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Thursday, May 25, 2023

(Still) more on the "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" and FIRE.

Howard has suggested, in some recent posts (here and here) that there is some inconsistency between FIRE's opposition to, say, disinviting and/or shouting down campus speakers, such as Judge Kyle Duncan, and its (I gather) failure to criticize the (now abandoned) decision of the Los Angeles Dodgers to disinvite the "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" from an event at Dodger Stadium. 

I disagree; the merits matter. The "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" are not merely (though they are) "offensive-to-some"; they are a hate group, and they traffic in a kind of nasty bigotry and obscenity that, I am confident, Howard would not shrug off were it directed at another religious group, regardless of his disagreement with that group's teachings or beliefs. A group like FIRE is, it seems to me, on solid ground when it distinguishes between (a) students at an elite university harassing a Article III judge who has been invited, in accord with established procedures, to deliver a university-appropriate talk and (b) a for-profit sports franchise deciding that, all things considered, it's a bad idea to invite and promote a hate group, the schtick of which is to mock professed religious women who share the faith of the largest religious community in that sports franchise's city.

Posted by Rick Garnett on May 25, 2023 at 03:53 PM in Rick Garnett | Permalink

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