosphy. A moral people cannot be led.
Truer words were never spoken.
I have been in public and private schools, schools on military bases and schools overseas. They’ve been both suburban and rural, large and small.
If there is a common denominator among the most stable, talented or goal oriented students I’ve known, it is that they come from a traditional, nuclear family.
Jack Long, the proof is always in the pudding. What has the “Great Society” reaped? Move poverty, more unwed mothers, more child abuse, more dead beat fathers, fewer high school graduates (the Los Angeles school system has a 50% drop out rate). It is true that when you subsidize something, you get more of it.
But you can’t have socialism is you encourage traditiona families. Only with the breakdown of the family, and eventually the breakdown of society, can a system like Marxism be acheived.
Smedley, the media has gotten progressively more lewd and porn is more widely available upped the game…children are participating in the most unnatural and dangerous behaviors…and are getting sicker and sicker…so sick mentally, physically and relationally that it will take a miracle to heal and enable them to have a near normal life.
Along with their addictive sexual behaviors are addictions, to substances, gambling, spending, eating, then abortions usually complicate things…like a snowball effect, all of this grows until it takes over their sense of identity, worth, self-control, humanity, are lost, any sense of self-other respect and empathy are diminished…it is a waste of life and affects the whole family…sometimes one generation foists their pain and chaos onto the next…and two or three generations may be involved.
For several years, I worked with and among these people in Celebrate Recovery which is one of the fastest growing support Christian 12 Step groups. While it does not take the place of therapy and treatment, support and accountability are vital to recovery.
I think I could use this 12 step program. Where can I find more information?
I need some kind of moral based therapy that can help me overcome my years of public school indoctrination into secular humanism. I am fully aware of my problems, but I am a mess trying to solve them and move forward with my life. I have just recently realized how lost I am. I suppose awareness is a step forward, but it is just a baby step I am realizing. I think I need some kind of post cult therapy.
I am generation lost. I am a runaway slave but I know not where to run to.
There is a huge difference between students being promiscuous on their own, which happens, as you point out, and the promotion of all sorts of sexual activity. This is the latter.
Those who prey on children frequently use pornography with their victims. Innocent children have no idea what is being asked of them. State run institutions really don’t need to be promoting this sort of stuff.
There is a great increase of date rape and violence on campuses. Promiscuity leads to violence and addiction – to sex and other behaviors, to substances and unhealthy relationships
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was involved in a discussion about religion. The other person believed that children should not be given formal religious education of any kind. They would then be free to select their own religion when they were old enough to decide.
Coleridge did not bother to debate the point, but invited the man to see his rather neglected garden. “Do you call this a garden?” asked his visitor. “There are nothing but weeds here.”
“Well, you see,” said Coleridge, “I did not wish to infringe on the liberty of the garden in any way. I was just giving the garden a chance to express itself and choose its own production.
http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/samuel-taylor-coleridge/32593
One night Miss Lefty is a sheltered Victorian socialite overcome by the vapors, the back of one hand dramatically raised to her forehead as the other hand searches desperately for her fainting sofa upon hearing Rush say the word “slut,” the next night, having regained her composure, she’s attending “Filthy Gorgeous” in her assless leather chappies, being led on a leash by her anarchist hipster metrosexual boyfriend.
You guys should sue for that $13,000. Or, demand $13,000 for a formal ball.
Be Breitbart !!!
Of course, here is California the system has prioritized the teaching of acceptance of gay lifestyles to elementary kids. Obviously, that is far more important than spelling or arithmetic.
I would be willing to contribute to a class action suit – against the state for teaching behaviors that increase incidence of AIDS 440% and incur the highest risk of all other STDs, cause physical injuries, and an increased risk of cancers, pregnancies, abortion, substance, porn addiction, depression, suicide and other mental health disorders and….none of which are reliably prevented by condoms or pills.
530 Words and I still have no idea what this Filthy/Gorgeous event is, but hey, at least you got a bunch of people angry about it! Always quality posts.
On the other hand, one might applaud the professor’s refusal to talk down to the lowest common intellectual denominator.
And on the third hand, ‘Enry ‘Awkins should realize this post was written by Michael Alan, not the Professor.
Nice compliment to Michael.
It’s okay Henry. Even the monkey sometimes falls from the tree.
LukeHandCool (who now realizes Henry is only human … just like Luke, who, just like everybody, he guesses, puts his pants on two legs at a time).
Well, the professor will have approved it. The point is another frequent troller complaining, in this case because he hasn’t the comprehensive ability to understand an obvious story.
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My youngest, a daughter, heads this fall to UNC-Chapel Hill, aka ‘Berkely of the Holler’. My eldest daughter graduated from Oklahoma 5 years ago, but reported little or no blatant attempts at political indoctrination, perhaps because she was in a science-related curriculum. The youngest wants to be an educator, however, and will step into what is pretty much the deepest, darkest lefty hole in North Carolina: UNC-Chapel Hill. She’d disdain this ‘filthy/gorgeous’ type of cultural shock event, but she’ll face considerable leftist indoctrination in the education program at UNC.
I go to Cornell, and I know what this event is actually about, and it is not an “annual celebration of sexual promiscuity” as Alan has stated, it’s supposed to be about lifting the shame of being homosexual. “filthy” refers to how many in society view homosexual behavior, “gorgeous” is what they view themselves as. He could have made the article about the merits of that, but he didn’t, instead he completely characterized the event because he was to lazy to make the appropriate arguments. So no, I didn’t miss anything, I was commenting on what Alan missed.
*mischaracterized
Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence said:
“[T]he only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be aid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments. Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind.”
More pertinent quotes of the Founders found here:
http://www.free2pray.info/5founderquotes.html
I think I would be content if the schools could manage to teach the 3-R’s.
[…] Alan at Legal Insurrection writes about how that secular humanism is playing out in our institutions of higher learning: Earlier this week I had the pleasure of sitting in on a lecture given by Dr. Richard Baer, […]
retire05said
“This is cultural Marxism, designed for no other purpose than to eliminate sociatal norms to be replaced with their philosphy.”
This nails it perfectly.
Exactly, Scorpio51. I agree.
Returning power to the local school and parents essentially fixes this. Costs no money. And fixes this.
The destruction of our schools and their moral underpinnings has been done on purpose by the usual suspects.
Hollywod is and has been working overtime to normalize pornography, much in the same fashion, in pursuit of the same agenda, and likely managed by the same Farxists.
Is it time to drag out Linda Kimball’s excellent primer on Cultural Marxism again? Yes, I believe it is.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/cultural_marxism.html
I don’t think it’s possible to link that too much, everyone on the right and everyone “in the middle” needs to read that.
Awing – Your first comment was “530 words and I still have no idea what [this event] is about” even though there is a link to promotional materials. You then claim that you know all about it because you go to Cornell, and conclude with a “description” of the event belied by the materails to which the post’s author linked.
Always quality trolling.
I did some sex ed googling after reading this and listening to the lecture and what is the first thing that comes up… The G (can’t spell it, the Planned Parenthood institute) claims that studies have proven that sex ed does not cause early sexualization. I guess the science is settled. My question is why do they INSIST on stampeding and overiding the parent’s beliefs. Why is this so important to them? What is their agenda? If they don’t have an agenda, then why do they insist on smearing those who want to teach their Children the beautiful message of Catholic procreative love. If Planned Parenthood ever comes in my daughters school and plants a contraceptive in her arm or some teachers hauls her off for an abortion I will probably end up in jail. IF my daughter does have sex before marriage, I want her to know that the only appropriate contraception is a condom because that is the only means of preventing diseases. Pregnancy is not a disease and in the event my daughter did get pregnant we would help her take care of the child. There is no need for any other birth control for unmarried sex partners other than condoms. Even if she chooses not to become Catholic, striving towards the highest ideal can’t hurt. Casual sex hurts people. We can at least strive for something higher. Marriage is the safest sexual ideal, for both the body and the heart. Why is this so threatening to them? Why do they insist on destroying everything that strives for something higher? I am tired of being bullied.
Furthermore, I am not asking THEM to embrace these ideas. If they want to take hormone altering poison for 1/3 of their lives, and hook up with random guys and get STDs from their condomless hook up sex, then have at it; BUT don’t tell me what I can teach my OWN children.
The craziest part is that I am considered the weirdo because I want the best for my children.
Rather than allowing individuals the FREE WILL to aspire towards the highest ideal, we have all been FORCED to swallow the pills of the lowest common denominator.
The truth is that the faculty lounge elites don’t want anyone to hold marriage and family as the highest ideal and how dare a woman consider motherhood the highest ideal. I am not asking them to change, I am just asking them to get their wrinkly old claws off of me and let me teach my daughter what I believe in.
It is no secret that the worldview of the left equates human beings to a disease, a cancer upon the Earth. Why else would they consider pregnancy a disease? That is why they do not want me to teach my daughter that procreative marriage is the highest ideal. In their perverted worldview, procreative marriage is the lowest common denominator. The problem is not that we have different worldviews, the problem is that they are FORCING their views upon us. Planned Parenthood and the rest of the sisterhood love to play the victim, when in fact they really are the BULLY.
I am most grateful for this post. I just started reading the engrossing WITNESS
WITNESS by Whittaker Chambers (h/t M.Dirienzo at Richochet). Chambers uses the phrase: “man without mysticism is a monster” and chastises social democrats as sharing the Communist vision of man without God.