Monkeypox, grooming of children, hulking men upending women’s sports, drag-queen story hours, Libsoftiktok … it’s not a great day to be gay.
Yet as the sick, dangerous and unhealthy reality of homosexuality becomes increasingly hard to ignore, liberal government seems to be pushing acceptance of it harder than ever.
Now a Christian college in Washington state is under attack from state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who claims the school is discriminating against LGBTQ+ people in its hiring, reports The Seattle Times. Seattle Pacific University says the state is violating its constitutionally protected right to religious freedom.
“The attorney general is wielding state power to interfere with the religious beliefs of a religious university, and a church, whose beliefs he disagrees with,” reads the school’s 22-page complaint, filed July 27 in U.S. District Court in Tacoma.
Ferguson has already returned fire, accusing the school in a July 29 statement of arrogance. The school’s lawsuit “demonstrates that the university believes it is above the law to such an extraordinary degree that it is shielded from answering basic questions from my office regarding the university’s compliance with state law,” he thundered.
The private Seattle college has long barred the hiring of people in same-sex marriages and has required faculty and staff to sign off on a statement that sex should occur only between married men and women.
The policy led faculty to cast a vote of no confidence in the school’s board last year. Students and others also staged an intermittent sit-in outside the president’s office in the spring and summer.
Ferguson’s office sent a letter to SPU in June requesting information about every instance in which the university applied its policies to decisions around hiring, promoting, disciplining or firing faculty and staff. The office also asked for the names and contact information of people to whom the policies had been applied, as well as a description of every job at the school.
Lori Windham, an attorney with the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said the request is overly broad and relates to the internal affairs of a 130-year-old religious institution. According to SPU’s lawsuit, it’s an intrusion that violates the First Amendment right for religious organizations to determine how to exercise their own faith.
The complaint also says that SPU would be disaffiliated from the Free Methodist Church if it hired people who are in same-sex marriages.
