By Kathleen Gilbert
SOUTH ORANGE, New Jersey, April 28, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Seton Hall University, the oldest Catholic diocesan university in the U.S., will be offering a same-sex "marriage" course taught by a homosexualist professor.
The Setonian, the university's newspaper, reported that the new course offering for Fall 2010 would be offered by associate professor W. King Mott, an open homosexual who was demoted in 2005 after complaining about the Catholic Church's stance against homosexuality.
The course will be offered under the Women and Gender studies department, and will be available to upper level students of any major.
“The Roman Catholic Church is prima facie homophobic,” Mott had told the press. “The Roman Catholic Church considers me to be inherently disordered. I don't know how much more homophobic one can be.” However, the university insisted that it was not rebuking Mott for his personal views, but only for failing to disassociate himself from the school.
Mott claims that next semester's course is not an advocacy course, but will, in the words of the Setonian's Jessica Sutcliffe, "[teach] the issue of gay marriage from an academic perspective."
“It is one thing to say ‘I am for or against gay marriage,’” Mott said. “It’s another to actually understand the issue. ... I hope my students gain an appreciation and respect for disinterested analysis that can be used to formulate an informed opinion."
Students in the course will write a report on same-sex "marriage" from "a perspective they choose after they have been educated on the issue," according to the article.
Junior Anthony Angelella, a secondary education and mathematics major, quoted by the Setonian, said he was "surprised" but "excited" about the class, and that it "just shows that a Catholic campus doesn't have to be so cut and dry about controversial issues.”
Mott, who as of 2005 lived with his male partner, openly maintains an affiliation with Lambda Legal, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, and Human Rights Campaign, all leading homosexualist groups.
TFP Student Action points out that, in a paper entitled "The Sanctity of Marriage: Current Boundaries and the New Vocabulary," Mott said that maintaining marriage as between one man and one woman was "laughable."
"The notion that marriage is a stable and ancient human arrangement, derived from divine revelation, limited to that existing between one man and one woman, and binding save through the permission of a single Church is contrived," he wrote, as quoted by the student group. "It is laughable to consider that human relationships could ever find satisfaction and expression in this single interpretation of marriage."
TFP Student Action's John Ritchie questioned the rationale behind allowing Mott to offer the course. "Why should any Catholic university sponsor a course that leads students away from the truth?" he asked.
"Why should the Catholic classroom be used as a tool to advance the homosexual movement and undermine traditional marriage?
"In our hyper-sexualized culture, Seton Hall University would do well to cancel this course and replace it with one that teaches students how to appreciate the beauty of abstinence, modesty and heroic purity."
Seton Hall University responded to LifeSiteNews.com's request for comment with a statement declaring that the class was a "special topics" course that, as such, professors could offer "on an experimental basis three times" and therefore was "not reviewed by the college curricular committee."
"This course has been scheduled for the fall semester to examine one of the most significant political policy questions of our time. It is not presented to our students as an advocacy course. Thus, we fully anticipate that the Catholic position on same-sex marriage will be robustly explored," stated the school.
The University declined to give further comment.
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