Source: Zionica electrionic news service
On the same day President Obama became the first U.S. president to come out in support of same-sex marriage, a group of students announced the presence of the “Biola Queer Underground” at this small evangelical university, touching off a highly-charged debate about Christianity and homosexuality.
The group launched a website and posted flyers around the Biola University campus May 9 with the following message: “We want to bring to light the presence of the LGBTQ community at Biola. Despite what some may assume, there are Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender, and Queers at Biola. We are Biola’s students, alumni, employees, and fellow followers of Christ. We want to be treated with equality and respected as another facet of Biola’s diversity.”
The emergence of the group, whose members remain anonymous, has shaken this 104-year-old Christian college in Southern California. Like many schools rooted in evangelical Christianity, Biola has a code of standards that includes prohibitions on sex outside of marriage and same-sex relationships: Sex is “designed by God to be expressed solely within a marriage between a husband and wife,” according to Biola’s student handbook, which goes on to say that “sexual misconduct, depending on the facts and circumstances of each case will result in disciplinary action.”
With debate raging over the group and its aims, Biola President Barry Corey told students that the school has no intention of changing its policy to “fit increasingly accepted ethical or moral norms. In particular, we don’t need to modernize or bend our biblically based position on sexual ethics.”
On the same day President Obama became the first U.S. president to come out in support of same-sex marriage, a group of students announced the presence of the “Biola Queer Underground” at this small evangelical university, touching off a highly-charged debate about Christianity and homosexuality.
The group launched a website and posted flyers around the Biola University campus May 9 with the following message: “We want to bring to light the presence of the LGBTQ community at Biola. Despite what some may assume, there are Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender, and Queers at Biola. We are Biola’s students, alumni, employees, and fellow followers of Christ. We want to be treated with equality and respected as another facet of Biola’s diversity.”
The emergence of the group, whose members remain anonymous, has shaken this 104-year-old Christian college in Southern California. Like many schools rooted in evangelical Christianity, Biola has a code of standards that includes prohibitions on sex outside of marriage and same-sex relationships: Sex is “designed by God to be expressed solely within a marriage between a husband and wife,” according to Biola’s student handbook, which goes on to say that “sexual misconduct, depending on the facts and circumstances of each case will result in disciplinary action.”
With debate raging over the group and its aims, Biola President Barry Corey told students that the school has no intention of changing its policy to “fit increasingly accepted ethical or moral norms. In particular, we don’t need to modernize or bend our biblically based position on sexual ethics.”
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