The editorial board’s recent tirade against a campus Christian group in Pella, “Discrimination of gays unacceptable” (April 2), merely exposes the prejudiced and close-minded nature of what is perhaps the most intolerant group on today’s university campuses: leftists.

The underlying assumption of the editorial board’s assertion that religious freedom should stop when it violates civil liberties is that civil liberties and religious beliefs are somehow opposed to each other. The more concrete contention is that gay students have a “right” to be leaders of Christian organizations, notwithstanding Christian beliefs that homosexuality constitutes a moral failing, and as such, does not exemplify Christian principles and values.

If beliefs can violate rights, surely it is the government’s responsibility to regulate the beliefs of all organizations and individuals to rectify such tragic miscarriages of justice. This is merely a parallel suggestion that follows logically from the editorial board’s suggestion that school funding to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship should be severed.

The beliefs of IVCF, according to the board, somehow violate the “rights” of gays, and thereby, fail the state litmus test. How dare they believe something different! They should be disbanded!

Clearly, the solution advocated by the board is Orwellian in its implications. But this is no impediment to leftists for whom there is nothing more offensive than the presence on campus of religious people and organizations arrogant and intolerant enough to actually believe in something — in God, no less. What nerve!

One can hardly help but wonder how the editorial board would respond if a leader of LGBTAA or the Black Student Alliance were to suddenly reveal himself to be a closet member of the KKK. Surely that wouldn’t be objectionable. It would be a dreadful shame if intolerant LGBTAA members were to discriminate against the Klan member in question and infringe upon his “right” to hijack the principles of their organization.

The concept of universities imposing litmus tests on the beliefs of campus organizations is a crystal clear picture of American universities as leftists would have them — not as celebrated bastions of free speech, but rather as exemplary embodiments of leftist dogma that are free of Christianity, of conservatives and other undesirable people and ideas.

Paul Armstrong

George Washington University

Former ISU student