A reminder that our time on earth is limited came today with the very sad news that Kortney Blythe Gordon, a staff member of Students for Life of America, was tragically killed along with her preborn daughter in a car accident this weekend.  Another SFLA staff member, Jonathan Scharfenberger, was gravely injured in the same accident and is in critical condition.   The two were driving home from SFLA’s Georgia conference on Saturday evening.

Though Kortney’s life was short, she made her time here count through her tireless service to the pro-life cause.   We are so grateful for her efforts in equipping students to advocate for women and preborn babies on their campuses and beyond.

Please join us in lifting up Kortney’s husband, Benjamin, their families, and Jonathan and his family in your prayers.    Though we are saddened by the heartbreaking loss of Kortney and her daughter Sophy, we are comforted in knowing that they are in the loving presence of our Lord and Savior.

Remember that tiny free speech zone my colleague David Hacker blogged about a while back?

It seems that Genesee County, Michigan, is out to best that anonymous California community college and win the title of “Most Unconstitutional Speech Zone Ever”.

Behold (courtesy of The Detroit News):

Students often lose their faith in college.  This is concerning, both for Christian parents of college-aged children and for Christians in general.  As an attorney with the ADF Center for Academic Freedom, I am often asked by parents what they should do about this.  Should they only consider a Christian school for their child?  Will their child end up a statistic if they attend a public or secular university?

While I can’t really provide a universal answer to that question, one thing I do know is that sometimes the answer is not hiding in the “holy huddle,” but rather equipping ourselves to be in the world and welcome, not shy away from, challenges to our faith.

Campus Crusade for Christ at UNC-Chapel Hill has undertaken a project that is a great example of that.

Bart Ehrman, a professor at UNC famed for his sarcastic criticism of Christianity, has tested the faith of many students.  But Crusade has taken the opportunity not only to respond to Professor Ehrman’s teachings, but also to challenge students to dig deeper and understand their faith on a more mature level.  They created Ehrmanproject.com, a website with responses from Biblical scholars to many of Ehrman’s principal arguments disputing the reliability of Scripture and philosophical questions about God.

Professor Ehrman appears to need a lesson on the marketplace of ideas:

But, Ehrman contends, their views do not represent the consensus among scholars using historians’ techniques to analyze ancient texts.

“Look at their credentials,” said Ehrman, 55. “None of them teaches at state universities, Ivy League schools, or prominent four-year liberal arts colleges,” he said. “People with those views would never get a job at UNC.”

What is the reason those scholars don’t teach at UNC?  Hint: it’s not because they’re stupid.  (Ehrman himself attended only private, Christian schools).  It is because, as Ehrman indicates, they hold views different than most of Professor Ehrman’s buddies.  (Mike Adams and Ken Howell know about this all too well).  Since when did academia become about sitting around at the faculty club with people who all think the same way you do?  That sounds like a recipe for stagnation, not a robust exchange of ideas.

There is certainly something to be said for receiving a Christ-centered education.  But if there are no Christians left to engage with others on our public university campuses and challenge the prevailing orthodoxy, those campuses will become even more lost.

This year’s NCAA Men’s Tournament has been very exciting—so far, seventeen games have been decided by five points or less.  But we know you all have really been saving your excitement for our picks for the rest of the tournament, based on the schools’ commitment to respecting the First Amendment rights of their students.  (The guidelines we’re using are the same that Casey used last year.)  Without further ado, here are the picks for the Southeast Region:

Butler v. Wisconsin

Butler University, a small private school in Indiana, won everyone’s hearts last year as the Cinderella team who made it all the way to the championship game and fought valiantly against the Goliath of the tournament—Duke.  The game came down to a desperation heave by Butler’s Gordon Hayward in the last seconds of the game.  (He missed.)  This year, Butler has already exceeded expectations by taking out Old Dominion in the second round in a two point game, and shocking No. 1 seed Pitt with a one-point nail-biter victory in the third round.

Now, everyone (including me) loves a scrappy underdog.  But does Butler deserve to win?  In 2009, Butler actually sued one of its students for writing an anonymous blog criticizing the school.  Now, it’s bad enough when universities punish students for their protected expression, but actually suing one of your students for money damages?  That is truly absurd. 

Luckily for Butler, however, they are playing the University of Wisconsin, one of the country’s most frequent violators of the First Amendment. 

The ADF Center for Academic Freedom has been litigating against the Badgers since 2006 because of its discriminatory student fee system.  Although the University of Wisconsin told the Supreme Court about ten years ago in the Southworth case that it would distribute student fee funds to all student organizations without viewpoint discrimination, the University more recently claimed that the Establishment Clause required it to eliminate funding for religious student expression.  The University of Wisconsin-Madison selectively denied funding to Badger Catholic, the large Roman Catholic student organization on campus because some of the students’ expressive activities contained too much of what the University defined as “prayer, proselytizing and worship.”   In September 2010, the Seventh Circuit reaffirmed that the Establishment Clause does not require such discrimination against religious student speech.  The court ruled that the University must treat religious student groups equally to nonreligious student groups, in terms of granting them funding for their expression and allowing them space to meet on campus.  The University filed a petition for writ of certiorari, but that was recently denied by the Supreme Court.

Even though Badger Catholic has now ended with a victory, we continue to fight for non-discriminatory distribution of Wisconsin student fees in the CFACT case, the third case we’ve litigated against the University’s Madison campus since 2006.  Our winner should come as no surprise, then.

Pick—Butler

BYU v. Florida

I’ll try to remain professional and not vindictively pick Florida to lose just because they managed to defeat my Bruins.  But there are plenty of other reasons why Florida is in deep trouble in this match up.

First, there’s the Gators’ red light rating from FIRE.  Among Florida’s numerous red light policies, we have this gem, their civility code:

A university is a place where self-expression, voicing disagreement, and challenging outmoded customs and beliefs are prized and honored. However, all such expressions and challenges need to be civil, manifesting respect and concern for others.

We’ve got no problem with encouraging students to be polite.  Heck, we like to think we’re pretty polite ourselves.  But requiring civility among adults in the storied “marketplace of ideas” is downright unconstitutional.  (The court in our case a few years back at San Francisco State held as much.) 

A friend and former client who shall remain nameless recently referred to Florida as “God’s school.”  But I don’t think the student members of Gator Christian Life and Beta Upsilon Chi (a Christian fraternity) would agree, since they were derecognized by the University simply because they had the audacity to require that their members and leaders actually be Christians, of all things.

Florida is in deep trouble, y’all.

BYU, on the other hand, as a private, religious school, is not rated by FIRE, through they have had a few minor controversies on campus, and appear to limit speech in outdoor areas of the campus.  But this match-up is much closer than it should have been given BYU’s incredibly oppressive policy of prohibiting flip-flops, at least on their Idaho campus.  (Shout out to my colleague Jenna Lorence for pointing this out!)  As someone who probably didn’t even own a pair of socks during my undergrad years, I think that’s just plain un-American!

Oppressed toes aside, BYU really comes nowhere near to the level of constitutional infractions Florida has accumulated. 

Pick—BYU.

Based on the above, it’s clear that the Southeast region’s representative in the Final Four should be BYU.  Butler’s luck in being paired against the University of Wisconsin runs out when compared to a less egregious offender of the First Amendment, and their second chance at a Cinderella season will be over soon.

Go Cougars!

Check out the Sweet Sixteen of Liberty: Southwest Region

Check out the Sweet Sixteen of Liberty: East Region

Our fearless leader, David French, ADF Senior Counsel, wrote a thought-provoking column yesterday at Patheos, reminding us that sometimes, standing up for what is right and speaking truth is not always “civil”, using Jesus as the example.  This was a great reminder, especially yesterday, as we celebrated the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  People like to remember Rev. King for his instrumental work in achieving racial justice, but forget that in his time, Rev. King was considered a radical by many.  This included other Christians, who urged Rev. King to take a more “moderate”, incremental approach.  Dr. King responded to these concerns in 1963 with his “Letter from Birmingham City Jail”:

I am coming to feel that people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will.  We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.  We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability.  It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God . . . We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

Addressing his dismay at being called an “extremist” by his fellow clergymen, Rev. King noted:

I must admit that I was initially disappointed in being so categorized.  But as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist.  Was not Jesus an extremist in love—“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.”  Was not Amos an extremist for justice—“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”  Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ—“I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.”  Was not Martin Luther an extremist—“Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God.”  Was not John Bunyan an extremist—“I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.”  Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist—“This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.”  Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist—“We hold these truths self-evident, that all men are created equal.”  So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist we will be.  Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love?  Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice—or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?

We know that “civility codes” on college campuses are used to stifle speech (see, for example, the case of the College Republicans at San Francisco State University), which is why it is important to oppose them.  (Ironically, they were also used by government officials to silence speech during the Civil Rights Movement.  Many of the foundational free speech cases come from that era.)

We must remember that simply because someone does not like what they hear does not mean the truth should not be spoken.  And we must remember that when we are labeled “extreme” simply because we truly believe in love, justice and truth, it is no insult, though it is meant for one.  It simply means we are in good company with those in the past that chose to stand for these things and make a difference.