[Crossposted on “Alas” and on “TADA.”]
An adjunct professor who taught courses on Catholicism at the University of Illinois has lost his teaching job there, and he claims it is a violation of his academic freedom.
Kenneth Howell was told after the spring semester ended that he would no longer be teaching in the UI’s Department of Religion. The decision came after a student complained about a discussion of homosexuality in the class in which Howell taught that the Catholic Church believes homosexual acts are morally wrong.
One thing that makes this story interesting is that we can actually read the email Howell sent his class, which prompted the complaint (which we can also read).
My initial reaction, upon reading this story, was to think the U of I was wrong to fire Howell (technically, Howell wasn’t fired — he was just not asked to return).
After all, the Catholic Church does believe homosexual acts are wrong. A professor should be able to describe the Church’s arguments in a course about Catholicism. And Howell sounds very agreeable when he says things like this:
Howell said he was presenting the idea that the Catholic moral teachings are based on natural moral law, and the Catholic understanding of what that means.
“My responsibility on teaching a class on Catholicism is to teach what the Catholic Church teaches,” Howell said. “I have always made it very, very clear to my students they are never required to believe what I’m teaching and they’ll never be judged on that.”
There’s an obvious free speech value in professors being able to state controversial and disliked opinions without being fired. And, as well, an educational value in students encountering a variety of views, including views that I hope most students disagree with.
So Howell’s firing was unjustified, right?
I’m not sure.
1) We don’t actually know that Howell was fired (or not asked back) because of the student complaint. That one event follows another doesn’t prove that one event caused the other.
2) Howell’s account is disputed. Howell claims to run a classroom in which students are encouraged to disagree with Howell’s own views. On the other hand, the letter of complaint claimed Howell “would preach (not teach) his ideology to the class …the teacher allowed little room for any opposition to Catholic dogma.” If that claim is true, then U of I is entirely justified in not asking Howell to return.
Of course, I have no idea if the claim is true or not.
3) Judging from the one example of his teaching we can see — the email — Howell is arrogant, hypocritical, ignorant, and a bad teacher. As PZ says, “I think it entirely reasonable to boot Kenneth Howell out of UI because he’s not very bright and doesn’t meet the intellectual standards I expect of UI professors.”
In his email, Howell wrote:
Unless you have done extensive research into homosexuality and are cognizant of the history of moral thought, you are not ready to make judgments about moral truth in this matter.
In context, it’s clear that Howell considers himself to be someone who is ready to make judgments, based on what I can only assume he considers to be his own “extensive research into homosexuality.” Which is laughable, because Howell also wrote:
To the best of my knowledge, in a sexual relationship between two men, one of them tends to act as the “woman” while the other acts as the “man.” In this scenario, homosexual men have been known to engage in certain types of actions for which their bodies are not fitted. I don’t want to be too graphic so I won’t go into details but a physician has told me that these acts are deleterious to the health of one or possibly both of the men.
So Howell is plainly an ignoramus. But worse: He’s the kind of arrogant know-nothing who believes he knows a lot, and presents myths to students as if they were facts. And he presents a terrible example of scholarship for students to emulate (i.e., “a physician has told me” — now there’s a valid academic source!).
If this email is a fair representation of Howell’s abilities as a teacher, then it’s likely that his students become more ignorant, and worse scholars, because they took his class. Frankly, if that’s why Howell was let go, then the only thing I’d ask is “what took them so long?”
Well, and that doesn’t even begin to explain why some kinds of birth control are acceptable and other kinds aren’t. I mean, avoiding children is okay as long as you use an unreliable method to do so? WTF is that gibberish?
—Myca
I didn’t say it was a good explanation. But it’s slightly more coherent than “you just don’t understand what Natural Law” means or “no, that’s DIFFERENT, it just IS.”
The closest thing I’ve heard to an explanation that because reproductive sex is male/female PIV intercourse, any male/female intercourse is ‘good enough’ for natural law; it at least mimics reproduction so it’s sort of OK.
Well, oral sex between opposite sex partners could, in principle, lead to PIV intercourse later on. So I suppose it’s more “procreative” in that sense. OTOH, regular, loving sex involving a same sex couple could also lead them to desire to raise a child together and could lead them to adopt a child or have a child of their own through various means (sperm donor, surrogate mother, etc.) Therefore, it’s also procreative if one allows a more lenient definition.
I am curious as to what the natural law ‘purpose’ of my bisexual desires is. See, offhand I’d’ve thought it was that I could experience love and sexual bonding with people whose desires are complementary to mine – straight men, gay women, fellow bisexuals – but I am sure Mark can correct me on this one.
Mark and his wife are engaging in immoral and “disordered” sexual acts, by his own definitions and admissions.
Mark’s premises:
(1) Mark at #45: 2.) […] Catholics believe that a moral sexual expression holds all of the above [reproduction, pleasure, an expression of love] to be equal, and that all (pleasure, love, and an openness to life) should be present in each sexual act. [emphasis added]
(2) Mark at #45: 2.5.) Based on the above criteria, only sexual union in marriage can bring about these greatest goods.
(3) Mark at #45: 2.5 [continued] All other acts are “disordered,” as they reject some aspect of this holistic approach.
Mark is married and has PIV sex with his wife so he has a shot at bringing about these “greatest goods.”
Now:
(4) By his own admission at #45, Mark and his wife purposely and intentionally avoid PIV sex during her ovulations and fertile times: 3.5) […] Among the numerous methods out there, my wife and I use the Billings Ovulation method, which is statistically just as effective as regular condom use. 4.) To get personal: When applied in my our own life, the Billings method allows for between 17-20 days of free sexual spontaneity between my wife and I.
(5) The Billings method is not “open to life”: If there is no PIV sex during the woman’s ovulations and fertile times, there is no (well, only a super-slim) possibility of fertilization, implantation, pregnancy, and birth.
(6) Each sexual act that is not “open to life” rejects one of the three legs of the stool of the so-called “holistic approach” (see (2)): “pleasure, love, and an openness to life”.
(7) Where the holistic approach is rejected, the given sexual act is immoral and “disordered.”
(8) Thus, each sexual act between Mark and his wife, where they purposely and intentionally avoid her ovulations and fertile times, is not “open to life” and rejects the holistic approach, is immoral and “disordered.”
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I fully expect the counter-argument to be: “But because Mark and his wife are male and female it’s biologically for them to procreate at some point!” I will highlight point (1) in which Mark asserts that each act must possess the holy sexual trinity (love, pleasure, and being “open to life”) and that actively avoiding the possibility of conception via deploying Billings, a method “which is statistically just as effective as regular condom use,” is most emphatically not “open to life.” Thus, by his very own logic, immoral and “disordered.”
——
edited for very garbled formatting and word choice
Bonnie, expect a convoluted version of “but that’s DIFFERENT” in response.
Update on this situation:
Thanks for this, Ron. I am glad he was reinstated, because no matter how much I disagree with him, I don’t think there were grounds for not asking him back to teach; and I am glad that he is now being paid by the college instead of the Catholic-affiliated organization that was paying him (I am too lazy to look upthread for the name), because it removes all kinds of conflict of interest issues; and I am also glad that the university is continuing the investigation.