WILL THE LEFT EVER DEFEND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST CHRISTIANS?
February 11, 2010 4:37 pm UncategorizedBy John M. Rogitz
This week marked the first round of briefs filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, a Christian-discrimination case. Once again the left has found a way to attack all things Christian in the name of tolerance without even acknowledging that their notion of tolerance is completely subjective to their own political whims.
The case originated from a conflict between the administration at UC Hastings School of Law and the Christian Legal Society. Hastings denied school recognition to CLS because they require their members to be Christian. Of course, CLS lost on appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals – a notoriously liberal judicial bench with the highest U.S. Supreme Court turnover rate. Now this case is before that same U.S. Supreme Court.
So what’s the big deal? At my law school there were black and Latino legal organizations. You had to be black or Latino to join those clubs because the school gave them advantages on tests through cheat sheets, outlines and resources the rest of the student body did not have! Talk about affirmative action.
How’s that not discrimination against a European mutt like myself? Maybe I should have filed suit for excluding Micks, Germans and Poles from their little clubs. I think that must have not occurred to me at the time because any regular Joe wouldn’t think to (1) Join a club where even the name lets you know you’re not welcome or (2) Sue because an organization is exercising their 1st Amendment right to freely associate with whom they so choose.
Now I know what some of you must be saying. Because UC Hastings gets Federal funds, school sponsored organizations are not completely private and hence cannot discriminate. Fine. So be it. I actually agree with that.
My alma mater, California Western School of Law, also gets Federal funds. The black and Latino clubs had a competitive advantage over me for three years because of all the breaks the school gave them. See where I’m going with this liberal inconsistency thing?
As conservatives, we value intellectual diversity. You know, bringing the right brained and left brained people together, no pun intended. We like to let different ideas mix about. What difference does racial diversity make if we’re all supposed to be color blind to the people we’re discussing intellectual issues with? Those intellectual issues have nothing to do with one’s tribal roots or Pilipino cuisine. Such experiences wouldn’t help the least in a debate on whether universal healthcare is constitutional.
The champions of tolerance over on the left keep reminding us that race ultimately means nothing in modern society and that we’re all equal citizens. I agree, except that the left still relentlessly assaults Christians simply for being Christian. The liberals over at Hastings only believe in tolerance for minorities they identify with – homosexuals, blacks, Latinos, women, Muslims, etc. Even though almost all massive atrocities committed against humans in the past century were done in the name of atheism (Hitler, Stalin, Musolini, Franco and other socialists), the left still believes that Christians represent the angry white man constantly trying to oppress them.
I’ve never seen the left defend Christians against discrimination. I doubt they’d even at least acknowledge what an irony it is to oppress Christians in the name of liberty.
COPYRIGHT 2010 JOHN M. ROGITZ
March 6th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
Hastings wasn’t discriminating against the group for being Christian. Hastings has a non-discrimination policy which extends to every group on campus whereby the groups cannot restrict membership based on protected classifications. The Christian Legal Society was refusing to follow the non-discrimination policy by preventing students from joining based on sexual orientation. It is suspicious that a year prior a lesbian had joined the group and then mystically magically the CLS appears with a Statement of Faith which they interpret as preventing gay students from joining. The non-discrimination policy doesn’t target a particular viewpoint and the fact that the organization is religious in nature is irrelevant. Under this policy, the black law student association at Hastings would be prohibited from restricting membership to black students only. The Black Law Student Association at Cal Western for instance states that, “Anyone who is concerned about issues facing Black and other minority law students and committed to the recruitment and retention of Black students at California Western may join.” I’m not sure where the ‘inconsistency’ is there. You state that the left relentlessly assaults Christians simply for being Christians but that assumes that being Christian and being liberal are mutually exclusive, which they aren’t. It’s not really a liberal versus conservative issue, it’s the court being concerned about intolerance.