{"id":2885,"date":"2008-06-25T07:34:45","date_gmt":"2008-06-25T11:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=2885"},"modified":"2008-06-25T13:36:57","modified_gmt":"2008-06-25T17:36:57","slug":"why-were-losing-our-right-to-speak-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/why-were-losing-our-right-to-speak-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we’re losing our right to speak out"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christian Examiner online<\/a> | Chuck Colson | June 2008<\/p>\n

Do you want to talk about traditional values on a college campus? Or do you want to speak out against same-sex “marriage”? You may have to enter the Whisper Zone. David Woodard is a political science professor at Clemson University\u2014one who has first-hand experience on how dangerous it can be to speak out in favor of traditional values: He almost lost his job over it. <\/p>\n

In 1993, Woodard was asked to testify about the political power of homosexual groups in American life. He agreed to serve as an expert witness for the state of Colorado, which was fighting to defend the recently passed Amendment Two, which made it illegal to give protected status based on sexual orientation.<\/p>\n

In his new book, \u201cWhy We Whisper: Restoring Our Right to Say It\u2019s Wrong,\u201d co-authored by my friend, the able South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, Woodard writes, \u201cIn that one decision, I unexpectedly jeopardized my academic career and entered . . . into the fiercest battle of the emergent culture wars.\u201d<\/p>\n

To publicly oppose the campaign for same-sex \u201cmarriage\u201d and gay rights was, he writes, \u201cthe equivalent to being sent to the university Gulag.\u201d He was denied an administrative position on the grounds that he was \u201cideologically incompatible\u201d with the values of the university. He often found the word homophobe scribbled on his office door. The press viciously attacked him for his views.<\/p>\n

But in private, Woodard was hearing a different message. People would call to whisper encouragement. So did parents and university staffers. Some students came into his office, carefully closed the door, and whispered their support. \u201cThe one thing they all had in common is that they were all scared, and they all spoke in whispers,\u201d Woodard writes.<\/p>\n

Homosexuality is not the only issue Americans can no longer speak freely about: Speaking up in support of any traditional belief will earn you attacks from secular elites. \u201cWhether individual, parent, church, or business, Americans holding traditional values are trapped in a \u2018whisper zone\u2019,\u201d Woodard and DeMint write, \u201csurrounded by invisible electric fences that threaten to \u2018shock\u2019 them if they cross unmarked legal lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

. . . more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christian Examiner online | Chuck Colson | June 2008 Do you want to talk about traditional values on a college campus? Or do you want to speak out against same-sex “marriage”? You may have to enter the Whisper Zone. David Woodard is a political science professor at Clemson University\u2014one who has first-hand experience on how … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[79,8,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-freedom","category-gay-marriage","category-persecution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}