MPR’s Sasha Aslanian reports that a student newspaper at a suburban Catholic school has sparked a debate over free speech by criticizing a Catholic DVD and defending gay teens. The DVD denouncing same-sex marriage was sent by Minnesota's Catholic bishops to parishioners prior to Minnesota elections.
Report includes Aslanian interviewing Sean Simonson, a senior at Benilde-St. Margaret's School in St. Louis Park and editor on the school's student newspaper, the Knight Errant. He is author of an editorial “Life as a Gay Teenager,” one of two editorials that were removed from publication website.
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SASHA ASLANIAN: The Knight Errant student newspaper published a news story last Thursday about the bishops preserving marriage in Minnesota DVD. But it was the two editorials that accompanied it, and the online comments they inspired, that created the uproar. One staff editorial challenged the bishops arguments against same-sex marriage, and called the DVD unsubstantiated. Senior Bernardo Vigil helped write the piece.
BERNARDO VIGIL: We did expect a little bit of a pushback from that, which there was. A lot of the comments were, this shouldn't have been published, this is a Catholic school.
SASHA ASLANIAN: But the Op Ed that touched off the cyber storm was editor Sean Simonson's piece, Life as a Gay Teenager.
SEAN SIMONSON: There's so many suicides in the news, and I just felt very frustrated that, like, my voice couldn't be heard, and that there were all these things that I see as injustices all the time that I didn't feel like anyone else recognized.
SASHA ASLANIAN: Simonson writes, you fear looking the wrong way in the locker room and offending someone. Politicians are allowed to debate your right to marry the person you love, or your right to be protected from hate crimes under the law. Your faith preaches your exclusion or damnation, and no one does anything to stop it. After Simonson's essay ran in the Knight Errant, 93 comments poured into its website. Many of them praised Simonson for what they said was his courage.
A distinct minority didn't. Some quoted theology. Some attacked Simonson. Some were anonymous. Benilde Saint Margaret's principal, Sue Skinner, called Simonson's parents a day after the piece ran, and also talked to Simonson. School administrators declined to be interviewed for this story, but Simonson said the principal wanted the newspaper to stop taking comments on the piece. Simonson disagreed.
SEAN SIMONSON: The piece was to create this dialogue, and if we just stopped accepting comments, then we destroyed the meaning of the story. And so it just wasn't really worth doing.
SASHA ASLANIAN: Knight Errant staff, together with their faculty adviser, agreed instead to remove the two Op Eds and the comments from the website, and post an explanation from the principal, that reads in part, while lively debate and discussion clearly has its place in a Catholic school, this particular discussion is not appropriate because the level of intensity has created an unsafe environment for students. As importantly, the articles and ensuing online postings have created confusion about church teaching.
JANE KIRTLEY: I think it's always regrettable when a school administrator decides that the appropriate way to handle controversy is to suppress it.
SASHA ASLANIAN: Jane Kirtley is a professor of law and media ethics at the University of Minnesota. She says Benilde Saint Margaret's is well within its legal rights to curtail student expression. But she says, students need a safe place to debate these kinds of issues. Vigil and Simonson say they got that chance Monday morning. Their religion classes discussed the issues raised in the editorials and clarified the church's position on gays and lesbians.
Benilde's president, Bob Tip, said in a statement, that the Catholic Church teaches that men and women with homosexual tendencies must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. The editors say what they regret about taking down the articles is that it appears the commenters calling for their censorship have won. In reality, says Vigil, the discussion has simply moved.
BOB TIP: As per usual, with things involving high school students, a lot of it's moved to Facebook.
SASHA ASLANIAN: And on Facebook, the discussion can't be anonymous. Sasha Aslanian, Minnesota Public Radio News, Saint Louis Park.