»The demand for their real happiness

Published: May 15, 2004

To the Editor:

The Mormon student at the University of Utah who was forced out of a theater program after refusing to read a script containing profanity is wrong to suggest that the university violated her constitutional right of free exercise of religion (Religion Journal, May 8). The student could have dropped the class if she was offended by it, or she could have gone to a private school organized around her religious beliefs.

Public universities have a constitutional duty not to tailor their curriculums to religious dogma. A student who takes a geology class and writes on the final exam that the earth is only 6,000 years old is probably going to fail the class, even if the student insists that being compelled to give any other answer would force her to renounce her religious beliefs.

DAVID R. DOW
Houston, May 8, 2004
The writer is a professor at the University of Houston Law Center.