Thirty-three students and former students of religious colleges and universities are suing the Department of Education in an effort to strong-arm religious schools into accepting and promoting the LGBT agenda. Although the Department of Education is technically the plaintiff, the real targets are religious colleges and universities. The complaint lists 25religious colleges and universities and has serious implications for all religious schools that receive federal funds. The students, all of whom identify as LGBT, are alleging discrimination because the religious colleges and universities that they attended or applied for prohibited sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman and did not allow pro-LGBT student groups that were at odds with the school’s religious beliefs to be established on campus.
Most of the targeted colleges and universities are Christian schools, and all of them maintain these policies based on their deeply held and clearly stated religious beliefs concerning human sexuality. There is no reason whatsoever that these policies should have come as a surprise to these students. Each of these colleges and universities have made their stance on sexuality public for years. The students filing this lawsuit could easily have chosen to attend one of the myriads of schools that embrace the LGBT agenda. Demanding that religious colleges and universities either submit to the LGBT agenda or lose their funding is nothing other than a bully tactic to silence any and all disagreement.
Behind this lawsuit is an organization called the Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP) — an organization that is open about the fact that its goal is to end religious freedom protections for colleges and universities.
In the words of Al Mohler, “this is a direct threat to the very existence of Christian education.” Mohler goes on to say,
[W]hat we see here is not just an issue of federal funding. It's not just the Title IV funding issue. It's not just Title IX exemptions. What you see here is a deliberate effort by a major means of coercion to bring an end to institutions of Christian conviction, that operate as colleges and universities and seminaries.
The director of REAP told the Washington Post that the timing of the lawsuit is intentional — one of the goals is to influence Equality Act negotiations and avoid the possibility of religious freedom carve-outs making their way into legislation. Currently, the Equality Act specifically exempts itself from the religious freedom safeguards in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. REAP wants to make sure that it stays that way.
Through this lawsuit and the Equality Act, LGBT advocates are demanding nothing less than total submission. REAP has made it clear that they want to force religious educational institutions to give up their beliefs or give up their funding and perhaps their very existence. Religious colleges and universities ought to be able to operate in accordance with their religious beliefs, and students ought to be able to pursue an education that is consistent with and helps them grow in their faith.
(Image: Michael Barera, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
