Forced religious tolerance becomes discrimination

Forced religious tolerance becomes discrimination
"Conformity for diversity's sake," The Washington Post. November 2, 2011--Illustrating an intellectual confusion common on campuses, Vanderbilt University says: To ensure “diversity of thought and opinion” we require certain student groups, including five religious ones, to conform to the university’s policy that forbids the groups from protecting their characteristics that contribute to diversity.

Last year, after a Christian fraternity allegedly expelled a gay undergraduate because of his sexual practices, Vanderbilt redoubled its efforts to make the more than 300 student organizations comply with its “long-standing nondiscrimination policy.” That policy, says a university official, does not allow the Christian Legal Society “to preclude someone from a leadership position based on religious belief.” So an organization formed to express religious beliefs, including the belief that homosexual activity is biblically forbidden, is itself effectively forbidden.

The question, at Vanderbilt and elsewhere, should not be whether a particular viewpoint is right but whether an expressive association has a right to espouse it. Unfortunately, in the name of tolerance, what is tolerable is being defined ever more narrowly.

Although Vanderbilt is a private institution, its policy is congruent with “progressive” public policy, under which society shall be made to progress up from a multiplicity of viewpoints to a government-supervised harmony. Vanderbilt’s policy, formulated in the name of enlarging rights, is another skirmish in the progressives’ struggle to deny more and more social entities the right to deviate from government-promoted homogeneity of belief. Such compulsory conformity is, of course, enforced in the name of diversity."

CMDA CEO David Stevens, MD, MA (Ethics): "In a show of linguistic sleight of hand, Vanderbilt asserts that they are defending freedom of religion while enforcing a freedom from religion policy. That effort goes back almost a hundred years. Vanderbilt was founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church to train pastors in 1875. It was initially endowed by Cornelius Vanderbilt as a gesture to bring reconciliation between the north and south after the Civil War. Forty years later, the school took the church to court and eliminated their representation from the institution's board. Hostility towards organized religion is apparently not new to the school.

"The school maintains they are simply applying a religious anti-discrimination mandate, though their very interpretation and application of that mandate discriminates against those who have religious faith. That is not a policy of religious tolerance but intolerance. Other student organizations may select their leadership based on their compatibility with their stated mission, but if religious organizations do the same, they are guilty of religious discrimination.

"The guilty ones are not the Christian groups on campus. It is the board and administration of the school who are violating the first amendment of the Bill of Rights by not allowing the free exercise of religion and freedom of association. Unless the school backs down, this issue will end up in the highest court of the land.

"I have a family member who attended Vanderbilt. I couldn't recommend it in good conscience now, anymore than I would recommend to someone they attend a school that discriminated on the basis of race, ethnic group or gender. Discrimination is discrimination is discrimination, no matter what words you wrap around it."
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Resources
Email from Vanderbilt University to campus chapter of the Christian Legal Society
Letter from the Christian Legal Society to Vanderbilt University
If you are interested in writing a letter to Vanderbilt's administration regarding this issue, click here for a template letter we have prepared for your convience that can be downloaded, signed and sent.