Remember when dissent and diversity of opinion was a good thing?

That kind of thinking is so mid-2000s.

The hip meme is "group-think is good-think."

And let's not forget that equally popular slogan, "good-think is group-think."

Case in point, broadcaster is fired for "tweating" support for traditional marriage.

A Toronto broadcaster has been fired after he posted on Twitter about the debate surrounding New York Rangers forward Sean Avery's support of same-sex marriage.


Damian Goddard was a host on Rogers Sportsnet. On Tuesday, he tweeted his support for hockey agent Todd Reynolds, who used Twitter to voice his opposition to Avery's position.

Goddard wrote: "I completely and whole-heartedly support Todd Reynolds and his support for the traditional and TRUE meaning of marriage."

The TV network then issued its own tweet, saying: "Today's tweet from Damian Goddard does not reflect the views of Rogers Sportsnet." On Wednesday, it severed ties with Goddard.

In a statement, Sportsnet spokesman Dave Rashford said: "Mr. Goddard was a freelance contractor and in recent weeks it had become clear that he is not the right fit for our organization."

Avery, an agitator who is no stranger to making headlines on and off the ice, stated his support for same-sex marriage in a video that is part of the New Yorkers for Marriage Equality campaign, organized by gay-rights organization Human Rights Campaign.

The "true meaning of marriage"?  What a whack.  Where does he get off thinking that he has the right to have an opinion about the "true meaning of marriage"?  Or express it to others?

We can't have people exposed to that kind of thing any more than we can have it exposed to a Mormon who was forced to resign from the Olympic Committee for publicly supporting the traditional meaning of marriage as part of his democratic rights of free speech and petition. 

It may appear anomalous that this kind of pressue to conform is coming from people identified with "liberalism" and "progressivism."  However, according to Dr. Michael Gross' extremely lucid and fascinating book, The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany), the modern Kulturkampf in which liberals seem to abandon their principled support of individual conscience and rights to autonomy and free speech is nothing new.  During the 1870s, the liberals in Germany spearheaded a series of anti-Catholic legislation that outlawed monastic orders and the Jesuits, prohibited Catholic priests from teaching, required the State approval of Catholic priests prior to parish appointments.  As a result of this persecution, by 1878, every Catholic Bishop in Prussia had been arrested or expelled, over half of Catholic parishes were without priests, and the monasteries and the property of religious orders in Prussian and Protestant territories had been confiscated. 

Dr. Gross documents convincingly that this Kulturkampf - the original Kulturkampf - was not an aberration whereby liberals abandoned liberal principles, but rather it was seen by 19th Century German liberals as a working out of liberal principles of education and progress. Gross quotes the liberal leader Eduard Windthorst as saying "Freedom protects everything except unfreedom, and tolerance endures everything except intolerance." (p. 259.)

That last statement from a 19th Century German is identical to the apologetic offered by many 21st Century American liberals and progressives as to why it is acceptable for them to require everyone else to conform to their vision of the good.

Update:  Apparently, Damien Goddard is Catholic and tweeted his support for the Mormon Peter Vidmar who had been forced to resign as USOC Chief of Mission for his support for Prop 8.

Those 19th Century liberal German Kulturkampfers would have understood.