It didn’t take long for the reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscriber site) to signal his position on the issue. The subhead announces: “Conservative Christian groups have forced colleges to allow them to bar gay students and nonbelievers.”

UNC-Chapel Hill’s brave battle against the three-member Christian fraternity menace on campus, Alpha Iota Omega, figures prominently in the Chronicle’s report. That’s because UNC-CH is one of three institutions facing a lawsuit for their actions who “are determined to fight the legal challenge, despite considerable costs.” The other two are Arizona State University at Tempe and the University of California’s Hastings College of Law. (Naturally it’s the public institutions, the ones with the least tenable position before the law since they’re bound by the Constitution in ways private institutions aren’t, that have the legally coerced financial wherewithal to fight such lawsuits.)

The Chronicle apes the Moeser justification that the issue has “forced colleges to choose which of two basic principles is more important: freedom of religion, guaranteed by the First Amendment, or equal protection under the law, as established by the 14th Amendment.” That is utter hogwash ? the 14th Amendment doesn’t at all mean that there must be equal protection within private groups. Equal protection in regards to university programs means that the school grants the “official recognition, … financial support, preferential access to campus facilities, and the right to use their college’s name” to all private groups regardless of beliefs, not monkey around with the beliefs of each group. Or should I remind Moeser et al. that the freedoms of assembly and speech are also at issue here?

The Chronicle quotes Jordan Lorence, a senior lawyer at the Alliance Defense Fund (which is representing AIO). Requiring a Christian group to admit non-Christians or gay people “would be like requiring a vegetarian group to admit meat eaters,” Lorence said. “It would be like forcing the College Democrats to accept Republicans.”

Forcing the College Democrats to accept Republicans? Now really, who would be stupid enough to try something like that?

Oh, riiiiiiight: UNC-Wilmington!