Tag Archives: Alliance Defense Fund

News

Flordia A&M university shuts down Christian campus group

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From the Examiner.

Full text:

In January, Florida A&M University officials had placed the student group “Commissioned 2 Love” on “inactive status”.  Their reasoning was; because the club’s adviser [who was assigned by the university] was not present at all of the group’s gatherings. The Florida A&M Student Handbook states that student organization advisers, who are assigned by the university and not chosen by the clubs themselves, must “attend and remain present for the duration of all organizational meetings, official functions, and sponsored activities.”

Based on this, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) sent officials of Florida A&M University a letter yesterday urging them to reinstate a Christian student group they de-recognized in January and banned from engaging in activities on campus.  This rule, says ADF’s Jeremy Tedesco , would allow the university to “appoint an atheist to oversee a Christian group, a meat-eater to advise a vegetarian group, or a Republican to provide direction to College Democrats”.  He said that the policy is not only unconstitutional, but absurd.

According to the ADF letter, this requirement is unconstitutional because it gives university employees complete and unbridled discretion over whether a student group’s meeting or speech will occur.

The ADF letter also points out that the university’s policies violate the Constitution because they “compel student organizations to associate with government employees who they may not want to associate with, and who in fact may be adverse to the group’s mission and expression.

Even worse, the students are not given the authority to select their own advisers, but rather the Associate Vice President for Student Life appoints advisers for student organizations…. FAMU’s policies are particularly egregious violations of the right to association, since they require the government employee with whom student organizations must associate to…‘[p]rovide counseling, leadership and direction regarding…the mission of the club or organization.’”

According to a related Competitive Enterprise Institute post, Obama has made it a priority to increase the amounts of money extracted from Christian taxpayers that are paid to secular universities that treat Christians like dirt.

Excerpt: (with links removed)

Education expert Neal McCluskey earlier lamented the failure of House Republicans to propose meaningful cuts in education spending, “despite the fact that the ivory tower is soaking in putrid, taxpayer-funded waste. Quite simply, the federal government pours hundreds of billions of dollars into our ivy-ensconced institutions every year, but what that has largely produced is atrociously low graduation rates; at-best dubious amounts of learning for those who do graduate; ever-fancier facilities; and rampant tuition inflation that renders a higher education no more affordable to students but keeps colleges fat and happy.” Shortly thereafter, in an effort to trim the deficit, House Republicans came out with some additional cuts, proposing the elimination of some wasteful education programs.

If the GOP is reluctant to make cuts, Obama is much, much worse: he earlier sought to double education spending, and Obama’s recent State of the Union called for more increases in education spending (and other wasteful boondoggles at taxpayer expense), even though many students learn little in college. As we noted earlier, half “the nation’s undergraduates show almost no gains in learning in their first two years of college,” according to a study cited in USA Today. “36% showed little change” even after four years. Although education spending has exploded, students “spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago.” “32% never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week.” States spend hundreds of millions of dollars operating colleges that are worthless diploma mills, yet manage to graduate almost no one — like Chicago State, “which has just a 12.8 percent six-year graduation rate.”

Wake up! Not only do Christians need to do a lot more studying of these issues, so that we can ground our social views with public evidence and research, but we also need to do a lot better job of developing an understanding of fiscal conservatism that reflects our individual goals and priorities. The left is not on your side – stop giving them other people’s money.

News

Public school censors student for singing Christian song

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Here’s a disturbing story from Fox News.

Excerpt:

A California elementary school is changing course after being sued for barring a fifth grader from performing to a Christian song in the school’s February 4 talent show.

The students parents filed a lawsuit Friday saying Superior Street Elementary School violated their son’s first amendment rights by telling him he couldn’t dance to his favorite song “We Shine” because of its references to Jesus, MyFoxLA reported.

The lawsuit claims that after the boy’s January 14 audition the school’s principal, Jerilyn Shubert, told his mother the song was “offensive” and a violation of the “separation of church and state” and asked why he couldn’t “pick a song that does not say Jesus so many times?”

[…]The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal alliance that brought the case on behalf of the student, says while its pleased with the district’s decision the lawsuit will continue to ensure that the school drafts a policy to prevent this from happening again.”Christian students shouldn’t be censored at public elementary schools because district officials think that religious speech may be offensive, which isn’t justified by the Constitution” said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman. “The LAUSD did the right thing by recognizing the student’s constitutional rights and lifting its censorship of religious speech at the talent show.”

The school is, of course, a government-run (i.e. – public) school. The school web site is here. I found something interesting on the web site.

Excerpt:

Superior Street Elementary School, as a multicultural and diverse learning community, prepares each student for academic, social, and personal success by providing a safe, supportive, challenging, and meaningful environment.

The problem with public schools is that they get paid money up front through taxation so that they have no responsibility to provide results to their customers in order to earn that money. Instead of having to compete with other schools in order to get paid, they get paid regardless of how they perform. So by the time that Christian parents discover what they are getting for their taxpayer dollars, it’s too late to take them back, and the only solution is to sue, which costs time and money.

But there is another point I want to make about the ADF and the lawyers. Where do they come from? And who pays them?

I ask this because recently I have been having discussions with a single Christian woman who thinks that anything that children want to do with their lives is as good as any other thing. I sent her the profiles of some high-powered influencers on either side of the culture war, e.g. – high-tech business owners who use their fortunes to promote same-sex marriage and conservative Supreme Court justices. I would put the ADF into the class of high-powered influencers. But the response from her was that poets can be just as influential as wealthy entrepreneurs or Supreme Court Justices.

Let’s just take a look at the biography of an ADF lawyer and see what they are like:

Alan Sears serves as president, CEO, and general counsel of the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. He leads the strategy, training, funding, and litigation efforts of ADF that have resulted in various roles in 37 victories at the U.S. Supreme Court and wins in more than three out of four cases litigated to conclusion. Under his leadership, ADF has funded more than 2,000 grants and legal projects for allied lawyers and organizations, and ADF attorneys have successfully defended marriage as the union between one man and one woman in over 40 cases nationwide.

Since the launch of ADF in 1994, Sears has provided strategic leadership in the training of more than 1,400 lawyers through the ADF one-of-a-kind National Litigation Academy, which is designed to equip attorneys to more effectively defend religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and marriage and the family. These attorneys have reported more than $117 million in pro-bono/dedicated time. Sears’ visionary efforts have also resulted in the graduation of more than 900 outstanding law students— representing more than 140 law schools—from the unique ADF Blackstone Legal Fellowship program. This in-depth summer internship program helps equip these students to assume leadership positions to shape the future of American law. Today, ADF has more than 1,800 allied attorneys.

Sears earned his Juris Doctor from Louis D. Brandeis School of Law. While serving in numerous positions within the government, he worked for the Department of Justice under Attorneys General William French Smith and Edwin Meese III, including service as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and Chief of the Criminal Section. Sears was also appointed as the director of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography and served as associate solicitor with the Department of the Interior under Secretary Donald Hodel. A graduate of the University of Kentucky, Sears has continued his education with professional instruction at Stanford University, Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, and Pepperdine University.

Practicing law for three decades, Sears is a member in good standing with the American, Arizona, California, District of Columbia (inactive), and Kentucky bar associations. He has helped fashion the language for numerous state and federal laws and has testified before committees of the U.S. House and Senate, state legislatures, and many local governments and commissions. Legislators in 20 states have adopted his legislative recommendations. Sears has assisted legislators and law enforcement officials from many countries and has spoken before committees of the British Parliament.

I would link to the profile of a poet for contrast, but the poet accomplished nothing in his life and had no effect on society as a whole.

The interesting thing is that both of these children cost about the same to raise. Is one a better deal than the other? If I knew I was going to get poets on the other end of the decision to marry, could I do better using the money for the child for something else that would benefit God more – like sponsoring Christian apologetics events? What is the point of marrying and having children anyway? What is the business case? What is the value proposition to a man who has scarce resources that have alternative uses? And what leverage do I have after a marriage to make sure my plan will be followed? (E.g. – consider this case)

I should also note that the ADF is a charity and is funded by the donations of wealthy Christians. They are not funded by the donations of poets, because poets have no marketable skills and therefore nothing to share with others. Actually, it is poets who invent concepts like postmodernism, moral relativism, emotivism, diversity and multiculturalism, which is what causes these problems in the first place.

News

Christian student faces complaint for advertising for Christian roommate

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The Grand Rapids Press has this story about a Christian student on trial for advertising for a Christian roommate. (H/T Mary, ECM)

Excerpt:

GRAND RAPIDS — The 31-year-old nursing student was looking to keep her expenses down when she decided to invite someone to share her home.

But when she posted an advertisement for a Christian roommate on her local church’s bulletin board, the Grand Rapids woman landed in the middle of a civil rights debate that has her facing a complaint of alleged illegal housing discrimination.

The advertisement contained the sentence, “I am looking for a Christian roommate,” said Joel Oster, senior litigation counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, which represents the woman.

Someone saw the ad over the summer and anonymously filed a civil rights complaint with the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan. The complaint was then filed with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, and the woman was notified at the end of September.

“I think it’s a clear violation on its face,” said Nancy L. Haynes, executive director of the local Fair Housing Center. “It’s an advertisement that clearly violates the Fair Housing Act.”

Although the woman might choose a roommate based on religion, say, after interviewing the person over coffee, she cannot publish an ad with that intent, Haynes said.

“She can choose to rent to a Christian, that’s her prerogative,” she said. “It’s a separate violation to make a discriminatory statement, to publish a discriminatory statement.”

There is a lot more to the story in the original post, and the Alliance Defense Fund is involved in the case.

This is a useful reminder about how far those on the left are willing to go to limit your fundamental human rights (freedom of association) so that they don’t have to read anything that makes them feel “discriminated” against. You can be sure that if a person posted an advertisement for a gay roommate that this would never have caught anyone’s eye. Christians aren’t as intolerant as people on the left. When things like this happen, we need to fight back hard to keep our basic human rights. And it’s important to never vote for people on the left who favor anti-Christian bigotry like what is happening to this woman.

Non-religious people are always interested in preventing the free expression and practice of Christianity in public. They don’t want to be reminded about the moral values of others – it makes them feel bad about their own selfishness and immorality. That’s what’s driving this censorship – they don’t want to be confronted with the idea that there are rules that they should live by, and that some people exist who take that seriously. They wish everyone was in rebellion against moral standards like they are – because if everyone were doing it, there would be no one left to judge them.