Columbia Digging Deeper Hole

Isn't there an old saying that says something to the effect of "if you are in a hole over your head, quit digging"? Apparently the dean of Columbia University hasn't heard of that saying. He is continuing to defend his decision to invite the Iranian leader to speak on campus. To make his point even more clear, he is now saying, were Hitler alive, he would certainly have a platform available for him at Columbia!

So, as I pointed out in the last post on this topic, the reason Columbia won't allow the ROTC on campus is due to the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy of the military. And what was the Nazi policy towards homosexuality?

By German law, homosexuality was a crime. After the prison sentences most homosexuals were automatically shipped to concentration camps. In 1935, a new law legalized the `compulsory sterilization (often in fact castration) of homosexuals.' A special section of the Gestapo dealt with them. Along with epileptics, schizophrenics and other `degenerates', they were being eliminated. Yet homosexuality was still so widespread that in 1942 the death penalty was imposed for it in the army and the SS. Vera Laska

Germany even executed homosexuals in the military! Once again the question is asked of Columbia, if the military executed homosexuals, as approved by both your speakers Ahmadinejad and Hitler, opposed to simply discharging them from the military, would the ROTC be invited back to campus?

Radical Fundamentalist, Yes; Military, No

Today's WSJ's Best of the Web has a very good comparison of Columbia University's priorities. Columbia has invited Iran's leader to speak, but has barred the ROTC from campus since 1969. At first it was to protest the Vietnam war, but now it is continuing that ban due to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of the military. And what exactly is Iran's policy in dealing with homosexuals?

"On Sunday, November 13, the semi-official Tehran daily Kayhan reported that the Iranian government publicly hung [sic] two men, Mokhtar N. (24 years old) and Ali A. (25 years old), in the Shahid Bahonar Square of the northern town of Gorgan.

The government reportedly executed the two men for the crime of "lavat." Iran's shari'a-based penal code defines lavat as penetrative and non-penetrative sexual acts between men. Iranian law punishes all penetrative sexual acts between adult men with the death penalty. Non-penetrative sexual acts between men are punished with lashes until the fourth offense, when they are punished with death. Sexual acts between women, which are defined differently, are punished with lashes until the fourth offense, when they are also punished with death." Human Rights Watch

BOTW closes the article with the question wondering if the military executed homosexuals as opposed to discharging them, maybe Columbia would invite the ROTC back to campus.