Part of this false narrative has been that voting patterns of white evangelicals as a group is significantly changing to the benefit of the Democratic Party, particularly among young evangelicals. Chip Berlet has seriously  challenged this claim. And he and I have pointed to polling that shows that while young evangelicals are more accepting of homosexuality than their elders, the same polls found them to be more stridently anti-abortion. Common sense tells us that one cannot only look at one bright spot in a deeply mixed picture without risking conflating the spot with the picture itself.

So what then shall we make of the news (hat tip to Blue Virginia) that Liberty University revoked the charter of the recently formed Democratic Club at Liberty University. Why? Because LU does not agree with the platform of the national Democratic Party.

The Lynchburg News & Advance reports that the club was taken by surprise by an email from a university administrator which stated in part:

"The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the "LGBT" agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.)...

"The candidates this club supports uphold the platform and implement it. The candidates supported are directly contrary to the mission of Liberty University."

The News & Advance continues:

The goals of the Democratic Party and LU "run in opposite directions," the e-mail said.

LU has had a College Republicans club for several years.

Claire Ayendi, who was chairman of the Republican club last year and graduated this spring, said she didn't regard the university's disbanding of the Democratic group as a political act.

"I think it's more like a moral issue," Ayendi said. "Letting a club like that exist goes against what the school is founded on," she said.

In a written statement sent to The News & Advance Thursday night, Hine said, "Among other things, Liberty University stands for the sanctity of human life. The loss of human life through abortion is a great tragedy and we cannot remain silent when the political policies or politicians themselves promote the destruction of innocent human life.

"While those who are members of the LU Democratic Club are well intentioned and honorable, the platform and policies of the national Democratic Party and the candidates supported by that party, and thus the student organization itself, are inconsistent with the mission of the University.

"

Ah, Liberty University -- that's the same school that "common ground" advocate Rev. Samuel Rodriguez found to be a "perfect fit" for a "strategic partnership" with the Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference of which he is the president. And that's the same Rev. Rodriguez for whom the crusade against marriage equality is an urgent priority.

Those of us who share such values as respect for the constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state, reproductive justice and LGTB civil rights can't go along a "strategy" that downplays and risks these values in favor of inaccurate assessments of the relative strength of the Religious Right; overly rosy interpretations of polling data and partnerships with immoderate Religious Right figures like Rick Warren and Samuel Rodriguez at the expense of progressives and progressive values.  

I agree with Chip Berlet's call for fellow progressives to please reconsider. Because even tho many things have changed. Many things have also stayed the same. And some of the things that have changed, have not changed for the better.

It's nice that there was, briefly, a campus chapter of the College Democrats at Liberty University. But the News & Advance story also reports that the school's College Dems are also anti-abortion and oppose marriage equality. Nevertheless, they will no doubt be celebrated as martyrs for freedom and epitomizing a trend opposed to the theocratic heavy hand of the legacy of the unfailingly Republican Falwell.  

But what in the end do we see here? A handful of antiabortion, antigay Democratic students being shut down by an antiabortion, antigay accredited Institution of Higher Learning, the largest evangelical university in the world. In other words, a fight between the emergent Religious Right in the Democratic Party and one of the premier institutions of the Religious Right itself. If the stories of actors such as these come to be the kinds of stories that drive our discourse, progressives (especially those who support separation of church and state, reproductive justice and gay rights), will continue to be marginalized in the Democratic Party and in the national media.