Group thinks discrimination is free speech

In the "war is peace" loony-loony land of BushAmerica, everything that's genuinely free speech isn't considered free speech at all - while everything that isn't free speech is. And anyone who defends themselves against this conservative tenet is accused by Freeper types of a hate crime. (Someone told me today that some kids just got charged with a hate crime because they defended themselves against some religious fanatics who threatened them because they wouldn't convert. I haven't found a website confirming this blatant misapplication of the hate crime statutes yet though.)

Shippensburg University is a public institution of higher book-learnin' in Pennsylvania. There's an organization there called the Christian Fellowship of Shippensburg University. However, the presidency and many other offices of this group are open to men only.

This violates university policies against discrimination. The vice-president of the student senate informed the Christian Fellowship that the university couldn't officially recognize this group unless it also allowed women to hold its offices.

What's the Christian Fellowship's response to this warning? A lawsuit, of course. The group says the school's threat to not recognize it violates the Constitution's guarantee of free speech. Seriously, they said that.

The organization is getting help in its lawsuit from the Alliance Defense Fund, a right-wing legal defense group that's long been nearly synonymous with intellectual terrorism on America's campuses. The ADF was also involved in a suit that forced UW-Madison (also a public university) to use mandatory student fees to finance a religious group. That it was successful in that suit shows how thoroughly conservative judicial activism has pervaded America's judiciary.

The Christian Fellowship cries that even though the group is still allowed to function and receive recognition, its members are under a threat of being investigated for discrimination. Yet there's no proof this is so. The Christian Fellowship is really looking a gift horse in the mouth, because they're violating the school's antidiscrimination policy but still haven't lost their recognition.

Is there any ridiculous legal theory conservatives haven't used in recent years? Their claim that antidiscrimination policies violate their True Free Speach Now (tm) seems to have only been in use since the mid-'90s, and it's one of the silliest theories they have.

(Source: http://www.pennlive.com/news/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1210222509213040.xml&coll=1)