Alliance Defending Freedom and three Christian schools are revolting against a high profile federal case filed by LGBT students last month that endangers funding to faith-based institutions.
Corban University, William Jessup University and Phoenix Seminary are the three Christian schools who declared intervention on a federal lawsuit filed by 33 LGBT current and former students from Christian and religious schools last month. Conservative Christian nonprofit organization Alliance Defending Freedom is backing the three schools, who expressed desire to intervene as defendants in the lawsuit that claims the religious exemption in Title IX is unconstitutional.
According to Christian Headlines, the ADF appealed to the federal court in Oregon on Friday to enable the three Christian post-secondary schools to serve as defendants in the case filed by Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP), an LGBT youth group arguing that the declaration of "religious exemptions'' in Title IX are unconstitutional.
Current federal rules state that religious institutions are exempted from Title IX, the law that bans descriminiation based on sex in education programs education programs and activities. Under the Biden administration, Title IX now applies to sexual orientation and gender identity.
The 33-member coalition of REAP argues that Christian colleges and universities are often discriminative of the LGBT community by prohibiting LGBT content in student handbooks "based on scriptural teaching."
The lawsuit seeks to change this and ensure that Title IX is enforced at "all taxpayer-funded educational institutions, including at those institutions that discriminate and cause harm on the basis of sincerely held religious beliefs." Per the ADF, this lawsuit simply "threatens the rights of faith-based schools to operate according to their beliefs.
However, Christian schools are fighting back, claiming that the court must not decide upon the constitutionality of the Title IX's religious exemption without listening to the side of the "very religious educational institutions that the exemption was designed to protect."
Furthermore, the schools' motion to intervene argues that ruling for the LGBT students' case will' be detrimental not only to faith-based institutions, but also to those students who rely on federal funding to attend these Christian schools.
A ruling that sides with the LGBT students will also force faith-based institutions who remain steadfast in their religious convictions and uphold religious speech about important issues like sex, gender, marriage, and morality to lose vital federal funding for them to continue serving the religious public.
"Religious schools would face the impossible choice of losing students who would be denied needed federal financial assistance or abandoning their beliefs. And it would slam the door of opportunity in the face of students who want to pursue higher education at colleges and universities that share their faith," the ADF said, describing what could happen if the LGBT group wins the case.
According to Life News, ADF senior counsel David Cortman called the LGBT lawsuit "radical and broad," saying that "It attacks every single religious school in the entire country. It seeks to undo protections for religious colleges and universities to be able to teach and operate according to their own religious beliefs."
Cortman argued that the LGBT lawsuit in fact "creates constitutional violations" instead of solving such violations, "discriminating against the schools for operating according to their faith."
The LGBT lawsuit appears to be an emboldened attack on religious freedom, perpetuated by President Joe Biden's executive orders and the Democrat-supported Equality Act. Cortman hopes that the court will "allow them to participate" in a discussion that in fact involves them and the fate of 200 more Christian schools across the United States.
