A federal judge in Detroit has upheld the constitutional right of a Christian student to express her religious beliefs in opposition to homosexuality during her high school’s 2002 “Diversity Week” program.
The case involved a federal lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm, on behalf of student Betsy Hansen, whose religious views against homosexuality were censored and excluded from the program held at Ann Arbor’s Pioneer High School.
During the program, Pioneer High School officials prevented Hansen from expressing her Roman Catholic view on homosexuality at the “Homosexuality and Religion” panel, and they censored a speech she was asked to give on the topic, ”What Diversity Means to Me.”
School officials claimed Betsy’s religious view toward homosexuality was a ”negative” message and would ”water-down” the ”positive” religious message that they wanted to convey – that homosexual behavior is not immoral or sinful.
The federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Law Center alleged that school officials violated Hansen’s constitutional rights to freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, and the equal protection of the law. Moreover, the lawsuit alleged that school officials coerced students to accept the religious belief that homosexual activity is not immoral or sinful in violation of the Constitution.
School officials handpicked religious leaders who endorsed the school’s pro-homosexual “religious” belief to sit on the panel, and they denied Hansen’s request to have a panel member who would express the Roman Catholic belief on homosexuality.
Judge Gerald Rosen’s 70-page opinion began with blistering criticism of the school:
“This case presents the ironic, and unfortunate, paradox of a public high school celebrating ‘diversity’ by refusing to permit the presentation to students of an ‘unwelcomed’ viewpoint on the topic of homosexuality and religion, while actively promoting the competing view. This practice of ‘one-way diversity,’ unsettling in itself, was rendered still more troubling – both constitutionally and ethically – by the fact that the approved viewpoint was, in one manifestation, presented to students as religious doctrine by six clerics (some in full garb) quoting from religious scripture. In its other manifestation, it resulted in the censorship by school administrators of a student’s speech about “what diversity means to me,” removing that portion of the speech in which the student described the unapproved viewpoint.”
Judge Rosen held that the Ann Arbor Public Schools and several of its employees violated Hansen’s constitutional rights to freedom of speech and the equal protection of the law. He also concluded that the school officials violated the Establishment Clause by inviting the pro-gay clergy to hold a panel on “Homosexuality and Religion.”
Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Law Center, applauded Judge Rosen for his strongly worded opinion, ”Judge Rosen displayed judicial courage by refusing to bend to the winds of political correctness, and he decided the case according to the well established law. This is a tremendous victory for the First Amendment rights of Christian students and a tremendous defeat for those who consider public schools as their private platform to advance the homosexual agenda.”
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