Colleges Can Bar Military Recruiters

Colleges Can Bar Military Recruiters
Associated Press
November 30, 2004

PHILADELPHIA - A federal appeals court on Monday barred the Defense Department from withholding funds from colleges and universities that deny access to military recruiters.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a decade-old federal law which allows withholding the funds infringes on the free speech rights of schools that wish to limit on-campus recruiting in response to the military's ban on homosexuals.

Ruling in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of more than a dozen law schools, a three-judge panel said the government's threat to withhold funding amounted to compelling the schools to take part in speech they didn't agree with.

"The Solomon Amendment requires law schools to express a message that is incompatible with their educational objectives," the court wrote.

By a 2-1 vote, the panel overturned an earlier decision by a federal judge that those challenging the law were unlikely to prevail at trial.

The ruling affects all institutions of higher learning, but the case revolved around law schools because most had developed policies prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.



Monday's ruling represented the first time a court has barred the government from enforcing the law.

The Justice Department, which represented the government in the case, said it was reviewing its appeal options. "The United States continues to believe that the Solomon Amendment is constitutional," the agency said in a statement.

One judge on the panel wrote a stinging dissent, saying he was disturbed that law schools would ignore the consequences that a recruiting ban would have on the military's ability to compete with law firms for young talent.

"They obviously do not desire that our men and women in the armed services, all members of a closed society, obtain optimum justice in military courts with the best-trained lawyers and judges," Judge Ruggero John Aldisert said.

He said he disagreed with plaintiffs who argued that the schools were being asked to violate their own anti-discrimination policies by welcoming recruiters who won't take openly gay men and women.

The two-judge majority based its decision in part on an earlier Supreme Court ruling that the Boy Scouts of America could bar homosexuals from becoming scouts or troop leaders.

The court reasoned that if the Boy Scouts could legally reject gays because it had a core belief that homosexuality is illegitimate behavior, then other institutions could impose an opposite type of restriction if it had a core value that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong.
 
The liberal bastions of higher learning have been trying to get this done since the Vietnam era. They just finally found the loophole
they needed and a court to rule on it.

In reality it is not at all about sexual orientation as anti-military sentiment by the cultural elite who are made up of people who cut their teeth in the 60's anti war movement. They are using the Homosexuality "issue" to further their own cause.
 
Barring recruiters from Colleges because the debate over homosexuality? Since when does these two have a correlation?

This is nonsense.
 
Well historically colleges and universities have always been the platform of "forward and progressive" thinking. Actually this just means that a college is made up of a whole bunch of liberal :cen: 's who never had the guts to go out into the real world and apply what they learned because they were too afraid. Instead they chose the seclusion, comfort and security of Academia. And of course, I am making a broad generalization here. But for example, in political science upper level courses, I've very few times ever came across any conservative minded professors. Most of their lectures were geared toward liberal oriented domestic and foreign policy and when one tried to make arguments against them, they would try to use intimidation and passive aggressive tactics to get me to shut up. And so, is it suprising that universities are using homosexuality and the whole "human rights" thing as a tool to support their reason for banning military recruiters on campus? I think the answer is obvious.
 
Actually this just means that a college is made up of a whole bunch of liberal 's who never had the guts to go out into the real world and apply what they learned because they were too afraid.

I understand your anger. I too experience several times of professors trying to suppress and initimidate Students from voicing out their opinions.

However, just remember there were a plenty amount of Vietnam War Veterans professors in my school whom I dearly revered and were exposed to the unstable period in American History.
 
I really have nothing to say about the story but I just wanted to point out the ad for GayMilitaryDating.com at the bottom of this page as I type this...
 
Yeah Google ads are kind of annoying aren't they.

Still don't understand why gays feel such an urge to declare their homosexuality to the world, though. I don't parade in revealing costumes pronouncing my attraction to women to everyone within eyeshot.

I'm not concerned about this ban at all. I strongly doubt anyone going to such places of high learning is going to be swayed by a couple of recruiters standing around in the lobby. I just hope they don't ban recruiters in high schools, that's the time when most of my friends who joined became interested, and not one of them regrets the decision.
 
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Yeah Google ads are kind of annoying aren't they.

Still don't understand why gays feel such an urge to declare their homosexuality to the world, though. I don't parade in revealing costumes pronouncing my attraction to women.
no, but you have TV stations that show nothing but your kind of porno...
 
^ That's because we're the vast majority. And we don't play said porno on big TVs mounted to the back of a truck driving slowly down the street.
 
The silent majority of gays are really cool people. I know a number of furries who are gay but dont' flaunt it desperately. The loudmouths get the attention, same with Democrats and Republicans and members of the NRA...
 
Yeah, I live in a small community up here and there are two gay couples. One of them lives down the street and they're decent folks, I talk to them whenever I see them around. You wouldn't know they were gay unless you saw them together.

Then there is another couple who makes a point of their homosexuality. Extremely open about it. I find it annoying, but it wasn't unbearable until I tried to attend their Halloween party so it wouldn't seem like I was an ass (I was literally walking by and got invited). Left after realizing I was the only straight one there after meeting the woman in the Soviet officer's uniform.

Edit: sorry tomtom22, I was typing this before you made that last post. It's the last off-topic post I'll make here.
 
no, but you have TV stations that show nothing but your kind of porno...


This video popped into my head when I read that.

Didn't the Supreme Court overrule the lower court on this one? I thought it went to them and the SC said any school that accepts Federal money must accept certain guidelines. The University of Delaware ran into problems because they receive tons of money from the government and were trampling on students religions that didn't align with the college's perfectly. If schools are going to ask, beg or demand money from the federal government they have to give the government something in return.
 
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