UVU’s Matthew Holland takes a stand, and catches flak for it.

John F. Kennedy won a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for Profiles in Courage, a collection of eight essays on historical examples of senatorial moral heroism that had been written by his speechwriter, Theodore Sorensen.

Increasingly, it requires similar courage in academia and other walks of life to publicly dissent from The Rising Orthodoxy about same-sex “marriage.”

Matthew Holland, the president of Utah Valley University, recently signed his name to an important statement of such dissent, and he’s being criticized, sometimes quite harshly, for having done so.

Here are three articles on the controversy (of which I prefer the second and the third):

http://www.uvureview.com/2015/05/08/uvu-president-lends-name-title-amicus-brief-supporting-traditional-marriage/

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/2484246-155/op-ed-holland-is-a-courageous-example

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/2484526-155/op-ed-attacks-on-marriage-brief-signers-show

I’ve long admired Matt Holland, whom I consider a friend.  He’s been, so far as I can see, an able, innovative, and adventurous president at UVU, and he was an excellent teacher and scholar while he was at BYU.  (His 2007 Georgetown University Press book, Bonds of Affection: Civic Charity and the Making of America, is a fine specimen of socio-political reflection.)

I admire him even more now.

But I’m troubled by the plainly obvious tendency among advocates of same-sex marriage, who’re feeling very confident these days, not only to seek the legal enshrinement of a redefined concept of marriage but to stigmatize, marginalize, demonize, and, if possible, silence those who disagree with them.  It’s an evil trend, and there’s an ugly totalitarian streak to it.