Tommy Tainant
Diamond Member
- Jan 20, 2016
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Oxford students call for professor’s removal over alleged homophobia
Students at Oxford University are demanding that a Catholic law professor be sacked for alleged homophobia.
At least 350 students have signed a petition calling for John Finnis to be removed from teaching, citing a “a long record of extremely discriminatory views against many groups of disadvantaged people” including the LGBT+ community.
Finnis, 78, who is emeritus professor of law and legal philosophy at University College, has rejected the students’ claims, saying there was “not a ‘phobic’ sentence” in all his writings.
His Collected Essays, published in 2011, include an assertion from a paper published in 1994 that homosexuality is “never a valid, humanly acceptable choice and form of life”. It is “destructive of human character and relationships”, he wrote, because “it treats human sexual capacities in a way which is deeply hostile to the self-understanding of those members who are willing to commit themselves to real marriage”.
Not sure there is enough in the passage quoted. But if I was a gay student I would not feel comfortable being taught by this character, and paying for the pleasure.
Students at Oxford University are demanding that a Catholic law professor be sacked for alleged homophobia.
At least 350 students have signed a petition calling for John Finnis to be removed from teaching, citing a “a long record of extremely discriminatory views against many groups of disadvantaged people” including the LGBT+ community.
Finnis, 78, who is emeritus professor of law and legal philosophy at University College, has rejected the students’ claims, saying there was “not a ‘phobic’ sentence” in all his writings.
His Collected Essays, published in 2011, include an assertion from a paper published in 1994 that homosexuality is “never a valid, humanly acceptable choice and form of life”. It is “destructive of human character and relationships”, he wrote, because “it treats human sexual capacities in a way which is deeply hostile to the self-understanding of those members who are willing to commit themselves to real marriage”.
Not sure there is enough in the passage quoted. But if I was a gay student I would not feel comfortable being taught by this character, and paying for the pleasure.