Yeshiva University is an Orthodox Jewish institution of higher education in New York — a city with a human rights law intended to ensure that in all but truly private settings, people are protected from discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, national origin and sexual orientation.
Yeshiva says the requirement that it recognize a student-led LGBT group amounts to an infringement on its First Amendment rights to practice its religion as it sees fit. We respectfully disagree.
It’s true that Yeshiva — which only grants secular degrees — is in essential ways rooted in faith, as is Fordham in the Bronx and St. John’s in Queens. As such, it properly is and should remain exempt from the law in many ways. It can give Jews preference in employment, housing and, if it wishes, admissions.
The question at issue here is only whether the YU Pride Alliance, a small group of students, should get a room for meetings, a booth at the recruitment fair and a little bit of snack money like the Fantasy Football Club and the Soup Club and the Blockchain Club and dozens of others do.
Recognition is not a stamp of approval; nobody believes the existence of a student Democratic or Republican club makes Yeshiva partisan. It’s simply letting a group of young people associate, not because of what they want to do but because of who they are.
The U.S. Supreme Court told the university, which has so far lost in the state courts, earlier this month that it would have to go through its appeals in New York before getting heard in Washington. In reaction Friday, the university shut down all clubs. Rather than being forced to accept one LGBT club, it is saying, nobody on campus will be able to participate in student-led extracurriculars. Please.
The same local human rights law that says gay students can form a club at a private religious university also safeguards the freedom of religious students to form a club at a private secular university. Seems like a fair trade to us.
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