Ms. Piggee Wants Free Speech

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Ahhh, free speech, what a tangled web you weave. We certainly love free speech (can you imagine this site without it? We would have been lynched ages ago!), and so does a one Martha Piggee. If you don’t know who she is, you certainly will soon.

A cosmetics teacher from Carl Sandburg College in Galesburg, Illinois, Piggee came under fire for distributing pamphlets declaring homosexuality a sin and urging readers to turn to a Christian God for salvation. While she was never formally reprimanded by the college, Piggee was told to halt distribution. Well, Piggee did not take that well. How not well? She took the college to court.

365 Gay reports:

…Piggee went to court accusing the college, the board of trustees and five college administrators of violating her due process rights and her constitutional rights to free speech. The suit said that the college’s sexual harassment policy was not clear.

Sensibly, the court tossed the case out, but Piggee wasn’t having it and appealed. She and her lawyer insist the college’s objections violate her right to free speech. While a federal appeals court dismissed the case, Piggee’s determined to fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

We’re not lawyers, but it doesn’t seem like her case doesn’t have a chance: she was, after all, on a university campus. Still, it raises some questions about free speech. So, darling readers, what say you? Should Ms. Piggee have the right to distribute homophobic, pro-Christian literature to her students?

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