Sensitivity and Double Standards

[Rick Duncan]

As I said before, I think the real problem in our
"fascinating case" is the inflexibility of the faculty
and University officials who refused to accommodate
the reasonable concerns of the religious student.

This is a true story. A few years ago, my secretary
asked to be excused from typing one of my
articles--Wigstock and the Kulturkampf: Supreme Court
Storytelling, The Culture War, and Romer v. Evans, 72
Notre Dame L.Rev. 345 (1997)--because she is gay and
strongly disagreed with my analysis of Romer. The Dean
asked if I minded having another secretary type the
article. It was a bit inconvenient, but I gladly
agreed to accommodate the secretary, because for her
this was a matter of conscience and loyalty to a
cause.

A few weeks later, I asked my Dean whether he would be
equally sympathetic to a request by a conservative
Christian secretary to be excused from typing an
article supporting gay rights. He said he would not,
because this objection would be discriminatory and he
would not accommodate personal prejudices. I told him
this was an outrageous double standard, and one that
arguably is unlawful. But I was not shocked by the
double standard. It is merely life in the Big Tweleve
(or in the Big Ten, or the Ivy League, or....).

As I said earlier, it would not surprise me a bit if
the same drama department that refused to accommodate
religious objections to dialogue would go out of its
way to acccommodate other types of objections to
racist, sexist, or "homophobic" plays and dialogue.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

Cheers, Rick Duncan


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"Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm."
    --President George W. Bush (quoting John Page)

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