To guarantee equality in what are effectively non-governmental relationships contradicts the right to personally hold others to be different. Freedom of association is the freedom to discriminate.
ADF Seeks Supreme Court Review for Christian Student Groups
December 22, 2011 at 11:45 am
Last week the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) requested review by the U.S. Supreme Court in Alpha Delta Chi v. Reed, a case involving two Christian student organizations at San Diego State University.
According to ADF, San Diego State University denied official recognition to the two Christian organizations because they require members and/or leaders to agree with the organizations' religious beliefs.
To receive official recognition, student organizations are required to abide by a nondiscrimination policy, which includes a prohibition on religious-based discrimination in selecting members and leaders. But this requirement actually discriminates against religious organizations, ADF argues, because it allows secular organizations to require members and leaders to agree with the organization's beliefs but does not allow religious organizations to do the same thing.
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Indeed, forcing religious organizations to ignore religion in selecting members and leaders is, in general, bad public policy. Intact, cohesive religious groups contribute to socially beneficial forms of diversity that occur naturally in a free and open society. Forcing religious organizations to ignore religious beliefs and commitments of participating individuals would dampen this diversity and trivialize the importance that religion has in the lives of many individuals and organizations.
Further, as ADF argues, such policies "effectively [transform] laws designed to protect individuals and groups from discrimination based on their religion into tools to punish, penalize, and exclude individuals and groups because of their religion." Such policies also put religious groups at a disadvantage by marginalizing the activities and purposes at the core of religious groups without imposing a similar disability on secular groups.
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