Closing Ranks Against LGBTQIA2S+ People: Church-Related Colleges and Universities Are Promoting an Anti-LGBTQIA2S+ Agenda

When I worked in higher ed over the years, and when I was in the closet, my energies were spent trying to hide, as well as writing and teaching and attending meetings as a member of the faculty.  Being in my gay closet took an enormous amount of time and energy, and some times money. Closets consume energy, time, and money with no guarantee of protecting the person within the closet, but, ultimately, hurting, if not destroying, the person in the closet. 

But there is this second “layer” of people who are non-LGBTIQIA2S+ allies, who are protecting other non-LGBTQIA2S+ allies, in private, church related colleges and universities, who are losing positions and jobs because they support LGBTQIA2S+ people in general.

This is what is happening at Point Loma Nazarene University, in which the dean of the school of theology, Dr. Mark Maddix, was fired for supporting an adjunct professor, Melissa Tucker, who supported LGBTQIA2S+ people. No one in this story is LGBTQIA2S+. Not one soul. There are only non-LGBTQIA2S+ faculty who support LGBTQIA2S+ people. And being an LGBTQIA2S+ person is forbidden in the theology or doctrines of the Church of the Nazarene, which is stridently anti-LGBTQIA2S+. This is exactly what I can’t get over. No one in this story is LGBTQIA2S+. It is only about those who support LGBTQIA2S+ in theory. And not even this is possible in at Point Loma Nazarene University(PLNU) in California. PLNU rejects and forbids any relationship that is not heterosexual. 

Here’s a link to the article: https://religionnews.com/2023/04/07/lgbtq-group-condemns-point-loma-nazarene-university-for-dismissal-of-dean-and-professor/

How is this of Jesus? How is this an example of the love of Christ for all people? This is all about fear, hate, and bigotry. And what I’m struck by is how this firing of faculty has gone from merely letting LGBTQIA2S+ go or firing them or denying them tenure (I was denied tenure because I’m gay at a major research university), to now alienating staff and faculty simply for supporting LGBTQIA2S+ people. Why go to such an institution? And yet there is an LGBTQIA2S+ group at PLNU? Why go to such an institution of higher education?

Such institutions are supported by tuition dollars. May fewer students go to this institution after this series of hateful actions, and may it close down.

Amen.




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