Just as we’re identifying the three Supreme Court-bound cases that will be impacted by Obama’s new justice pick comes Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, where a religious student group is suing the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law because the school demands all student groups to admit any interested members, even the gay ones. Indeed, it’s headed to Washington on Monday, and may be Justice John Paul Stevens’ last vote on a gay-specific issue. Time for a showdown between the right to discriminate v. the right to discriminate.
supreme court
Can a College Block a Religious Student Group If It Won’t Let Gays Join?
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JAW
Yes… They should have that option… I do not want “Focus on the Family”” members or “Yes on 9” members or anti Gay people to be members, let alone have them elected to power, in any Pro Gay group.
delurker again
@JAW: Missing the point. The UC Law school is a state school supported by taxpayers. If theCLS is to use classrooms, facilities all funded by the taxpayer, shouldn’t it adhere to the school’s non-discrimination policies?
If the CLS wants to discriminate, fine. Let them do it on their own dime.
Steve
You have to distinguish between “freedom of speech and religion”, and “funding”. A group of students who want to form an association to express their own beliefs, must be allowed to do so. A college, however, must also be allowed to decide where and how to spend its own money, and which expressions of speech it wants to support. Remember that the college is an association of people, who have their own rights.
The students must be allowed to form their organization.
But, the college cannot be compelled to support it, financially or otherwise.
The issue really boils down to things like: use of a room in a college-owned building; phone and/or network service for that room; and a listing in a published college directory.
One solution might be for the college to allow any and all student organizations without qualification, but to charge market rates for those services. The college might award grants to organizations that allow all students to join without discrimination. The grants might be in an amount similar to the charges incurred for such services.
hardmannyc
Agreed. If they want to form a group, let them do so. Let them even meet on campus — informally. But no funding if it goes against college policy.
Tommy
@JAW:
It seems you are confusing beliefs v. being a member of a minority group. I think any organization should have the right to exclude people who don’t agree with the core beliefs or goals of that organization. But they shouldn’t be able to exclude people based on immutable things like race, gender or sexual orientation. A belief is something you choose, you don’t choose to be gay, black, female etc.
Most gay groups let straight people join if they agree with the goal of the organization to achieve equal rights for gay people.
JAW
@delurker again: I do get the point… if there was an easy answer to this it would not be heading to the Supreme Court.
I do not want my tax dollars going to anyone or group that discriminates against me or my beliefs. Yet there are Gay groups on campus that I would bet, discriminate against people that believe that being gay and gay sex is wrong.
The question boils down to protecting each others rights. Each time some is give a right, other people lose rights.
If They win then we lose the right to join that group if they are given money.
If we win then They lose the right to openly share their religious beliefs at school
jeffree
This case seems to have no real merit. Since this is a public/state university,
the Christian Legal Society shouldn’t receive funding or use school resources such as meeting space/copiers/phones unless they follow the nondescrimination policy. Tax dollars don’t need to be used to support an organization such as this.
So what happens when some Christian Law student joins the CSL, comes out as gay and gets kicked out?? That would expose the agenda of this group.
JAW
@jeffree: If this did not have merit then the Supreme court would not be hearing it tomorrow.
Have You guys clicked on the link… “it’s headed to Washington” in the above article… it takes you to a story in the washington post explaining the other side. This is not an wasy question to answer. for the Supreme Court, let alone us
randy
So the religious groups want special rights, eh? Funny that special rights are okay for them, but when we ask for mere equality, they bellow that we shouldn’t have ‘special rights.’ I’m tired of this.
The issue is actually simple: The same rules for everyone. Don’t like it? Then form your own group off campus that can discriminate. Or form an on campus group, but you forgo any funding and free use of meeting space.
Compromise is already built it — the group can select its own officers, such as president and treasurer. Surely the group has the right to select their whomever they wish — A gay student may run for president, but will actually be elected? Common sense says probably not. The only scenario where it would be an issue is if the CLS is taken over by gay students who then vote the gay guy in. Again, how likely is that? Not very.
So the practical result is that anyone can join the CLS, and if they can actually stand to be around these types of people, they can even run for office, but the CLS will likely not elect them. Which is exactly the position that they ultimately.
True, this can backfire upon gay groups. EVery gay group must be open to all students, even the anti-gay people. So every gay group has to worry that its membership might be swamped with anti-gay, who might then elect anti-gay people in charge of the group. But has that ever happened? I really don’t think any college students have so much time on their hands that they are willing to spend lots of time trying to sabatoge someone else’s group. It’s work perfectly fine in the past, so there is no need to give special rights to hate groups.
Baxter
I hope that if the Supreme Court backs the school, that the decision will be applied equally to all groups. Jewish student groups should have to accept Muslims and black student groups should be forced to accept Klan members. Somehow I doubt that’s likely to happen, because these rules only seem to apply to Christians.
Paschal
@JAW: Simply the fact that an issue is to be heard before the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t mean that it is a difficult issue. This is the court which stopped a recount of votes in Florida. You’d think that something like a recount wouldn’t need to go before this court but it did and an undemocratic decision was made. Any college has a right to decide not to provide funding to a group which doesn’t obey a simple rule of the college in question. This rule being that all students be allowed to become members. If an anti-gay person, as someone commented similarly in relation to the NYC St. Patrick’s Day Parade, joined a gay group his/her clear intention would be to destroy what that group is about. If a gay person joins a Christian group because he/she is a Christian then there is no problem. If, however, a gay person joined that group to cause harm to it then that group should get rid of that person. People can decide who are in their student groups but that doesn’t mean that they are deserving of college funding. The college has a right to refuse funding to a student group which doesn’t obey the rule of the college that all students must be allowed to join.
PopSnap
I’m not sure why a gay person would want to join the type of Christian group that hates them anyway. At my college in Ohio we have 3 Christian groups- a Liberal Christian one, a Campus Crusade for Christ (The pamphlet handing out, JEEZUS evangelical fundies who everyone hates & makes fun of), and a Catholic student group that we barely notice is there. What beats me is why would a gay student want to join the Campus Crusade one instead of the Liberal one? Are they sadistic? Do they hate themselves that much? My gay friend from high school went to a conservative Christian college. The dorm he stays in is called RONALD REAGAN HALL for Christ’s sakes! He complains to me constantly and begs me to drive 3 hours out to hang with him because he’s miserable and everybody treats him like a leper. Well guess what? He should’ve went to Kent State with me where we have a 300-member LGBT-Straight alliance, an LGBT minor, and twenty openly gay professors.
Let me put it this way. Do you guys ever get annoyed when you go to a gay bar and there’s a guy there hitting on the girlfriends you brought? What the fuck is THAT? It’s a gay bar dumbass. Go to the Lemon Grove down the block, not Adams Street which has rainbow flags & leather daddies and muscle hunks stripping. Pisses me off like no other.
We minorities try to deny that we segregate ourselves and like doing so. But we do. I’d rather be around my gays than around my straight guy friends and I’d admit it. Just like most black people I know love hanging out with other black people. It’s not that I wouldn’t talk to straight people or some such thing, I just like being around “my own kind”. Point in case, my friend going to the conservative Christian college vs. me going to the liberal state one.
Does this post make sense? im kinda loopy…
Elle
@PopSnap: Maybe the only way to weaken this kind of discrimination and intolerance is to bring ourselves together.
B
The case is being currently argued before the Supreme Court – sfgate has a “breaking news” article on it (the text the link points to may be updated before you read this).
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/04/19/national/w003746D60.DTL&tsp=1 ; “Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito questioned the school’s lawyer sharply, saying that being forced to admit someone who doesn’t share their beliefs was a threat to the group. But Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor pressed the group’s lawyer on notion that if they can ban gays, other groups can legally ban women and minorities.”
The article also states, “The Christian group requires that voting members sign a statement of faith. The group also regards ‘unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle’ as being inconsistent with the statement of faith.”
So, in theory (i.e., if they are not dissembling), you can be gay and join the group. You can also be gay and be a voting member if you sign the “statement of faith” and are “repentant” if you are not celibate. Whether you can be serially repentant is not clear, where “serially repentant” means you are truly sorry at 9 AM on a Sunday morning for what you did at 2 AM on the same day. There’s a long Christian tradition of repenting for your frequent “sins”, particularly of a sexual nature, as evidenced by the high teenage pregnancy rate in the Bible Belt, so sinning a lot is not inconsistent de facto with being repentant. As Sir Thomas Beecham once told the chorus during a rehearsal of The Messiah, “When you sing, ‘for we are sheep who have gone astray,” could you please try to sound less self-satisfied.”
B
No. 10 · Baxter wrote, “Somehow I doubt that’s likely to happen, because these rules only seem to apply to Christians.” … not so: a Christian group was simply the first one to get some attention.
If the court rules in favor of the Christian group, then in principle some hypothetical KKK supporters could form a student group, say it is open to all, but that voting members must sign a statement about everyone else being racially inferior. In theory a black guy could join and sign it, but the chances of that happening are next to zero. One of the things the court may have to decide is whether such rules about voting members are legitimate or simply a scam to get school funding.
Kurt
Assholes vs. Assholes.
The system has worked perfectly well. The truth is that campus groups attract those in line with their stated mission. There has been no gay takeover of the CLS and no reasonable basis that they are about to see a gay Jew elected their Secretary-Treasurer.
Same for all of the other campus groups. CLS decided to go for the drama, however, by challenging the open membership rule even though it had caused them no problems. Hastings took the bait and now we have a big fight.
Adn of course, many of these policies came into being because in the 1970s, conservative groups launched a big campaign against student groups (which they thought were mostly liberal) being financed by mandatory student activity fees. So universities reformed their rules to meet right wing objections.
Now, everyone has changed sides.