Posted on 04/10/2006 2:26:20 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
ATLANTA — Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.
Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.
Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.
With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.
The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. "Christians," he said, "are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian."
In that spirit, the Christian Legal Society, an association of judges and lawyers, has formed a national group to challenge tolerance policies in federal court. Several nonprofit law firms — backed by major ministries such as Focus on the Family and Campus Crusade for Christ — already take on such cases for free.
The legal argument is straightforward: Policies intended to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination end up discriminating against conservative Christians. Evangelicals have been suspended for wearing anti-gay T-shirts to high school, fired for denouncing Gay Pride Month at work, reprimanded for refusing to attend diversity training. When they protest tolerance codes, they're labeled intolerant.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Will the ACLU be helping to fight for freedom of speech? :)
More power to these students. Rush Limbaugh is right when he says that American college campuses (or "campii," as he might call them) are the last bastion of Stalinism in the world. It's great that these students have the guts to demand the restoration of their Constitutional rights -- a subject that most weaselly elected politicos seem to be too afraid to defend.
"The message is, you're free to worship as you like, but don't you dare talk about it outside the four walls of your church," said Stephen Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Assn. Center for Law and Policy, which represents Christians who feel harassed.
Critics dismiss such talk as a right-wing fundraising ploy. "They're trying to develop a persecution complex," said Jeremy Gunn, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.
POST #4 - quoted from the article.
Let me guess, she is probably one of the same people who wanted to ban South Park over the 'Bloody Mary' episode.
>>>............a teen-ager in Kentucky lost in federal court when he tried to exempt himself from a school program on gay tolerance on the grounds that it violated his religious beliefs..........<<<
The ACLU, yea like they haven't been going after the Church at all or anything.
"one of the same people who wanted to ban South Park"
I would bet not. She has the option to simply turn off that channel. Those who want to shut her up feel they have the right to get in her face with their views but are deeply "offended" when she does the same.
No
First homosexuals get their foot in the door by claiming that they should be "tolerated."
Then they institute thought and speech restrictions in the name of that "tolerance".
Then they justify those restrictions by claming they're "commonplace."
How did it violate his religious beliefs? I can see where he might disagree with it, but disagreeing with something is very different than having your rights violated.
Why should anyone have to tolerate perversity?
Next they would have us tolerate pedophilia and then Beastiality. You give an inch and the perverts want a mile.
What, beside your own bigotry, would lead you to make such a guess?
Some title.
Could just have easily been, "Christians Sue for Beliefs" or "Christians Claim 'Tolerance' Policies Intolerant"
Well see, when your religion says something is bad, and an organ of the state campaigns to have that bad thing called neutral, the state is campaigning against the tenets of your religion. Having the state campaign against your religion is a violation of the rights described in the document that founded the state doing the campaigning.
The circle of wrong is complete!
There. That wasn't so hard now, was it?
Christians are under constant attack. How many LAT articles have been written about that?
Nowhere in the constitution do you have the right not to be offended.
The first order of business in the constitution is the right to free speech.
How did it violate his religious beliefs ?
Apparently he was ordered to attend a school program that said that God's commandment that sodomy was a disgusting abomination in His eyes was wrong and to be ignored. Suppose an orthodox Jew was ordered to attend a school program that mocked kosher dietary laws.
Hate crime laws and speech codes are Soviet laws, rules that restrict freedom of thought and expression. Down with them all.
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