Texas GOP calls to end gay marriage, criminalize adult Trans healthcare – Los Angeles Blade

By James Finn | DETROIT – 2022 has been a tough year for LGBTQ Pride as political and religious leaders openly push hate and right-wing groups like the Patriot Front and Proud Boys attempt to terrorize Pride events and even small children, like last weekend in Idaho and California’s Bay Area.

But many bright spots dot the headlines! Here’s an inspirational and existentially important story about a dedicated group of students spreading love in the best traditions of Christianity and Pride.

Have you seen those graduating seniors at the private Christian Seattle Pacific University? They went viral handing rainbow Pride flags to their university president instead of shaking his hand, protesting discrimination against their LGBTQ teachers. Their message — that Gen Z Christians aren’t about to tolerate anti-LGBTQ persecution in the name of Jesus— took TikTok and Twitter by storm.

The students’ gesture was brilliant and captured public imagination. Their video, which you can watch in full above, is jaunty, positive, and uplifting. LGBTQ folks all over the world are sending messages of love and thanks. Progressive Christian pastors have praised them in sermons and editorials, and mainstream press gave them a well deserved moment in the sun.

But there’s a lot more going on than you’ll find in that video.

I’ve been following this fascinating story for over a year, and I want tell you why it’s critical to LGBTQ equality, and why it’s existentially important to U.S. Protestant Christianity. Let’s dig under the headlines to look at who and what these kids are fighting for and what their tactics have to say about progress.

Part-time nursing professor refused promotion because he’s gay

The story first blew up in January 2021 when adjunct (part-time) nursing professor Jéaux Rinedahl applied for a full-time teaching opening at the invitation of his Seattle Pacific (SPU) department chair, who said Rinedahl’s 40-year nursing career and excellent rapport with students made him an ideal candidate.

Rinedahl, who calls himself a devout, church-going Christian, says he loves teaching and has a “deep and profound respect” for the university’s mission and values.

But then someone in administration learned Rinedahl is gay, probably by spotting his wedding photos online, and SPU denied him the promotion on the grounds that his “lifestyle” contravenes moral guidelines in university employment policies. SPU, however, “repeatedly encouraged” him to stay on part time, according to his attorneys.

He was good enough to work on campus, but not good enough to work fulltime. Students and faculty cried foul at once.

SPU students began protesting as soon as the story broke. Faculty overwhelming supported Rinedahl.

Students, faculty ,and staff members presented a united front, telling reporters they believe SPU’s employment policies are regressive, contrary to the university’s ethos of inclusion, and at odds with its ecumeniucal Christian traditions.

Students held vigils as professors challenged the SPU Board of Trustees to amend “antiquated rules” that didn’t reflect actual practice.

In response, several weeks later, the board issued a statement saying they would not reconsider university employment policies. If they thought their firm response would put the matter to bed, however, they badly miscalculated.

In April of 2021, 72% of SPU faculty voted to express “no confidence” in the board, calling on members to “propose a solution that eliminates the discriminatory hiring policy” and to “re-establish the former practice of having faculty representatives participate in regular board deliberations.” They asked board members who could not fulfill their responsibilities in line with the majority spirit of SPU faculty, staff and students to step down.

That did not happen.

Instead, the board hardened its position, drawing a line in the sand over LGBTQ matters, reflecting a national trend in the conservative Christian world.

This doesn’t sit well with the vast majority of Christians who actually teach and attend classes at SPU, however, who don’t consider themselves conservative Christians, who say they can’t accept practices they find contrary to their Christian beliefs.

So what’s going on? Why is the board digging in its heels?

Nobody is quite sure. While Seattle Pacific is a private Christian university historically tied to the Free Methodists denomination, it is not sectarian in operation. It’s not run as a branch of any Methodist church, and the student body is not predominantly Free Methodist or any kind of Methodist. Nor are they expected to be. Most students describe themselves as Christians, but like many Gen Z Seattle area residents, some do not.

The denomination has no legal authority over the university, and while it has contributed a small sum of money over the past 40 years, the total doesn’t amount to as much as a rounding error in a single annual budget.

Faculty are confused.

Christopher Hanson describes himself to The Guardian “as the only out queer full-time faculty member at the school.” When he interviewed for his position in 2019, he questioned anti-LGBTQ employment policy, but says he was “told not to worry about it because it was merely a historical document.”

Unlike students, SPU faculty members are required to be Christians. A certain amount of church attendance is also required, though professors say nobody has ever monitored that. Very few faculty members attend Free Methodist churches. Particular Christian dogma and denominational statements have not traditionally played a role in the university’s governance or hiring practices.

In short, SPU has operated as a sort of “open tent” for mainstream Protestant Christians. Faculty members tell reporters that a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ethos prevailed regarding gender and sexual minorities, and while some of them had been unhappy about feeling unaccepted, they could live with it in the spirit of ecumenical cooperation.

Then Jéaux Rinedahl came along.

The board used his case to batten down the anti-LGBTQ hatches, aligning themselves with conservative elements of the Protestant Christian world that had never been strongly represented on campus.

Can legal action put things right?

Professor Rinedahl sued SPU in state court, settling his case for an undisclosed amount, and then the Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP) helped SPU students join a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the Department of Education’s federal religious exemption to Title IX.

REAP is not expected to prevail in federal court, however, and the Department of Justice shocked LGBTQ advocates in court filing last June saying they would “vigorously” defend the right of religious colleges and universities to discriminate against LGBTQ faculty, staff, and students.

Short of Congress passing the proposed LGBTQ Equality Act, which will not happen anytime soon, the SPU board can, legally, discriminate against LGBTQ people.

SPU students aren’t waiting on the law

Leah Duff, 22, a Christian student from Maryland who came to SPU from an LGBTQ affirming church, puts it this way:

“You’re going to charge me thousands of dollars every quarter to come here and to get an education, but you’re not going to provide me the education that I deserve as a queer person by having queer staff and faculty? You talk about being ecumenical, being so diverse. And it’s like, where is it?”

Duff didn’t know about SPU’s anti-LGBTQ policies when she decided to attend because they weren’t visibly enforced then. She says she feels cheated, and she’s not alone.

She’s joined a group of LGBTQ and allied students holding a sit-in at the university administration complex. They’ve been at it for over 20 days and say they intend to occupy the building throughout the summer and for as long as it takes to get justice.

Students have made a video of the sit-in too, titling it, “That feeling when you’ve been sitting outside your president’s office for 100 HOURS to protest your university’s homophobic policies because you are a bunch of gen z students who won’t take no for an answer.”

Graduate and outgoing SPU student government president Laur Lugos helped organize the sit-in, and she handed Interim President Pete Menjares a handwritten letter at graduation along with her rainbow flag.

She told the Seattle Times she asked him to resign, expressing her dislike of “Christian niceness,” describing it as “superficial kindness” that cannot make up for Christians actively participating in discrimination.

She reminds me of a Mormon teenager who once wrote to tell me she didn’t need Church leaders to “be nice.” She needs them to to be good, to stop excluding her and treating her as second-rate because she’s a lesbian.

Gen Z Christians aren’t cool with lines in sand, and I predict SPU will have to accommodate that

Young Christians today are increasingly uncool with concrete moral judgements about matters theologians and Bible scholars say are not black and white. They say Christians agree to disagree about many matters and that LGBTQ issues are not, or should not be, any different.

Hardcore conservative Christians take a very different viewpoint, seeming to define their Christianity in terms of sexual matters, but Gen Z is fleeing those churches in unprecedented numbers.

SPU’s Christian faculty and (perhaps more critically) its Christian student body clearly don’t buy into the hardline position. So what happens next? This is a question of existential importance to SPU and many other Christian institutions.

If the board maintains its hardcore line, Gen Z Christian students like Leah Duff and Laur Lugos will choose different Christian universities (or secular universities), leaving SPU with a shrinking pool of potential students and likely very little diversity.

SPU faces a choice between accommodating diverse belief or shrinking and perhaps fading away. Much of the conservative Christian world seems faced with the same choice, as leaders draw lines in the sand that baffle their followers, especially younger generations.

For now, SPU students are fighting to get their school back. Reach out on TikTok and send them some love!

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James Finn is a columnist for the LA Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected]

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The preceding article was previously published by Prism & Pen– Amplifying LGBTQ voices through the art of storytelling and is republished by permission.

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