California State Senator Ricardo Lara proposed a bill earlier this summer that would threaten the religious liberty of all religious schools in the state that are not seminaries. It would require that such schools not “discriminate” against LGBT students or lose federal funding. As Biola University warned, the bill “functionally eliminates the religious liberty of all California faith-based colleges and universities who integrate spiritual life with the entire campus educational experience.”
Religious schools across the state flooded the senate committee with complaints. Christianity Today notes that the bill could have barred standards of belief and conduct for faculty and could have prevented colleges from giving preferential admission to students in its denomination or faith.
The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission called the legislation “its own form of discrimination by stigmatizing and coercively punishing religious beliefs.” The National Association of Evangelicals stated that protecting one minority community does not require the alienation of others. The senate committee noted that “the probability of litigation against the state appears fairly high.”
Yesterday, Sen. Lara announced that he was amending his controversial bill to keep religious exemptions in place. His bill would still require schools to “disclose if they have an exemption and report to the state when students are expelled for violating morality codes.” But it does not threaten federal funding for religious schools or require them to amend their morality standards.
This is good news. But there’s bad news on the religious liberty front as well.
Continue reading Denison Forum – BILL THREATENING RELIGIOUS LIBERTY HAS BEEN DROPPED
