Larry, my understanding of this is that the speaker is one of those “street preachers” who obtains permission from the university to speak in public, but is not necessarily endorsed or compensated by any organization on campus.

Tom Short is affilated with my old Christian crew, Great Commission Ministries (GCM), who focus heavily on planting churches and groups on college campuses. I don’t know for a fact, but there is a good chance ISU has a GCM group that invited him. I would surmise the “evening meetings” he was attending were small group meetings within the church, probably at someone’s home.

I still have a lot of great friends in GCM churches, though of course, I have “fallen away” from their belief system.

I guess maybe I am not understanding the situation properly. This guy was a speaker, invited by some campus group to speak? If that is the case…would it not always be proper to be silent and refrain from audible protests while the guy is actually speaking? Would we not want and expect the same thing for an atheist speaker?

Larry, my understanding of this is that the speaker is one of those “street preachers” who obtains permission from the university to speak in public, but is not necessarily endorsed or compensated by any organization on campus. We had such a preacher at my college (“Brother Jed” Smock, possibly the same Rev. Jed that Jennifurret mentioned), and his open-air sermons by the student union building always drew a crowd of hecklers. My understanding is that such people gain access to the school grounds through Free Speech and Free Assembly rights, but are generally missionaries from some organization outside of the school, rather than guests of school organizations.

That said, you have a point about courtesy for someone speaking, but it’s a little hard to let someone rail on in public for hours without challenging anything he says, especially when much of it is laughable and/or offensive. There is no orderly “question and answer” session at which to raise issues; the street preacher spends his entire allotted time preaching.

~David D.G.

I guess maybe I am not understanding the situation properly. This guy was a speaker, invited by some campus group to speak? If that is the case…would it not always be proper to be silent and refrain from audible protests while the guy is actually speaking? Would we not want and expect the same thing for an atheist speaker?

I would support protesting outside the speaker’s venue…protesting and openly debating the guy afterwards…etc. But during…I would side on respectfully allowing him to finish (since a campus group has paid money or taken the time to set this up).

And, if it is true that this guy does more to keep people away from christianity…then it would be in an atheist’s best interest to shut up and let him speak.

Whenever I see someone protest or speak over someone who is at a podium presenting…I think it makes the protester look rude and out of line…all of the time…regardless what side of an issue they are on. Much better to be respectful and allow them to finish. There is a time to protest and a time to be respectful of other people…and their ideology should not alter when those times are.