Gay-Bashing Provocateurs

A gay-bashing, right wing student newspaper at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island offers a fresh example of the conservative media's strategy of "publicizing censorship of their papers" so they can "cast themselves as the little guy up against the leftist establishment." The Hawk's Right Eye provoked the university administration into clamping down by running nasty attacks on Judy Shepard, whose son was beaten to death in Wyoming for being gay. After Shepard spoke on campus, HRE accused her of "preying on students' emotions and naivety" [sic] so that she could become "a mascot for the homosexual agenda." Now that the university has established a "publications and broadcast review committee" and is considering revoking HRE's funding, national conservative groups have swarmed to its defense, complaining of "harassment" and "a heavy-handed approach to silencing ideas that oppose the leftist orthodoxy so prevalent on college campuses."