Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against California State University–San Marcos officials on behalf of a pro-life student organization and its campus president, Nathan Apodaca, who are prevented from bringing pro-life speakers to campus under the university’s discriminatory funding policies. The university funds pro-abortion and other favored views with almost $300,000 in mandatory fees charged of Mr. Apodaca and all students, but denied Students for Life $500 in funding to host a visiting speaker on “Abortion and Human Equality” to provide a contrasting view.
CSU–San Marcos has more than 100 recognized student groups. Although the university says that it prohibits any of those groups from spending activity fee grants on expenses to bring speakers to campus, the Gender Equity Center and the LGBQTA Pride Center enjoy preferential status, and as such, are exempt from that rule and the standard $500 cap. In the 2016-2017 academic year, those two “centers” received a combined $296,498 for speech and expressive activities —more than 21 percent of all mandatory student activity fees the programming board received for that year—compared to only $38,629 for the more than 100 other groups combined (less than 3 percent). This year the GEC hosted the ABC’s of LGBTQ: Queer Women and the so-called “Pleasure Party.” The LGBQTA Pride Center hosted “Kink 101”—which was an interactive workshop and discussion of bondage, dominance, sadism, and masochism—and fetish-style practices. These and the centers’ other advocacy events were funded exclusively from mandatory student fees.
Earlier this year, Students for Life applied for a $500 “Leadership Funding” grant to host pro-life speaker and University of North Carolina–Wilmington Professor Mike Adams to provide an alternative view. Student groups like SFLA may receive only $500 per semester.
Although Apodaca, like other Students for Life members, paid the same mandatory student activity fees that all students pay as a condition of enrollment, he and his pro-life peers are denied equal access to those fees to bring Adams to campus. Instead, the Gender Equity Center and the LGBQTA Pride Center receive the lion share of funding available for student advocacy and may use those funds to bring speakers to advocate for these officially preferred views.
Full story at Alliance Defending Freedom.
This is ridiculous and outright crazy. What used to be ugly is now good and what used to be good is now considered ugly! I bet the majority of students at CSU San Marcos have very little interest in the “kinky” stuff.
This article seems very superficial to me. Why do the two groups have ‘preferred’ status? Who granted or permits this status to exist?
I am very troubled when a state funded University appears to favor groups of one point of view while financially hamstringing those of a different viewpoint. After all, ‘university’ includes different points of view, especially those with which one does not agree.
Such litigation is long needed, and more of it. Time to put the legal screws to colleges that see their mission as aiding the perverted and opposing Catholic and Christian and Jewish people of morality. The college’s behavior is blatantly unconstitutional. Sue and sue and sue. Do not settle unless the college provides many zeroes in the settlement check, along with a public apology and a complete change to their policies.
Satan rules at CSU San Marcos. To think how insulted and ashamed Saint Mark must be. Perhaps the campus and city is equally as despotic should change its name. Maybe to Sodam, Gomorrah, or Leningrad? Once my college child reads this, I know transferring to CSU SM is out of the question! The sickness that permeates the administration and faculty is disgusting.