Lesbians Can Be Expelled From Private Religious Schools

California's 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego has upheld the right of a private Lutheran school to limit the enrollment of students whose conduct is inconsistent with the religious beliefs of the institution. The case represents the assertion of judicial protection of freedom of association.

Note this from the Los Angeles Times story:

In ruling in favor of the school, the appeals court cited a 1998 California Supreme Court decision that said the Boy Scouts of America was a social organization, not a business establishment, and therefore did not have to comply with the Unruh Civil Rights Act. That case also involved a discrimination complaint based on sexual orientation.

"The school's religious message is inextricably intertwined with its secular functions," wrote Justice Betty A. Richli for the appeals court. "The whole purpose of sending one's child to a religious school is to ensure that he or she learns even secular subjects within a religious framework."

On its face, the case seems a straightforward confirmation of the bedrock First Amendment guarantees. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority in the precedent-setting Roberts v. United States Jaycees:

... the Court has concluded that choices to enter into and maintain certain intimate human relationships must be secured against undue intrusion by the State because of the role of such relationships in safeguarding the individual freedom that is central to our constitutional scheme. In this respect, freedom of association receives protection as a fundamental element of personal liberty ... The Constitution guarantees freedom of association of this kind as an indispensable means of preserving other individual liberties.

Despite such basic principles of human freedom, the response to the 4th District's ruling on the left has been entirely predictable. Freddie de Boer of the Extraordinary Bloggers has this:

Hey, why would someone like me be more invested in building a legal defense of gay marriage specifically and a larger lattice of rights to defend gay people generally? Why, maybe because of things like girls getting kicked out of their private high schools because the administration of said high school believes them to be lesbians.

This is why I am concerned with legality, rights and government first. Because right now, today, gay people are the subject of explicit, systematic discrimination. As we have said several times, these are of course connected phenomena, and I want to change both law and culture.

Notice the ultimate totalitarianism here, where Freddie wants to control both law and culture.

It's okay, though, right? That's expected of the International ANSWER-sponsored progressive gay-rights steamroller. It's what's been going on all along since November 5th and the No on H8 Stalinism that has attacked, boycotted, and excoriated regular folks who expressed a legitimate policy preference at the polls, peaceably. The progressive nihilists want their culture war - and they want it now!, even if there's little substantive connection on the issues other than excessive emotion and juvenility.

Notice how Freddie's discussion at the post is all about "discrimation" and "rights," but the rights discussed only favor the two lesbians who were expelled for behavior inappropiate to the norms and values inherent to a private sectarian educational establishment. Just forget the First Amendment rights of those "Christianists," naturally, those torture-loving bigots.

What's especially interesting is Freddie's spurious extrapolation to gay marriage. Gays do not face discrimination on questions of marriage. Same-sex marriage is not a civil right, and has yet to be considered one in U.S. constitutional jurisprudence. Homosexuals are free to marry, in any case, as is everyone else. They cannot, however, simply strongarm their way to a same-sex right that society does not recognize nor want, for fear of cultural destabilization and anti-social licentiousnesss. Moreover, the plight of the two girls can hardly be taken as representing a larger social climate of intolerance toward gays. Poll after poll finds phenomenal support for equal treatment under the law, as Newsweek recently found:

Seventy-four percent back inheritance rights for gay domestic partners (compared to 60 percent in 2004), 73 percent approve of extending health insurance and other employee benefits to them (compared to 60 percent in 2004), 67 percent favor granting them Social Security benefits (compared to 55 percent in 2004) and 86 percent support hospital visitation rights (a question that wasn't asked four years ago). In other areas, too, respondents appeared increasingly tolerant. Fifty-three percent favor gay adoption rights (8 points more than in 2004), and 66 percent believe gays should be able to serve openly in the military (6 points more than in 2004).

The same poll found that just 31 percent "support FULL marriage rights for same-sex couples," to quote from the language from the questionnaire.

To gain said rights, secular progressives demand that the great majority of Americans capitulate to their coercion and hostility. And if they don't - as we've seen - marriage traditionalists involuntarily subject themselves to Soviet-style show trials and aggressive boycotts designed to stifle freedom of speech and association, which are exactly the same issues that the District court protected by ruling in favor of the Lutheran school.

As a red herring, the plaintiffs alleged that the school master sat too close to the girls during their questioning, "intimidating" the students in an "prurient fashion," although the court rejected such claims outright. Pam Spaulding's playing this "abuse" angle in a classic leftist victimology shake-down grab. As for the Extraordinary Brotherhood of Traveling Bloggers, Freddie's post is one in a series labeled "Same Sex Marriage and Nomenclature," so no doubt we'll be seeing more jackbooted opposition to the traditional majority dripping like death from their page.

I'll have more on the august work from this extraordinary bunch, with special attention to the extra-extraordinary blog-master Mark Thompson, who was once considered a freedom-loving libertarian, but who now cheers the rationality of Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli citizens, and who has now apparently joined forces with a some ultra-orthodox gay-marriage ayatollahs who want to ram down cultural change on the rest of us.