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Administrators at the Azusa were eager to take the plan, which came with $3.4 million from the child development agency, First 5 LA. And they were very forthright about being a Christian university. "We hadn't been hiding the ball," Mark Dickerson, chief counsel for Azusa Pacific, told the Los Angeles Times. "We did point out to them [in September] that we are a faith-based organization and we do require all our employees, faculty or staff to sign a statement of faith," he said.

"This is not our concern," program officer Marlene Tarumoto-Sugita responded in an e-mail message. "We leave that up to you."

But a threatened ACLU suit on behalf of a prospective employee who refused to sign the document apparently changed the agency's mind, and First 5 LA cancelled the program with Azusa.

Hmm. So one of the best qualified schools to run a program can't because it wants to preserve the identity that makes it one of the best qualified schools—and that's called a victory against discrimination.

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November (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47