Why marriage matters for America and conservatism

Virginia bans “all-comers” policies

Don’t feel qualified for your calling? Neither did Moses.

Rick Warren on how religious freedom ensures other freedoms.

Feminism, Work-life balance, and Yahoo!

Reverse Affirmative Action — Liberal college seeks conservative scholar.

We have a lot to be thankful for this year at Alliance Defending Freedom as our clients prevailed time and again in cases across the country.  Here’s a recap of the top university victories in 2012:

Julea Ward – As Jeremy wrote recently, Julea Ward scored a big victory when she settled her case against Eastern Michigan University.  Her case shows that the freedom to believe is still a critical component of our constitutional liberties.  As Jeremy said, the appellate court ruling in her favor “will have a lasting impact on the right of college students to live out their lives according to the dictates of their faith.  It clearly sets out that public universities ‘cannot compel students to alter or violate their belief systems . . . as the price for obtaining a degree,’ which is precisely what EMU was demanding Julea do.”

OSU Student Alliance – The Ninth Circuit handed down a resounding victory for independent student press on college campuses in OSU Student Alliance v. Ray.  Public universities cannot relegate these papers to second-class status and expect to get away with it.  This case will continue in 2013, so watch for updates.

Bronx Household of Faith – While not technically a university case, several Alliance Defending Freedom university lawyers are working on this case to protect equal access to government facilities.  New York City has a no-worship policy that it is trying to use to block a church from renting its facilities after school hours, like all other community groups can.  A federal district court struck down the policy in June, finding that it violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.  This case is more than a decade old and was recently argued to the federal appellate court in New York City, so stay tuned for what happens next.

Florida Christian College – Just last month, Florida Christian College settled its suit against the State of Florida over a tuition grant program.  The state refused to allow FCC students to participate in the tuition grant because the state viewed FCC as “non-secular” and “too religious.”  In other word, FCC students lost out on the tuition assistance, while everyone else did not.  That is no longer the case.

Texas Aggie Conservatives – A group of conservative students at Texas A&M University thought it was unfair that they could not access student organization funding simply because they were part of a political group, but virtually all other student groups could access those funds.  They sued A&M and got the university to remove its discriminatory ban on funding religious and political student groups.

Young Americans for Freedom – Another group of conservative students, this time in Florida, were restricted from distributing flyers on campus.  They successfully settled their case this year, which enabled spontaneous student speech, removed speech zones on campus, and limited a college speech code.

Nationwide Letter Campaign – We also sent letters to over a hundred public universities from coast to coast detailing unconstitutional speech policies on their campuses.  As of today, we received 27 favorable responses indicating that those universities revised their policies to protect student speech.

Aside from these critical wins, we were successful countless other times in situations you may never hear about.  But those victories were just as critical for preserving the religious liberty of the individuals involved in them, and for that we are thankful.

We hope and pray that 2013 brings more victories for student speech on campus.

Admittedly, this blog does not regularly spotlight parenting advice, but in an article highlighted by Tim Challies, Adam Griffin poses a question that all Christians should ask themselves.  And it bears directly on how Christian students and professors should conduct themselves on campus.

In this article, Adam ponders what kind of man his now one-year-old son will become.  In the process, he compares his desire for his son to be highly esteemed with what Scriptures like John 15:19 say will happen to those who follow Jesus faithfully:

Reading this, I realized that if God answers my prayer for my son to be a follower of Christ, people will hate him.  People will absolutely, unquestionably be repulsed by my son.

If God graciously saves my Oscar, people will call him a bigot and a homophobe.  Some will ridicule him as a male chauvinist as they scorn his “sexist” beliefs.  He’ll be despised as closed-minded for saying that Jesus Christ is not only God but the only God.  He will probably meet a girl who insults his manhood or considers him old fashioned for waiting until marriage to have sex.  His peers will think him a prude.  Bullies will call him a coward.  His integrity will draw insults like “goody two shoes” (I don’t even know what that means).

Teachers will think that that my son ignores scientific theories about our origins, prompting his classmates to mark him an idiot.  People will tell him he has been led astray by his parents down an ancient path of misguided morality masked as a relationship with God.  Financial advisors will think he’s irresponsibly generous.  When he takes a stand, there will be those who will not tolerate his intolerance.  He will be judged as judgmental.  He will have enemies, and I’ll be asking him to love them, and even for that he’ll look foolish.

And he observes that “[r]aising kids who are ready to be hated means raising kids who unashamedly love God even in the face of loathing and alienation.”

Clearly, as Christians, we are not just called to hold Biblical positions, but also to do so in a way that is polite, winsome, and above reproach.  But the Gospel and all of Scripture include an inherent offense that can never be removed.  No matter how nice we are, the truths of the Bible will offend others.  And this offense is what we and our children must be prepared to endure.

Nowhere do Adam’s observations play out more vividly than at universities, where those who vocally advocate, defend, and try to live out Biblical truth will be hated.  This is true for students, who can get vilified for criticizing vulgarity, labeled “racist” for defending life, expelled as “homophobic” for declining to endorse immorality, and cursed out for defending marriage.  But it is also true for professors, who can get passed over for promotion or even face accusations of unethical conduct if they defend unpopular or unfashionable truths.

Thankfully, our Constitution offers students and professors protection, and God has graciously blessed those referenced above with victory.  Of course, Alliance Defending Freedom remains willing and ready to stand with others who face similar persecution for faithfully following Christ.  But all of the protections our Constitution affords and all of the lawyers ready to spring into action are completely worthless unless the student or professor is first willing to be hated.

So if you are a Christian who happens to be a university student or professor, Adam’s parenting article raises two questions to ponder prayerfully:

Does your university hate you?

If not, why not?