Friday, July 08, 2011

Separate dorms illegal?

The Catholic University of America (CUA) has a new president, John Garvey. He has decided that housing students in coed dorms invites a hook up culture that is "destructive of love and marriage". So he has announced that the university will return to separate dorms for young men and women.

Is that really such an unreasonable decision? It's supposed to be a Catholic University. Why would an institution based on Christian morality throw young men and women together in mixed dorms? Anyone who has ever been eighteen would have some idea of the likely consequences.

But Mr Garvey's reform has hit a problem. A law professor from George Washington University, John Banzhaf, is suing the Catholic University on the basis that separate dorms would violate the sex discrimination provisions of the District of Columbia's Human Rights Act. According to Professor Banzhaf:

The statute does not require that a certain population be disadvantaged for an action to be illegal; the simple act of segregating the genders is enough, Banzhaf said.

Here again we have "anti-discrimination" laws being used intrusively in an attempt to prevent an institution from fulfilling its proper purpose.

7 comments:

  1. Since seculars and liberals want separation of church and state so much then hold up your end of the bargain. Don't intrude in religious institutions, their conduct or their rules. End of story.

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  2. Seculars and liberals don't want separation of church and state as we understand it. For seculars and liberals, the esoteric meaning of "separation of church and state" is "separate the church, isolate the church, then destroy the church, using the power of the state."

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  3. Although separate dorms prevent sex about as much as do separate bathrooms, it should still be their decision.

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  4. I am a secular liberal American. I strongly disapprove of the Catholic Church's stance on sex and on women.

    I have to side with the Catholic University of America on this one, at least based on the information presented here and in the link. They should not be forced to allow conduct -- such as unmarried men and women sharing communal living space together -- that is inconsistent with Catholic morality. As a legal matter, and without knowing that much about how "business necessity" is interpreted in Washington D.C., it seems to me that it is a business necessity for a Catholic University to impose Catholic norms. That's why it is (and should be) legal for Catholics to discriminate against women in the priesthood.

    I would be interested in hearing further how the professor justifies his argument. I am also curious as to what gives him standing to sue. He is not personally affected by this. I wonder if he has a client on whose behalf he is suing?

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  5. Banzhaf explains the legal theory here, and note the cool picture of separate dorms:
    http://www.pr-inside.com/catholic-u-can-respond-to-sex-discrimination-charges-law-prof-attacked-on-archdiocese-website-by-pope-r2680072.htm

    And there’s even more here:
    http://www.prlog.org/11549732-catholic-gets-intent-to-sue-notice-over-single-sex-dorms.html

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  6. There's a statement here from the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.

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  7. This is an example of Mazzini's dictum "we corrupt in order to rule" in action. They want the people to be nothing more than a disorganized mob of depraved perverts. Those who are depraved live only for the things of this world, especially the flesh, & are easily controlled by the alternating carrot of being allowed by the state to gratify their passions unrestrainedly, & the stick of imprisonment or violent death for those who would dare defy their masters. This ensures that the great mass of the people will never resist. The Spanish Civil War demonstrates that when a nation is by & large faithful to the teaching of the Church, it will resist tyranny. The Catholic Nationalists fought & won against all odds. The red scum had help from all over the world, it was a near run thing but for once light triumphed over darkness, which is certainly a rare occurrence in this worthless modern age. If the Spanish people at that time had been nothing more than a giant mob of deviants & degenerates living only to fornicate & snort dope up their nose & so on, as is the case in the western world today, they never would have recovered from being infected by the Marxian bacillus & would most certainly have become a puppet state of the Soviet Union.

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