North Dakota Law Review Hijacked by Religious Right

Apparently, the most recent issue of the North Dakota Law Review was supposed to contain a collection of articles on the topic of family law.  Unfortunately for the publishers, the authors who submitted articles were right-winger who only wanted to write about gays and their threat to marriage and the family:

Five of the six guest articles are by authors who are affiliated with church-based law schools and other “organizations (that) share a common thread in their view towards marriage and family,” Seaworth wrote.

The article “Does the Family Have a Future” is by William C. Duncan, director of the Marriage Law Foundation, whose mission is, in part, to “aid lawyers tasked with defending man/woman marriage and to file amicus briefs on behalf of groups and individuals also intent on preserving that vital social institution.”

Another is “Marriage Matters: A Case for Get-The-Job-Done-Right Federal Marriage Amendment” by Steven W. Fitschen, a professor at televangelist Pat Robertson’s Regent University School of Law. He has filed numerous friend-of-the-court briefs in court cases dealing with same-sex marriage and related issues.

“First,” Fitschen writes in his Law Review article, “God ordained heterosexual marriage from the beginning of human history,” and then quotes the Bible’s Book of Genesis.

“It wasn’t supposed to be an issue about gay marriage,” he said. “And everybody wrote about gay marriage.”

Apparently, the outcry over the issue has grown so loud that that University of North Dakota Law School Dean Paul LeBel had to post a letter [PDF] on the school’s Web site assuring the legal community that “the university and the School of Law are welcoming and inclusive educational communities.”