Some conservative religious groups complain about the alleged "oppression" of their point of view in secular universities. Well it seems they don't mind suppressing view points on their campuses that don't match their own. First we had the flap about Notre Dame giving Obama an honorary degree and now we have a flap over campus Democratic club at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.
Seems that the University's Student Democratic Club cannot be recognised any more by the school because of the Democratic party's alleged support of positions antithetical to the religious teachings endorsed by the private University.
Reverend Falwell is quoted here as saying:
“They are good, Christian kids who sit with me at ball games. I just hope they find a pro-life family organization to affiliate with so they can be endorsed by Liberty again.“
An e-mail to the leaders of the University's Democratic club allegedly explaining the reasoning for the ban says:
“The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the “LGBT” agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.)”
As a private school, the University may well be within its rights to do this, but it strikes me as a bit extreme. After all Democrats are hardly uniform about the above issues, and the student leaders claim to have views in line with the University's. Plus this is a bad strategy on the part of the University-after all if Falwell wants to change the Democratic party and insure representation of conservative religious tenets, then what better way to do so than to promote conservative Democrats.
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