University compares homosexuality to smoking and tobacco use
by Matt | January 30th, 2006 |According to an article published by 365gay.com, a small, Christian university is comparing the expulsion of a gay student to a hospital asking a smoker to leave.
On January 13, John Brown University expelled Michael Guinn for violating “campus lifestyle guidelines”. Guinn says that he was required to abide by a code of behavior that no other student was required to follow.
The school found out about his sexual orientation, supposedly, through an email to school administrators pointing them to Guinn’s online journal.
According to the article:
According to Guinn, he was required to sign a pledge that he would not dress in women’s clothing, not slap others on the buttocks if he was a member of a sports team, not hug or shake hands with other men for too long, not “broadcast his lifestyle”, and not tell other students he was gay until he knew them well.
Guinn said it was difficult to make friends under the restrictions.
On the weekend the university released a statement to correct what it called “misconceptions” in Guinn’s account. The statement however did not address the specifics of Guinn’s allegations, except to say that it did not have separate “lifestyle” contracts for difference students.
“We can say in general, however, that Guinn’s repeated and knowing violation of the standards laid out in the community covenant that he signed warranted our disciplinary decision, which is consistent with other cases of student discipline in the past,” the statement said.
It went on to say that hospitals ask anyone smoking to leave and notes that airports remove anyone making threats, so too, the statement said, the university has the obligation to expel anyone violating its rules of conduct.
“As a Christian university we believe that scripture sets our standards for the ways in which we should live our lives. We articulate those standards for our undergraduates in our community covenant. We do not have separate covenants for different undergraduates on campus, and we discipline on the basis of behavior, not on the basis of identity,” the statement said.
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So… the next time that Christian fundamentalists try to break the First Amendment by getting government to endorse religion, does that mean that we, as Americans, have the “obligation to expel anyone violating” our “rules of conduct”?
Technorati Tags: gay youth, gay, lgbt, gay rights, michael guinn, john brown university, expulsion
Matt, 21, is an LGBT activist and youth advocate working mainly within the cities of Greensboro & Winston-Salem and the State of North Carolina. He is the Owner & Editor of InterstateQ.com and has been active in LGBT advocacy work since the age of 14, now currently serving as the Executive Director/Co-founder of Activate! - The North Carolina Advocacy Coalition.
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