Bisexual prof. raised by lesbians who supports traditional marriage faces loss of tenure
Robert Oscar Lopez isn’t your typical social-conservative
professor: he was raised by his mom and her lesbian partner, and he openly
admits that he is bisexual.
But he
also opposes same-sex “marriage” and adoption, and even submitted a brief to
the United States Supreme Court arguing against the redefinition of marriage.
He bases his views in part on the trauma of his parents’ divorce when he was a
toddler, and his subsequent experiences of being raised in a same-sex household.
Now he
says he's under attack for defending the rights of children to be raised by
their natural parents. Specifically, he may lose tenure, and even faces suspension
without pay, from California
State University-Northridge, the taxpayer-funded university that tenured him
just two years ago.
Lopez says
that it all began when he gave his students the option to attend and present
research, for credit, at a conference he organized on parenting and children's
rights at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in 2014.
One of the
speakers there, Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute, spoke on the topic
of divorce, during which she says she
never discussed the issue of homosexuality. However, at her table she had
several pamphlets, including one titled “77 Non-Religious Reasons to Support
Man/Woman Marriage.” She says that speakers at the conference supported the
right of children to be raised by their mother and father.
After
choosing to attend the conference, a student subsequently filed a complaint against Lopez, claiming that
he discriminated against her based on gender. She also submitted a copy of
Roback-Morse’s pamphlet, and one other pamphlet entitled "Are You a
Survivor of the Sexual Revolution?" as evidence that Lopez had created a
"hostile learning environment on the basis of gender and sexual
orientation." Other students also reportedly filed similar complaints
about the conference.
In an
e-mail sent to media, Lopez says that he has been under investigation by the
University of California's Northridge administration for 378 days for alleged
discrimination and retaliation against students. Lopez says he himself didn’t
find out he was under investigation until 245 days after the process was
launched.
He also
said that one of the three people heading the investigation compared the event at the Library to being tricked
into going to a KKK rally.
Harassment
is nothing new for Lopez. The radical LGBT organization Human Rights Campaign targeted Lopez in 2014 as part of the so-called "Export of Hate",
something he says leaves him fearing for his family's safety.
Now, he
says the university violated policies when it targeted him, and he is
threatening legal action against the university for violations of California
employment and civil rights law.
University
policy states that it will complete
investigations "no
later than 60 working days after the intake interview," with a 30-day
extension if necessary. However, in a deposition, the university told Lopez he
was investigated after formal charges were filed in May.
Lopez also
points out that the deposition says the allegations made against him by a
female student “were similar to the allegations made" by two students
"about the conference just days after it took place on October 3" of
last year - meaning the investigation apparently started in 2014.
The
university eventually found Lopez innocent of discrimination, but last month
found him guilty of retaliation against a student. Lopez says the “retaliation”
claim is clearly bogus, pointing to how the student in question got an
"A" in his class, even after reporting him, and that there is no
documented proof of retaliation.
The
findings could cause Lopez to lose his job.
In a letter to
the university, Lopez's attorney -- Charles LiMandri with the
Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund -- wrote that the finding of retaliation
violated university policy, noting that while "intimidation" and
"retaliation" have high bars in official university documents, the
charges against Lopez are based upon conversation fragments that took place
seven months apart.
"In
sum, this evidence does not even begin to meet the CSUN's own standard for
'retaliation,'" says the letter. "Under these circumstances, we have
no choice but to conclude that the disposition of this investigation is purely
political and ideological attack on Dr. Lopez for holding -- and exposing his
students to -- ideas about children's right in the context of family and
reproduction which are apparently unpopular at CSUN."
Lopez says that when it comes to the question of same-sex
"marriage," he is most concerned about the rights of children.
"Same-sex
'marriage,' theoretically, does not impinge on anyone else's rights,"
Lopez told LifeSiteNews last year. "But if you guarantee a right to
children as part of marriage, now this drags in the rights of other people --
there is a third-party...Not everyone gets married but every human being has a
mother and father; those latter relationships are more fundamental than a
spousal relationship.”
Lopez
filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court on behalf of children and against redefining marriage, saying that it
was children, not same-sex couples, who have real standing in court on the
issue of marriage.
Lopez also
strongly opposes IVF, telling LifeSiteNews that "gay advocacy groups are
pushing for the creation of children through artificial reproduction technology
and for adoption systems that give children to gay couples because the gay
couples want to be parents, not because children need to be in their homes."
"This
is the transformation of human beings into chattel in a way we haven't seen
since before slavery was abolished. I have stated many times that this isn't
identical to the African slave trade, which involved far worse abuse, but there
is an undeniable commonality between pre-13th-Amendment slavery and what is
being advocated by groups like the Human Rights Campaign," he said.
Roback-Morse has come out in support of Lopez. "I believe
the sexual revolutionaries despise Robert Lopez because he challenges one of
their core assumptions," she wrote this week at the National Catholic
Register. "The sexual revolution is based on the idea that all adults able
to give meaningful consent are entitled to unlimited sexual activity with a
minimum of inconvenience. What they never mention is this: Children just
have to accept whatever adults choose to give them."
