Publically Funded US University Expells Student

[TC]

Student expelled from University of Cumberlands for being gay


When Jason Johnson enrolled at the University of the Cumberlands in 2004, he says he didn't worry about being kicked out for being gay.

After all, the school's code of conduct only barred "lewd and indecent conduct."

But Johnson, now a sophomore, said yesterday he has been expelled from the Baptist-affiliated college under a new sexual conduct policy that forbids engaging in or promoting homosexuality.

Administrators confronted him last week about his page on MySpace.com, on which he discussed his sexual orientation and boyfriend, he said.

The policy says, "Any student who engages in or promotes sexual behavior not consistent with Christian principles (including sex outside marriage and homosexuality) may be suspended or asked to withdraw from the University of the Cumberlands."

(full article at
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.d...369/1008/NEWS01 )

KY school that expelled gay student receives state funds
Associated Press
Wednesday Apr 12, 2006

A state senator is criticizing a provision in the state budget that gives money to the University of the Cumberlands.

Ky. state Senator Ernesto Scorsone (D-Lexington) is questioning $10 million in the state budget to build a pharmacy at the University of the Cumberlands.
Last week, the school expelled a student for disclosing on a personal website that he is gay.

http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ci=108...s&sc3=&id=11614

[which doctor]

Another victory for the religious right. Another defeat for gay rights.

[Mujer Libre]

What the fuck is "promoting homosexuality" anyway?

I mean... last time I checked there aren't queer recruiting officers... Fucking fundies.

[Zero]

They talk about "promoting homosexuality" as if it were a disease or some shit.

Fucking morons. <_<

[Communism]

When are they going to knock down the statue of liberty, the land of the free my ass.

[Amusing Scrotum]

You know, there&#39;s another thread in the Discrimination forum where a few members are moaning that another College won&#39;t allow Christian students to harass homosexual students.

And then, when issues like this come up, you get an idea of what that harassment actually means when the Christian&#39;s are able to get any influence over the operating procedure of a University.

Personally, I don&#39;t think that someone could consistently oppose the form of harassment shown in this thread and then defend the form of harassment being denied in the other thread....sooner or later, you have to choose.

You are either for the harassment of homosexuals, or you are against it.

As it is, I hope all the homosexual residents of Cumberland and everyone else in that area who is pro gay rights, managed to do some harm, whatever that harm is, to this particular University.

This kind of stuff shouldn&#39;t go unnopposed....but unfortunately, given the current political climate in America, I don&#39;t think we see much opposition to this particular policy.

Originally posted by Mujer Libre
What the fuck is "promoting homosexuality" anyway?

I would imagine it would be a group of "homosexual elders" standing on a street corner with a megaphone shouting: becoming gay WILL result in eternal salvation.

I don&#39;t know of anything like this happening....but there is one group that I know of that aggressively promotes something in this manner and this University isn&#39;t moaning about them.

Fucking Christians. :angry:

[TC]

Personally, I don&#39;t think that someone could consistently oppose the form of harassment shown in this thread and then defend the form of harassment being denied in the other thread....sooner or later, you have to choose.

You are either for the harassment of homosexuals, or you are against it

No, these are qualitatively different. In the other thread, the homophobic fundie represented a marginalized minority who the institution surpressed. In this thread, the christian fundies represent the majority that controls institutional policy. This university has a policy against gays, the university in the other thread has a policy against homophobes, so therefore the relationship of gays and homophobes to the people with power (the university administration) is the reverse in these two threads, so a reverse response is completely consistent if you believe that power relations matter.

Being expelled is a whole lot different than seeing someone run around the school yard trying to get people to listen to them about jesus. You cannot compare the two. Someone being an asshole is a lot different than institutional descrimination.

[redstar2000]

I can&#39;t help but wonder if this kid was one of those people who think that religion is "personal" or "harmless" or "trivial" and should be "tolerated".

After all, there are some people on this board who think that.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by TragicClown+--> (TragicClown)In the other thread, the homophobic fundie represented a marginalized minority who the institution surpressed.[/b]

The "suppression" that they faced, was not be allowed to verbally harass homosexual students by constantly confronting them with Bibles....they were allowed to piss and moan about homosexuality, they just weren&#39;t allowed to continuously accost homosexual students.

So really, their argument boils down to a judgement call....they are willing to defend the "right" of Christians to verbally harass students, but they&#39;ll oppose University students getting expelled because they are homosexuals.

That&#39;s the point I was making.

TragicClown

Being expelled is a whole lot different than seeing someone run around the school yard trying to get people to listen to them about jesus. You cannot compare the two. Someone being an asshole is a lot different than institutional descrimination.

Indeed....but you&#39;re attacking a strawman here.

I never said they weren&#39;t different. All I said is that some people here are willing to support the "right" of someone to undertake in one form of harassment, but they won&#39;t support the "right" of someone to undertake in another form of harassment.

In their opinion (and yours?), running around harassing students is a "right" where as summarily expelling them isn&#39;t. I fail to see to see how someone could support one and not the other.

After all, the homosexual students getting harassed may well end up quitting College because of the harassment they recieve....which means that the result of both policies is the same.

So how can someone support one and not tother?

[Disciple of Prometheus]

They talk about "promoting homosexuality" as if it were a disease or some shit.

Lol, everyone knows us gays are so contagious, .

"At University of the Cumberlands, we hold students to a higher standard. Students know the rules before they come to this institution. We&#39;ve followed our policies and procedures in keeping with our traditional denominational beliefs."

I wonder just what "higher standard," they are referring to, because a "higher standard," would imply new, logical, and a purely scholarly school institution, not this you may study here if your not (insert group here), because that would "lower the standard of our institution." I can not wait until these schools are torn down.

[redsoldier32]

not consistent with Christian principles, what the [email protected]*K does that mean, i think that we should rid of these christians schools, seriously

[Nicky Scarfo]

You know, there&#39;s another thread in the Discrimination forum where a few members are moaning that another College won&#39;t allow Christian students to harass homosexual students.

I was reading that thread earlier and wanted to reply, but I can&#39;t find it now. What the fuck happened to it?

ON EDIT: Thanks to Armchair, the matter has been explained. It&#39;s a shame, that was a really good debate going on there. Any way to recover it?

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

This is absolutely disgusting news. Sadly, many people would find that perfectly acceptable.

[SanPatricio&#39;sSoul]

The sad part about this is that homophobia or discrimination against GLBT people goes against Christian principles in and of itself, people just want to have a crusade, they totally make me look bad in my beliefs

[Black Dagger]

The sad part about this is that homophobia or discrimination against GLBT people goes against Christian principles in and of itself

The bible is quite overtly queerphobic is it not? Ditto for most christian denominations, esp. the Catholic church.

[Quills]

Originally posted by SanPatricio&#39;sSoul@Apr 17 2006, 05:56 AM
The sad part about this is that homophobia or discrimination against GLBT people goes against Christian principles in and of itself

...Lol?

they totally make me look bad in my beliefs

Your beliefs are bad.

[TC]

Originally posted by Black Dagger@Apr 17 2006, 08:49 AM

The sad part about this is that homophobia or discrimination against GLBT people goes against Christian principles in and of itself

The bible is quite overtly queerphobic is it not? Ditto for most christian denominations, esp. the Catholic church.

The New Testimate origionally contained no references to homosexuality or extra-marital sex and christians aren&#39;t supposed to adhere to Old Testimate law (according to the pauline epistles) so its irrelevent.

The references to &#39;homosexuals&#39; in some english translations are mistranslations of terms that mean quite different things in the greek versions and the references to pre-marital sex are useually actually &#39;prostitution&#39; in the origional.


I think really, people don&#39;t have prejudices because of their religion, people find creative ways to use their religion to justify pre-existing prejudices. There used to be creative translations of parts of the bible to refer to black people as sinful as well but no mainline christian church uses those anymore.

[Black Dagger]

This is new, Tragic Clown defending christians&#33;

The New Testimate origionally contained no references to homosexuality or extra-marital sex and christians aren&#39;t supposed to adhere to Old Testimate law (according to the pauline epistles) so its irrelevent.

The &#39;10 commandments&#39; are old testament law, are they &#39;irrelevant&#39; to christians? The fact is, christians take what they want from the old testament, when and where it suits them.

The references to &#39;homosexuals&#39; in some english translations are mistranslations of terms that mean quite different things in the greek versions.

So what is the meaning of the &#39;true&#39; translations?

I think really, people don&#39;t have prejudices because of their religion, people find creative ways to use their religion to justify pre-existing prejudices.

I don&#39;t think it&#39;s so easy to separate the two. Because religious authorities tend largely to be queerphobic, and people are meant to obey or at least &#39;greatly respect&#39; the will of their religious authorities - the structure of their religion can lead to them accepting these queerphobic ideas. There&#39;s that, and then there&#39;s the stuff in lots of religious texts that effectively says &#39;god hates homosexuals&#39;. The latter is reinforced by the former.

There used to be creative translations of parts of the bible to refer to black people as sinful as well but no mainline christian church uses those anymore.

I&#39;ve read some of the stuff used by the Christian Identity movement that they claim supports a ban on what they call &#39;race mixing&#39;, and when i went and read the biblical references they cite they do seem to support their conclusion. That&#39;s the problem, religious texts are often so huge, and vague that they&#39;re easy to manipulate.

[dislatino]

The &#39;10 commandments&#39; are old testament law, are they &#39;irrelevant&#39; to christians? The fact is, christians take what they want from the old testament, when and where it suits them.

I do believe this is the case, when it suits them they all jump in when they don&#39;t they all decide to turn a blind eye.

[TC]

This is new, Tragic Clown defending christians&#33;

...nooooo i&#39;m not...i was refering to the part of the bible that they supposedly follow not to the religion. The bible is a historical artifact thats been translated in ways that suit different people&#39;s politics...but you were talking about the bible itself not about christianity the religion.

If anything i think pointing out the inconsistencies between evangelical christian doctrine and the doctrine of the origional church and bible is useful in undermining evangelical christianity.

The &#39;10 commandments&#39; are old testament law, are they &#39;irrelevant&#39; to christians? The fact is, christians take what they want from the old testament, when and where it suits them.

its irrelevent to paul...the christians today selectively cherry pick the parts of the old testimate that they happen to like.

So what is the meaning of the &#39;true&#39; translations?

This is a little off topic but since you asked:

The problem is that it translates πορνοι and αρσενοκοιται as homosexuals which is not a literal translation. πορνοι is the inclusive male plural of the greek word for prostitute (which means that it can actually refer to female prostitutes as well), and αρσενοκοιται is a made-up contraction of αρσενος (male) and κοιται (plural of bed)...the most literal interpretation is a male with multiple beds which is presumably an alliteral way of saying a guy who sleeps around a lot, but contemporary translators have inverted the syntax of it to claim that it means "male bedder" (which doesn&#39;t make sense gramatically, its not a verb) and then to translate that as &#39;homosexual.&#39;

Also the word μαλακοι which in greek means &#39;soft&#39; and can either mean literally soft if describing like, a soft fabric, or it can mean morally lax...but in the modern english translations of the bible its often translated as &#39;effeminate&#39;, which is really not the original meaning.

The ancient greek word for homosexual, πηδερασστι, doesn&#39;t appear in the bible...if Paul was talking about gays he&#39;d probably have used it instead.

The bible hardly has the most mature ideas about sex in it but the homophobia was added later.