The Supreme Court declared in 2010 that public universities must permit religious student clubs to select leaders who share their faith. UNC-Greensboro is now getting around this by declaring that a Christian student club isn’t really religious.
On what grounds? It isn’t affiliated with a church.
Other schools are apparently pursuing this strategy as well. Expect to hear more about it.
This is closely related to the problem Nathaniel Peters wrote about on Friday. Peters was writing about the recent HHS decision to require almost every institution in America other than churches to become abortion providers. He made the case that if we base our objections to this on our own conscience rights, we may absolutize the privatization of moral principles, such that the public square is no longer responsible to any standard of right and wrong.
Alongside that problem, place this correlative problem: if we make claims based on the special role of religious institutions in society, we may invite unlimited oppression of all other institutions besides those that conform to the narrowest possible definition of “religious.”
This is not just relevant at UNC. In the debate over the HHS mandate, we’ve been maneuvered into defending a special right for “religious” institutions not to be forced to become abortion providers. All we’re doing is quibbling over the definition of “religious institution.” What about all the other institutions that aren’t “religious institutions” in the narrow sense, but are staffed by human beings (yes, even profit-making businesses are staffed by human beings) who are now required by federal law to become part of the abortion industry?
March 6th, 2012 | 10:49 am
Um, UNC-Greensboro surely gets most of its funding from the state, right? Methinks the North Carolina legislature could rectify this situation tomorrow.
March 6th, 2012 | 12:09 pm
[...] further at First Thoughts. [...]
March 6th, 2012 | 12:43 pm
In the debate over the HHS mandate, we’ve been maneuvered into defending a special right for “religious” institutions not to be forced to become abortion providers.
Abortion providers???
Even if it were certain (which is is not) that morning-after pills and/or oral contraceptives in some cases interfere with implantation, it is a huge leap to call an employer who provides insurance that might be used to cover the cost of the drugs an “abortion provider.”
Should we hold demonstrations against all employers who currently provide insurance that covers morning-after pills and contraceptives? Should we boycott the insurance companies who sell the insurance? By your logic, they are all “abortion providers.”
March 6th, 2012 | 12:53 pm
Your last paragraph is just hyperbolic hand-waving. Obviously the question of whether institutions that provide insurance that pays for abortion are “abortion providers” is separate from how we should treat those institutions. We can conclude that they are abortion providers and yet find very good reasons for not engaging in the actions you breathlessly describe.
As for the question of whether the HHS mandate requires virtually all American institutions to become abortion providers, could you help me understand the nature of your objection? You aren’t very specific. Here are the possibilities I can come up with:
1) You don’t think blocking implantation qualifies as abortion.
2) You don’t think providing people with insurance that pays for abortion counts as providing abortion.
3) You don’t think institutions that provide abortion via insurance should be described as abortion providers.
If it’s #1, it’s probably not worth rehashing that argument here. If it’s #2 or #3, I have to say I don’t really see the logic of the position. Or do you have some other objection that I’m not seeing?
March 6th, 2012 | 12:54 pm
Excellent post that deserves much thought and debate.
When Jefferson wrote and Congress edited the Declaration of Independence, “endowed by our Creator” was not a philosophical argument about science or theology, but rather referred to a real, true and single God that we know and experience and was born of the Judeo-Christian tradition (regardless of “Jefferson’s Bible” and the rest). They were not thinking about the possibility that our creators were little green men from outer space, as Richard Dawkins has speculated.
This maneuver by UNC Greensboro and others like it are attempts to force what we actually mean and experience by Christianity and force it into compliance with what no one means by religion. Then, once even Christians realize that their religious liberty depends on making every law accommodate the religion little green men, then they hope Christians too will throw in the towel.
Both sides pretend that this fight is about settling on an understanding that works for all. But often the objective of one side is just to destroy the church.
It may turn out to be true that:
1) Freedom of Religion was actually born from the Judeo-Christian tradition as it is lived an experienced, and was not fathomed out of whatever every single person may or may not come up with on his or her own and declare his religion.
2) We may actually discover that so much of what the government has already done and proposes to do is totally incompatible with Freedom of Religion.
March 6th, 2012 | 2:16 pm
Greg Forster,
Well, it is usually said that Planned Parenthood is the country’s largest abortion provider. If you want to change the idea of what an abortion provider is to (1) a company that provides its employees insurance that pays for contraceptives, or (2) an insurance company that pays claims for contraceptives, or (3) company that manufactures contraceptives, or (4) a company that actually sells contraceptives, then the country’s largest abortion provider may be Wal-Mart, or Walgreens, United Healthcare, or Johnson & Johnson.
I would say that there is no solid proof that oral contraceptives and emergency contraceptives actually do interfere with implantation, although it is not unreasonable to assume that in rare cases they do. But then again, so does cigarette smoking.
I do not find it unreasonable for those who believe life begins at conception to be concerned about drugs that interfere with implantation, but I personally think it is not helpful to speak of “abortifacient” drugs, since there are real abortifacient drugs that induce abortions in women who are clinically pregnant. I don’t think—even if you consider them morally equivalent—that preventing implantation and terminating a clinical pregnancy are the same thing.
In any case, my primary objection is to the use of the term “abortion provider.” Planned Parenthood is an abortion provider. An insurance company that pays for an abortion is not an “abortion provider,” but rather an insurance company that pays for abortions.
March 6th, 2012 | 2:36 pm
Douglas Johnson –
It’s a side issue, but… that’s wrong in several ways.
“Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It’s the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be… I was most emphaticaly NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don’t think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.”
You don’t have to agree with Dawkins. But you should at least avoid misrepresenting him.
March 6th, 2012 | 4:09 pm
Reading David Nickol’s post I realized how to eliminate all abortions, not only in the United States, but throughout the world. You simply declare that anything that purposefully kills the baby in the womb is NOT an abortion. Viola!
And just so you don’t have to pretend that the word never existed, you just argue that abortion only ever referred to a practice whereby the child is delivered and burned at the stake. And then say you’re against that.
(Basically this is the same tactic as the movement to redefine marriage. You don’t say you are actually “redefining” anything, you just say that “hey marriage was only ever a relationship between two random people that never had anything to do with their complementary sex” and viola! Anyone who disagrees is a racist Jim Crow by extension.)
March 6th, 2012 | 4:30 pm
Ray Ingles,
Total side issue, agreed.
But what did I write that misrepresented Dawkins?
P.S. Thanks for the link, though. I always pictured him a calm, semi-methodical thinker. Holy cow did I get that wrong.
March 6th, 2012 | 6:40 pm
Reading David Nickol’s post I realized how to eliminate all abortions, not only in the United States, but throughout the world. You simply declare that anything that purposefully kills the baby in the womb is NOT an abortion. Viola!
Douglas Johnson,
As I just said in another thread: Why are responses on these topics from you and others so often snappish, sarcastic, or—as they say—snarky? I realize people have very strong feelings, but is that any reason to abandon politeness and civility?
Please note that I said, “I don’t think—even if you consider them morally equivalent—that preventing implantation and terminating a clinical pregnancy are the same thing.” You are free to condemn anything that interferes with implantation all you want. I did not say it was not the causing of death of a human being. I just don’t think the correct way to describe it is abortion. The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary defines abortion as follows:
Failure to implant, whether because of natural causes or because of the effects of some drug, does not seem to me to involve expulsion (expell to force out from or as if from a receptacle : drive out : cast out : EJECT, DISLODGE).
I have not proposed a new definition of abortion. I am using the existing one. Also, I pointed out that it is a matter of dispute whether the drugs you call abortifacients interfere with implantation.
March 7th, 2012 | 8:11 am
First off the top paragraph here doesn’t make much sense. I think the writer is trying to say in 2010 the SC ruled that student clubs *couldn’t* making sharing a faith a standard for club membership or leadership.
That is, of course, a lie. The SC didn’t rule that student clubs couldn’t be religious or make exclude people either from membership or leadership on the basis of not sharing the club’s religious beliefs. The SC ruled that a college *could*, if it wanted, have a rule that student funds only go to clubs that were open to all students.
Likewise the HHS claim is also another lie. The bill created an extraordinary exception for abortion. Individuals who want insurance to cover abortion have to write their own check to their insurance company for a ‘mini-policy’ that covers abortion only. Your employer then is only an abortion provider if you believe that because your boss pays you for your labor, he is entitled to tell you how to spend your pay because it’s really ‘his’.
Even on the birth control pill front, let’s leave aside the rather unlikely set of events that have to happen for the pill to cause abortion (a woman has to start using at *just* the right moment when an egg has been released and fertilized but not implanted yet…BTW NFP can have the same effect, if the couple has sex just before the optimal fertilization period the result may be an egg that is fertilized but finds the uterus hostile to implantation resulting in its death), and the rather more likely fact that use of the pill probably lowers the numbers of abortions that would happen (whether or not abortion is ever made illegal). Fact is the only person who ‘provides’ contraception is a doctor who prescribes it or a pharmacist who fills the script and the health bill says nothing about any mandate to provide contraception.
March 7th, 2012 | 8:26 am
Douglas Johnson –
Isn’t it obvious? Dawkins wasn’t speculating that “our creators were little green men from outer space”. He was pointing out that that – ahem – unlikely scenario was the best possible case for ‘intelligent design’.
And he was doing this in direct response to a question by a ‘cdesign proponentist’, not spontaneously. He wasn’t even “speculating” as such, he was responding to a specific question in an interview.
Oh, and Dawkins never used the phrase “little green men”, either.
That’s off the top of my head. If I think of other errors in that phrase of yours, I’ll let you know.
March 7th, 2012 | 11:06 am
Boonton: You’ve misread the first paragraph of the post. That wasn’t what I was claiming.
March 7th, 2012 | 12:05 pm
Greg,
Your first paragraph:
The Supreme Court declared in 2010 that public universities must permit religious student clubs to select leaders who share their faith. UNC-Greensboro is now getting around this by declaring that a Christian student club isn’t really religious.
What are they getting around? You said the SC said in 2010 public universities must let student religious clubs use faith tests to select their leaders. Your words would literally mean then the ‘Student Christian Club’ must be allowed by the University to select their leaders from Christians only (Jews, Muslims, atheists need not apply, Mormons depending upon whether this club considers Mormons Christians or not etc.). So what is there to get around?
Christian Legal Society v. Martinez is the 2010 ruling being referenced. That ruling did NOT say that Colleges must allow student clubs to discriminate based on religion if they were religious clubs. The ruling said that Colleges could have a rule that said all clubs that received student funds could be required to NOT discriminate based on religion. Colleges were not required, of course to implement such a rule but if they did a Christian group who wanted to discriminate against non-Christians would ‘have to find a way to get around’ it.
March 7th, 2012 | 11:16 pm
Ray Ingles,
I think you may have some confusion over the meaning of “to speculate.”
March 8th, 2012 | 8:15 am
Douglas Johnson – There may be a technical reading of your phrasing that doesn’t make it an actual lie. That doesn’t mean it’s a fair representation.
For example, you may have seen the quote going around the net, “Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.”
Each part of it, technically, can be interpreted such a way as to make it not a lie. But I think you’ll agree with me that it’s a misrepresentation.
As you presented it, you imply rather strongly that (a) Dawkins gives at least some credence to the idea, and (b) that he made such a conjecture without specific prompting. Neither of which are at all the case.
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