The Boston Phoenix November 23 - 30, 2000
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By now, the buzz over the case almost eclipses the woman who started it all. Julie Catalano, a 21-year-old senior studying clinical psychology, first got involved with the evangelical, nondenominational Tufts Christian Fellowship (TCF) in 1997. Back then, the fresh-out-of-the-closet freshman was struggling to reconcile her Catholic upbringing with her homosexuality. TCF chaplains advised her to pray to become straight. When rights collide
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by Kristen Lombardi
To say that Catalano prayed seems an understatement. For three painfully long years, she underwent "reparative therapy." She sought out a Christian counselor, who encouraged her to delve into her childhood to figure out her desires. Catalano quit after three sessions, but she didn't give up the effort. Every day, she appealed to God to cure her evil ways; she had TCF members bless and lay hands on her; she even resorted to heterosexual how-to guides like Coming Out of Homosexuality.
As a junior in 1999, she again laid bare her lesbian status to a group chaplain -- but by then she had come to terms with it. She was later informed she wouldn't be allowed to serve as a TCF senior leader -- a position typically held by long-term members -- because of her belief that homosexuality is neither wrong nor sinful. Ashamed, Catalano quit. She then filed a discrimination complaint against the religious group.
At first, the student judiciary responded sharply. Last April, the Tufts Community Union Judiciary -- known on campus as the "J" -- found that TCF had, indeed, violated university policy. TCF was stripped of its privileges as a recognized group: it could not bear the Tufts name, hold its prayer meetings in Tufts classrooms, or use its $6000 annual stipend from the student government.
Civil libertarians quickly seized on the decision as an example of political correctness gone awry. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonprofit Philadelphia-based organization, collected 150 signatures from professors and college administrators across the country to protest the TCF's derecognition.
"There is something fundamentally wrong with a university saying to orthodox Christian students, `You have to accept as a leader someone who doesn't agree with your religious tenets,' " says Harvey Silverglate, a Boston civil-liberties lawyer and long-time Phoenix contributor who helped establish FIRE. Tufts officials, he insists, would never expect the gay and lesbian student alliance to take in orthodox Christians as leaders. "The university would step up and say, `Gay and lesbian students are entitled to their own group,' " he says. "So why not the same treatment for evangelical Christians? Because there's this politically correct reflex at work. The same rules have to apply to everyone." The Tufts Christian Fellowship should qualify for protection under the freedom-of-religion clause, Silverglate says.
Silverglate likens the Tufts case to Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston, which arose from the refusal of a South Boston veterans' group to allow an Irish gay and lesbian group to march in its annual St. Patrick's Day parade. In that situation, Silverglate points out, a city nondiscrimination policy specified that all public events must be open without regard to race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. The US Supreme Court ruled that the policy was irrelevant because the South Boston Allied War Veterans -- a private organization that did not use public funds -- had a First Amendment right to express the parade's culturally conservative message without being forced to include an incompatible, gay-friendly view. When the gay Irish group first brought suit against the South Boston veterans' group, the parade organizers were taking money from the city to host the parade -- which is why the Allied War Veterans lost the early court cases. By the time the Supreme Court heard the case, however, the veterans' group was no longer accepting public money, and therefore could bar gay participants to convey a conservative message.
Gay-rights advocates argue that no organization, religious or secular, should be allowed to use student fees collected by an avowedly nondiscriminatory private college to discriminate against gay students. Some even contend that the freedom-of-religion argument is nothing more than a smoke screen. To say that the principle protecting the Tufts Christian Fellowship from being forced to admit gay leaders also protects gay student groups from having to accept evangelical Christians as leaders, they argue, assumes that all evangelical Christians are homophobic or that no evangelical Christians are gay.
"It's silly to make these types of assumptions," says Myron Quon, a staff attorney at the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York City. "It's not an oxymoron to be gay and Christian, just like it's not outrageous to be a non-gay Christian who is supportive of gay civil rights and equality."
Quon maintains that the religious right often invokes religious freedom and its belief in the Bible to justify its stance on homosexuality -- but freely ignores scriptural injunctions against other activities that the Bible lists as equally sinful. "There is this picking and choosing going on," he says. "The Bible also says that weaving and eating meat are equally heinous, but you don't see Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson kicking people out for these sins." Besides, he adds, no one has forced the TCF to change its religious beliefs; the university has just questioned whether it wants to give financial support to a group that discriminates. "It's really a false argument to say that this is about religious freedom," says Quon.
But Jonathan Crowe, a TCF senior leader, says the evangelical group has denied leadership posts to members whose actions conflict with other Biblical tenets. "It has come up over the issue of premarital sex," he says. "Members engaging in premarital sex have been prevented from becoming leaders." And although the J determined that TCF had allowed a heterosexual student with sympathetic views on homosexuality to serve as a senior leader, Crowe maintains that the J had "misunderstood" the student's support of Catalano. "He disagreed with other leaders about her ability to lead, but he didn't agree with her beliefs."
Since the October 16 reversal of the original finding against TCF, advocates on both sides of the case have found something to agree on: the controversial decision could easily serve as a definition of the word "ambiguous."As in its original ruling, the student judiciary found that TCF had, in fact, discriminated against Catalano -- because it had used a double standard to judge students who sought leadership posts. But rather than take away its status, the J placed TCF on probation for the 2000-'01 academic year, ordering the group to conform its constitution to school policy. The confusing part came in a five-line determination that the school policy, as written, protects a person's identity -- but not necessarily that person's beliefs about his or her identity. Thus, the J reasoned, the TCF or any other student group is entitled to limit its appointment of leaders to those who accept the group's own religious views. "If the university intends for this policy to cover beliefs," the J wrote, "it should be specifically stated. To avoid future disputes, Tufts should clearly define the terms of the nondiscrimination policy."
"This is an incredibly mixed-up and muddled decision," Silverglate says. He maintains that the ruling fails to reach the fundamental question at hand: is it a violation of civil-rights laws when a religious group refuses to adhere to university policy on a matter that conflicts with its beliefs? "The decision never reached that issue," he says.
Moreover, the distinction drawn between identity and belief about that identity, is, as Silverglate puts it, "what we lawyers would call gobbledygook." Although he says he agrees that Catalano had experienced some form of discrimination, he points out that religious groups are legally allowed to discriminate all the time, especially when choosing leaders who set policy. "What I'm saying isn't esoteric hair-splitting," he says. "It's absolutely fundamental."
Likewise, Lambda's Quon calls the decision "pretty messy" and says that "frankly, it doesn't make much sense." First, the decision states that school policy prohibits discrimination based on certain categories, including sexual orientation. But by distinguishing between identity and belief, he says, "the interpretation allows for discrimination based on advocacy, which flies in the face of the nondiscrimination policy."
Quon contends that such a distinction is not just "wrong," but also "dangerous" for gay students, as well as for other minority students. "Where do you draw the line?" he asks. It's unlikely that Tufts would allow a white-supremacist group to set up shop on campus under the university's name. But if it did, by the logic of the Catalano case, African-American students could be leaders so long as they believed they were inferior to white students.
It's important to remember here that Tufts is a private university and as such can make its own rules. That's why the campus can ban the Ku Klux Klan, while the city of Medford can't prevent the group from marching down Main Street into Medford Square. All of which raises a question: why did the school allow students to form a conservative religious group that espouses views in direct conflict with its nondiscrimination policy?
Jennifer Levi of the Boston-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders says that Tufts must now figure out how to permit a Christian Fellowship with a religious stance against homosexuality to exist at a university that requires nondiscrimination. "It's very difficult to identify how broad a nondiscrimination policy should be," she says, "but that is the real debate taking place at Tufts."
For now, then, the rancor at Tufts looks to be far from over. There's little doubt that pro-gay-rights students remain angered by and suspicious of the administration's responses so far (see "Campus Strife," right). Despite attempts to reassure people that tolerance and diversity are valued at Tufts, President John DiBiaggio has come under fire for how he's handling the issue. "He's been ambiguous and curt about the whole thing," says Adam Carlis of Tufts Students Against Discrimination (TSAD), a coalition of 35 groups that formed after the October ruling.DiBiaggio, for his part, maintains that the administration has already taken a forceful and adequate position on the Catalano decision. "I have reiterated our strong endorsement of the [nondiscrimination] policy and religious freedom," he says. "Both issues are critical, and both deserve protection." The administration's actions thus far have shown that, as he puts it, "we do value tolerance, we do value diversity, and we are responsive to student concerns."
The true extent of the administration's responsiveness will become apparent on November 27. That's the deadline the TSAD has given for DiBiaggio to publicly back a tougher, less compromising approach to the interpretation of school policy established in the J's ruling -- or else. As Catalano herself puts it, "People are frustrated, passionate, and willing to act. This is not something the administration can sweep under the rug and hope it goes away by Christmas break."
Of course, it's hard to predict how things will pan out. Some observers think the school will work out a nondiscrimination policy that doesn't allow for legal hair-splitting -- a policy that can serve as a model for other schools struggling with this issue. "What we're seeing now is the start of a process of investigation and reconciliation at Tufts," says Steinbach of the ACE. "The ultimate determination of the policy will be made by the senior administration, the president, and the board of trustees."
Others are less optimistic. Carlis, along with his fellow TSAD members, accuses DiBiaggio of "waffling" and say his responses have "only added to our fear that the administration doesn't care about the ruling's implications." But if the controversy surrounding the Catalano case shows anything, it's that the conflict between religious freedom and gay rights isn't about to evaporate anytime soon -- either nationally or locally. And, more importantly for Tufts, it proves that the administration must do more than play both sides of the fence.
Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com.
