Vin Suprynowicz

A few weeks after Proposition 8 was approved by California voters back in November — banning same-sex marriage there — Professor John Matteson apparently assigned members of his public speaking class at Los Angeles City College to address the issue.

Did the instructor actually expect all his students would adhere to the minority position — often mistaken for a majority viewpoint, by those walled up in today’s leftist academic preserves — on this controversial issue?

Over the long (especially long, at tax-funded institutions — The Los Angeles Community College District’s offices were closed even on Friday) Presidents’ Day weekend, The Los Angeles Times was unable to reach Mr. Matteson for comment.

But student Jonathan Lopez reports his professor called him a “fascist bastard” and refused to let him finish when he rose to speak against same-sex marriage.

When student Lopez tried to find out his mark for the speech, Professor Matteson allegedly told him to “ask God what your grade is,” according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of young Mr. Lopez last week by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization based in Scottsdale, Ariz., and co-founded by James Dobson of Focus on the Family.

Young Mr. Lopez, a Los Angeles resident working toward an associate’s degree at the college, is described in the suit as a Christian who considers it his religious duty to share his beliefs, particularly with other students. Mr. Lopez further contends the teacher threatened to have him expelled when he complained to higher-ups.

Alliance staff counsel David J. Hacker contends Mr. Lopez was a victim of religious discrimination.

“He was expressing his faith during an open-ended assignment, but when the professor disagreed with some minor things he mentioned, the professor shut him down,” Mr. Hacker says. “Basically colleges and universities should give Christian students the same rights to free expression as other students.”

In addition to financial damages, the suit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, seeks to strike down a sexual harassment code barring students at the college from uttering “offensive” statements.

In a letter released by the Alliance, the district said it deemed Lopez’s complaint “extremely serious in nature” and had launched a private disciplinary process.

In the letter, Dean Allison Jones also said two students reported being “deeply offended” by Lopez’s address, including one who stated that “This student should have to pay some price for preaching hate in the classroom.”

It’s regrettable things have reached a point where such matters must burden the courts. It’s hard to believe the free give-and-take of the classroom will be enhanced by students and professors seeking whispered advice from “counsel” before they rise to speak.

It also seems silly to assert the plaintiff here is owed monetary damages — though lawyers understand a suit may go nowhere in the courts unless some reimbursable “damages” are claimed.

What IS a serious matter are these college “speech codes” which seek to systematically stifle any utterances — from students OR faculty — that any listener might find “offensive.”

Presumably these students are attending class — with a taxpayer subsidy, in this case — to learn something. Let them start, then, by learning this:

No, there is not some “price to be paid” for exercising one’s right to free speech, especially when the speech in question is a serious expression of deeply held religious belief or moral precept.

In America, under the First Amendment, it is anyone who attempts to stifle this free give-and-take of ideas — especially in a non-threatening college classroom environment — who should have to “pay some price.”

There is no right “not to be offended.” Fundamentalist Christian students have no right to silence or punish those who advance the right of gays to be left in peace. But neither do gay students or their champions have any right to silence those who profess a religious belief that homosexual behavior is wrong.

A professor or instructor’s duty may indeed include expelling or silencing those who interrupt class with unscheduled noisy protests or demonstrations — especially those meant to intimidate and drive away other students because of their race, religion, or sexual preference. But there is no evidence to date that young Mr. Lopez was marching around in a white hood with a noose, threatening or attempting to instill fear in anyone.

In this context, if the instructor chose to broach this issue in class, then it was his duty to let each side be heard in full, using the occasion to teach tolerance of differing viewpoints — even viewpoints that might tend to make listeners uncomfortable.

For how are students supposed to develop their independent critical skills, if not by hearing out and then weighing the logic of unfamiliar and even “offensive” arguments? Without this, “education” becomes nothing but the rote memorization of today’s “politically correct” catechism.

Yes, Professor Matteson might be well within his professorial prerogative to point out to young Mr. Lopez that “because God told me so” is not a form of argumentation likely to win a lot of converts to his point of view, in this day and age. But Americans were never promised a nation “free from religion.” What government is barred from doing on this continent is creating an “establishment of religion” — a government-approved set of doctrines or beliefs which are then defended with the power of the tax-funded state, to the exclusion of others.

Government must not bar the free expression of those who believe “Every species is sacred,” nor those who ridicule that belief. Government must not bar those who advance the normalcy and right to tolerance of the homosexual lifestyle — nor those who challenge that current orthodoxy.

Government must play it down the middle, creating an environment tolerant of all such divergent views, while barring either side from imposing its will on the other — particularly with the aid of guns and badges.