Religious Liberty Battles And The Corruption Of Children

By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD

It what appears to be foreshadowings of litigation to come, two cases have caught my attention recently.
In the first, Pastor James Domen is the founder and president of Church United in California. Formerly a homosexual, after finding Christianity, he rejected that lifestyle, married a woman, and fathered three children.
The purpose of Church United is to “equip faith leaders to positively impact the political and moral culture in their communities.” In his church’s online presence he talks about his past experience with homosexuality and how he overcame it.
That was until his online hosting service, Vimeo, decided that his videos were hate speech and defamatory, and violated Vimeo’s standards which forbid any content that promotes Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE). Vimeo then removed Domen’s account, deleted all 89 of his videos, and banned him from using its services.
Domen and his church filed a federal lawsuit in California, which was eventually transferred to New York. In the suit Domen claimed that Vimeo discriminated against him on the basis of sexual orientation and religion. In New York a magistrate judge dismissed the suit January 17. In granting the dismissal, the judge ruled that the Communications Decency Act (CDA) gave Vimeo, and other interactive service providers, immunity against such suits to ensure that they would not be liable for the content posted by others.
Naturally, Pastor Domen and the church appealed, the gist of which is the CDA does not give free rein to discriminate against subscribers. “Vimeo and other Internet giants are applying the CDA to shield themselves from liability for banning protected classes of customers based on discriminatory intent,” says Domen’s appeal brief.
The relevant sections of the CDA protect platforms such as Vimeo from claims for defamatory statements posted by third-party users and also to protect covered websites when they, in good faith, filter inappropriate content. Neither of which applies to Domen or his church since they are a primary user, and second they are not producing pornography or other inappropriate content. Thus, they argue, the suit was wrongly dismissed.
“Domen’s complaint alleged that Vimeo terminated their account and banned them from using its services based on discriminatory animus in violation of [California’s] Civil Rights Act,” according to Domen’s brief.
It argues, “The outcome of this case will determine whether websites have blanket immunity to discriminate against customers, including outright banning customers from their website based on race, sexual orientation, religion, and other protected classes. Under the district court’s ruling, discrimination that is unconscionable in any other business or consumer contest, is allowed if it is committed by an interactive computer service.”
Robert Tyler, president of Advocates for Faith & Freedom, representing Domen, explained, “COVID-19 forced churches, synagogues, and mosques online and the courts have given Internet platforms license to shut down religious organizations through the Communications Decency Act. The CDA gives these unconscionable rights to discriminate whether it’s because a church is predominantly black, Baptist, or conservative in their preaching.
“In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to handpick the speech that Americans may access and convey on the Internet….When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power.”
The appeal was filed in mid-June, so we have a long way to go before we have a decision.

• + + Also in mid-March the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) filed suit in federal court in New York on behalf of a conservative political activist, Pamela Geller, against the state’s governor, the city’s mayor, and the police commissioner. Geller is a blogger and commentator who was prominent in the “birther” conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama, claiming he was born in Kenya.
  The easiest explanation of the suit is that city and state allowed for two sets of rules for public gatherings during the COVID-19 emergency. On one hand, it alleged, demonstrators gathering protesting the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis were allowed, while gatherings that public officials disapproved of were banned.
  “This case seeks to protect and vindicate fundamental liberties that citizens of the United States enjoy free from government interference. These liberties are not conferred or granted by government to then be rescinded at the will and whims of government officials. These God-given liberties are possessed by the people, and they are guaranteed against government interference by the United States Constitution. . . . First among these liberties is the right to peacefully protest government officials through the freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble,” the lawsuit states in its introduction.
  The suit lists the officials’ orders curbing public gatherings as well as statements by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio which seemed to endorse the public protests of Mr. Floyd’s death. Cuomo and de Blasio have embraced these protests and their public statements have encouraged the demonstrations, it said.
  Yet at all times Geller was unable to engage in any public political protest. “Defendants’ First Amendment restrictions, facially and as applied to Plaintiff’s speech activity, are unreasonable and an effort to suppress expression merely because public officials oppose the speaker’s views. Defendants’ First Amendment restrictions operate as content and viewpoint-based restrictions on Plaintiff’s speech activity in traditional public fora.”
  AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel David Yerushalmi said: “It is astounding that Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have so much disdain for our most fundamental liberties. For months they have issued draconian edicts destroying our economy and stealing our freedom in the name of public health. But when the message is politically important for their ends and for their political careers, public health evaporates into the not-so-thin, putrid air of hypocrisy.”
  Web censorship; favored vs. non-favored speech — considering all that is happening this year, both politically and in the streets, both of these cases appear to be a vanguard of things to come.
  Also, just as this column was written, a suit filed by the Thomas More Society over the issue of religious freedom was heard and it resulted in a federal court issuing a preliminary injunction prohibiting Gov. Cuomo, his Attorney General Letitia James, and New York City Mayor de Blasio from ordering or enforcing COVID-19 prompted restrictions on outdoor religious worship gatherings.
  A preliminary injunction is just that, temporary until the matter can be given a full hearing, but it does show the disposition of the courts when it comes to a double standard. Stay tuned, this is far from over.
• + + In the signs of our times department: Last week on my radio program we had as a guest Cathy Ruse, senior fellow and director of human dignity at the Family Research Council (FRC). A devout Catholic, she has authored a booklet for FRC, “Sex Education in Public Schools: Sexualization of Children and LGBT Indoctrination.” It is really a must-read for any parent, grandparent, or anyone who has a child that they love. It outlines the radical way that sex education is taught in our public schools.
  “Well-funded international pressure groups have been extraordinarily successful in pushing agenda-driven curricula that sexualizes children and promotes a ‘sexual rights’ ideology among youth. School systems are devoting significant classroom time to these programs — 70 classroom hours per child in some cases — even while American public schools are failing to fulfill their core mission,” she wrote, continuing:
  “Today’s sex ed lessons can be highly manipulative — carefully designed to get children to approve of the concept of sexual rights and fluid sexual ‘identities,’ and to reject their religious beliefs, the authority of their parents, and even physical reality itself.
  “Even if parents identify problematic lessons in sex ed and manage to opt their kids out, that won’t protect them from sex propaganda appearing elsewhere in school, such as in the halls, in history class, on the calendar, and in the library.”
  The publication is available for download at: https://www.frc.org/sexeducation, and, besides telling the bleak story of how our children are being sacrificed to the gods of secular pleasure, it also contains a universal op-out letter parents can use to get their precious ones excused from the worst parts of these new sex curricula. Spoiler alert: Don’t try reading this in a good mood; it will take you right out of it.
  (You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and hear his radio program, Faith On Trial, every Thursday morning on IowaCatholicradio.com.)