I sympathize with both sides of the Gadfly conflict. What happened to the 4 students was certainly unfair and unwarranted. It would have been easy for Paul Mininger to tell the students, stop printing this paper or I'm going to kick you out. But Mininger didn't do that, he just got rid of them.
In Peace Shall Destroy Many Deacon Block acts in a similar way when he forces Louis Moosomin to leave Wapiti. He says "he did not care, in his numbness, that he had, by every standard he ever believed, damned his own soul eternally. Wapiti was clean for his son."
I'm guessing this was how Mininger thought of these students, like in order to protect the minds of the rest of the student body, he needed to make an example. Other students might have thought, it looks like those 4 are having fun and they got away with it, so why can't I. Mininger pruned the metaphorical plant of Goshen, but the leaves are not leaves, they're human beings.
You could even compare this model to men who perpetrate violent military action. They're just trying to protect their families.
So Mininger did what he had to do to protect the college.
I wish Mininger would have acted less harshly. After reading the Hess article I'm guessing Mininger felt the same way. I'm glad reconciliation was made between him and Jim Wenger, but I would like to see more reconciliation between Mennonites and the LGBTQ community.
I'm also glad Mininger reconciled with Jim Wenger. Although I'm not impressed with how Mininger acted when he expelled the four editors, I think I understand why he did what he did. At the same time, I agree with your analogy--the leaves are not leaves, they're human beings. I think making an example out of somebody can lead easily to this tension between protecting the minds of the students and treating the perpetrators (for lack of a better word) with compassion.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that Mininger reconciled with Jim as well and I'm wondering what that looked like a bit more, even though we can't. I also don't think that Mininger was protecting the college necessarily, I think he was protecting the Mennonite church and homophobic donors who would have withdrawn their support had they found out about Menno Pause or Jim.
ReplyDeleteJacob, I certainly sympathize with your point of view here. When a person makes a unilateral decision to "protect" one group, often another group is dismissed as less worthy or important. Dan Hess' essay is poignant because it shows Paul Mininger haunted by his decision and willing to make amends. In positions of responsibility such as Mininger's, one is charged with making decisions that are representative of a "group." Your comparison with Block's dismissal of Moosomin from Wapiti is apt, if harsh, and suggests that Mennonite attitude towards LGBTQ people, along with our prejudices with other groups, require rethinking and repentance.
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