Freedom of Speech is a secular concept.

[deacon blues]

Some of you know of my hobby- reading history. I'm currently reading parallel diaries of David O. McKay and Ernest Wilkinson, president of BYU during the 1960's.
In 1968 Wilkinson held a Dean's meeting where the topic of campus unrest and free speech came up. Wilkinson reports in his diary that a professor- Dr.Terry Warner said, "Freedom of speech, as it is known today(1968), is a secular concept that has no place at BYU."
Wilkinson appears to support the idea, with the caveat the freedom of speech is limited by Christianity and the teachings of the Church.
My first thought was: "What about the concept of agency, or free agency as it was called back in Pres. McKay's time.
I am struck with the fact that many "so-called" Christians LDS or otherwise, believe in free speech for US, but not for THEM. In other words: LDS free speech is protected, non-LDS speech is not.
Is that what they think heaven is like?

Apparently Dr. Warner taught at BYU until 2009, at least forty years.

[alas]

Then there are all the so-called Christians going nuts over the girl in college who wrote a religious tract instead of the required psychology essay and is unhappy with her failing grade. They are calling it a freedom of religion problem that she doesn’t know that for a psychology grade your subject matter needs to vaguely resemble, ya’know, psychology. So, religious people need to realize that “freedom of religion” and “freedom of speech” do not equal “my religion is the only truth the world has ever found.” They need to realize that not only are there different religions that, if you want your own religion respected, need to be given equal respect but also there is this weird thing called science and that if you want to take advantage of all the modern conveniences science has given us, also needs to be respected. Even if you don’t agree with scientific discoveries, a certain level of respect is needed. That minimum respect should be that you can at least parrot back what your professor says OR back your opinion up with ideas that are still within the realm of science.

Maybe it is a double standard that science can be used to disprove religion or at least specific details, like a 6,000 year old earth, but religion cannot be used to disprove science. Not unless you can produce God in all his glory.

It really shows that people on the far right have no clue what they are even talking about because this girl didn’t even back up her thesis from any religious text. She claims that God set up the modern gender roles, annd if God set up gender roles, then trans people do not exist, and claims the Bible proves it, but then her quoted scriptures do not really say what she wants them to say. Like me saying that I can prove that llamas do not exist, because they are never mentioned in the Bible, but that I can prove that dragons do exist because they are mentioned.

You do not have *both* the right on a test to free speech AND the right to a good grade. This is a base of the conservatives misunderstanding of “free speech.”

It is kind of a different problem telling professors that they cannot teach science in a science class but must teach religion. That is “Academic freedom” which is still a different animal than “freedom of speech” or “freedom of religion”. There is no guarantee of academic freedom at BYU. And maybe there shouldn’t be. Which was why I turned down a scholarship to BYU, where I had free room and board, and paid full tuition and all expenses somewhere else. About the time I was turning down that BYU scholarship, my mom was best friends with one of the future September 6 which says a bit about how I was raised.