Dear Ms. Hess and President White:

Under current parameters leasing the Kibbie Dome, is neither a celebration nor a restraint of First Amendment rights, it is a business decision. If the University of Idaho facilities renting policy is reduced to its simplest form, the access criterion is the ability to pay the rental fees. The ragged remnants of the Aryan Nation, may pay the fee and hold a three day celebration of their philosophy in the Kibbie Dome. Conversely, if the Latah County Search and Rescue organization wished to use the same facility, but were unable to pay the rental fee, they would be excluded.

Denying the use of University of Idaho conference facilities is not the equivalent of stifling speech. One premise does not logically follow the other. The University of Idaho is only one of many locally available conference venues. Indeed, there are free speech areas available on campus where speakers may proclaim their point of view to any willing listener. (Brother Jed’s annual preaching appearances come to mind, for example.) If the Trinity Conference speakers were engaging an audience in a like manner, I would certainly consider it their constitutional right to do so.

The University’s hosting of the Trinity Festival, if characterized as a business decision, is not an attractive argument. However, it is, perhaps, better than an appeal to constitutional nuance which may be discounted completely when Idaho citizens consider the following remarks from Trinity Festival organizers and like-minded supporters.

“Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. The credit for this must go to the predominance of Christianity. The gospel enabled men who were distinct in nearly every way, to live and work together, to be friends and often intimates. This happened to such an extent that moderns indoctrinated on “civil rights” propaganda would be thunderstruck to know the half of it.”

“Slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since. Whatever its failures, slavery produced in the South a degree of mutual affection between the races which will never be achieved through any federally-mandated efforts.”

The previous quotations are from the book “Southern Slavery As It Was” written by Steve Wilkins, pastor of Auburn Avenue Church, Monroe, Louisiana, and Doug Wilson, pastor of Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho. The book was published in 1996 by Canon Press, the publishing arm of Christ Church, Moscow. Both men are