President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality has had far-reaching effects across the nation – potentially even at a conservative evangelical university in La Mirada, CA. Last week, just a handful of days after Obama’s announcement in support of same-sex marriage, students at Biola University launched Biola Queer Underground. The LGBT-straight alliance emphasizes gay students’ personal stories and seeks a campus dialogue to make those gay students feel more welcome.

Biola’s student handbook states that “sexual relationships are designed by God to be expressed solely within a marriage between husband and wife,” and students are required to sign a contract affirming their agreement with this stance. However, members of Biola Queer Underground take issue with the conservative theological stance that LGBT sexual orientations are incompatible with Christian belief. A statement on their website reads:

We want to bring to light the presence of the LGBTQ community at Biola. Despite what some may assume, there are Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender, and Queers at Biola. We are Biola’s students, alumni, employees, and fellow followers of Christ. We want to be treated with equality and respected as another facet of Biola’s diversity.

Although Biola University removed the group’s fliers, the underground group’s emergence did prompt the university president to release a new, detailed policy on “human sexuality” that university officials say has been in the works for the past year and a half. The new policy denies that Biola needs to “modernize” its biblical approach to the LGBT community and calls same-sex relationships “illegitimate moral options for the confessing Christian.” Members of Biola Queer Underground expressed disappointment in the administration’s response:

Biola claims to want a dialogue. However, unless LGBTQ students who don’t view homosexuality or transgender identity as sinful are allowed to speak openly without threat, this conversation will continue to be one–sided. Without inviting Christians speakers who have a different view of homosexuality, fruitful dialogue will not happen.In the past, your monologues on homosexuality have not been good or fair to us. We understand your interpretation of scripture; please hear ours.

In light of last month’s study from GLAAD and the University of Missoui Center on Religion & the Professions — which found that pro-LGBT people of faith are the “missing voices” from the mainstream media, leading to an entirely one-sided view of religion as inherently anti-gay — the students at Biola University are modeling an important way forward. When members of traditionally socially conservative environments speak out on these issues, it helps to shift the conversation in the right direction.

A coalition of national groups, led by the American Jewish Committee and Religious Freedom Education Project, have released new “guidelines” for public schools that attempt to walk the line between combating bullying and protecting religious speech.  The guidelines themselves are not particularly specific, but they seem to suggest that religious rhetoric should not be curtailed in anyway, regardless of how damaging or disruptive it might be to those who “disagree” with it:

With respect to sexual orientation and behavior, one student’s call for legalization of same-sex marriage may be perceived by another student as a challenge to his or her deeply held religious beliefs. Conversely, one  student’s expression of his or her religious convictions concerning what he or she  regards as sinful sexual behavior will be perceived by another student as suggesting that gay and lesbian students have no place in the school. A student may wear a T-shirt proclaiming “Straight Pride” to counter another student’s “Gay Pride” T-shirt, or vice versa.[...]

When confronting one student’s claim that another student’s speech conveying an idea is harassment and bullying, school officials should consider, time and circumstances permitting, explaining on an age appropriate basis, that disagreement about an idea is not necessarily a personal attack; that some students’ faiths may require them to express their views publicly; that students have a right to disagree with the view of other students or the school and to express that disagreement; and that the most effective response to an idea one disagrees with is often to express a contrary idea, not censorship. Suppression of speech should be the last, not first, resort.

The rhetoric in this document is troubling, because it ignores the current context for how prevalent anti-gay bullying currently is in schools, and how particularly damaging research has shown it to be. Rather, these guidelines suggest that “disagreements” are a two-way street — that a religious condemnation of homosexuality is equivalent in effect to a student’s opposing position defending gay people. This is absurd and completely ignores how vulnerable young people in the throws of coming out can be to such anti-gay viewpoints.

As documented in The Good News Club, conservative Christians are proactively encouraging anti-gay evangelism within schools. It’s unsurprising that among the endorsers of these guidelines are Christian Educators Association International, the Christian Legal Society, and the National Association of Evangelicals. Noticeably absent was GLSEN or any group that advocates for the LGBT community. These organizations are within their right to defend religious expression, but to minimize the impact of anti-gay bullying by conflating “condemnation” with “disagreement” is dangerously disingenuous. The key to reducing anti-gay bullying is training about LGBT issues, not openly humoring religious reproach while ignoring the harm it causes.

The eight-million member Methodist Church upheld its prohibition on same-sex relationships during its national legislative meeting this week, calling them “incompatible with Christian teaching.” Delegates voted 61 percent to 39 percent against “softening the language on homosexuality in their Book of Discipline, which contains church laws and doctrine,” as pro-equality advocates “protested against the vote by singing and interrupting the meeting“:

The debate on the floor of the convention showcased the church’s passionate divide and demographic shifts. Several Americans begged delegates to “hear the pain” of gay church members. Moments later, a delegate from Africa said in Swahili that saying that a homosexual person was created by God was like saying “that God created me to live with animals.” The translator apologized while rendering the remarks into English.

The Rev. Troy Plummer, executive director of the Reconciling Ministries Network, which advocates full inclusion of gay people, said in an interview: “I’m tired of being compared to beasts in our church. Even if our world understandings differ, it’s just horrendous. That our perspectives differ is the truth, and we just voted 61 to 39 percent that we can’t tell that truth.”

The votes set off a protest inside the convention. Gay rights supporters gathered around a communion table at the center of the hall, singing. The moderator canceled the remainder of the morning session, making it uncertain whether several other resolutions on homosexuality would come to the floor before the conference ends on Friday.

The vote may have also reflected the changing demographics within the church. While American membership has declined, the church expanded in Africa and the Philippines, where homosexuality is denounced. “This year about 40 percent of the nearly 1,000 delegates to the Methodist general conference are from outside the United States — an increase of more than 10 percent from the last conference, in 2008,” the New York Times notes.

Meanwhile, a growing number of American religious organizations have embraced same-sex couples, including: Evangelical Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians (U.S.A), adherents of the United Church of Christ, and Unitarian Universalists. Polls also show that a majority of Catholics and non-evangelical white Protestants back marriage rights for gay couples.

[Photo credit: Dave in Northridge]

Christian conservative groups are condemning Dan Savage — the founder of the anti-bullying It Gets Better project — for “bullying” religious students who walked out of a recent lecture in which the popular sex columnist pointed out “the hypocrisy of people who justify anti-gay bigotry by pointing to the Bible and insisting that we must live by the code of Leviticus on this one issue and no other.”

Savage made the remarks at the National High School Journalism Conference, causing a group of students to walk out as he began discussing the moral problems contained within the religious document:

SAVAGE: We can learn to ignore the bullshit about gay people in the Bible the same way have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish about slavery, about dinner about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation. We ignore bullshit in the bible about all sorts of things. The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waived Bibles over their heads during the civil war and justified it…We ignore what the Bible says about slavery because the Bible got slavery wrong. …If the Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced wrong, slavery. What are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? 100 percent.

“You can tell the Bible guys in the hall, they can come back now because I’m done beating up the Bible,” Savage said before moving on to his next topic, “It’s funny as someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible, how pansy-ass some people react when you push back.” Watch it:

Savage has since apologized for describing his detractors as “pansy-ass.” “I wasn’t calling the handful of students who left pansies (2800+ students, most of them Christian, stayed and listened), just the walk-out itself,” he said. “But that’s a distinction without a difference—kinda like when religious conservatives tell their gay friends that they ‘love the sinner, hate the sin.’… Likewise, my use of ‘pansy-assed’ was insulting, it was name-calling, and it was wrong. And I apologize for saying it.”

Ironically, this story about Savage’s comments broke on the same day that Joel Osteen — the leader of the nation’s largest Christian Church — told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that he believes homosexuality is a “sin” because “my faith is based on what I believe the scripture says and that’s the way I read the scripture.”