Human Rights? Not For You, Filthy Sodomite.
If one were to attend law school one could do a lot worse than New York University. The prestigious institution has a long and storied history. It also has an excellent program which invites well educated law professors from around the world to teach at NYU for a semester. This fall, Thio Li-ann will be teaching a class on human rights. Dr. Li-ann has an impressive résumé with degrees from Cambridge, Harvard, and Oxford. She has served on various law and advisory boards and taught at universities in New Zealand, Australia, and Taiwan. She has written papers on international law and human rights. She has also served in parliament in her home of Singapore where she worked tirelessly to protect the public from sodomy by supporting the continuation of legislation that criminalizes homosexual acts.
That last point seems to have angered some gay and lesbian students, many of whom are members of NYU OUTLaw. The group sent out an email to fellow students drawing attention to statements made by Dr. Li-ann in a speech she gave to Singapore’s Parliament on October 22, 2007 (transcript here; video above) concerning the fate of 377A of Singapore’s penal code which states the following:
Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years.
Over the course of her argument Li-ann provides a laundry list of reasons for why this statute must stand and just how its repeal would cause society to collapse into a sweaty pile of diseased, unmarried, sex-crazed perverts who would, presumably, roam the streets raping children and feasting on the flesh of heterosexuals. The scope of her speech is, at times, breathtaking. She argues that homosexuality is a choice and homosexuals can change. She supposes that terms like “sexual orientation” can not only apply to homosexuality but to incest, bestiality, and pedophilia. She is also concerned about health, arguing that sodomy breeds disease with this, astonishing simile: “Anal-penetrative sex is inherently damaging to the body and a misuse of organs, like shoving a straw up your nose to drink.”
She then goes on to provide a handy list of five key steps that supporters of the gay agenda subscribe to in order to push their views and undermine society, one of which looks to lower the age of consent and another which looks to prohibit discrimination based and sexual orientation. These quickly bring her back to, you guessed it, pedophilia; going as far as to quote the “motto” of NAMBLA. She wraps up this particular section with a warning for the ladies:
To slouch back to Sodom is to return to the Bad Old Days in ancient Greece or even China where sex was utterly wild and unrestrained, and homosexuality was considered superior to man-women relations. Women’s groups should note that where homosexuality was celebrated, women were relegated to low social roles; when homosexuality was idealized in Greece, women were objects not partners, who ran homes and bore babies. Back then, whether a man had sex with another man, woman or child was a matter of indifference, like one’s eating preferences. The only relevant category was penetrator and penetrated; sex was not seen as interactive intimacy, but a doing of something to someone. How degrading.
She then goes on to blame the invention of marriage on the Torah, which I find not only ridiculous but highly offensive. One would like to think we’ve progressed far enough to where such antisemitism from an elected official would not be tolerated. It seems that people are still more than willing to blame the world’s ills on the Jews.
NYU has, thus far, not elected to rescind Dr. Li-ann’s invitation to teach, but there are questions that must be asked; the first and foremost of those being whether or not she is qualified to teach a class on human rights, something Cary Nelson, national president of the American Association of University Professors — which has advised NYU on this matter — has doubts: “Academic freedom protects you from retaliation for your extramural remarks, but it does not protect you from being prohibited from teaching in an area where you are not professionally competent […]”
via Inside Higher Ed
July 8th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Women’s groups should note that where homosexuality was celebrated, women were relegated to low social roles;
I have news for her: women in the vast majority of medieval Europe had low social roles as well. Does that mean that homosexuality was “celebrated” in medieval Europe? Hell no.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Oof, my lunch isn’t sitting well after listening to her.
Anal sex is like shoving a straw up your nose to drink? I’ve drank through my nose, it feels weird, I hope it doesn’t become criminalized. What about people who like to put coffee up their butts? Hmm..
And says that homosexual oral and anal sex are very prevalent ways of passing diseases, and by that logic, criminalizing it will protect the people?!!! Does that mean that straight oral, anal, or vaginal sex has some immunity I did not know about? I must have my stats wrong.
Its a misuse of organs? I misused my liver just the other night. A lot of eating disorders misuse your digestive system, maybe they should be put in jail too. Is it ok to hump someone’s armpit? Its not an organ, right? How bout chilli doggin? No organs being misused!
I DID however giggle when she said, as straight faced as she is, “rimming”, and then proceeded to explain to parliament what it was. But again, what organ is being harmed by a little dirty trombonin?!! Or is it merely between homosexuals that a tongue can mutilate a butthole and must be protected by law?
And denying the bigotry inherent in her argument by equating “allowing homosexual special rights as a minority is like allowing pedophiles the right to have sex with children”.. Oh jeez, its like the whole Prop 8 argument here in California, “Dudes marryin other dudes?!! What’s next a Philippino marrying a centipede?!!” The worlds gonna go crazy, and yes, I WILL have sex with a duck.
Ugh, enough already. Now without further aggravation, I’m gonna consensually frottage the crack between my mattresses as the law has granted me the right to.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I would say more on this subject, but yelling at people like this is like yelling at a broken toaster oven. It might make you feel better, but the thing is still going to be spitting out black, crispy, nutritonless crap.
Best we can hope is everyone with a brain and a soul stays the fuck away from her class, and reacts like all civilized people do when they or their friends are slandered. Speak your piece, take the high ground, and continue to let them embarass themselves. Then we can all just sit back, put our feet up, and wait for her to have a flaaaaaamingly gay child in the next few years.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
That last quote seems ridiculous to bring up (by the one who said not in the context of the post) since academic institutions always have controversial professors. It’s practically a sport. Plus given what she would be teaching I can only HOPE the students debate her into the ground. She clearly has the qualifications to teach and lets be honest, what we wish human rights to be in this country and what they are…don’t even up.
Li-ann’s stance may not be one some of us would take but it’s not a totally foreign one in our society. The students she teaches will no doubt fall on both sides of it, for and against without her hand holding them. She’s the kind of person many of those students will face in their post college careers anyhow, may as well learn to deal with it now no?
She’s that great example of highly educated ignorance in power. Even if NYU did rescind the invite, another school would take her up. At least there students who are totally against her ideas can gain insight as to why those who believe them are so adamant about them.
I’d like to happily write this woman off as having out of date ideas with no baring on what any enlightened society needs…but she sounds no different than much of what you can hear from assorted religious and conservative commentators on a daily basis.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Well, if she does end up teaching there, the backlash should be huge…
I hope.
July 8th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I thought you said she was well educated?
July 8th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
I’m really trying to listen to this but I just want to strangle her.
July 8th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I’ve been reduced to stuttering rage. A woman who does not count the tool of logos in her rhetorical arsenal cannot be debated, so I guess that’s all right.
July 8th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Not what I needed to hear last thing of all tonight:( I’d say she’s a brilliant example of the fact that education doesn’t per definition make someone intelligent. That said, she may well have a high IQ but it really doesn’t show up here, I might be biased though.
July 8th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
I for one am adamantly against Phillipinos marrying centipedes.
It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and scolopendra gigantea.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
As a lifelong rhinodeglutitionist I find her comparisons both highly offensive and wildly inaccurate.
July 8th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
so are hetrosexuals able to do sodamistic acts? wtf a hetersexual person can do all of the things that she is blaming homosexual person for doing!
the only reason homosexuals are targeted for having high percentage of std’s or hiv is because the gay community is small compared to the hetrosexual community! such crap! stay out of peoples beds lady, its not even about sex its having a relationship.
July 8th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
As a graduate of NYU, I hope that my impression of the student body as a whole over the years I spent there was not wrong and that people will take her class just to disrupt it, questioning her and making her cry.
July 8th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
@Eve…hopefully someone captures it on video. Cause seeing her eviscerated in a classroom by students would be too perfect.
July 8th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
While it kind of breaks the narrative of bigotry and hatred, I do want to point out that cross-species preference (i.e. zoophilia) is in fact a sexual orientation. There’s never been research on zoophilia that concluded otherwise – and the DSM IV (mostly) echoes these research findings. As far as I know, those are the only two axes against which we currently recognize human “sexual orientation” – same sex/opposite sex and same species/other species. The rest are preferences within these axes, and/or fetishistic expressions of specific areas of focus.
No need to worry, however. I know from extensive firsthand experience that having laws that criminalize discrimination based on “sexual orientation” are simply not applied to zoophilia. Regardless of how those laws are written – or how clear it is that sexual orientation includes more than just gay/straight – zoos are absolutely fair game for every form of persecution. She need not worry that accepting same-sex orientations will magically result in zoos being protected from attack. We’re fair game, as always.
We’re a great scapegoat for Normal society – good to know one is appreciated. Those with the stomach for it can find a tiny sampling of examples of the endless attacks, discrimination, and persecution we get to carry in that role of scapegoat can find them here:
http://www.cultureghost.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2479
Fausty
July 8th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
This is pretty much hypocrisy at it’s finest. And it’s wrong to let someone of that mind teaching human rights, and not only because of her opposition to gay rights, but also her lack of knowledge and research on the subject she’s opposing.
July 9th, 2009 at 5:17 am
Talking about this woman’s close-mindedness makes me very sad…but it’s worth it for the quotes!
“I would say more on this subject, but yelling at people like this is like yelling at a broken toaster oven. It might make you feel better, but the thing is still going to be spitting out black, crispy, nutritonless crap…”
There’s got to be a way I can use “yelling at a toaster oven” the next time I’m comforting someone after an argument!
But even that is not as awesome as:
“It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and scolopendra gigantea.”
July 9th, 2009 at 5:38 am
She’s probably just bitter she doesn’t understand the appeal of anal, yet is still confused that she’s drawn to it.
Or at least that would be how I’d write her up in a vicious Alan Bleasdale style serial.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:06 am
Maybe she had a very bad backdoor experience in the past?
While I have no doubt that she’s qualified to teach certain branches of law, it’s quite clear to me that she should be one of the last people hired to talk about human rights. I hope the NYU students simply boycott her class.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:33 am
The fact that she’s forcing her opinion on others is repulsive.
What’s worse is she’s trying to make her opinion a crime.
What a disgusting woman.
I can see students rising up in anger, and then throttling her.
July 12th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Why would NYU hire a bigoted moron to teach there? Somebody in the administration of that school must be banging her. For sure. Just find out who and this whole thing goes away overnight.
July 14th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
I am shocked that university has the gall to pull something like this given that they just barely beat back a nearly three-day student occupation of an NYU building. Given that radical students in New York are so mobilized lately (what between the NYU and two New School occupations), you think administrators would do their best to not give them targets.
Well, here’s to them getting their shit shoved back in their asses by kids with a taste for direct action.
October 6th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Porn Star Felicia Tang Murdered by Pastor Boyfriend, Say Cops…