All Posts Tagged With: "Christian"
Gay mormon video, Google Glass and embezzlement
Five things students are talking about today (February 21st)
Hales' mother in his Gay Mormon YouTube video
1. It must be especially difficult to be gay and a Mormon right? Well it may have just become easier. Jimmy Hales, a student at Brigham Young University, decided to come out to his friends and family while recording their reactions. Most of them were surprisingly supportive—if a bit shocked. In a blog post he writes that he will never get married and plans stay celibate his whole life, but he’s happy with the acceptance he’s found. That may not be the ideal situation for most gay youth, but it seems to work fine for him.
2. It’s less than a month until the only holiday where students feel justified drinking before noon: St. Patrick’s Day. In anticipation of excessive drinking, one U.S. college, Penn State, has a daring plan. They’re going to pay 34 downtown bars, restaurants and shops $5,000 each to not sell alcohol that day, reports The Associated Press. It’s happening because of complaints from the community. The city hasn’t had a St. Paddy’s Day like that one last year in London, Ont.
Continue reading Gay mormon video, Google Glass and embezzlement
Harry Potter course, Lesbian-only bursary & #SnowDay
What students are talking about today (February 8th)
Harry Potter (Sonia Belviso/Flickr)
1. The Gazette student newspaper at Western University published an editorial this week on a new Harry Potter course that will be offered this fall. They came to the conclusion that it will not be a bird course. “Some may say authors such as Shakespeare, Hemingway and Joyce provide the reader with a much deeper, denser text…. while Harry Potter’s journey through Hogwarts is just too simplistic.” But they added, “Who’s to say there is not deeper meaning in Harry Potter? With adult themes such as challenging authority, self-sacrifice, tolerance and genocide, these books following the Boy who Lived should not be pushed aside as ‘just for children.’” However, proving that many students still need to improve their basic reading skills, the paper faced a backlash from those who took the headline “Harry Potter and the Bird Course?” to mean “Harry Potter is a bird course.” Editor Gloria Dickie responded with a second editorial reiterating that the editorial board does not see it as a bird course.
Continue reading Harry Potter course, Lesbian-only bursary & #SnowDay
Free speech and unequal prejudice
On the Christian law school where gays need not apply
Carleton's Students for Liberty/Facebook
From Teitel Page on Macleans.ca.
Have you heard? Free speech is a thing of the past. And religious liberty is dying fast.
It began last week when Arun Smith, a seventh-year human rights student at Carleton University in Ottawa, tore down a “free speech wall” on campus because it featured socially conservative comments. The action inspired three National Post columns and an Ezra Levant exclusive lamenting the end of freedom of expression as we know it.
Elsewhere, on the religious liberty front, the Canadian Council of Law Deans wrote a letter of protest to Canada’s Federation of Law Societies about Trinity Western University. The Christian liberal arts school in British Columbia wants to open a law school that would require students to sign a Community Covenant Agreement that pledges “Healthy Sexuality.” The agreement has nothing to do with gonorrhea or how to avoid it: what’s to be avoided is love and sex between people of the same gender (which is, I guess, by Trinity Western’s standards, worse than gonorrhea). “Sexual intimacy,” says the covenant, “is reserved for marriage between one man and one woman.” In other words, gays need not apply.
What students are talking about today (October 11th edition)
A fraternity shut, a prayer dropped and a mullet banned
A Mulleted Man in Ontario (Danielle Scott/Flickr)
1. The University of British Columbia chapter of Kappa Sigma has been suspended for “code of conduct violations.” What the fraternity is accused of doing hasn’t yet been made public.
2. An Australian man is speaking out after a Perth bar told him to leave because of his mullet. I reckon that’s discrimination.
3. The president of the University of Windsor has approved removing a Christian prayer from convocation ceremonies. The request came from a student club, the Windsor-Essex County Atheist Society. The prayer had referenced an “eternal God” as “the source of all goodness, discipline and knowledge.” Read more here.
4. A Montreal police officer who was already accused of excessive force for pepper-spraying protesters during a student march earlier this year is under investigation again. Stéphanie Trudeau, who wears badge 728, faces scrutiny for an incident that started with a man holding a beer on a sidewalk and ended with four charges of obstruction of justice, assault and intimidation. An accidental audio recording on someone’s phone captured the officer calling the four arrested “a bunch of red square types,” a reference to the symbol of the student protests. More here.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (October 11th edition)
Crandall University defends “sexual purity” requirement
Policy effectively bars GLBTQ staff
Seth Crowell, vice-president of Crandall University, told CBC News that the Moncton, N.B. institution has the right to effectively bar GLBTQ people from working there despite public funding.
Crandall, a Christian university, has a “Moral Code” that requires staff to be “be sexually pure, reserving sexual intimacy for within a traditional marriage between one man and one woman.”
Crowell told CBC that a 1983 act of the legislature gave what was then Atlantic Baptist College the right to grant degrees with “a viewpoint that is Christian.” Since 1996, Crandall has received about $24 million in funding from all levels of government, according to Global News.
Waterloo adds reinforcements ahead of speech
Protesters expected
The University of Waterloo is once again preparing for protesters who might try to shut down a speech, reports The Waterloo Record. The university says it will protect 80-year-old Charles Rice with extra police when the Catholic professor emeritus gives the annual Pascal Lecture on Christianity next Tuesday on the topic of morality, enlightenment and The Natural Law. The former professor is opposed to same-sex marriages and abortion, which has caused some students to oppose the lecture. Protesters successfully shut down a talk by writer Christie Blatchford when she first tried to speak to an audience of 27 people at the university about her book on the Six Nations occupation of Caledonia in November 2010. Her rescheduled speech drew a crowd of 300.
