Sound and Fury: Professor of Music and Man of Faith

He never spoke about his faith on campus. He never discussed his religious views with his students. But music professor Daniel Mattson was fired from Western Michigan University when an LGBT activist decided that it was harmful for students to be in the presence of someone who had written about his traditional Catholic views on gender and sexuality, off-campus and several years prior.

     Mattson worked as an adjunct faculty member at the Western Michigan University School of Music since 1999. As a part of his work for WMU, he played trombone for the faculty ensemble, the Western Brass Quintet, and a joint student-faculty group, Western Winds.

     In 2009, Mattson returned to Catholicism, after having spent most of his adulthood living as a gay man. Following his conversion, he left his homosexual lifestyle and embraced traditional Catholic views on sexuality and gender.

     Mattson chronicled his religious conversion in a series of blog articles and op-eds for conservative and Catholic publications, which culminated in the book, Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay. Mattson’s goal was to help Catholics like himself, who lived with same-sex attraction, live out the virtue of chastity, even when it runs counter to secular thinking.

     In the fall of 2021, an LGBT activist and professor at the school of music, discovered Mattson’s writings. Even though Mattson strictly separated his religious writing from his work at the university, she decided that his views were “harmful” to LGBT students. A small group of activists stirred up controversy around Mattson’s beliefs in order to force school officials to cancel a scheduled event featuring Mattson as a guest artist.

     It did not matter that Mattson had said all he desired to say with the publication of his book four years prior to the WMU activists discovering his writings. The mere fact that he ever wrote about his religious views on sexuality put a target on Mattson’s back.

     WMU provided no institutional support for Mattson or defense of his constitutional rights. In response to the protests, then-Director of the School of Music, Keith Kothman, sent a campus-wide e-mail condemning Mattson’s beliefs and informing students that they would not need to attend his recital. Ordinarily, twenty students came to a guest recital. Only one attended Mattson’s. Then, the school banned Mattson from all school activities and ultimately declined to renew his contract.

     CIR filed suit under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, alleging that WMU violated Mattson’s right to free speech and discriminated against him based on his religious beliefs. WMU’s overt hostility to Mattson’s Catholicism makes this case an extraordinary opportunity to set a clear precedent that protects the right of individuals to practice their religion through books and other writings, regardless what others think.

     Daniel Mattson is a world-class trombonist, a professor of music, and an orthodox Catholic. For more than ten years, none of his colleagues at Western Michigan University (WMU) saw any conflict in those identities. But in 2021, LGBT activists heard about Mattson’s religious beliefs and decided that his presence at the university was threatening. In response to their complaints, the university fired Mattson. Now, he is suing WMU to ensure that no one’s religion disqualifies them from fully participating in public life.

     Mattson has worked for the past 25 years as a professional trombonist. In 1997, he began performing with the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, and beginning in 1999, he took up an adjunct faculty position at WMU’s school of music, where he played for the Western Brass Quintet, the school’s faculty ensemble.

     In 2009, Mattson returned to the Catholic Church after spending most of his adult-life in a homosexual lifestyle. He was brought to the Church through studying its teaching on human nature. In particular, he was attracted to the writings of Thomas Merton, who taught that human beings can only experience true freedom by living in line with human nature, which persists across all cultures in two kinds, male and female. After years of being taught that freedom meant the freedom to satisfy one’s desires, he compared hearing the Catholic message of freedom to Lazarus rising from the tomb at Jesus’ call.

     As he studied the lives of saints, including St. Augustine, St. Basil, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and others, Mattson found men delivered from patterns of sin and temptation who went on to live holy lives. In their lives, he had a model for how he could begin to pursue holy living even in the face of his temptations. He began to work to live a faithful life through prayer, pursuit of virtue, and the sacraments of the church.

     Over time, Mattson discovered that he had insights that would help him speak to same-sex-attracted men and women about their experience and assist in their self-understanding. He shared these insights in blog posts and articles, his work of spiritual autobiography, Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay, and as a participant in a documentary film, Desire of the Everlasting Hills. Mattson’s work has been translated and published around the world, assisting those who experience same-sex attraction with a religious understanding of its nature.

     All the while, Mattson kept his religious writing and private life separate from his work at WMU. He never talked about his religious beliefs with his students. Once, a student asked Mattson about his views after googling his name; Mattson confirmed his views, but politely declined to discuss them further.

     WMU officials believe that Mattson must choose between his life as a world-class artist who has talents to share with students and his life as a religious believer who must be kept at a safe distance, which in this instance, means losing his livelihood. Mattson rightly refuses to allow modern activists to disqualify him from teaching at a public university because they disagree with his off-campus religious convictions.