And you do know what voluntary means do you?
Students at Liberty University have to sign an honor code, which describes accepted and forbidden behavior – and LGBTQ students fear they have to remain in the shadows to graduate
It took one weekend to leave Tessa Russell truly exposed.
On 6 April 2019, her girlfriend Ash Ables traveled to Liberty University in central Virginia to surprise her. They had been dating for four months, but it was her first time visiting Russell on campus.
The two were eating pizza in front of the TV when Russell’s resident adviser (RA) swiped into the room, catching the couple off guard. Because same-sex relationships are effectively verboten at the evangelical Christian school, Russell immediately tried to pass the relationship off as platonic.
Her resident adviser wasn’t buying it, and ordered Ables to leave campus. Russell frantically reached out to her Liberty LGBTQ network, and the couple crashed at a friend’s apartment.
Then Russell’s cellphone rang. Her RA demanded that she return, saying the two “could not be together”. Feeling that she didn’t have a choice, she left Ables and went back to her dorm at 3am, where her adviser was waiting.
“You know, you can get counseling for this kind of thing. These relationships are sinful. I recommend you go to therapy for this,” Russell was told.
“It was just painful because it was so shameful – even though it’s something that should not be – I have a girlfriend who I love. There was nothing wrong with that, but it was just so looked down upon by my peers,” Russell, who graduated in the spring, told the Guardian.
Here’s the thing. Why would a lesbian go to a university which says that being a lesbian is a sin? There being some tens of thousands of places across the country that are willing to take the cash in return for the degree certificate.
Why would you do that?
Of course, it’s possible, on further investigation, to think that there might be a slightly different problem here:
Those folks down south are known to have had the occasional problem with miscegenation as well.
Dunno but i’m guessing these RAs main role is the virginity patrol so probably millions of stories of them being judgemental,prudish, and overzealous as they tell horny heteros to cool it or jesus won’t love them as much.
Dunno, Tim.
I’m not sure lesbianism is really real, tbh. Apart from a small number of unfortunate looking beefy women who seem to have more masculine personality traits and make excellent PE teachers and NCO’s, I reckon most lesbianism is a phase girls go through because becoming an adult is confusing and scary, or maybe a result of something darker – trauma at the hands of men.
Probably parents wouldn’t be delighted to see their daughter cuddling up with a fat black girl (BTW, black parents tend to be a lot more forthright about their dislike of both homosexuality and white people) but it’s not really miscegenation, since the products of such a union would likely involve a Subaru, some cats, and maybe a turkey baster.
It was just painful because it was so shameful – even though it’s something that should not be – I have a girlfriend who I love. There was nothing wrong with that
She should get her money back from Liberty, since they’ve obviously failed to teach her the basics of Christian sexual morality.
Interestingly, the Abrahamic faiths have historically been a lot less annoyed by lesbos than sodomites. Can’t remember any cities being destroyed by fire and brimstone because of Sandi Toksvig.
Muslims, God bless em, are a lot more excitable about this stuff than are Christians or Jews, but still see it as a lesser form of haram behaviour than zina (unlawful sexual intercourse in Sharia).
have a girlfriend who I love. There was nothing wrong with that,
Yes there is, honey, yes there is. You only have to look at that photo to see this is a cry for help.
But by all means, don’t kick her out for being a lesbian if you like. Kick her out for being a lying toe rag. She knowingly broke the honor code. She is a liar and a cheat.
I know people who have kids at Liberty or were there not too long ago, and I can tell you that they really are sincere about being a Christian school. So, no idea if this RA has a problem with mixed race couples, but I do believe they’d intervene in any lesbo/gay tryst.
Why would a lesbian go to a university which says that being a lesbian is a sin?
Perhaps the article’s closing line offers a suggestion:
>”When she and Ables get married next year, she hopes, but doesn’t expect, her family to come to the wedding.”
Probably went there due to family expectations.
>”After a stay at a psychiatric hospital specializing in eating disorders and months of secular therapy, she returned to campus recognizing she was a lesbian . . .”
Hmmm
PJF
Possibly
But I wouldn’t discount the possibility that this is a set up to embarrass a traditional school, organised by woke leftist atheists from start t finish. Two ton Tessa is merely the instrument.
Clearly, even though she attends a Christian college, she’s not very familiar with God’s views on teh gayers and duh lessies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJy2UucDcDw
Plenty of people don’t “discover” their sexuality until they’re older than 18 and it wouldn’t surprise me if growing up in the kind of household where Liberty is a serious choice for college means you’re less likely to have figured this stuff out by then. So not convinced by the “lesbians shouldn’t have applied in the first place” argument.
“Steve
Dunno, Tim.
I’m not sure lesbianism is really real”
It is in my head. Where many of the attractive women I know (or know of, or have seen a picture of) are often at it when I have a spare few minutes – and some privacy.
How any religious establishment can call itself a university beats me. And would any degree from such a place be worth any more than one in grievance studies anyway?
How any religious establishment can call itself a university beats me.
Might be worth checking on the history of universities, Nick.
Andrew C – This is the kind of feminism I can get behind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL4qEtTu2Yk
Views about homosexuality are quite heterogeneous even among white evangelicals by the way. There are several mainline Protestant churches that no longer preach homosexuality is a sin (or indeed pre-marital sex especially if it is within a loving relationship) and will happily perform a gay marriage service. Evangelicals haven’t generally evolved so fast to fit modern social mores, but the process is already underway.
While the majority of mainline Protestants support gay marriage, only about a third of white evangelicals do, but that figure is rapidly growing (was closer to one in ten a decade back) and there’s a very marked generation split, plus a gender difference – so 60% of young female white evangelicals think homosexuality should be accepted, for example.
Liberty draws from the more conservative end even of the evangelical spectrum but it wouldn’t surprise me if a substantial proportion of its student body believe / practise a version of Christianity within which homosexuality and gay marriage are considered acceptable (in the more “sexually liberal” evangelical context, often because sexuakity is considered a gift from God etc).
https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/
https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/evangelical-protestant/views-about-homosexuality/
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN19I2MU
After a stay at a psychiatric hospital specializing in eating disorders and months of secular therapy, she returned to campus recognizing she was a lesbian
Ah. So we have symptoms as much as sexuality here. Can’t see how scissoring a butch munter is going to help; perhaps Ash is a teddy substitute?
MBE – Yarp. It’s kind of like how the Israelites “evolved” their religious ideas while Moses was otherwise occupied, and had to be corrected. Presenting sin as virtue is as old as Baal.
Few women pay Gamecock any attention. Lesbianism is widespread. Only possible explanation.
Steve:
. . . cuddling up with a fat black girl . . .
With that and the anorexia thoroughly cured, scissoring doesn’t seem possible. So what’s the point?
. . . black parents tend to be a lot more forthright about their dislike of both homosexuality and white people . . .
Ashland in Virginia has a drag queen on a bicycle who is acknowledged by passers-by, and a black school bus / railroad crossing monitor who is acknowledged by passers-by. I haven’t seen either acknowledge the other. (The crossing is infamous for cars driving onto the tracks, which is what caught my attention recently)
Can’t remember any cities being destroyed by fire and brimstone because of Sandi Toksvig.
My TV nearly bought it when she pitched up on Time Team (“fer fuck’s sake!”), though to be fair it was a lot more (all) to do with it being Toksvig than a lesbian.
I don’t think miscegenation can be the problem that means people of different races having children – not something they will be doing! Or at least not as both being genetic donors.
PJF – I dunno why, but Ms Toksvig always struck me as being a less witty female clone of Clive Anderson
Steve: I’m not sure lesbianism is really real, tbh.
I don’t suppose you’ve ever looked at the audience at a Joan Armatrading concert!
Can’t remember any cities being destroyed by fire and brimstone because of Sandi Toksvig.
The Cities of the Plain?
Of course, it’s possible, on further investigation, to think that there might be a slightly different problem here:
Yet further investigation reveals that Liberty University is located in Lynchburg, VA.
MBE
Colour me sceptical on those poll results – and those polls in the UK where allegedly 73% of adults “support” gay marriage. Not supporting gay marriage is one of those things that people are shy about admitting – like voting Republican or Tory.
@Theo
People being shy to state socially unpopular views to pollsters is definitely a fair point. Having said that, what rate of acceptance of gay marriage would you think is a reasonable estimate for the UK? Even if you think shyness has depressed the percentage I can’t see the true figure being much lower than that – church attendance in the UK is relatively low so few people would give a biblical justification, and indeed many UK churches now perform gay marriage ceremonies (perhaps a greater proportion than in the US, since our churches are largely more comparable to US “mainline” denominations with fewer equivalents of their evangelicals?). Yes there are other cultural / religious minorities that are more socially conservative but I still don’t see how those opposed to gay marriage could reach 50%+ of the population. Obviously anecdotal experience will vary across the UK – am sure the rate of support differs between Brighton and Bradford, or more generally rural/urban and young/old.
I did wonder what proportion of the UK population actually knows a gay couple personally (as opposed to knowing gay individuals) since that’s a factor likely to improve acceptance. The ONS reckon there are about a quarter of a million cohabiting gay couples https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-49263465 so potentially quite a decent proportion of Brits will know one even if that’s not “likely to be one living on your street” levels. Wonder what their geographic spread is though, suspect it may be very urban-concentrated.
TMB – The Cities of the Plain?
Cruel 🙂
MBE – I think you’re probably right but I’m not sure what “acceptance of gay marriage” means. Is it like accepting the theory of gravity, or accepting that flying via Ryanair is an unpleasant experience?
I reckon most people just don’t give a shit about LGBTQIAWTF issues, never did give a shit about LGBTQIAWTF issues, and don’t want to hear any more about LGBTQIAWTF issues*. This is tolerance, which is, of course, increasingly verboten.
(*I’m not sure to what extent, if any, Adam and Steve care about LGBTQIAWTF issues either. Seems to be scraping diminishing returns by pushing ever weirder boundaries of fringe sexual interests – the well-documented identity politics pivot to try to normalise men who want to be girls right after gay weddings were legalised being the textbook example. Men who just enjoy bumsex but aren’t that keen on proselytising genderspaz to children are falling down the progressive stack)
We have a gay couple in the village and one of them was recently elected on to the Parish Council. I’m not sure if they’re married, the must be in the early 30s and are quite popular. I don’t think anyone in this conservative area would object of they were and that includes a lay preacher.
Anyway, to the girl in the story: This is the Guardian so we know there’s a lot to this story we’re not being told. My guess is rebellious teenager rebels, gets sent to school she doesn’t want to go to so rebels again. Probably some over bearing parental issues at work as well.
“LGBTQIAWTF”
Steve, I’m concerned that you know too many significant characters of LGBT . . . .
*People used to show off by reciting Pi to some depth of digits. Perhaps Steve has a new way of showing off.
MBE
I have plenty of gay friends and acquaintances and have even been to two of their marriages quite happily, but I don’t ‘aprove/support’ gay marriage, being the viciously bigoted Papist that I am.
I suspect that is how most people interpreted tolerance until about ten minutes ago. It might have something to do with the fact that, apart from the between-the-sheets-aspect, they are no different in their general attitudes than me. And, like me, they can’t stand the professional gay proselytisers.
(Opinion poll result? I call trash. I’m on YouGovs panel and the amount of question begging and assumptions makes the answers they get extremely unreliable, before you even get on to questions of shyness.)
I suspect the answer may simply be that religious colleges set lower entry requirements in order to maintain their student numbers. Certainly the quality of ‘education’ supplied by these institutions is deeply unimpressive.
MBE
I imagine the level of “support” for gay marriage is quite low overall, though the level of “acceptance” or “tolerance” is probably quite substantial – though very low among immigrants, white and, er, coloured.
There are three gay couples in my general neighbourhood. All work in the private sector and are generally quite right-wing. Of the six men, only one appears in any way gay: the others dress conservatively, behave normally and are good neighbours. One couple have married. The other two couples can’t see the point of marrying when their civil partnership meets their needs. When some socially conservative gays reject marriage, perhaps “support” for gay marriage isn’t that substantial after all.
@JJ
That’s a really interesting point. Liberty University is actually quite academically selective. Brigham Young University is Mormon but has similar rules against pre-marital sex and homosexual behaviour (as well as requirements for “clean language”, “dress and grooming standards” and abstinence from “alcoholic beverages, tobacco, tea, coffee”!) yet at the same time has academically selective entry, a substantial research and doctorate programme, and a surprisingly strong reputation in areas of the sciences. The idea that all seriously religious (rather than ones with a religious affiliation that’s largely nominal/historic these days) universities are poor quality isn’t quite right. However, the fast-growing Grand Canyon University, which has overtaken Liberty University as the largest evangelical university in America, is less academically selective, and has indeed used that, as well as its online offering, to drive growth. That’s why I think there’s some truth in your point in general.
I also knew someone who attended a smaller Christian college (liberal arts place I think) before dropping out. Academic hothouse it was not, and it was clear these smaller places operated a variety of strategies to get bums on seats – the religious aspect seemed to largely target parents (making them comfortable with the idea of letting their son/daughter go away to college), and lower entry requirements and relatively cheap fees were also part of the draw. From what I could gather anecdotally, the student body there was not in fact particularly religious or socially conservative – which I think would come as a surprise to many Brits with their stereotypes about American Christian educational establishments. (As a kid I often used to read Southern Living magazine. Bit incongruous in England. Anyway, one thing I loved in the small ads were all the “military academy” style private high schools. The sell was basically “Is your kid lacking discipline because of lax standards at public high schools?” Very little mention of academic excellence which clutters British private school adverts, plenty of muscular Christianity and discipline, discipline, discipline. So imagine the kind of kids that get sent there. Not the kind who have a surplus of Christian discipline to begin with I imagine. Now apply similar logic to the question of which parents will buy the pitch of a small-town, minimally academic, heavily – in principle – Christian college. The psychology, and distrust of a “liberal” education system, is pretty similar.)
BYU is the kind of objectively “good” university that, if it wanted to, could recruit non-Mormon students quite easily. But it doesn’t even try to market itself in non-Mormon communities and the stats suggest 99% of its students are Mormons. On the other hand Grand Canyon University has a student body who are 20% Catholic (perhaps because it doesn’t push the evangelical Protestantism as much as Liberty U does, but still) and 30% of students did not apply because of the school’s Christian mission. My working hypothesis about the ecosystem of U.S. Christian higher education institutions is that at the top end (not necessarily in terms of academic/research standing, though that’s clearly one factor) there are some “high-prestige” institutions that can fish within the pool of their particular denomination sufficiently successfully that they can fill their places without either lowering entry standards or having to dilute their ideological vision… and at the bottom end, lower-prestige institutions may need to cast their nets wider, compromising on both academic and religious standards.
Even within a particular religious community, there will inevitably be intergenerational clashes and Christian higher education institutions – where the young enjoy relative independence from parents for the first time, but older and more traditionalist figures still set “the Rules” – are going to be a flashpoint for them. Attitudes on social issues show faster liberalisation among the young even within “conservative” communities – this is clear both from trends and age-group cross-tabulations in the Pew data I posted above, and is unlikely to be entirely an artefact of “shyness” or other biases that affect the overall level of poll responses. Perhaps contrary to your remark, I think we’re more likely to hear reports of such clashes from the higher prestige and relatively more academically selective institutions. Partly that’s media bias – they love a Liberty U story, everyone knows who Falwell is, and a story of doomed love at some tiny Christian college in the back of beyond that nobody’s ever heard of just isn’t going to have the same impact. But also, my anecdotal impression is that the less prestigious schools may have had to make more practical compromises to handle students who are, shall we say, less uniform in their religious convictions and commitment. I doubt it’s within their means to do much prodnosing into students’ private lives – couldn’t afford to expel half the student body. Somewhere like BYU or Liberty U probably have the critical mass of virtuous/well-behaved/compliant/brainwashed students (delete as per personal preference) required for the authorities to think it’s even worth trying “maintaining standards” on the rest of them. And if that goes down badly, sometimes it’s going to get into the press.
(Pretty sure I’m neglecting some important confounding factors such as institution size. Some data cribbed from https://religionnews.com/2018/04/27/liberty-university-is-no-longer-the-largest-christian-university/ )
Yep.
“Certainly the quality of ‘education’ supplied by these institutions is deeply unimpressive.”
[citation needed]
My son, spending 10 years in various colleges and trade schools, reported often the Leftist BS he was subjected to. Professors enjoyed presenting their Leftist beliefs to their captive audiences more than discussing the actual subject of their classes.
NFW Liberty does that. In fact, Liberty may be superior to Harvard and MIT for undergraduates. Because they actually teach the subjects.
My working hypothesis about the ecosystem of U.S. Christian higher education institutions is that at the top end (not necessarily in terms of academic/research standing, though that’s clearly one factor) there are some “high-prestige” institutions that can fish within the pool of their particular denomination sufficiently successfully that they can fill their places without either lowering entry standards or having to dilute their ideological vision… and at the bottom end, lower-prestige institutions may need to cast their nets wider, compromising on both academic and religious standards.
So they are like every other college in America then.
You do not have to be religious to have a low-end liberal arts college that is only interested in bums-on-seats. In fact I would think that even the most dire Christian college is not as bad as some in the State system of California. And some of the Christian colleges are pretty dire.
Nautical Nick November 25, 2020 at 11:48 am – “How any religious establishment can call itself a university beats me. And would any degree from such a place be worth any more than one in grievance studies anyway?”
I am sorry to say that that is such an a-historical culturally-illterate statement I hardly know where to start. I won’t even bother. I will point to the world of American High Schools where Catholic schools have queues of students. Fleeing their secular government – and free – competitor. Because secular education is so bad.
I am willing to bet that in the near future there will be no Western education except religious education. Every secular institution will *only* have Grievance Studies. Even in Physics.
@SMFS
“So they are like every other college in America then.”
Yeah, fair point. The TLDR of my argument was that – in what might seem a paradox to the less religiously inclined – the Christian colleges that go heaviest on all the God stuff, right up to trying to control their students’ sex lives (or even caffeine consumption!), may often be the ones with the stronger academic requirements, since it’s the higher prestige institutions which have the luxury of enforcing either