Violations by college professors and administrators of the First Amendment freedoms of religion, speech and assembly of evangelical Christian and politically conservative students have become so numerous that legal defense groups like the Fund for Individual Rights in Education and the Alliance Defense Fund can’t train lawyers fast enough to keep up with the caseload.
By contrast, there were four documented incidents of Old Glory being burned last year, according to the Citizens’ Flag Alliance. So even as the civil liberties of Christians and conservatives on campus are routinely violated, the U.S. Senate is now using four days to debate the proposed constitutional amendment to … ban flag burning.
The House passed the amendment last year 286-130 and the Senate may very well succeed as well this year. The American Legion, which supports the ban, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes it, say the proposed amendment is only one vote short of the 67 needed to secure passage. If the amendment is passed by the Senate, it will then go to the president for signature and from there to the states, most of which will quickly approve it. Congress will then pass a new law banning physical desecration of the flag.
Meanwhile, conservative students like Jered Ede at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore will continue to be suppressed by college professors and administrators, who often act in league with liberal and leftist student groups. Ede is editor of The Carrolton Record, an independent conservative student newspaper at Johns Hopkins.
When the newspaper published an article critical of the officially sanctioned campus appearance of a pornographer and included a photo of the pornographer with members of the school’s Diverse Sexuality and Gender Alliance, more than 600 copies of the publication were stolen by persons unknown. Johns Hopkins administrators then refused to allow the paper to be distributed in dorms, even though other publications are routinely given permission for such distribution. Johns Hopkins officials are thus ignoring a 1994 Maryland law making it illegal to steal newspapers. That statute was passed in response to a wave of thefts of student newspapers on Maryland campuses, including Johns Hopkins.
Unfortunately, Ede’s experience — first reported by Baltimore Examiner reporter Ron Cassie — is all too common for religious and political conservatives on the typical American college campus, yet we hear nothing about congressional action to defend the First Amendment in the groves of academe. By proscribing flag burning — a despicable act to be sure, but one that is intrinsically an act of political expression — Congress will be joining with those liberal campus professors and administrators in saying the First Amendment protects every person’s right to say anything except … (Fill in the blank with your preferred target to silence).
Ironic, isn’t it, that those on the right who want to ban flag burning and those on the left who want to ban expression by campus conservatives and Christians would have us sliding down the same slippery slope of politically correct suppression that always follows the compromising of the First Amendment.
