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 ...
She'll lose. Universities should have some ability to regulate the behavior of students I would think.
Early warning shots-- the War against Religion...
various FR links & stories | 05-06-05 | the heavy equipment guy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1397759/posts
Let a university add Christians to the list of groups protected by speech codes. Then see if the LA Times calls someone protesting it "intolerant."
They feel harassed because they don't have the freedom to harass others?
Thank you for the LINK backhoe!
How does that violate his rights? Again, I am sure he will find it offensive, but oh well. Life sucks, wear a helmet.
Suppose an orthodox Jew was ordered to attend a school program that mocked kosher dietary laws.
So according to your logic, if a school cafeteria serves pepperoni pizza, a orthodox Jew has the right to sue the school for violating his rights?
"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."
Another way of clearing this up -
For me stealing is wrong too. It violates my beliefs. I shouldn't be FORCED to adopt policies that ADVOCATE and stealing when it violates my freedom of religion and free speech to say it is WRONG.
Today you're not allowed to speak out AGAINST it. It doesn't matter what your BELIEFS are. OTOH gays are allowed to squeal and get relief legally if someone doesn't ACCEPT them and ADVOCATE them.
She has a point, but I don't think she will win her case. How can you go into court and say I want to hate these people and make fun of them? I would be shocked (happily) if this passes, but I just don't see it. What next KKK going in and saying that they should be able to say different stuff to folks.
That's my take on it as well. I'm just not feeling their pain.
Don't be stupid.
The school cafeteria can serve whatever it wants. It most assuredly cannot declare that his religious beliefs are stupid, ignorant, and bigoted and demand his assent by forcing him to attend an assembly saying so.
I know that we have a handful of libertarian types whose are simply liberal democrats who don't like to pay taxes and want to smoke pot legally. Fortunately they are of no importance in our GOP.
I like that phrase!
It's really perversity training, isn't it?
I've always felt that their "training" attempts to integrate sin into the student's lives. I mean they clearly advocate sexual immorality. They want young people to experiment and to focus on discovering their sexual identity, whether they are homo, bi or hetero. Their sexuality then becomes their chosen proud identity above all else.
That is perverse!
Why does diversity only work in one direction?
You appear to have a straw man here. I didn't read anywhere that they want the right to hate written into law.
That is exactly the point.
The cultural left demands that 'tolerance' and 'diversity' means allowing only one viewpoint. Theirs. And forcibly expelling the Christian viewpoint from the public sphere. And committing the power of the state to the normalization of deviance to the point that the Christian viewpoint becomes 'deviant'.
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.
I'm wondering, why in the world anyone is required to attend? Public schools have become clearing houses for correct LIBERAL political thought.
The first amendment states that your speech shall not be infringed by the federal government. Personally, I think a college (or a business) should be able to set their own rules for speech.
I wonder how many defending *this* student were among the mob demanding French Muslim girls remove their headscarves?
>>>....Malhotra said she had been reprimanded by college deans several times in the last few years for expressing conservative religious and political views. When she protested a campus production of "The Vagina Monologues" with a display condemning feminism, the administration asked her to paint over part of it.
She caused another stir with a letter to the gay activists who organized an event known as Coming Out Week in the fall of 2004. Malhotra sent the letter on behalf of the Georgia Tech College Republicans, which she chairs; she said several members of the executive board helped write it.
The letter referred to the campus gay rights group Pride Alliance as a "sex club … that can't even manage to be tasteful." It went on to say that it was "ludicrous" for Georgia Tech to help fund the Pride Alliance.
The letter berated students who come out publicly as gay, saying they subject others on campus to "a constant barrage of homosexuality."
"If gays want to be tolerated, they should knock off the political propaganda," the letter said.
The student activist who received the letter, Felix Hu, described it as "rude, unfair, presumptuous" — and disturbing enough that Pride Alliance forwarded it to a college administrator. Soon after, Malhotra said, she was called in to a dean's office. Students can be expelled for intolerant speech, but she said she was only reprimanded.
Still, she said, the incident has left her afraid to speak freely. She's even reluctant to aggressively advertise the campus lectures she arranges on living by the Bible. "Whenever I've spoken out against a certain lifestyle, the first thing I'm told is 'You're being intolerant, you're being negative, you're creating a hostile campus environment,' " Malhotra said....<<<
How can you go into court and say I want to hate these people and make fun of them?
It is her right to have a voice and express her opinion. That right is inalienable and no entity or person has a right to prevent or hinder this right.
"... to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment."
"Harassmanet", eh???
The author's bias is exposed VERY early in the article.
res ipsa loquitur
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