Back in 2004, a Christian student group was denied recognition at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law because it required its officers and voting members to uphold certain Christian teachings. The school said that the group couldn’t discriminate on the basis of religious belief.
One of the teachings that the Christians were required to confess was that Christians should not engage in sexual conduct outside of marriage. The school felt that this was discriminatory against homosexuals. The school offers billboard space and rooms for recognized groups. This group was seen to be outside of the school’s nondiscrimination policy and so the group was denied status. The group sued, saying the school had violated its freedom of speech, religion and association.
Five years later, the Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to decide whether that’s true.
So this is yet another example of how religious freedom and gay rights can come in conflict in the public square. This is a major area of concern for gay activists and proponents of religious freedom and there are going to be some tricky issues to settle. It’s important that the media focus on this and give us some good coverage of the matter.
But let’s look just at the early media coverage of yesterday’s announcement about the Supreme Court. As I noted above, the school claims that a group can’t discriminate on the basis of religious belief. They also claim that a recognized group can’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. But much of the media focused on the latter issue. Take, for instance, this headline from the Christian Science Monitor:
Supreme Court takes case of student group that bars gay members
The group requires members to uphold the traditional Christian teaching that all sex outside of marriage is sinful. This is probably a significant barrier to membership for straight students as well, no? And there’s also the issue that students who identify as having same-sex attraction might actually support the ancient Christian teaching on the matter. Gay people do not all look, think or act alike. There are non-heterosexuals who believe sex outside of marriage is sinful just as there are heterosexuals. There has got to be a better way to phrase this headline. The error is compounded in the copy:
The Christian Legal Society (CLS) at the Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco was stripped of its registered student organization status at the college because it refused to allow gay and lesbian students to become voting members or officers of the group.
But that’s not actually what happened. The CLS did refuse to do something. But what the group refused to do was to change its statement of Christian faith or its policy against members advocating or unrepentantly engaging in sex outside of marriage. Hastings officials told the group to change its policies. The group refused. Hastings refused to give the group official status. The group no more excludes gays and lesbians than it excludes anyone else who disagrees that sex outside of marriage is sinful. Many other media outlets took the same approach, however.
As bad as the Monitor’s story was, however, I thought this brief one, from Adam Liptak of the New York Times, handled things better. Headlined “Rights and Religion Clash in Court”:
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from a Christian student group that had been denied recognition by a public law school in California for excluding homosexuals and nonbelievers. The case pits anti-discrimination principles against religious freedom.
The group, the Christian Legal Society, says it welcomes all students to participate in its activities. But it does not allow students to become voting members or to assume leadership positions unless they affirm what the group calls orthodox Christian beliefs and disavow “unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle.” Such a lifestyle, the group says, includes “sexual conduct outside of marriage between a man and a woman.”
The law school, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, part of the University of California, allows some 60 recognized student groups to use meeting space, bulletin boards and the like so long as they agree to a policy that forbids discrimination on various grounds, including religion and sexual orientation. The school withdrew recognition from the Christian group after it refused to comply with the policy.
With an economy of words, Liptak does a better job of balancing the school’s argument that the group discriminates on the basis of religion and sexual orientation. This one will be interesting to cover. The Times piece also had this quote, which I found most interesting:
Judge Diane P. Wood, who was on many short lists for the most recent Supreme Court vacancy, dissented, saying she would have struck the balance in favor of anti-discrimination principles. “Given that universities have a compelling interest in obtaining diverse student bodies,” Judge Wood wrote, “requiring a university to include exclusionary groups might undermine their ability to attain such diversity.”
See, it’s okay to be exclusionary as long as you’re excluding the right people!
This quote made me wonder, if such a view were to be upheld by the Supreme Court, whether the government be getting into the business of deciding which religious views are acceptable or not on state-run campuses. There’s a lot of rich, meaty territory to cover and a lot of arguments to look out. Kudos to Liptak for including one such argument in his brief, early report.
 | Posted at 6:23 pm |  Print
| Permalink | Trackback |
Comments (19) |
December 8, 2009, at 7:34 pm
Mollie, although I frequently disagreed with your posts in the past I think your point about the qualitative difference between the headline in the NYT v. CSM is a good one.
However, I would differ in going so far as to call the CSM headline or article “bad” or truly “erroneous” as you do. Rather, I would say it was “technically” accurate but seemed to bias in favor of the side claiming discrimination by describing the conflict in less than fully impartial terms.
Consider the sentence: “…it refused to allow gay and lesbian students to become voting members or officers of the group.” If *certain* gay and lesbian students violated their policy, isn’t that an accurate statement? The same with the headline. If “certain” is assumed rather when it should have been explicitly stated, then it’s fine.
And I would hazard the guess that you are inclined to notice when imprecise and biased phrasing impacts conservative religionists more than when it impacts progressive religionists or secularists.
What if there were a liberal university that banned advocacy of anti-gay policies, and a Christian student group objected because it was prohibited recognition? I’m not sure you would have a problem with the headline “Supreme Court takes case of university that bars recognition of Christian students”. It’s not ALL Christian students that are barred, since many Christians aren’t prejudiced; however, some are and therefore I would say that such a headline is technically accurate. What would you say?
December 8, 2009, at 7:39 pm
(re-posting a vanished comment & hoping for no duplication)
Mollie, on the whole your concerns are just. I agree that the NYT headline is preferable to the CSM headline.
Now imagine there’s a hypothetical university that barred groups that discriminate against homosexuality, and denied recognition of a Christian student group that believed homosexuality were immoral and was therefore prohibited from membership in the university. Now let’s say that a headline was written: “Supreme Court takes case of university that bars Christian members”.
Would you object as strongly to this bias? Or would you say that it was an accurate headline because it the word “some” or “certain” should be assumed as a modifier of Christians, because not all Christians discriminate against gays?
December 8, 2009, at 10:13 pm
There is quite another perspective from the one Mollie stated that comes from that article: “
So from that perspective, the organization is free to do whatever it wants but cannot use the school’s public facilities.
Of course, it’s also possible to create some pretty extreme examples of religious belief to which they want members to agree such as racist statements.
So the question as is typical is where to draw the line.
December 8, 2009, at 10:20 pm
Jerry,
I’m a “strict separation” person myself. I mean, I don’t like the idea of taxpayers subsidizing any religions — including my own. I’m pretty sure that providing bulletin board space or meeting space doesn’t quite rise to that level — but I think that the views of Lynn and others should be included in the article — as they were.
December 8, 2009, at 10:56 pm
Mollie’s reporting is only a little bit disingenuous. This campus club is not discriminating only against gay people. Their rules, requiring adherence to a specific set of Christian principles, also discriminate against persons of other faiths - Jewish people, Muslims, Buddhists, and even athiests. Of the 40-some other clubs and organizations on this campus, none seek the “special right” to exclude other members of the student body. This kind of “special right” has no place on an American campus. Education is about promoting the free exchange of ideas.
December 8, 2009, at 11:31 pm
Well, I went to a public university in a different state (although still on “an American campus”). And we had groups that discriminated all over the place — you had to be a Democrat to be in DSA, a Muslim to be head of the MSA, a Jew to be in the Hillel group, etc.
My libertarian group — unsponsored, natch — tried to fight the funding for the student center that gave the religious groups free office space and stipends — appealing to the establishment clause. We did not win our fight.
December 8, 2009, at 11:54 pm
Yep. Welcome to the 21st century.
December 9, 2009, at 12:21 am
Ya know, I added this site to my favorites ‘cause I was interested in how media mavens and others view how the media covers religion.
Now, I know we all tend to get caught up in the story itself, and we all have our own biases and prejudices. I’m guilty of getting off-topic myself. But, please, could we stick to the reason for GR.
Was the story fairly or unfairly covered by CSM snd NYT or not? Isn’t that the purpose of GR? Or am I missing something here?
December 9, 2009, at 12:53 am
“Well, I went to a public university in a different state (although still on “an American campus”). And we had groups that discriminated all over the place — you had to be a Democrat to be in DSA, a Muslim to be head of the MSA, a Jew to be in the Hillel group, etc.”
Same for me, Mollie. Anyone could be a member of the group (we had a fair number of non-Orthodox in our OCF) but only Orthodox Christians could be officers in the group.
December 9, 2009, at 12:59 am
Ed,
Yes, you’re right. Let’s all stick to the issues. This blog does occasionally see general First Amendment discussions as on-topic but this is getting a bit far afield — mea culpa.
December 9, 2009, at 8:38 am
I will charitably assume, Storm Christopher, that you were intentionally being ironic. Otherwise, you might want to think a little harder about your post.
December 9, 2009, at 11:27 am
From the NYT article it seems that this is the crux of the argument:
Apparently Hastings doesn’t allow officially recognized groups to restrict membership in any way. Given that, I don’t see how this is a gay rights or religious rights issue. There’s nothing particularly Christian nor anti-homosexual about the club’s rule that members must refrain from sex outside of marriage. Nor, on it’s face, does there seem to be anything anti-Christian in the School’s rules. It looks like it’s a simple matter of university policy which has been discovered as a convenient tool for these groups to use to advance their causes. I’d love to see a reporter dig into whether schools with policies like this have had problems before this case.
December 9, 2009, at 12:16 pm
“There’s nothing particularly Christian” - sorry I meant to say nothing exclusively Christian.
December 9, 2009, at 1:04 pm
Sounds like when I was at uni - to be an official Students Union society (and thus get some funds etc) you had to freely let anyone vote and stand for leadership. So I guess theoretically a Brass Band club would have to let anyone in even if they lacked a shred of talent (although they wouldn’t have to let that person play).
One christian society was thus not ratified, but others seemed to manage to live with the rules.
So anyway the problem with this article is.. just drawing too much attention to the gay bit? (as opposed to say, straight people who don’t say the right things, who might also be banned)
December 9, 2009, at 1:07 pm
Sorry I meant freely let anyone join, vote and stand for leadership.
December 9, 2009, at 1:34 pm
I question why we don’t see more coverage of cases such as this—both broader coverage and deeper consideration—because, as some of the personal experiences cited here uncover, this is a decision that could have massive implications at schools all over the country. Is it also the media’s role to help people think about issues like this by supplying coverage that explores implications as great as this—presenting argumentation (and not just personal feelings—oh, is that kind of reporting getting old!) from both sides?
December 9, 2009, at 3:40 pm
“So anyway the problem with this article is.. just drawing too much attention to the gay bit”
That was the focus because this is about a court case and the issue in the court case specifically involves the UC anti-discrimination policy’s sexual orientation provisions. The case isn’t about promiscuous heterosexuals or divorcees or single moms. It’s about a policy banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and religion, thus the story’s emphasis.
December 9, 2009, at 3:43 pm
Precisely — it’s about both sexual orientation and religious belief. Many people focused only on the former. I thought the New York Times did better on covering that front.
December 11, 2009, at 10:58 am
Related to CLS and religious beliefs: Remember the Washburn University case, where a Mormon student was expelled from a CLS chapter specifically for being Mormon after quoting Cicero’s “the eyes are the window to the soul” while leading a Bible study. The university revoked recognition. When CLS filed suit, the university reinstated the chapter to avoid the lawsuit.