Too diverse to be 'diversity': is it "harassment" to recommend a book?

Reason, August-Sept, 2006 by Cathy Young

SCOTT SAVAGE, the head reference librarian at Ohio State University at Mansfield, got in trouble because of a book. No, he didn't run afoul of the USA PATRIOT Act, which infamously allows the government to subpoena library records. He suggested an assignment for a freshman reading list that two gay professors found offensive.

The controversy started last March. After the university decided to introduce a common reading experience program in which all freshmen would be required to read the same book as an extracurricular activity, Savage volunteered to serve on the committee to select the book. He took exception to the fact that many suggested texts were, as he said in an e-mail exchange with other panelists, "ideologically or politically or religiously polarizing." When one member responded that the university had not only a right but "an obligation" to polarize on some issues, Savage pointedly offered, "in that spirit," four conservative books. One of them was The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom, by David Kupelian.

As the title suggests, the book is strong stuff. Kupelian, managing editor of the webzine WorldNetDaily, gives homosexuality a prominent place in his hierarchy of evil; according to the book's promotional text, "the 'gay rights' movement--which transformed America's former view of homosexuals as self-destructive human beings into their current status as victims and cultural heroes--faithfully followed an in-depth, phased plan laid out by professional Harvard-trained marketers."

The reaction from Savage's fellow committee members was equally strong. Two English professors, J.F. Buckley and Norman Jones, filed a complaint of harassment based on sexual orientation. Buckley claimed that Savage's recommendation of the book made him "fearful and uneasy about being a gay man on this campus."

Under threat of a lawsuit from the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, the university promptly cleared Savage of all charges in April. Yet the questions raised by this incident remain contentious and highly relevant. Was the attack on Savage a simple question of suppressing unpopular speech and trampling on religious liberty, or was his behavior in some way inappropriate?

Some commenters on the Volokh Conspiracy blog suggested a hypothetical situation: What if a librarian had suggested an anti-Semitic or racist book for the freshman reading list? How about, say, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a tome somewhat similar to The Marketing of Evil in attributing a vast and diabolical conspiracy to its target? As one commenter astutely pointed out, while most people would "agree that we have the right to punish others (at least socially) for racist or anti-Semitic comments," the problem is that there is no consensus today on whether "being gay is morally the equivalent of being Jewish."

Savage's list, of course, seems to have been intended to make a point about "polarizing" texts, not to recommend the book for actual freshman reading. But the same questions would still apply if his suggestion had been serious.

To many social conservatives, the threat of action against Savage demonstrates the danger of equalizing sexual orientation with race, ethnicity, religion, or gender: It will stigmatize, marginalize, and effectively suppress beliefs that are still held by a large number of Americans and are sanctioned by traditional religion. Others would say that such beliefs are nothing but time-honored bigotry and should be relegated to society's fringes, just as we have done with once-widespread racist beliefs.

Reading recommendations are only one instance of this tension. On many campuses, conservative religious groups have run into trouble because of their refusal to accept non-celibate gays as members or leaders. Legally, this issue is far from being settled. In April, a federal judge in California (a Bush appointee) ruled that the University of California's Hastings College of Law could deny recognition to student groups which discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. The school thus remains free to deny official status and funds to the campus chapter of the Christian Legal Society, which bars people who engage in "unrepentant homosexual conduct."

Last year in a dispute at Southern Illinois University, however, a federal appeals court ruled against the university and in favor of a similar group. And in May, another federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by a Christian fraternity against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--but mainly on the grounds that the university had already carved out an exception to its anti-discrimination rules to let political and religious groups screen members "on the basis of commitment to a set of beliefs." Thus, a Christian group could not refuse admission to a student because she was gay, but could reject her because she did not subscribe to the view that homosexuality is sinful.

Those who support the student groups in such cases often base their position strictly on commitment to freedom of speech and association. In 2000, in an online colloquy hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education, David French, an attorney representing Christian Fellowship student groups at Tufts University and Middlebury College, stated that his defense of free association would extend to a Bob Jones-type group that forbade interracial dating. (French is now with the Christian Alliance Defense Fund and represented Savage in his dispute with Ohio State.) Yet while French emphatically distanced himself from Bob Jones' theological views, he was far more sympathetic to Christian Fellowship and branded as "ridiculous" the suggestion that the group was fostering "self-hate" among gay students by demanding that they renounce homosexuality as a sin.