Stanford's (interesting and important) religious-liberty clinic

Brian Leiter comments, here, on a piece that ran in the New York Times a while back about Stanford's new religious-liberty clinic.  While I disagree with Brian regarding his characterization of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty's and the Templeton Foundation's support for the clinic as "dubious" or "right wing," and also disagree with him that our practice of (sometimes) accommodating religious believers through exemptions from otherwise generally applicable laws is immoral, I think he is quite right to push back hard on the idea that clinic is justified as some kind of special favor to conservatives, or Republicans, or whatever.  Brian writes:

Most surprising of all is how Lawrence Marshall, director of clinical legal education at Stanford, describes it:

"The 47 percent of the people who voted for Mitt Romney deserve a curriculum as well,” said Lawrence C. Marshall, the associate dean for clinical legal education at Stanford Law School. “My mission has been to make clinical education as central to legal education as it is to medical education. Just as we are concerned about diversity in gender, race and ethnicity, we ought to be committed to ideological diversity.”

So the academic rationale for this clinic is that Romney voters need a law school clinic, on the bizarre assumption, I guess, that the only people seeking religiously based exemptions from laws are Republicans.

Yes, Prof. Marshall is right to remind those who profess commitments to diversity that ideological diversity matters too.  But, it is wrong -- it is not fair to the clinic's faculty, students, supporters, and clients -- to frame and defend it as a consolation prize to the "47 percent who voted for Mitt Romney."  Many (I hope!) among that 47 percent are happily to engage in experiential learning that involves service to the poor and to immigrants, say, just as (I hope!) many among those who voted for President Obama see the importance of (sometimes) accommodation religious minorities who are burdened by duly enacted generally applicable laws.