By Ethan Hollenberger
Conservative radio hosts, a professor, and a former student caused Marquette University administrators to actually stick to the university’s Catholic heritage.
The newly formed “Gender and Sexuality Resource Center” was to sponsor “FemSex: The Female Sexuality Workshop” during the spring semester. The workshop would offer three-hour sessions once a week for 12 weeks. According to the syllabus, “Themes include pleasure, health, gender, consent, boundaries, privilege, power, body image, communication, race, class, orgasms, masturbation, sex, kink, and sexual identities.” The workshop is completely student run and facilitated. The FemSex program teaches students to give into a debased and anti-Catholic view of sex and desire.
The Gender and Sexuality Resource Center held information sessions in January after posting flyers around Marquette, a historically and culturally Catholic Jesuit university.
The posters were intercepted by conservative political science Professor John McAdams and posted on his blog, Marquette Warrior, causing local Milwaukee talk radio hosts to expose Marquette’s severe lack in judgement.
As a former student at Marquette, I emailed Marquette President Father Scott Pilarz, S.J., and his staff seeking comment and a defense of the workshop.
After several days of inquiries Marquette Provost John Pauly responded in an email that, “After reviewing its content, we found that aspects of the program did not fulfill the expectations set out in the charter of the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center. Because of this, the center is no longer sponsoring the program.” He added the workshop is student run and not taught by a Marquette faculty.
Pauly noted his decision was, “on fairly specific grounds, saying that this particular workshop was not one that Marquette should be perceived as formally sponsoring through the center.” The Gender and Sexuality Resource Center is lead by Pauly’s office.
While Marquette’s leaders standing up for the principles of the school is applauded, they only did so after tough questions and pressure. FemSex should have never been considered for university sponsorship in the first place. Marquette administrators have an established pattern of retreating after public outcry. If not for watchful conservatives, FemSex might be officially sanctioned today.
In hosting FemSex, Marquette was complicit in undermining traditional Catholic values, once again caving in to the amoral push of progressive culture. Holding Marquette administrators accountable to the University's Christian Catholic traditions should never happen. Unfortunately, the left’s assault on academia is prevalent at Marquette and will continue.
Ethan Hollenberger, age 22, is a conservative activist from Wisconsin. While at Marquette, he was a founding member of his campus' Young Americans for Freedom chapter. He can be contacted at ethan@ethanhollenberger.com. More of his columns are available at www.ethanhollenberger.com. Follow him on Twitter: @EHollenberger.
