Being a proud graduate of Gordon university, i’ve discovered days gone by 2 months of debate over Gordon College’s anti-LGBT discrimination discouraging.
But absolutely absolutely nothing has frustrated me just as much as President D. Michael Lindsay’s op-ed in this newspaper (“There are some wounds that may need to be healed,” Aug. 25) monday.
Very nearly couple of years ago, we and lots of other LGBT alumni founded OneGordon, an 
LGBT advocacy company serving users of the Gordon community (we’re perhaps perhaps not connected to the school, needless to say). Many of us knew, from direct experience, just exactly how profoundly rooted Gordon’s anti-gay attitudes went, and just how very very long the trail to acceptance could be. It’s real that present activities have illuminated a fire under us, our supporters, therefore the world that is outside but I’ve stayed mentally prepared for the discussion because of the university during these problems become long and challenging.
The things I didn’t expect, nevertheless, had been when it comes to university leadership to produce statements that appear to keep therefore relationship that is little truth.
Dr. Lindsay’s aim in signing the letter that is famous asking President Obama for the exemption from LGBT work nondiscrimination guidelines, ended up being simple and easy — it absolutely was to exempt Gordon from those guidelines. You don’t have actually to just take my word because of it: In a page posted regarding the university web site on July 7 (“Questions about the Letter to President Obama”), he penned, “Signing the page was at keeping with your decades-old conviction that, being an clearly Christian institution, Gordon should set the conduct objectives for people in our community.”
If you’re unconvinced, read another page provided for alumni because of the president associated with Board of Trustees (the authority that is ultimate Gordon) on July 13; it is connected through the very very first article regarding the OneGordon internet site. Like all of us on the Board of Trustees, is concerned about Gordon’s ability to hire for mission in it, he explains Dr. Lindsay’s signature as follows: “ he. That’s the reason he finalized the page, plus in him 100 %. that people support”
Both the president together with trustees of Gordon university, then, want the capability to fire a feminine worker for, state, marrying an other woman.
However now Dr. Lindsay is apparently changing their story — maybe as the above place is costing Gordon local governments to its partnerships and institutions (such as for example Salem as well as the Peabody Essex Museum). In their current op-ed, he implies he didn’t have Gordon at heart at all, but instead other companies like Catholic Charities in addition to Salvation Army. However it is tough to reconcile this together with and also the president’s previous statements.
Equally difficult to believe is his claim that is repeated that university will not take part in discrimination. Nonetheless it does. You don’t have actually to simply take my term it’s on the college website for anyone to see (the top Google result for “gordon college behavioral standards”) for it:. Beneath the words “Who We Are,” there are practice that is“homosexual lumped in with theft and drunkenness as items that “will not be tolerated into the everyday lives of Gordon community users, either on or off campus.” It is hard to get together again this policy that is longstanding his declare that intolerance “has no destination at Gordon university.” Possibly, for this reason he generally seems to studiously avoid mentioning it.
The typical response is the fact that Gordon just isn’t against homosexual orientations, just behavior that is homosexual. That is like saying you have got no issue with ducks, just pets that quack. Singling out LGBT pupils and workers for special restrictions to their behavior is discriminatory, complete stop, in the same manner that Bob Jones University’s ban on interracial dating (a behavior) had been racist. Also it supports a wider campus tradition of homophobia that Gordon pupils we speak to have problems with even today.
The Gordon university that we understand and love, and that built such a formerly good reputation on the North Shore, wouldn’t normally run because of these uncomfortable conversations. It might practice truthful, candid discussion internally along with the wider community in regards to the genuine dilemmas on the line. There clearly was a profound discussion to be had about faith, pluralism, the Bible and sex in modern-day America, and Gordon university is in the middle of it. The teachers i am aware can be scared of losing their jobs recently — but they’re not scared of any intellectual or debate that is moral the sunlight, nor do they come right into these with their minds already made.
That’s the Gordon that people are typical vulnerable to losing. an organization which have taught intellectual humility, integrity and courage to a huge number of people over the past 125 years now seems dissembling and unserious, wanting to sweep a debate of historic magnitude underneath the rug just as if it had been merely a misunderstanding that is little.
I really do perhaps perhaps perhaps not envy President Lindsay’s place. The college’s trustees, faculty, staff, pupils, alumni, next-door neighbors and community lovers are pulling in various guidelines, and there’s no chance to satisfy everyone fully. I would really like to genuinely believe that their motives are great, even yet in the face area of unpleasant incongruencies in the plus the Trustees’ public statements, and just just just what often appears like a total unwillingness for either to see LGBT Gordonites as full members of the city.
For the reason that nature, that he is a wicked man who needs to repent (though that might also be true) if I could impart one sentiment into the mind of President Lindsay, it would not be. It could be this: it really is okay never to know the solution. It really is okay to be incorrect. Simply talk the facts in love as most readily useful as you’re able to, together with truth will set you free. That’s the variety of frontrunner this community requires.