Supreme Court takes up religious group's rights (to discriminate against gay people) on campus

[babylonsister]

Supreme Court takes up religious group's rights on campus

By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers


WASHINGTON — A San Francisco campus conflict between religious devotion and human sexuality will now give Justice John Paul Stevens a final opportunity to apply the First Amendment in the 21st century.

Oral arguments Monday morning will be the first since Stevens announced his retirement from the Supreme Court. More critically, the case involving a Christian student organization at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law is the year's most closely watched freedom-of-religion fight.

The first thing lawyers do is fight over what the fight is about.

"It's a skirmish in a long-running battle to create more space to discriminate against gay people," said Paul M. Smith, an attorney for a gay student group called Hastings Outlaw.

Alternatively, conservatives say the case called Christian Legal Society v. Martinez is about devout organizations maintaining their integrity and about public institutions not playing favorites.

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/16/92350/supreme-court-takes-up-religious.html

[msongs]

1. as long as gays/lesbians can discriminate against christians nt

[Mother Smuckers]

2. Ah, yes...

[elleng]

3. A good old First Amendment case!

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.