Comments on "BYU South" from an ASU alum

Recieved via email:

Actually, I see nothing wrong with a "BYU" dorm because *some* students may want such a dorm. I don't even see anything wrong with Fulton's condemnation of the boob on the front of the ASU paper.

However, I find the cancellation of the play by the gay ex-Mormon and the usurping of an academic facility (the child psych. lab) for an LDS parking lot to be immoral power politics at its worst.

Although Mormons are a distinct minority both in Arizona and at ASU, they see no moral dilemma in using campus facilities to promote their religion at the expense of a legitimate academic department. We all know that, thanks to Ashcroft, there is no longer separation of Church and State. Now there is no separation of academia from dogma "bought"by Mr. Fulton's donation.

I'm quite glad that I have refused all requests for Alumni donations. ASU's Nobel Laureate used the imprimatur of his Nobel Prize in Economics to promote the Bush campaign for the Presidency. Now we have the tragi-comical specter of a cult religion trying to dominate both social and academic life at a public institution for higher education.

As you know, there are many ways in which I am a Conservative. I work at a very "politically correct" school full of left wing bureaucracy and goofy "diversity world" values that I detest. Constitutional Conservatives, who believe in the rights of individuals to seek their pleasure in whatever way they please short of murder and mayhem, seem to be [as] asleep at the helm as [the] autocrats of the Right. However, the new autocrats of the Right violate every intention of the Founding Fathers by using privately-held religious beliefs to establish a de facto "papacy" in public life.

This New Right would have you believe that we should sacrifice all our freedoms to prevent an occasional exposed boob. If an exposed boob was the danger it was cracked up to be, countries like Italy, France, and Greece would all be like Sodom and Gomorrah. In fact, their divorce rates and teen pregnancy rates are far, far lower than ours even though their cultures are more overtly sexual and even have a lighthearted approach to it.

The Papacy of the New Right has lost its sense of proportion about what is truly dangerous to society and what is just a minor indiscretion. That's why Ashcroft put 5,000 people in prison under the Patriot Act and got precisely ZERO convictions. He, like his look-alikes, don't have a clue where the real dangers lie.