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Recent Cases Show Homosexual Agenda’s Threat to Religious Liberty 7/5/2006 Christian school faces lawsuit; federal employee suspended for expressing Christian viewpoints.
Many proponents of religious liberty fear that the homosexual agenda poses a serious threat to the rights of religious people to publicly express their beliefs.
Two recent cases – one involving a Christian school and the other involving a federal employee – underscore this.
In Wildomar, California, a private high school run by the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod was sued after school officials expelled two students whom they believed were involved in a homosexual relationship. The two girls filed the suit in December, and on Wednesday the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled in California Lutheran High School Association v. Superior Court that the case could proceed to trial.
In a letter to the students’ parents, school principal Greg Bork informed them that the students were being expelled for violating the school’s code of conduct, which prohibits actions “contrary to Christian decency.” The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod believes that homosexual behavior is sinful.
The students claim that the school violated their rights under California’s civil rights law, the Unruh Act, which prohibits businesses from discriminating on the basis of a person’s actual or perceived sexuality. The students’ attorney, Christopher Hayes, said that the school operates as a business and has students of various religions. “Nothing about accepting these young women or other perceived or actual homosexuals has any effect on anybody at the school’s ability to preach their religion, to practice their religion or to criticize lifestyle choices,” Hayes said.
“That’s nonsense,” said Robert Knight, Director of Concerned Women for America’s (CWA’s) Culture & Family Institute. “This is a direct attack against Christian morality and the right of Christian institutions to hold to their beliefs and to act accordingly. When homosexuality is wrongly defined as a civil right, then people who believe in traditional morality are cast as bigots without rights.”
The school argues that the Unruh Act does not apply to it because it is not a business and that the Act’s application to the school would violate its rights of religious expression and free association. In a brief to the Supreme Court, the school’s attorney, John McKay, wrote, “Any implementation of the Unruh Act would contradict the stated position of (the school) that homosexuality is immoral.”
In a second case, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in Louisville, Kentucky, suspended an employee without pay and relocated him after he shared his view on homosexuality with a co-worker. Larry Dombrowski has filed suit against the FAA alleging that this action violated his First Amendment rights.
Dombrowski had engaged in a conversation with a co-worker after she expressed the view that some people are born as homosexuals. Dombrowski responded by sharing his perspective as a Christian. He explained to his co-worker that his wife and daughter had attended a church seminar on homosexuality at which ex-homosexuals spoke and testified to their belief that homosexuals are not “born gay.”
Although the co-worker was not offended, she mentioned the conversation to a manager, who informed Dombrowski that he was being suspended for a week and transferred to Atlanta for expressing insulting or offensive views. Dombrowski does not seek to be rehired in his old position (in which he worked for nearly 20 years) but rather to have the allegations against him dropped. He also believes First Amendment rights should be guaranteed in a federal workplace.
Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) filed the suit on Dombrowski’s behalf.
“It’s vital that we keep the doors open for the Gospel and the places where we’re engaged most of the time,” ADF attorney Kevin Theriot told Family News in Focus. “That is in the public square. If we are not able to keep the doors open for the Gospel, it will have a direct effect on our religious freedom and our ability to tell others the Good News about Christ.”
Kristen Morgan is a second-year law student at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and a summer intern at CWA through the Blackstone Legal Fellowship of Alliance Defense Fund.
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