{"id":174,"date":"2009-05-22T16:35:58","date_gmt":"2009-05-22T16:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/05\/liberty-university-to-democrat.html"},"modified":"2009-05-22T16:35:58","modified_gmt":"2009-05-22T16:35:58","slug":"liberty-university-to-democrat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/05\/liberty-university-to-democrat.html","title":{"rendered":"Liberty University to Democratic Students: Drop Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jay, just a few days ago I was a participant in an event on &#8220;church politicking&#8221; at the National Press Club here in Washington.&nbsp; The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbn.com\/cbnnews\/us\/2009\/May\/How-Free-Are-Pastors-Free-Speech-Rights\/\">event was reported <\/a>by your friends over at the Christian Broadcasting Network.&nbsp; The focus of that afternoon was principally on whether pastors do or do not have the right to endorse candidates in sermons.&nbsp; The Tax Code suggests they do not&#8211;and I argued that was the correct position.<\/p>\n<p>Today, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/05\/22\/AR2009052200793.html?hpid%3Dtopnews\">Washington Post <\/a>reports that Liberty University, founded by the late Dr. Jerry Falwell, has just terminated the right of the&nbsp;Democratic student club&nbsp;to be recognized at the university.&nbsp; Effectively, Liberty has declared itself a Democratic Party-free zone.&nbsp; This is quite shocking, violating basic tenets of free speech, free association, and even religious liberty (can&#8217;t you be a Democrat and religious?).&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Perhaps just as significantly, this seems to violate the principle that tax exempt universities cannot engage in partisan political activity.&nbsp; Americans United had filed a complaint with the IRS back in December of 2007 when the current&nbsp;Liberty chancellor, and son of the founder, sent out an email endorsement of then-candidate Mike Huckabee for the Republican presidential nomination.&nbsp; With the boot now given to the Democrats Club on campus, it looks like we have mounting evidence of a pattern of partisan, pro-Republican conduct.<\/p>\n<p>I hope you will join me in calling this what it is: ill-advised, unlawful censorship of student speech.&nbsp; The university from whose law school&nbsp; your son graduated this year (congratulations there), Regent University, permits a Democrats club as it should and, indeed, I believe, must.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jay, just a few days ago I was a participant in an event on &#8220;church politicking&#8221; at the National Press Club here in Washington.&nbsp; The event was reported by your friends over at the Christian Broadcasting Network.&nbsp; The focus of that afternoon was principally on whether pastors do or do not have the right to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,1,139],"tags":[152,153,154,51,67,155,156],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-church-politicking","category-first-amendment","tag-democratic-party","tag-jerry-falwell","tag-liberty-university","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-regent-university","tag-tax-law"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Liberty University to Democratic Students: Drop Dead - Lynn v. Sekulow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/05\/liberty-university-to-democrat.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Liberty University to Democratic Students: Drop Dead - Lynn v. 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Lynn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/05\/liberty-university-to-democrat.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/05\/liberty-university-to-democrat.html","name":"Liberty University to Democratic Students: Drop Dead - Lynn v. 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Sekulow","description":"A debate blog about church, state, faith and politics with Jay Sekulow and Barry W. Lynn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/98ebaf547801cce8ce6fff4c27f51fc8","name":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","caption":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn"},"description":"Since 1992, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn has served as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the preservation of the Constitution's religious liberty provisions (www.au.org). In addition to his work as a long-time activist and lawyer in the civil liberties field, Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, offering him a unique perspective on church-state issues. An accomplished speaker and lecturer, Lynn has appeared frequently on television and radio broadcasts to offer analysis of First Amendment issues. News programs on which Lynn has appeared include PBS's \"NewsHour,\" NBC's \"Today Show,\" Fox News Channel's \"O'Reilly Factor,\" ABC's \"Nightline,\" CNN's \"Crossfire,\" CBS's \"60 Minutes,\" MSNBC's \"Countdown with Keith Olbermann,\" Fox News Channel's \"Hannity & Colmes,\" ABC's \"Good Morning America,\" CNN's \"Larry King Live\" and the national nightly news on NBC, ABC and CBS. On the radio, Lynn serves as host of \"Culture Shocks,\" a daily look at various issues affecting society and the culture. In the 1990s he served for two years as regular co-host of \"Pat Buchanan and Company\" and after that did a weekly syndicated radio program, \"Review of the News,\" with Col. Oliver North. Lynn is a regular guest on nationally broadcast radio programs, including National Public Radio's \"All Things Considered,\" \"Morning Edition\" and \"Talk of the Nation,\" as well as having appeared on national networks such as CBS Radio, CNN Radio, ABC Radio and AP Radio. Lynn began his professional career working at the national office of the United Church of Christ, including a two-year stint as legislative counsel for the Church's Office of Church in Society in Washington, D.C. From 1984 to 1991 he was legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2006, Lynn authored Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault On Religious Freedom (Harmony Books). In 2008 he coauthored (with C. Welton Gaddy) First Freedom First: A Citizen's Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State (Beacon Press). Lynn writes frequently on religious liberty issues, and has had essays published in outlets such as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Nation. Lynn also has op-eds published frequently by the McClatchy and Scripps-Howard newspaper chains. A member of the Washington, D.C. and U.S. Supreme Court bar, Lynn earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1978. In addition, he received his theology degree from Boston University School of Theology in 1973. Lynn, who was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and raised in Bethlehem, Pa., lives in Chevy Chase, Md., with his family.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/author\/blynn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}