Told ya! Religious right begins religious whitewashing of Pennsylvania campus incident

That didn't take long at all.

Yesterday, I wondered how long it would take before some on the religious right began exploiting an incident in which a campus police officer in Pennsylvania got into trouble for refusing to do his job.

This morning, One News Now and the Alliance Defense Fund demonstrates how they are attempting to manipulate the case:

A U.S. appeals court has heard oral arguments in a case involving a policeman who refused to carry out his chief's orders to remove a Christian pro-life group from of a college campus.

In April 2007, a small group of Christians was peacefully demonstrating on the grounds of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, sharing their beliefs about moral issues like abortion. Meanwhile, a much larger group of protesters who loudly opposed the pro-life message led the KU president and campus police chief to insist the Christian group leave campus. But the officer on the scene, Corporal Steven Armbruster, refused the order.

"Just because someone has a pro-life message doesn't subject them to arrest," contends Tom Marcelle, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). "It took great courage for the officer to uphold his duty to protect the Constitution and not violate the demonstrators' First Amendment rights."

Please bear in mind that while the article claims that the "group of Christians" were peacefully demonstrating, they didn't give the name of this group. And I think that is intentional. The group in question, Repent America, has a reputation of causing disruptive protests, getting arrested, and then suing in court about how their "First Amendment Rights" were violated.

Furthermore, the article doesn't even give the university's side of the story, i.e. Repent America was asked to leave because it didn't obtain permission to protest on campus. Also, the One News Now article omitted the reasons why Armbruster's case was initially dismissed:

His initial lawsuit, contending that the disciplinary action against him violated his free-speech and due-process rights, was dismissed last year by U.S. District Judge C. Darnell Jones II.

Jones ruled that Armbruster had refused the chief's order while serving in his official capacity as an officer, and so could not claim the university had violated his First Amendment rights.

Jones also rejected a second claim that the university violated Armbruster's "right to refuse to violate others' constitutional rights."

"Based on this court's research, over the past 30 years, no [higher court] has held such a right exists," Jones wrote.

The fact of the matter is this - Armbruster was an employee of the university and as such had a job to do. He deliberately decided on his own not to do his job and suffered the consequences - which was nothing more than a five day suspension without pay and a disciplinary letter.

However, should Armbruster somehow prevail - and he really shouldn't - perhaps it would be a good idea for lgbt students and their allies to start protesting Liberty University - which is affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund.