Related articles and links |  1 of 2

An Illinois church camp is defending their right to deny rental of their facilities to homosexuals while a Kentucky church camp has won a major legislative victory in the two latest skirmishes over civil rights and religious freedom. Two men in Evanston, Illinois, both Methodists, have sued the Chicago Campground Association for $1 million, saying camp trustees refused to let them buy or continue to rent a camp cottage because they are a homosexual couple. Cottage owners Bob and Nanette Graham have filed a separate lawsuit, accusing camp trustees of trying to evict them because they befriended the two plaintiffs, Robert Carroll and Russell Elenz. The homosexual couple has drawn the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church into the suit, saying the UMC is the true owner of the Historic Methodist Campground. However, trustees of the 140-year-old Des Plaines, Illinois camp say they own the camp and are fighting to maintain legal control of the property.

By law, camp facilities owned by religious groups and rented to outside groups are considered a public accommodation and subject to anti-discrimination laws. The campground association insists it is not subject to public accommodation laws because it does not rent to the public."The First Amendment should take precedence here," says Steve Laduzinsky, attorney for the camp's Board of Trustees. "This is not a civil-rights case. This is part of an internal church dispute over homosexuality and sexual orientation within the United Methodist Church. There are people trying to broaden the definition of a family to include same-sex marriages. Thousands of years of biblical teaching are being thrown out the window."Kenneth Dobbs, the plaintiffs' attorney, accuses campground trustees of hiding behind the First Amendment. "If you allow a camp to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, then no resident of a Methodist nursing home or a Catholic hospital would ever be safe. They could be thrown out for not conforming to church doctrine."

In a separate camp-related test of the First Amendment, the Kentucky state legislature has passed a controversial bill which allows religious organizations to refuse rental of their facilities to groups whose views conflict with their own.Gov. Paul Patton had vetoed the bill in March, but on April 14 the legislature voted to override the veto. The governor had accused the bill of "violating the spirit and meaning of the Kentucky Civil Rights Act by permitting discrimination on the basis of religion." The bill continues to forbid discrimination on the basis of disability, race, color, or nationality.The Bullitsburg Baptist Assembly campground in Boone County, Kentucky, had lobbied for the legislation after a group of atheists called Free Inquiry rented the facilities in 1996 and 1997."We rented to them the first year not knowing who they were," says Wayne Lipscomb, pastor of Union (Ky.) Baptist Church and former chairman of the camp's board of trustees. "The second year we rented to them to avoid putting our assets at risk of a lawsuit, and then aggressively pursued changing the law.""This bill was greatly needed and is not about anything other than religious freedom," says Sen. Dick Roeding, chief sponsor of the bill in the Kentucky Senate and part of a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers who worked for the override."The old law could have forced a Catholic hospital to rent its facilities to an abortion rights conference or required a Jewish community center to host a religious conference that wanted to make pork the meat of the new millenium," Roeding says. "It trampled on the Constitution." The bill becomes law in 90 days.

next page... |  1 of 2

May (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44