112
Opinion of the Court
berger that speech discussing otherwise permissible subjects cannot be excluded from a limited public forum on the ground that the subject is discussed from a religious viewpoint. Thus, we conclude that Milford's exclusion of the Club from use of the school, pursuant to its community use policy, constitutes impermissible viewpoint discrimination.4
IV
Milford argues that, even if its restriction constitutes viewpoint discrimination, its interest in not violating the Establishment Clause outweighs the Club's interest in gaining equal access to the school's facilities. In other words, according to Milford, its restriction was required to avoid violating the Establishment Clause. We disagree.
We have said that a state interest in avoiding an Establishment Clause violation "may be characterized as compelling," and therefore may justify content-based discrimination.
4 Despite Milford's insistence that the Club's activities constitute "religious worship," the Court of Appeals made no such determination. It did compare the Club's activities to "religious worship," 202 F. 3d, at 510, but ultimately it concluded merely that the Club's activities "fall outside the bounds of pure 'moral and character development,' " id., at 511. In any event, we conclude that the Club's activities do not constitute mere religious worship, divorced from any teaching of moral values.
Justice Souter's recitation of the Club's activities is accurate. See post, at 137-138 (dissenting opinion). But in our view, religion is used by the Club in the same fashion that it was used by Lamb's Chapel and by the students in Rosenberger: Religion is the viewpoint from which ideas are conveyed. We did not find the Rosenberger students' attempt to cultivate a personal relationship with Christ to bar their claim that religion was a viewpoint. And we see no reason to treat the Club's use of religion as something other than a viewpoint merely because of any evangelical message it conveys. According to Justice Souter, the Club's activities constitute "an evangelical service of worship." Post, at 138. Regardless of the label Justice Souter wishes to use, what matters is the substance of the Club's activities, which we conclude are materially indistinguishable from the activities in Lamb's Chapel and Rosenberger.
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