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When Palestinians convert (and other perils of free association)
The perils of free association
Dan Rottenberg
The Christian Legal Society, an evangelical student group, appears to have run into a problem that neither law nor religion can solve. According to a column in the April 16 Wall Street Journal, CLS has been denied official recognition at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, in San Francisco.
As far as I can gather, the trouble started when mischievous free-thinking Hastings students started joining the CLS in sufficient droves to form a majority of the chapter, at which point they must have passed resolutions endorsing fornication or homosexuality or even disbanding the chapter altogether. When the CLS tried to restrict its voting membership to evangelical Christians willing to sign a "statement of faith," it was excluded from campus for discriminating. And now a federal court has endorsed the law school's open-access policy.
This story sounds familiar. When I was a Penn freshman in the fall of 1960, a large and resourceful group of student Democrats joined the campus chapter of the Young Republicans and passed a motion to endorse John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for president. This was surely embarrassing to Republicans, but you can guess what happened next: The Republicans on campus returned the favor, packing the Young Democrats' meeting and passing a resolution to endorse Richard Nixon.
Banishing the geeks
Just about any organization can be vulnerable to fifth columnists. In The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson's memoir of his Iowa boyhood, he gleefully recalls how a group of his junior high school friends joined the school's audio-visual club, voted out the geeks (who customarily enjoyed playing with movie projectors), and subsequently commandeered the audio-visual room to smoke cigarettes and watch sex education films projected on the wall.
But this issue of organizational integrity transcends school and college pranks. Political strategists routinely encourage Republicans to vote in Democratic primaries and vice versa, and it's hard to prevent them, because ultimately who can say who's a Republican and who's a Democrat? For that matter, how does a country really know whether its citizens are loyal children of the fatherland or fifth columnists eager to hook up with some other country?
Trial by ordeal?
Of course it's annoying when Democrats pretend to be Republicans and vice versa, or Druids pretend to be Christians, or Jews for Jesus pretend to be Jews. The freedom to associate ought to include the freedom not to associate.
But when you're dealing with people's beliefs and ideals— as opposed to, say, their gender, race or nationality— how can you be certain what's going on in their minds? Should you subject them to trial by ordeal (a popular solution during the Reformation)? And even if you're convinced of their sincerity, how can you be sure they won't change their minds?
If the Palestinians had any brains, I've often felt, they'd convert en masse to Judaism. Then they'd invoke the automatic right to citizenship that Israel guarantees to all Jews everywhere. Then, having become a majority of the Israeli population, they'd vote Israel out of existence and change its name to Palestine. And then they'd convert back to Islam.
Conservatives at Penn
This much I know: Ultimately the problem of association or exclusion won't be solved in a court of law. It will be solved by human ingenuity.
The trouble with the Christian Legal Society folks is that they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want official recognition, funding and equal access to campus without granting equal access to students.
By contrast, when I was at Penn, conservatives on campus became angered by what they saw as the liberal tone of the Daily Pennsylvanian. They could have joined the DP and tried to change the tone. Or they could have applied to the administration for funding for a second paper. Instead they took stock of their assets— which, being conservatives, included many rich fathers— and started their own publication without the university's support. Eventually the DP followed their example and stopped accepting university support as well, the better to assert its independence.
The Christian Legal Society could easily do the same. As I said, all it takes is a little ingenuity.♦
To read responses, click here.
As far as I can gather, the trouble started when mischievous free-thinking Hastings students started joining the CLS in sufficient droves to form a majority of the chapter, at which point they must have passed resolutions endorsing fornication or homosexuality or even disbanding the chapter altogether. When the CLS tried to restrict its voting membership to evangelical Christians willing to sign a "statement of faith," it was excluded from campus for discriminating. And now a federal court has endorsed the law school's open-access policy.
This story sounds familiar. When I was a Penn freshman in the fall of 1960, a large and resourceful group of student Democrats joined the campus chapter of the Young Republicans and passed a motion to endorse John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for president. This was surely embarrassing to Republicans, but you can guess what happened next: The Republicans on campus returned the favor, packing the Young Democrats' meeting and passing a resolution to endorse Richard Nixon.
Banishing the geeks
Just about any organization can be vulnerable to fifth columnists. In The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson's memoir of his Iowa boyhood, he gleefully recalls how a group of his junior high school friends joined the school's audio-visual club, voted out the geeks (who customarily enjoyed playing with movie projectors), and subsequently commandeered the audio-visual room to smoke cigarettes and watch sex education films projected on the wall.
But this issue of organizational integrity transcends school and college pranks. Political strategists routinely encourage Republicans to vote in Democratic primaries and vice versa, and it's hard to prevent them, because ultimately who can say who's a Republican and who's a Democrat? For that matter, how does a country really know whether its citizens are loyal children of the fatherland or fifth columnists eager to hook up with some other country?
Trial by ordeal?
Of course it's annoying when Democrats pretend to be Republicans and vice versa, or Druids pretend to be Christians, or Jews for Jesus pretend to be Jews. The freedom to associate ought to include the freedom not to associate.
But when you're dealing with people's beliefs and ideals— as opposed to, say, their gender, race or nationality— how can you be certain what's going on in their minds? Should you subject them to trial by ordeal (a popular solution during the Reformation)? And even if you're convinced of their sincerity, how can you be sure they won't change their minds?
If the Palestinians had any brains, I've often felt, they'd convert en masse to Judaism. Then they'd invoke the automatic right to citizenship that Israel guarantees to all Jews everywhere. Then, having become a majority of the Israeli population, they'd vote Israel out of existence and change its name to Palestine. And then they'd convert back to Islam.
Conservatives at Penn
This much I know: Ultimately the problem of association or exclusion won't be solved in a court of law. It will be solved by human ingenuity.
The trouble with the Christian Legal Society folks is that they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want official recognition, funding and equal access to campus without granting equal access to students.
By contrast, when I was at Penn, conservatives on campus became angered by what they saw as the liberal tone of the Daily Pennsylvanian. They could have joined the DP and tried to change the tone. Or they could have applied to the administration for funding for a second paper. Instead they took stock of their assets— which, being conservatives, included many rich fathers— and started their own publication without the university's support. Eventually the DP followed their example and stopped accepting university support as well, the better to assert its independence.
The Christian Legal Society could easily do the same. As I said, all it takes is a little ingenuity.♦
To read responses, click here.
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