Squelching of Campus Christian Club Spawns Lawsuit Against UNC-Chapel Hill
by Jim Brown
August 25, 2004
(AgapePress) - The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill is being sued over its decision to deny recognition to a Christian student club because members refused to sign a "diversity" clause.UNC-Chapel Hill recently froze funding to Alpha Iota Omega, claiming the Christian fraternity's desire to limit its membership to Christians constitutes "discrimination." The Alliance Defense Fund is filing a federal lawsuit against the university on behalf of the fraternity. ADF attorney Jordan Lorence likens UNC's stance to telling a Christian church it is unconstitutional to require that its pastor be a believer.
"How can you evangelize people and urge them to convert to Christ and become Christians if you have to allow non-Christians to be part of the evangelism team? It's crazy," the attorney says, "yet this shows how much the liberal activism has permeated universities, that they would insist upon such an extreme policy."
Lorence accuses UNC of having a "mindless" way of applying principles of non-discrimination. "It's one thing, for example -- and it's wrong -- for the school chess club to say [it is] not going to allow blacks or Jews to join because being black or being Jewish has nothing to do with playing chess," he says. "But what they fail to see is that religion is also a set of beliefs."
The attorney says at UNC, Christian groups are the only student organizations that are not allowed to freedom to determine who their members are. The ADF calls that "political correctness run amok," stating that students have the right to meet with people who hold similar views as well as the right to determine the content of their group's speech -- all free from interference.
ADF has won three straight free-speech cases against public universities. The University of Minnesota, the University of Oklahoma, and Southwest Missouri State University all settled out of court recently, agreeing to rewrite policies that violated the First Amendment rights of students.
ADF and representatives of Alpha Iota Omega will announce their intentions to file the lawsuit at a press conference on the UNC campus on Wednesday afternoon.
