There is major drama brewing over at New York University’s esteemed Law School thanks to a little-known (outside Asia) professor named Thio Li-ann.
Prof. Thio has been invited by NYU Law to teach a course this coming fall titled “Human Rights in Asia”.
Definitely a good thing.
Not so good is Prof. Thio’s rather well-documented and very descriptive dislike of the Gays — a fact that many NYU law students are not very happy about.
This week, NYU OutLaw — the school’s GLBT student group — posted a scathing letter on its blog detailing Prof. Thio’s anti-Gay paper trail and their very clear displeasure with Thio’s upcoming visit to Greenwich Village.
Here’s a brief Thio run-down:
+ As a Nominated Member of Singapore’s Parliament, she vigorously fought against repealing a law punishing consensual gay sex with two years in jail.
+ During the debate she compared anal sex to “shoving a straw up your nose to drink.”
+ Has rejected arguments based on a diversity of sexual orientations by saying that “diversity is not license for perversity.”
Prof. Thio — who has a laudable track record defending hetero-human rights — dismisses the attacks as pure “political correctness” and defends her views by insisting they’re in-line with much of Middle America.
Problem is, Manhattan is anything but Middle America.
To make matters worse, there’s the problem of Prof. Thio’s mother — whom she lionized in a recent Mother’s Day tribute article above.
Awwwww.
Turns out that the homo-hate apple does not fall far from the tree. Mama Thio — aka big shot lawyer and born-again Christian Thui Su Mien — staged a major coup earlier this year of a woman’s advocacy group in Singapore, taking it over due to fears it was becoming a training camps for Lesbians and homos.
Oh, and there’s more. Turns out Prof. Thio’s cousin Dr. Alan Chin and his wife are also in the anti-diversity/anti-GLBT business.
Dr. Chin has written in Singapore daily The Straits Times of homosexuality being curable and treatable — and should still be regarded as a disease.
His wife, big-time bank exec Josie Lau, was embroiled in a major drama earlier this year during a brief stint as head of major Singaporean Women’s NGO Aware, the same organization Prof Thio’s mom overthrew.
Although she resigned the presidency after a mere three weeks, during her short stay she also expressed worrisome anti-GLBT rhetoric — which was later both praised by Christian groups and caused her and her hubby to receive death threats by a pissed-off self-proclaimed Gay “jihadist”.
It’s all a bit confusing — but more so, concerning.
NYU Law — which has a long-time law exchange program with the National University of Singapore — has stood by their Fall invite to Prof. Thio.
But with a very long, verbose and video-taped track-record of bigoted remarks — not to mention deeply dubious family connections — we wonder how long the University will be able to leave this particular door open.
See below: