‘If we let those Christian groups stay on campus, how can we keep out the Klan?”
Defend religious liberty in higher education, and that is the question you’ll be forced to answer. I’ve heard it every year at least once for the last 16 years, since I first defended a Christian student group, at Tufts University in 2000.
The problem, you see, is that Christian groups stubbornly wish to be led by Christians, and at hundreds of universities they have refused to sign pledges or conform to policies that mandate that they not even consider a candidate’s religious faith when that person seeks to run a campus Christian fellowship. In radical eyes, imposing faith-based litmus tests is mere subterfuge, the benign-sounding pretext that masks homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny.
As a result, the question about the Klan isn’t so much a question about slippery slopes (can we impose any standards on campus groups?) but about comparing equivalents. If homophobia and transphobia are on the same plane as racism, is there any substantive ideological difference between the Klan and, say, a Baptist student fellowship?
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