So If She Weighs As Much As A Duck...

The following report over at Ed Brayton’s DFTCW would be hilarious, if it weren’t so damned ironic.

It describes staff of ultra-orthodox colleges being (I hesitate to say “persecuted”) for making statements that run contrary to Calvinist doctrine, such as endorsing Darwin, or rejecting the notion of homosexuality (or voting for Democrats) as a moral flaw. However, the loophole that allows such colleges to rebuff these actions without legal backlash is that newly hired staff must sign a “Statement of Belief” defining each school’s religious credo, for which violators may be tried for—I kid you not—heresy.

Y’know, that old chestnut used by Spanish Inquisitors back in the 15^th Century?

Obviously, pouring molten silver down one’s throat is not involved in these modern-day “heresy trials,” but simply using the phrase to conduct these inquiries at any college (religious or not) smacks of sheer medievalism, as embodied in the following example.