USA follows Ireland: Zero Religious Freedom

That is the crux of this matter; would this school, now scorched by the fruits of its idealism, be permitted to change course and redefine ideology, by the same legal system which subjugated them in the first place...? I hardly think secular courts would cede that power...

I think you're making two exceptional points here.

First, is if you water down your ideology, don't be surprised when you get burned by it. I think that's a fair statement on its face, I wouldn't pretend to know whether or not the school did in fact, water its ideology down. Perhaps that's just me.

Second and I think more important is the conflict that is being deliberately generated (IMO) by the way 'religious freedom' laws and exceptions are being deliberately crafted by the Government to stand in direct conflict with 'equal employment opportunity' laws.

IMO, the language on the school's website that I posted above verbatim appears to me to be a mish-mosh of the school's claim of religious exemption combined with standard EEOC language that must be posted with every publicly posted job opportunity no matter who is doing the hiring.

I think that's an important distinction that many on this thread may have overlooked.

Having said all that, I agree with you that the secular courts would never cede any power they have over employment laws in this country even in the face of carefully crafted (and again, IMO designed to cause conflict with EEOC laws) religious exemptions.

I believe this to be a TEST CASE and predicted long ago here on FR that once the so called 'religious exemption' or 'religious accommodations' were crafted as part of Obamacare that it was only a matter of time before a case such as this one materialized.

We've already seen attacks and lawsuits against religious institutions, religious colleges, and businesses (Hobby Lobby comes to mind...) that exercised their religious exemption for not wanting to pay for birth control as part of their health care coverage.

The lawsuit against this school is a TEST CASE that simply stated, is another bite at the apple to reverse so-called religious exemptions by the anti-God Progressive Liberal Left.

That's how I see it, perhaps it's just me.

Thank you for your thought provoking post.

“IMO, the language on the school’s website that I posted above verbatim appears to me to be a mish-mosh of the school’s claim of religious exemption combined with standard EEOC language that must be posted with every publicly posted job opportunity no matter who is doing the hiring.”

That is a big part of the problem. The law depends on the word used, and words can have legal meanings that don’t match 100% with common sense, let alone how they are used in a catechism. If you use legal boilerplate pulled out of a law, you can expect a court to interpret it IAW the standard legal meaning.

Under normal employment law, if you hire without regard to sexual orientation, it means you will hire a practicing homosexual regardless of any legal homosexual activity that person engages in. So when you say that in your hiring statement, the courts will hold you to it.

That is why Baptists are being encouraged to revise their contracts and bylaws to specify what beliefs must be adhered to by any employee. It goes a bit further, too. In our church, we have sometimes allowed outside groups to use our facilities for things like alcohol counseling. So we needed to revise our rules to specify WHO we would be willing to let use our facilities. Otherwise, the courts will assume we lease them out IAW the standard rules required of secular businesses.

Had this school made any such attempt, they might well have prevailed in court. But they set themselves up for failure, and I strongly suspect (given other statements on their website) they did so because they wanted liberals to like them. They danced with the Devil and got burned.

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