Marci says: "Groups thrive and shrivel and respond to and interact with the
culture
and if they cannot adapt to broadbased moral and social changes by
changing their beliefs and practices, they become marginalized."
I have no further questions of this witness.
Marci's admission--that groups like the CLS must "adapt to broadbased moral and
social changes by
changing their beliefs"--demonstrates the important purpose of freedom of
expressive association.
That core purpose is that Government should not use its coercive power
(including its power over public fora) to coerce expressive groups into
"changing their beliefs." Government has no business telling expressive groups
which beliefs are acceptable and which are unacceptable.
Hastings can create a public forum and allow the marketplace to decide which
ideas are marginal and which are not. Or it can close the forum and allow only
school-sponsored groups to meet. But it cannot engage the fiction of
maintaining a marketplace of ideas, while at the same time using its power to
suppress ideas and beliefs that reject established versions of the truth.
Rick Duncan
Welpton Professor of Law
University of Nebraska College of Law
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902
"And against the constitution I have never raised a storm,It's the scoundrels
who've corrupted it that I want to reform" --Dick Gaughan (from the song,
Thomas Muir of Huntershill)
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