Bill Donohue comments on a bill to intimidate religious colleges and universities:
The assault on religious liberty, in the name of LGBT rights, is at the heart of a bill introduced by Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts. She wants to force all religious institutions of higher education to post on their website, and at a prominent place on their campus, statements granting them an exemption from Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
Initially, Title IX was meant to stop discrimination against women, but now it is a weapon in the LGBT arsenal to sexually engineer American society. Their goal is to force all institutions into ratifying their agenda.
Rep. Clark’s bill does not seek to repeal the many secular exemptions to Title IX: it says nothing about the exemptions afforded the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, fraternities and sororities, military academies, and the like. Her cherry picking amounts to religious profiling and religious discrimination; it also creates a chilling effect on free speech.
Exemptions to federal laws are commonplace—Native Americans being Exhibit A. ObamaCare exempted a whole slew of demographic groups and organizations, ranging from members of Indian tribes to certain religious sects. Unions are exempt from many labor laws, and so on. Now if someone were to toy with these exemptions, he would be called out for it. This is why we are calling out Rep. Clark.
Her bias is palpable. In defending her assault on religious liberty, she commends Obama’s Department of Education for “answering our call to action to publicly disclose the names of schools quietly seeking the right to discriminate against LGBT students.” Translated: a man who “feels” he is a woman should be allowed to shower with the gals, and if he is barred from doing so at Catholic colleges because of the exemption, the schools should pay a price for exercising their religious liberties.
Contact Rep. Clark’s communications director, Justin Unga: justin.unga@mail.house.gov
