Here’s to Falls Church’s former Vice Mayor, school board member and Citizens for a Better City president Harold (Hal) Lippman, who has taken the initiative to follow on the News-Press editorial in its March 14 edition, entitled “Liberty Christian’s Discriminations,” to issue a strong letter of protest to the Virginia High School League (VHSL) for permitting the private Jerry Falwell-linked Liberty Christian Academy to join as a member despite a blatant discrimination in its online mission statement (see story elsewhere this edition). The VHSL executive director’s reply to Lippman’s letter suggests that the matter will get much needed attention at the highest levels of that organization, which, after all, is responsible for advancing the best interests of all the students of the Commonwealth in their competitive athletic endeavors. Needless to say, we will be following this matter carefully going forward to keep our readers appraised.

In the current national environment that is seeing discrimination on the rise, the VHSL must pay a lot closer attention to individual school statements on such matters. While we do not necessarily oppose petitions from private schools to enter competitive sport leagues with VHSL schools, we are adamant in this current environment that very careful attention and enforcement be paid against anything even remotely smacking of discrimination. There is a sickness that has arisen in the land commensurate with the rise of Trump that is suddenly now making egregious expressions of mindless hate and explicit racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, male chauvinism and homophobia acceptable in certain quarters of our culture that, like measles, we thought for a long time had been effectively stamped out. If these sicknesses were not vanquished entirely, they were at least effectively suppressed.

That is, after all, what the “rule of law” is about. We as a culture cannot expect to wipe clean human emotions and foibles, such as they all too often manifest themselves in ways that hurt others. But we can, and must, establish an ever-perfecting process that suppresses them when they become hurtful or dangerous to the well-being of others, recognizing that it is a process, and that some day down the road we may achieve a new level of grace and universal acceptance. In the meantime, laws are needed to hold back the worst of human impulses, and they need to be enforced with a certain ruthless determination.

So, the VHSL cannot permit one of its member schools, public or private, to adopt policies, or advance philosophies, that defiantly or otherwise subvert a commitment to justice, equality and non-discrimination for any class of persons. This is not a matter of personal preference or religious claim, this is a matter of civil law decisive for democracy to function, plain and simple. No exceptions.

Anyone who harbors hatred or ill will toward any group of persons must not have anything remotely akin to a license in this troubled world. We will restore sorely-needed civility to our culture only when this criterion is fully appreciated and enforced.