By now, GetReligion readers are probably aware that some journalists have their doubts about whether the First Amendment actually protects religious doctrines and the “free exercise thereof” by believers.
The problem is that the old-liberal defense of “religious liberty” — inside the usual “scare quotes” — now clashes with the evolving doctrines of the Sexual Revolution. This leads to fights on religious campuses in which journalists pit bad religious believers who defend ancient doctrines against good believers who want those bad doctrines to evolve to mesh with the good teachings of the New York Times and other sacred texts.
The key in most of these clashes is whether students, faculty and staff sign a “doctrinal covenant” when they choose to work or study at one of these private schools. Private schools — liberal and conservative — have a right to defend the doctrines of the religious groups that founded them. As GetReligion readers know (explore this file), journalists often ignore the content of these covenants and fail to ask progressive activists whether they read these covenants before signing them.
Most of these stories focus on disputes at evangelical and Catholic schools. If you ever wondered how an education-beat newsroom would handle one of these stories in an Orthodox Jewish context, now you know — care of an Inside Higher Education report under this double-decker headline:
Students Sue Over Denial of LGBTQ+ Club Recognition
A lawsuit accuses Yeshiva University of violating New York City human rights law in its long-standing refusal to recognize an LGBTQ+ student group
The reader who forwarded this URL was rather blunt, stating that the article is “a mess. Journalistically speaking, it's biased, lopsided, and incurious.”
As usual, there is no way to know whether the school’s admission documents include a doctrinal covenant, since the reporting is sketchy, at best, on that subject.
