(The Center Square) – The oldest Jewish university in the U.S. has now appealed to the Supreme Court as the next step in a lengthy battle over whether the religious school has to recognize an LGBT club.
The legal battle began last year when a group of students and alumni of Yeshiva University took their university to court, demanding the school endorse an LGBTQ Pride Alliance club on campus.
The legal challengers argued the Jewish New York university, founded in 1886, is not a religious institution and should be forced to endorse the club. In June, the New York County Supreme Court sided with the students, ruling that the Jewish university did not qualify as a “religious institution,” pointing to organizational documents where the university calls itself an operation for “exclusively educational purposes.”
The university has argued this ruling could set precedent for religious schools around the country.
“Defense counsel’s arguments about the implications of this court’s ruling are overblown,” the June ruling said. “Every school with a religious affiliation or association is not necessarily affected by this court’s determination…”
Now, the university has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, emphasizing the religious nature of the school and thus why it should qualify for an exemption. Whether the high court will hear the case remains to be seen.
“All undergraduates are strongly encouraged to begin their Yeshiva experience with intensive religious studies in Israel, with over 80% doing so for university credit,” the school argued in their filing to the Supreme Court. “The male undergraduate students study Talmud with the Seminary students, as the University doesn’t ‘separate’ undergraduates and seminarians for religious instruction in the beit midrash or ‘study hall.’
“Yeshiva students living on campus also agree ‘to live in accordance with halachic [Jewish law] norms and Torah ideals,’ and Yeshiva complies fully with the laws of Shabbat and Kashrut and expects students in its undergraduate programs to do the same,” they add.
The university has argued that it welcomes LGBTQ students but cannot endorse the club without abandoning their religious beliefs.
“The Torah guides everything that we do at Yeshiva – from how we educate students to how we run our dining halls to how we organize our campus,” said Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University. “We care deeply for and welcome all our students, including our LGBTQ students, and continue to be engaged in a productive dialogue with our Rabbis, faculty and students on how we apply our Torah values to create an inclusive campus environment. We only ask the government to allow us the freedom to apply the Torah in accordance with our values.”
Yeshiva’s legal team points out that it has banned anti-LGBTQ bullying and discrimination and “provides support services to its LGBTQ students.”
“When secular authorities try to tell Yeshiva University that it is not religious, you know something has gone terribly wrong,” said Eric Baxter, VP and senior counsel at Becket Fund, a legal group working on the case. “The First Amendment protects Yeshiva’s right to practice its faith. We are asking the Supreme Court to correct this obvious error.”
“The legal challengers argued the Jewish New York university, founded in 1886, is not a religious institution and should be forced to endorse the club. “,,,,Since when was forcing people, Schools, businesses to act and promote beliefs that are inimical to their core moral values? Like Ronald Reagan stated “ I paid for this Microphone” so I gets to control what is said over it. This country began to lose its core values when the land of the free and the home of the brave became the land of the Feel and the home of mind control cowards. Basic freedoms 101 begins with the freedom of thought, followed by the freedom of speech, completed in freedom of action where No becomes as free a choice as Yes. Why should LGBTQ,,,,wxyz’s get to force people to go over the rainbow to dwell with the cowardly lions and straw people without brains when THE PEOPLE just want to believe there is no place like home, and live unmolested not being forced to expose themselves and their children to life styles that just don’t work with their inner core beliefs, that only create the internal anxieties and loss of peace and sanity that the LGBTQ radicals reveal to be their own core values and safety zones, that only create unsafety for others? Liberals would have you believe that LGBTQ is something THE PEOPLE will just have to live with whether they like it or not,,,,kind of like COVID, which many wish would just go away and have every right to choose to keep it at a distance.
Bigotry is not necessarily always a bad thing.
One need not tolerate or accept every belief or action of another.
LGBTQ are not a race, color, ethnicity, nationality, religion or gender. It is a chosen sexual perverted lifestyle.
The LGBTQ Con is just to want “equality, acceptance and tolerance.”
These LGBTQ’s are the open practitioners of the infamous crime against GOD and nature, Who sold their souls to the malicious, venomous bullies of Organized LGBTQ mafia.
These Sodomites, will not tolerate and will attack and attempt to destroy anyone and anything not accepting and promoting their degenerate, sexually perverted lifestyle.
Thursday, March 12, 2015. Michael F. Haverluck (OneNewsNow.com)
“Joe Biden went on to assure the pro-LGBTQ crowd that even though the Obama administration cannot enforce a thought police, people who stand for their religious convictions are in the process of being wiped out — as the White House’s homosexual agenda continues to proliferate across the nation. Ben Carson and others who ascribe to the biblical view of homosexuality should be eradicated from the planet in the name of “equality” and “tolerance.” “
WHEN YOU are compelled to do something, there IS NO FREEDOM there.
Losers Give Businesses Their Queer way of thinking expecting all to just follow their ways.