Profiles in Cowardice, Unreported

At SmithCollege, it was a few dozen student activists screaming, chanting and banging pots and pans.  With the American Psychiatric Association, it was angry letters from adult activists and bitter stories in the homosexual press.  The bottom line is the same: far-left homosexuals successfully intimidated a few cowardly officials and silenced voices they don't want the public to hear.

Not a bad way for neo-Marxist ideologues to celebrate May Day, but you'd think America's watchdogs of liberty, the free press, might raise an objection.  Sadly, the liberal media haven't written a word about either story. 

On April 29, author Ryan Sorba was invited by the Smith College Republican club to speak about his forthcoming book, The Born Gay Hoax.  The club arranged for police and campus security to be present in case campus radicals attempted to disrupt the speech.

Video shot by a conservative Massachusetts political group, MassResistance, shows officers standing by as laughing students, apparently in no fear of being disciplined by the college administration, chanted, screamed and banged on pots and pans.  Eventually the students rushed the podium and grabbed the microphone.  Rather than haul away the miscreants, the officers and a Smith college official ordered the speaker to leave.

The following day, Smith President Carol T. Christ sent a message to “the Smith community” about the incident.  Christ wrote, “I am disappointed that some members of our community chose not to uphold our own commitment to freedom of expression.”  Then she lowered the boom: “We are investigating possible violations of college policy.”

Here is an investigation that should begin in the Smith president's own office.  If Christ were serious about upholding freedom of expression, she would suspend or expel the students caught on video “possibly” violating Smith policy on free speech.  She would also forward all the information she has to the local police so they can investigate the apparent violation of Massachusetts law.  In Massachusetts, it's illegal to interfere with any person exercising a right protected by the state or U.S. constitution.

Meanwhile, the Washington Times reports that unnamed officials in the American Psychiatric Association have canceled a symposium, “Homosexuality and Therapy: The Religious Dimension,” which was to be held Monday, May 5, at the WashingtonD.C.Convention Center.  Homosexual activists complained that the panel would promote “reparative therapy,” or treatment of people with unwanted same-sex desires.

According to the Times, the APA canceled the panel after controversial homosexual Episcopal bishop Vicky Gene Robinson dropped out, and after “gay activists campaigned against the two evangelicals slated to appear,” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler and psychiatrist Warren Throckmorton.

Robinson told a homosexual newspaper, The Washington Blade, that “Conservatives, particularly Focus on the Family, were going to use this event to draw credibility to the so-called reparative therapy movement.”

Brian Fitzpatrick is senior editor at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the MediaResearchCenter.