Religion & Law

Rob links, below, to Perry Dane's recent discussion of the analogy that some have proposed between the controversy over the convent at Auschwitz, on the one hand, and the Cordoba Project near Ground Zero, on the other.  Walking in to work this morning (ed.:  are we supposed to be impressed?  You live less than a mile from work), another not-an-analogy-but-perhaps-in-some-ways-instructive-case came to my mind, the other big law-and-religion controversy this summer:  The Christian Legal Society at Hastings.

As I see it, the Christian Legal Society was not recognized by the law school at Hastings because, at the end of the day, the Christian Legal Society's message of "exclusion" -- its practice of "discrimination" -- was offensive to the administration (and much of the community) at Hastings.  To be sure, everyone admitted that Christians at Hastings are welcome, and that they are allowed to meet . . . but they should meet somewhere else, out of respect for Hastings' very different values, and because the recognition by Hastings of the CLS would interfere with the messages that Hastings wanted to express.  Yes, all agreed, the Christian Legal Society has the "right" to discriminate -- to do something that many in the Hastings community find deeply offensive -- but Hastings wanted to avoid symbolically endorsing that discrimination, notwithstanding its affirmation of the right.

The cases are different, of course.  But are they entirely different?  I don't think, by the way, that it is enough to say, "well, in the Hastings case, it would, in fact, distort Hastings' message / vision to recognize officially a group that discriminates on the basis of religion, whereas in the New York case, it would not, in fact, detract from the meaning of Ground Zero if the Cordoba Project moved forward nearby", because the "in fact"-ness of these claims is, in each case, what is in dispute.

Thoughts?