US: Ruth Malhotra feels like an outsider, marginalised and oppressed because she doesn't fit in with the mainstream student body at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
As a white Southern Baptist, Malhotra is not part of a racial or sexual minority, but she has gone to court to secure her right to be intolerant towards those who are.
Malhotra and Orit Sklar, a Jewish student, are suing the college for unspecified damages because they say its policy of anti-discrimination violates their constitutional right to free speech by not allowing them to speak out against homosexuality.
"By, among other things, prohibiting 'acts of intolerance' directed at others based on 'race, religious belief, colour sexual/ affectional orientation, national origin, disability, age, or gender', and enforcing the institute's speech codes against plaintiffs' individual and organisational expression, defendants, acting under colour of state law, have explicitly and implicitly discriminated on the basis of viewpoint and deprived plaintiffs of their clearly established rights to freedom of speech and expression secured by the first amendment to the constitution of the United States," Malhotra and Sklar say in their complaint.
The case is the latest in a wave of legal actions, most of which are backed by conservative Christians, aimed at overturning policies in schools, universities and workplaces that protect gays and lesbians from harassment.
The Rev Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical Christian, describes the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century.
"Christians are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian," he told the Los Angeles Times.
The arguments advanced by Malhotra and her supporters will be familiar to Europeans who observed the controversy nearly two years ago over Rocco Buttiglione's nomination as EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner.
A committee of MEPs objected to putting Mr Buttiglione in charge of the commission's civil rights agenda on the basis that the Italian conservative had consistently opposed granting civil rights to homosexuals.
Mr Buttiglione eventually withdrew his nomination, portraying himself as the victim of an intolerant new orthodoxy.
"The new soft totalitarianism that is advancing on the left wants to have a state religion. It is an atheist, nihilistic religion, but it is a religion that is obligatory for all," he said.
Malhotra accuses her college of establishing "a religious orthodoxy" that discriminates against those who believe that the Bible condemns homosexuality as evil.
Jon Davidson, legal director of the gay rights group Lambda Legal, suggested this week that cases like Malhotra's were using religious freedom as an excuse to justify harassment.
"What if a person felt their religious view was that African-Americans shouldn't mingle with Caucasians, or that women shouldn't work?" he said.
Although Malhotra's complaint also condemns speech codes banning racist remarks, Christian activists reject the comparison between condemning homosexuality and promoting racism, although some Christians have in the past used the Bible to justify slavery and segregation.
At the heart of the current debate is the issue of whether gay rights are really human rights at all.
Many conservative Christians believe that, unlike racial identity, sexual orientation is not innate but is a lifestyle choice that an individual is free to reject - a view for which there is no scientific evidence.
Anti-gay conservatives had a setback this week when a California court upheld the right of a school to ban one of its pupils from wearing a T-shirt which was denigrating homosexuality.
Tyler Harper took the case when his school told him to stop wearing a T-shirt with "Be ashamed, our school embraced what God has condemned" on the front and "Homosexuality is shameful" on the back.
The court found by a 2-1 majority that the T-shirt could interfere with the right of gay and lesbian students to learn while in school.
"Public school students who may be injured by verbal assaults on the basis of a core identifying characteristic such as race, religion, or sexual orientation have a right to be free from such attacks while on school campuses,"one of the judges wrote.
"Being secure involves not only the freedom from physical assaults, but from psychological attacks that cause young people to question their self-worth and their rightful place in society," he continued.
Dissenting judge Alex Kozinski said there was no evidence that gay students were harmed by derogatory messages such as that on Harper's T-shirt, but he acknowledged that such slogans could interfere with their study.
"There is surely something to the notion that a Jewish student might not be able to devote his full attention to school activities if the fellow in the seat next to him is wearing a T-shirt with the message 'Hitler Had the Right Idea' in front and 'Let's Finish the Job!' on the back.
"This T-shirt may well interfere with the educational experience even if the two students never come to blows or even have words about it," he said.
