Sarah Dingwall’s string of articles, at least as long as I’ve been reading it, have been nothing but radical Christian rhetoric and thinly veiled fundamentalist proselytizing. Her latest article, a non-story about a man banned on Facebook for homophobic comments, only confirms this while further ingraining negative stereotypes about her religion, state, and nation.
The crux of Ms. Dingwall’s article is that Christianity, the most followed, influential, and politically connected religion in the U.S., is somehow in danger of being unconstitutionally persecuted to extinction. For one thing, she makes the mistake as those devotees of the reactionary Phil Robertson.
The freedom of speech and expression doesn’t mean they are entitled to a platform for those opinions, particularly if said opinions resemble those of a particularly homophobic 5-year-old, for Phil, the man on Facebook, or even Sarah.
But the real reason for articles like Ms. Dingwall’s is to simply feed some sense of righteous persecution. If getting kicked off a website and having your opinions called stupid is grounds to claim persecution, everyone from Playstation fanboys to black mask anarchists could (and do) claim the same. It seems that the Christian right, since the age of Reagan, has become so powerful that those included have to magnify the most minuscule slight to fulfill the sense of hardship required to be a real Christian.
On a more local level, her unobjective, anti-intellectual articles threaten to discredit the entire newspaper. The newspaper obviously needs balance but, honestly, I’d be ashamed if someone like her was representing my ideology. There are conservatives on campus several times smarter and more articulate than she. I recommend she debate real issues in a logical way or the newspaper find another columnist.
