Wow...just....wow.
*Scratches NYU off the potential applications for law school*

Under what rock did NYU find this one, and why on earth were they looking there? My guess is that she interviews well, but her glib self-appreciating delivery ought to have made her interviewers nervous. Her speaking style is remarkably evocative of Hitler.

This news is incredible. Someone who advocates that government power should be used to oppress people she dislikes is supposed to be teaching about Human Rights law?

Its orwellian.

Wow, she clearly should be teaching at Suffolk law in Boston where selective bigotry is accepted.
The admin seems to have stepped right into it with this one.

Seems like she'd be a better fit at College of the Cumberlands, or Regent University. Maybe Oral Roberts or Liberty, too.

God is in the mix, don't ya' know?
She is expressing what many ministers and conservative lawyers and judges believe, so in that sense she is fine for the post.

After all, just how much time have we spent reaching out to the singapore community?

I am *utterly* stunned. NYU Law has an outstanding history of supporting gay rights.

In the 1970's, the law school banned military recruiters from the Business and Industry Placement Offices (because of their stated discrimination against gay people), and the dean of the law school worked with me personally to extended that ban university-wide. (This was years before DADT; it was an outright prohibition)

The dean was our prime sponsor in the University Senate to prohibit any employer who discriminated based on sexual orientation access to university facilities. Then he had nine hours of brain surgery, and had all of his classes and office hours canceled, and he **still** met with me to see the project through.

He once even called me at work, and gave me a 30 minute tutorial about a legal strategy. (My boss was fairly displeased; but there was NO way I was going to tell the dean of NYU Law School I had to get off the phone, or give up the opportunity to be personally taught law by him)

I have to believe inviting this woman was some sort of horrible oversight. This is not the NYU that I know.

Oh, and as a Lesbian Pagan, can I teach Evangelical Christianity at NYU? I have a unique perspective on it.

C]ertain Americans have to realize the fact that there are a diversity of views on the subject and it is not a settled matter; there is no universal norm and it is nothing short of moral imperialism to suggest there is. Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no consensus on this even within the U.S. Supreme Court and American society at large, even post Lawrence v. Texas. Li-Ann Thio

Believe it or not, she has quite a reputation as a rights activist in SE Asia, but keep in mind that anyone to the left of Il Kim Young or the Taliban looks like a rights activist in many of these countries(speaking from experience, their liberals would make Limbaugh look like a socialist)

Anal sex is like shoving a straw up your nose to drink.

Drinking through one's nose may be unusual ... but it does work, and is there any reason to outlaw it?

Has this woman never visited a hospital and seen all the patients with tubes up their nose? Is she implying that this is also perverse?

P.S. The students are doing the right thing --- if they avoid her classes long enough, NYU will eventually realize that her utility is such that they aren't getting what they could get if they hired a Human Rights professor who is more credible.

As log as she attracts attention and donations to the University, they will hold on to her, particularly if she is giving CLE symposium workships in International Law and Rights.

I do not see myself sitting through one of her sessions for CLE credits unless I am in a particularly pugnatious mood.

Another voice heard from:
http://mrwangsaysso.blogspot.com/2007/10/dr-thio-li-anns-infamous-speech.html

Even the respectable, gentlemanly Dr Cherian George from NTU (also Stanford, Columbia and Cambridge University) could not find a single good thing to say about Thio Li-Ann's speech. Here's Cherian, in his own words:

" .... more distressing than the final result of the debate was the retrogressive speech by the high-flying legal scholar Thio Li-Ann. Her convoluted, caricatured rendering of political philosophy and comparative politics needed to be corrected by good political science, but she got away with it in Parliament. Her theories about what constitutes a minority could have been debunked by any graduate student of sociology or anthropology, but this did not stop her.

Then there was Thio’s tasteless digs at homosexual sex, which some of her comrades considered witty, but really deserved no place in the highest forum in the land. Thio has been celebrated for supposedly speaking up for the silent majority. This is an insult to the majority, most of whom have the basic decency to know the difference between what should be uttered in public and what should be confined to close friends or private blogs.

Thio also did a disservice to the majority of God-fearing Singaporeans – we who would like to believe that our faiths are ultimately about compassion, not the hateful, hurtful cheap shots that Thio felt compelled to deliver on our behalf. How I wished a theology professor or other religious scholar would have stepped into the debate at that point, to show how it might be possible to express a faith-based objection to homosexuality – minus the hate speech .' "

And there is this coment on a presentation of hers at a Focus on the Family symposium:

...She was quick to lump homosexuality with bestiality, pedophilia, and incest , and she did it several times. Homosexuality has no unique link to bestiality, pedophilia and incest. And for goodness sakes the pornography on bestiality that I know about (from all the spam – “XXX girl with farm animals” ad nauseum - I get) is heterosexual porn. She may as well have said that carrots, bananas, apples and oranges are in the same section in the supermarket, so carrots must be fruits. ....

...Instead of reason, she relied heavily on emotion – something I found strange coming from a law professor. She was biased, and while she found it unfair being labeled a homophobic fundamentalist bigot, I found it difficult not to see her as one. She definitely did not need the assistance of “biased liberal reporters” to perpetuate this image of her. There was scarce reasoning behind her crusade. To be honest, I wonder what drives her and her mother, Dr Thio Su-Mien, to champion against homosexuality so fervently. The level of emotionalism involved at times came across to me at least, as deeply personal."

Singapore? Like Malaysia I would never go there. It is sad because it is beautiful as tiny city states go. It is prosperous and the third most expensive city to live in in Asia. It is the smallest "state" in SE Asia, but leads in several important categories:

The highest per cap execution rate in the world.
"Caning"(flogging) for overstay of visa, graffiti.
(homosexual acts may be included in this)
Gum chewing or spitting is highly illegal.

This is hardly a free society where even certain religions are outlawed (Jehovah's W.& others)

Her references to the Koran and Bible are revealing of the insular nature of the 3.2 million (mostly ethnic Chinese)citizens of this island state. Were she to express a similar attitude toward Judaism I wonder if she would be "tarred & feathered" for that? What they were debating was an old British colonial law that the Brits don't support.

I applaud the right thinking students who are avoiding this fascist, but I fear Dr. Laura will find a new radio guest if this one has too much spare time. Thanks Waymon.

Be ready for the backlash. Both the professor and her mother are closely connected to Focus on the Family, which I am sure will make a martyr out of her.