Free love’s antidote: On the Pitt campus, it should have been free speech
St. Augustine famously said: “Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.” University of Pittsburgh student Joseph Petrich wanted to advocate for chastity now, only to be told by university officialdom that he and his group had to leave.
Maybe he and his friends needed the help of St. Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of lost causes. As it was, they were rebuffed by a bureaucratic display of illiberal liberalism, the sort that is a stickler for rules but not a stickler for free speech.
Whatever one thinks about the practicality or even desirability of chastity, it is a brave act to stand up for sexual purity in a sex-soaked culture, especially on any college campus, ground zero for raging young hormones ready to hook up. It invites ridicule to swim against that tide.
We’ll save our ridicule for those at Pitt who saw young Mr. Petrich, president of the Pittsburgh Anscombe Society, and its members as a threat. The Anscombe Society, a fledgling national campus movement, is inspired by Gertrude Elizabeth Anscombe, an Irish-born Catholic philosopher who promoted traditional values, the sort that once needed no defense on campuses.
At a so-called SEXPO event organized by PantherWELL, a peer health education program in Pitt’s Office of Education and Promotion, the Anscombe members distributed leaflets promoting their viewpoint in the Litchfield Towers lobby on Monday and Tuesday, only to have the campus police called first. Later a Pitt housing official became involved. The group was finally asked to leave because it was not an official Pitt-approved club. The official clubs giving out advice on condoms and such could stay.
Now there’s a public relations disaster that should have been anticipated at once. The problem could easily have been finessed. No harm was being done, and fair play should have had a bigger call on officialdom than “rules-are-the-rules” inflexibility.
At least the bureaucrats have woken up. On Thursday, the university said in a statement that Anscombe has completed the application process for official recognition and should be certified in the near future, allowing its “important messages and voice” to be heard. Thank you, St. Jude.
Promiscuity is common enough on campuses. How about some passion for free speech?
Found here.
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Why not just play by the rules if you want to participate?