“Civilized, rational debate”:

Apropos the post below about Snider vs. Adams, check out Prof. Snider’s guidelines for student papers in his Cal State Long Beach class (Adams also points out other problems with Snider’s guidelines, but I want to stick to this):

Argument

I. Purpose: to persuade or at least to create tolerance for your point of view on a controversial issue; also to acknowledge the opposing side of the issue. . . .

Subjects to Avoid . . .

4. Topics on which there is, in my opinion, no other side apart from chauvinistic, religious, or bigoted opinions and pseudo-science (for example, female circumcision, prayer in public schools, same-sex marriage, the so-called faith-based initiative, abortion, hate crime laws, the existence of the Holocaust, and so-called creationism). For example, see Terrence McNally’s “Just a Love Story,” Los Angeles Times, 13 February 2004: B15. McNally correctly concludes that those who oppose same-sex marriage do so for one reason: homophobia. “Homophobia,” as Robert Goss points out, “is the socialized state of fear, threat, aversion, prejudice, and irrational hatred of the feelings of same-sex attraction” (Jesus Acted Up: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto, New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993: 1). In other words, homophobia is to gays and lesbians what racism is to people of color. Neither homophobia nor racism can be tolerated in civilized, rational debate; therefore, I will not accept either as arguments, however disguised, in your papers.

So in other words, the following arguments are inherently “chauvinistic, religious, or bigoted” — not just mistaken or incomplete (necessarily, since they’re short summaries), but chauvinistic, religious, or bigoted:

1. “Hate crimes laws are counterproductive, because they reinforce identity politics, and make racial groups more aggrieved at each other rather than less. They are also morally misguided, because assault or murder should be treated the same whether it’s motivated by racism or sadism. Finally, they risk unduly interfering with people’s free speech because they will often require prosecutors to comb through defendants’ political statements and associations.”

2. “Faith-based social programs should be entitled to be treated on an equal footing with non-faith-based social programs. If government money is spent on drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and a religiously themed program seems likely to do a good job at providing such rehabilitation, then it should get rehab funds just like a secular program should.”

3. “Abortion should be opposed, because I believe — together with liberal atheist Nat Hentoff that there is something to the argument that ‘[b]ecause abortion had become legal and easily available, . . . infanticide would eventually become openly permissible, to be followed by euthanasia for infirm, expensive senior citizens.'”

4. “In the last several decades, we’ve been experimenting a great deal with longstanding family institutions. We’ve liberalized divorce laws, destigmatized illegitimacy, destigmatized premarital sex, and more. Some of these changes may have been good, others may not have been but we ought to be cautious about implementing more such changes.”

5. “Religion is a useful and important means of social control. Prayer in public schools helps teach students to be more obedient and moral, whether or not God exists.”

6. “The Establishment Clause has been badly misread by the courts; it should never have been interpreted to apply to state and local governments. Local majorities should thus be entirely free to implement prayer in public schools, should they wish to, so long as students aren’t legally punished for not participating.”

I could add more examples, but are they really needed? I stress again that the point isn’t that all these arguments are persuasive — I don’t agree with all of them myself. Rather, the point is that a professor who holds the “opinion [that there is] no other side apart from chauvinistic, religious, or bigoted opinions and pseudo-science [on these topics]” either

1. is strikingly intolerant of reasonable, thoughtful, civilized argument that expresses viewpoints with which he disagrees, or

2. has not given much serious thought to the subjects.

Neither is a quality we should much appreciate in our university professors.