Shellea Allen, a student at the University of Idaho College of Law (U of I), and her classmate, Kiana Mathew, are speaking out against anti-LGBTQ harassment allegedly committed by student members of the Christian Legal Society (CLS) at an on-campus LGBTQ community event.
The university issued a “no-contact” order after Allen and other students said that the CLS students’ alleged speech and actions made them feel unsafe on campus. Now Allen feels compelled to speak out after the CLS students, represented by the anti-LGBTQ legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), won a preliminary injunction rescinding the order.
The April 1 LGBTQ community event was organized in response to a “derogatory slur directed against the LGBTQIA+ community” written on a classroom whiteboard in the U of I’s law school, the university’s dean and professor of law Johanna Kalb wrote to students in a Thursday, March 31 email.
“It breaks my heart that we struggle to be a place that respects the dignity and humanity of every person in our community,” Kalb wrote.
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“Dehumanizing each other through our language has terrible consequences,” Kalb added, noting that March 31 was the national Transgender Day of Visibility. “Bullying is not a conservative or a liberal value, and I will do everything in my power to stop it.”
Kalb’s email noted that, in response to the slur, some U of I faculty members would be holding a “moment of community” in front of the law school the next morning.
Before the event, law Professor Richard Seamon sent an email to students informing them that, as faculty adviser to the CLS, he would be participating in “a prayer circle, in which all are welcome.” The prayer circle would be held at the “moment of community” event, his email said.
Allen considered the prayer circle a form of “intimidation” and compared it to a “pray the gay away” event. She attended the event with Mathew. Allen said about 23 students attended the “moment of community” and about seven students assembled for the prayer circle.
Mathew said the prayer circle quickly formed around the students present — including Allen and others who also didn’t want to participate. Mathew said she felt as if “Christianity was being pushed onto everyone at the event regardless of anyone else’s religious beliefs which felt like disrespect to everyone else.”
After the prayer concluded, Allen said she asked the CLS students why they came to support the LGBTQ community when their organization’s website has statements opposing LGBTQ rights.
Mathews said that a student CLS member, Mark Miller, claimed that “the Bible says that same-sex marriage is wrong.” When Allen disagreed with Miller, Seamon allegedly remarked, “It actually does say it in the Bible.”
After that alleged exchange, Mathew said that Miller began “personally attacking Shellea for being a queer woman in a same-sex relationship with another woman.”
“Mark had told Shellea that she would be going to hell and that she needed to repent for her sins and caller her a sinner multiple times,” Mathew wrote in a statement given to LGBTQ Nation. “He also called her a fornicator and said, ‘no fornicator can enter the divine kingdom of God…'”
Mathew said that Allen began to cry. “After personally attacking her for her sexual relationship and telling her multiple times she would never get into heaven and that she needed to repent, Mark finally stopped,” she added.
Allen told LGBTQ Nation, “Several students from CLS started preaching about how ‘fornicators’ and ‘homosexuals’ would go to the gallows of hell as they recited bible verses and that we need to repent for our sins.”
The CLS members disagree with Allen and Mathews’ version of events. The CLS members said that they simply cited the Bible as the basis for their beliefs and offered to discuss the issue more in-depth at a later time.
U of I Law School Associate Dean of Students Kristi Running later wrote an email to Mathews and Allen, stating, “I’m so sorry that what was meant to be an opportunity to provide support and healing to our students turned out the way it did.”
According to Mathews, Running had no idea that Seamon had sent an email the morning of the event organizing a prayer circle.
Allen’s claim that the CLS’s national website opposes LGBTQ rights is indeed correct.
The organization’s website states that “churches, faith-based nonprofits, religious schools, and educational institutions, and individual Christians are under tremendous societal pressure to acquiesce to changing cultural standards” on LGBTQ issues, including same-sex marriage and other civil rights issues.
“As believers, we are called to live under God’s authority and with a consistent understanding of Biblical truths about human sexuality,” the CLS website adds. “[All Christians] need to know the practical reasons for upholding marriage between one man and one woman… CLS seeks to educate these groups about current critical legal issues and help them navigate through these legal minefields of sexuality-related issues.”
Furthermore, all CLS members are expected to abide by the organization’s “Community Life Statement” which asserts, “We renounce unbiblical behaviors, including deception, malicious speech, drunkenness, drug abuse, stealing, cheating, and other immoral conduct such as using pornography and engaging in sexual relations other than within a marriage between one man and one woman.”
The following Monday, April 4, a group of about 20 students staged a walkout of Professor Seamon’s Constitutional law class at 8:30 am to show their unhappiness over the mistreatment of queer students on campus and their disapproval of Seamon’s support of the CLS.
“The walkout was peaceful,” Allen noted, adding, “We gathered in the foyer to have a true moment of solidarity and support for the LGBTQ community.”
That same day, representatives from the American Bar Association (ABA) asked U of I students to speak with them about their experiences at the U of I law school. Allen said that CLS members Shawn Cothren, Ryan Alexander, and Peter Perlot told the ABA that the CLS’ actions at the community event were an example of “freedom of speech.” The students also alleged that CLS members were being discriminated against on campus for their religious beliefs. Allen said that one of the CLS students allegedly told the ABA representatives, “We are in a culture war.”
Then, on April 5, Allen found a handwritten note on her personal carrel desk that was allegedly placed there by Perlot. The red ink note, signed “Peter,” identified himself as the CLS president and invited her to talk with him if she had anything she needed to say to him or to ask him about.
Allen considered it a further act of intimidation and reported the note to the Dean’s office. Feeling unsafe on campus, she left the school that day and has been remote ever since. She also filed a complaint with the school’s office of civil rights and received a no-contact order for the members of CLS that she felt had been the most threatening to her: Perlot, Alexander, and Miller.
The no-contact order reportedly directed Perlot, Alexander, and Miller not to discuss same-sex marriage with any other students. On April 26, these three students filed a federal lawsuit against the university’s no-contact order.
On its website, the ADF, which is representing the CLS members and Seamon in a case against the no-contact order, wrote that the university “did not inform the CLS members that anyone had complained about them, and they did not give the students an opportunity to review the allegations against them or defend themselves.”
The court filing against the no-contact order claimed the order violated the CLS members’ First Amendment free speech rights and 14th Amendment rights to due process. The students sued the university for “declaratory, injunctive, and monetary relief.”
On July 1, ADF announced that a federal court issued a preliminary injunction order requiring the university to rescind the no-contact orders while the students’ lawsuit continues. In 2008, ADF donated over $420,000 to CLS.
On April 26, the same day that the three CLS students filed their lawsuit, Seamon wrote to Allen stating that he noticed she had begun attending his class online “[in possible] response to the events on Friday morning, April 1.”
“I am sorry that those events caused pain and offense to others,” he wrote, offering a chance to meet and discuss what had occurred.
She responded via email, “You also know I am gay, yet you invited a group that is actively working towards taking away my human rights, to an event that was in recognition of LGBTQ rights. So yes, your assumption is partially correct. Your event caused pain and offense, but what you need to know is this: Your event, caused me to fear for my life at the University of Idaho. I am scared to be on campus, I am scared to be in your class. I fear you. I fear the CLS. My life, my grades, my law school career are not safe with a professor that is actively working towards taking away my human rights.”
She also wrote to Seamon that she is a practicing Christian Catholic who disagreed with the assessment of the CLS circle being about “freedom of speech or religion.” She threatened to get a restraining order from the police if he continued to contact her via email.
Allen has accused U of I of “not stepping up to the plate” to address CLS’ alleged harassment of LGBTQ students. She said that, even though she and four other students filed complaints with the university about the CLS, the university has failed to censure the group. She and Mathew have both attended classes remotely since the April 1 incident, fearful of their safety on campus.
“The University has not taken the threats of the CLS seriously,” Allen wrote. “Students have to leave campus to feel safe, while the CLS (a group working to dismantle the human rights of others) is allowed to stay on campus and receive funding from the school. The disruption to my studies and life has been detrimental to my health.”
Allen said that her transgender colleagues have been continuously misgendered by students in the CLS and by a professor, though she didn’t name the professor or students allegedly involved. She said that in the fall, another colleague was assaulted and called a “f*****” by a CLS member.
LGBTQ Nation contacted the student who was allegedly assaulted, but they declined to speak on the record for fear of negatively impacting any legal outcomes in court cases. LGBTQ Nation also contacted the student who was allegedly misgendered, but they didn’t respond.
LGBTQ Nation reached out to Seamon for comment. Seamon and Cothren directed LGBTQ Nation to ADF. ADF pointed LGBTQ Nation to its court filings which do not mention the specific comments that the CLS students were alleged to have made toward Allen and Mathew.
