I think I understand Paul's point, and the arguments in favor it,
but I wonder whether it might get things backward. TAPPS could likely have
focused itself on Christian private schools with little difficulty for it. (It
might have benefited from including secular schools, but it likely could have
survived just as well limited to Christian schools.) On the other hand, my
sense is that in such situations it's a great benefit to minority schools -
both secular schools and especially Jewish schools - to be able to join such an
association, since otherwise there might be very few schools for them to play
against. In many places, an all-Orthodox-Jewish league would have very few
teams, and very long travel times to games.
So TAPPS generally did Jewish schools a good turn by letting them
participate. And if it hadn't let them participate, I suspect many would have
faulted them for being unfairly exclusionary, with the argument being "What's
it to you that the school is Jewish?" But now TAPPS is being told that by
being somewhat more open, it now incurs this extra obligation. That strikes me
as both creating perverse incentives, and being a poor reward for TAPPS'
moderate ecumenicalism, because it demands that this moderate ecumenicalism
lead to considerably more demanding ecumenicalism.
As to the guest/host analogy, I would think that this too cuts the
opposite direction at least as much as in the direction suggested below (and
perhaps more). If I invite someone to my home, or into my private association,
I surely would feel some impulse to accommodate him; if someone comes for
dinner but says that he can't eat pork (and doesn't otherwise demand a kosher
kitchen), I'll probably try to give him a non-pork option even if the main
course is ham. But I would hope that he would feel an even stronger impulse
not to reward my hospitality with excessive demands, or with repeating his
demands after I say no (even if I'm being not as hospitable as I might be in
saying so) - and I would certainly hope that he wouldn't reward my hospitality
with a lawsuit.
Eugene
Paul Horwitz writes:
In this case, it seems to me that the road to a reasonable resolution of the
problem lies in the fact that TAPPS opened itself to a situation in which it
welcomed the possibility of sporting events involving others whose religious
needs might require accommodation. If the league had remained solely devoted to
Christian schools and, in effect, had valued Christian community over sports or
all-state intramural play itself, then refusing to change its schedule would a)
be reasonable and b) not be much of a problem, since the issue would be
unlikely ever to arise. Once it took the step of opening play to
non-Christians, however, including those with an equally thick set of religious
commitments, then common sense, if not simply being a good host, would suggest
that the league ought to anticipate and accommodate the religious needs of its
guests. But certainly the work here is not done by invoking "common sense"
alone.
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