Amid a public outcry, Senator Ricardo Lara amended SB 1146, which targeted religious colleges and universities by forcing them to accept homosexual students or lose “Cal Grant” financial aid. Such schools are currently exempt from federal Title IX laws if their religious beliefs prevent them from obeying non-discrimination laws.
Opponents of SB 1146 have warned in recent months that minority students would be forced to choose between a religious affiliated university or a public university and that significantly more minorities graduate from religious schools than public schools.
But the amended bill, while allowing religious colleges and universities to maintain their strict conduct codes that are in conflict with California’s permissive, left-wing views about homosexual rights, requires those same schools to report any students who are expelled for violating their codes.
“The goal for me,” Lara said, “has always been to shed the light on the appalling and unacceptable discrimination against LGBT students at these private religious institutions throughout California.” Those reports will give Lara and other legislators “information on how common such cases are.”
Opponents say that requirement is an “unprecedented, unheard of intervention by the government in the affairs and operations of religious institutions and colleges and universities,” and say the bill, which is likely to pass, will “likely set the stage for stronger legislation next year.
The intimating provision will also give the schools pause before addressing violations to their conduct codes so as to avoid being labeled discriminatory.
It would have been wiser for California religious schools to avoid the government aid in the first place.
“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded, but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.” Luke 17:28-29.