The ACLU certainly does get involved in interesting cases. Its latest is a suit in a California court designed to assure that “Women’s Studies” courses at state universities can teach feminism and lesbianism to the exclusion of traditional values. That’s the real issue in a suit filed by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California against California State University at Long Beach, its Board of Trustees and officers.
The plaintiffs in the case are an unusual bunch. One is identified as an expert on “Feminist Theory,” another an expert in “Lesbianism,” another an expert on “Women and Racism,” another an expert on “Women and Mental Health,” another an expert on “Women and History,” and so forth.
The Complaint states that the plaintiff faculty members are “experts in the feminist discipline, methodology, and process, which is an essential requirement for teaching in a program of Feminist Studies. In addition all plaintiffs … are feminists.”
The attorneys’ Complaint starts off by defending “Women’s Studies” courses, and then, by a semantic sleight-of-hand trick, slips into calling them “Feminist Studies.” The lawsuit is designed to equate the one with the other.
The Women’s Studies program at California State University in Long Beach started in 1970. The program was pawned off on an unsuspecting university as something to benefit all women. The female faculty, however, converted it to a program to promote radical feminist/lesbian women’s goals and values to the exclusion of traditional women’s goals and values. The ACLU Complaint admits that “its focus was to be the feminist discipline.”
The controversy started when some churchgoing women enrolled in the Women’s Studies Courses at California State University at Long Beach. When they found out what was taught in “Women’s Studies 101: Women and Their Bodies,” and what was the assigned reading, they went into shock.
The women complained to university officials that “Women and Their Bodies” was pro-lesbian; that the texts and recommended books were ” inappropriate, pornographic, and pure filth,”; and that the Women’s Studies program was not ‘balanced’ because it failed to offer courses that espouse traditional American values. Several women who had taken Women’s Studies courses filed affidavits that they had been shown X-rated and pro-homosexual films in class, that the teacher had a foul mouth, and that classroom activities and homework included sexual activities.
The textbooks and recommended reading for the women’s studies courses included “Sapphistry: The Book of Lesbian Sexuality” by Pat Califia; “Sex For Women Who Want to Have Fun and Loving Relationships With Equals” by Carmen Kerr; and “Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement” edited by Nancy Myron and Charlotte Bunch. The books are so pornographic and filthy that they are not quotable in this column. With explicit prose and pictures, they advise women how to become lesbians and to engage in every type of perverted sex, including group sex, orgies, bestiality, sadomasochism, and bondage.
The 30-page ACLU Complaint attempts to wrap these courses in the sacred mantle of the First Amendment, Due Process, Equal Protection, and Academic Freedom. In addition, the Complaint charges that terminating the feminist/lesbian courses was sex discrimination in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
As a result of the uproar, the California State Senate Finance Committee introduced a resolution ordering the University Chancellor to find out if any of the courses offered by the California State University System allowed credit for engaging in “sexual behavior,” and if so, the University was to be penalized one million dollars. Then, a California Assembly-Senate Conference Committee adopted, as part of the state budget, a resolution providing that no funds could be used to support courses “which offer academic credit for engaging in sexual experiences.”
This is the same University where a male professor teaching a course called the “Psychology of Sex” made a practice of giving course credit for student participation in non-marital sexual experimentation, going to gay bars, and visiting nudist colonies, divorce courts, and encounter groups. Professor Barry Singer admitted that he had had sexual liaisons with his students, and that he had attended parties where students were naked or had sex.
It’s time that the taxpayers find out what is going on at some universities in the name of “academic freedom” and “women’s studies.”
