A Gay Firing Fiasco & Opportunity at Belmont University

I've been thinking this week about the abrupt resignation/termination of a young, successful women's soccer coach at Belmont (Baptist) University in Tennessee. She is a lesbian with a partner. They are having a baby. She told her team about the baby and was immediately removed from duty or removed herself from duty under duress.

Her student-athletes were devastated, asked the administration to reinstate her and, when denied, held protests on campus. The media got involved. A major donor called for her rehire. The President issued an apologetic statement for his failure to comment sooner, soothing in tone, but with no reinstatement commitment.

So, things are a bit of a mess at Belmont.

The university is ranked amongst the best value campuses in the U.S.. That value is tarnished now because Belmont evidently played foul. Americans like fair-play. This situation won't go away easily and it's complicated.

Belmont is a distinctively Christian institution. As such, it has the legal right to choose who can teach and who cannot as well as who can attend and who cannot. The President claims that sexual orientation has not been an issue in hiring or firing during his tenure. Recent events make this sound like, "I did not inhale".

There is an old saying that we are as sick as our secrets. I sense deep feelings of dis-ease on the campus now. The leaders need to engage the entire campus in deep introspection and healing. Exclusion and discrimination, in all forms, for all reasons, hurt everyone. The litmus test of the real value of Belmont will be its response to this situation. They have an opportunity to take the first step in righting a great wrong and serve as example to their peer institutions throughout America in doing what is right.

I went to a Christian college. My alma mater is struggling just like Belmont is struggling. A few weeks ago they refused to let a gay student write an editorial about establishing a gay-straight alliance on campus. Sad.

Belmont and other colleges and universities that characterize themselves as Christian are really challenged by no strings attached inclusion of young people and faculty who live their lives with full integrity regarding their sexuality and their sex lives. Why? Christians know that Jesus knew everything about everyone with whom he walked and dined and slept.

He never said,

Don't tell me who and what you really are. Pretend. I don't want to know.

I can only imagine what Jesus would say about Don't Ask, Don't Tell. And, He never mentioned homosexuality.

I think Jesus would find it unacceptable that most of our Christian institutions (and our government) create policies about sexual behavior rather than the kinds of behaviors He talked about in the Sermon on the Mount.

Consider the climate our rules make for LGBTQ students at these distinctively Christian institutions. They are supposed to have sex only inside marriage (but they can't marry the people they love) and they aren't supposed to be gay (even though they are). I cannot imagine the pain of being an LGBTQ student or faculty member at Belmont now, compelled by fear to lie. I can't imagine that Jesus would ask them to.

The problem in the Institution we call Christ's Church is that even though it claims to be distinctively Christian, it simply fails to conform to the standards of inclusion that Jesus modeled in his life -- bringing the most "excluded" people in society into his circle of love -- as his friends and disciples. Even in the last minutes of his life, He invited a man society considered "unclean" with Him into Paradise -- the thief who hung on the Cross beside Him.

The Church is an institution created by humankind. It is fallible and it is failing in its witness to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people just as it has with women and people of color in the past. Belmont is called to Christian witness. So, now it is time to think out of the box like Jesus did. I believe He is knocking on the door at Belmont and I hope they open it and their arms to everyone.

 

 

 

Follow Rev. Dr. Cindi Love on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SoulforceLove

Comments

[dgr]

02:25 AM on 12/13/2010

What Jesus would say about homosexuality? He would definitely accept any sinner who repented. He would say "Go your way and sin no more!"

[Jeffrey Marks]

07:05 AM on 12/13/2010

There's absolutely no scholarly evidence that the Bible calls homosexuality a sin. It couldn't considering that the word was only invented 150 years ago.

[Victor De La Cruz]

07:31 PM on 12/13/2010

America is a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles, which by definition are based on the Bible. Are there explicit Bible verses on homosexuality?

There absolutely are explicit Bible verses on homosexuality. Consider these Old Testament verses on homosexuality: "If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination." (Leviticus 20:13). "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is perversion. ‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you." (Leviticus 18:22-24). Notice that the latter verses - Leviticus 18:22-24 - lump in homosexuality with bestiality.

There are also New Testament verses on homosexuality, including, "For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due." (Romans 1:26-27).

[randyeliason]

01:24 PM on 12/17/2010

Here is one of many scholarly reviews of Rob Gagnon's book Homosexuality and the Bible.
“This is a brilliant, original and highly important work, displaying meticulous biblical scholarship, and indispensable even for those who disagree with the author.”—James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew, Emeritus, Oxford University, and Distinguished Professor of Hebrew Bible, Emeritus, Vanderbilt University.
It is plain ignorance to suggest that there is no evidence supporting the view that the Bible describes homosexual conduct as sinful. Gagnon's book proves the point beyond dispute.
If someone wants to suggest that the Bible's teaching in general, and Jesus' in particular, have no bearing on present day morality, they have the right to that view. But let's stop the nonsense suggesting that Judaism, Jesus, and historic Christianity did not maintain a strong proscription against homosexual behavior.

[LMPE]

02:36 PM on 12/12/2010

As I've always noted, a lot of these self-proclaimed Christians aren't Christians; they're hypocrites.

[DannyEVillage]

11:26 PM on 12/12/2010

a lot of people who call themselves christian simply want to use their bibles as weapons against those whom they don't like.

I've long said if you want to find out who a person hates just ask them about their god.