The Millstone of the Month award goes to the Dean of Students for the ambiguous and largely unknown revision of the Aquinas College poster/flyer policy which is being heralded as objective and binding.
One of the revisions in this policy is that all posters and flyers must be approved by the Dean of Students. Because the Dean’s judgments about allowing or disallowing poster content appear to be purely subjective, a policy was created to foster the appearance of equitability. The policy states, “Materials will not be approved if they contain...offensive, insensitive, or provocative language and/or images and/or graphic illustrations which dehumanize individuals based on sex, race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, height, weight, or marital status.”
The problem with this new policy is that it is based on the Dean’s subjective opinion of what is “offensive” and “insensitive.” For the Dean, a textbook image of a developing human fetus is “offensive” and therefore is prohibited for display. Yet posters that advertised Love is Everywhere, an event that blatantly disregarded Catholic teaching, were permitted.
It is interesting that the word “dehumanize” was chosen as core component of the policy. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines the verb “dehumanize” as something that, “deprives of positive human qualities.” Illustrating the early stages of a human being does not dehumanize anyone; on the contrary, it humanizes a person who is often willfully viewed as subhuman. Is this not merely “saying of what is that it is?” On the other hand, advertising an event that shamelessly supported the intrinsically evil act of homosexual genital activity is dehumanizing. It disregards natural law, and it degrades humanity by defining the meaning of a person according to sexual proclivity.
Granted, the Dean may just have a personal issue with human fetuses. However, some serious questions need to be raised. Why, at a Catholic institution, are the personal opinions of one individual overriding the teachings of our school’s professed faith? And why are we creating policies that encourage and enforce such absurd behavior?
