BYU-Idaho, an offshoot of BYU Utah, apparently fired an adjunct professor after she made some pro-LGBT comments. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. When you go to BYU or teach at BYU, you have to play by their rules. That includes supporting the church teaching on controversial issues. If you can't do that, don't work at BYU or for the church.
I would never work at BYU or for the church. Obviously, the church isn't pounding down my door to ask, so it's sort of a moot point. If I was younger and was going through the life stage of choosing a college, I wouldn't choose to go to BYU either. It's nothing against the church, it's that I want to be able to grow my hair out, get tattoos, and express where I disagree with the church without feeling like my college enrollment or worse, livelihood, would depend on my ability to keep my mouth shut.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for the professor and no, she is not a martyr for free speech. If I enter into a contract that requires me to do certain things, then I am obligated to do those things. If part of that contract means keeping your mouth shut on issues that the church doesn't support, than you either do that or your don't sign the contact. If I place a higher value on speaking my own mind than I do church employment, I don't sign the contract. Simple as that.
I do wonder if we are hearing the whole issue. We hear what she had to say, but nothing on the actual meetings or what the point of view on the other side was. Unfortunately, there are usually two sides to all issues and we are only hearing one. I've learned that when you only hear one side of the story, a lot of truth tends to be missing. And usually, the other sides tends to paint a very different picture. I have made it a practice to never believe a story where only one side is represented.
ReplyDeleteEven worse, trust overall in the media and news has fallen greatly. Gallop started asking about how trustworthy the media was back in 1997. The high was at 55% in 1999 and has steadily declined until last year, it was an abysmal 32%. Take the story about the firing of this professor. The first newscast came out with "Professor SAYS she was fired for pro lgbt comments" That comment right there should have raised red flags everywhere. The only point of view we are getting is one from the person who was just fired. I wonder how they will look at the situation..." However, it gets worse as other 'news' channel pick up the story and interestingly, omit the words 'SAYS'. and just go with "professor fired for pro lgbt comment". This is not news, this is only an angry person's point of view. Could it be correct? Yes, it could. But do we KNOW it's correct from the information we have. Not a chance.
ReplyDeleteI can say that a person in a vegitative state became lucid for a moment, signed over all their property to me and then went back to a vegitative state. could it be true. Maybe. But without having the other side tell their story, only a fool would trust just my word on it. No attorney would would turn over this persons property to me based on that argument alone. Yet, we hear news outlets jumping on stories like this and treating it as a seeming fact without actually having anything to back it up.