This week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in a case pitting UC Hastings School of Law against a Christian student group.

The school had denied recognition to the Christian Legal Society, which then challenged its anti-bias policies prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion or sexual orientation. The Christian Legal Society requires its voting members and officers to sign a "Statement of Faith" and abstain from all sex outside of heterosexual marriage.

On June 28, the Supreme Court upheld the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision for UC Hastings.

Washington Post, Friday, December 11, 2009
Campus Pride Executive Director
Shane Windmeyer

As quoted:

For decades, public and private universities have grappled with how to support gay students and protect them from verbal or physical attacks. Religious schools also have the challenge of upholding church teachings, such as the Catholic stance that it is not sinful to be attracted to someone of the same sex but it is sinful to act on such desires.

This delicate balance often puts gay students in a “conflicted state of acceptance,” said Shane L. Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, a national organization that helps colleges assess their gay friendliness. “The church wants to love the person and hate the sin. But what does that really mean?”

So visible support for gay students — such as a resource center, rainbow stickers, club tables and awareness weeks — is especially important at religious schools, he said. But such actions do not change campus attitudes overnight, he said.

Read the Article

(Note: I'm blogging today instead of tomorrow because tomorrow I'll be in DC to lobby against the Stupak amendment. Want to get involved? Check out ChoiceUSA to see what's happening in YOUR communities!)

After we lost Question 1 here in Maine I was pretty upset. But, more than being upset, I was kind of at a loss for what to do. I had just thrown myself so entirely into something that I cared about, yes, but that also gave me a real, political community outside of my school. My school is fabulous, and progressive, and a lot of other things, but sometimes we're not very political.

This campaign showed me that, a mere 28 minutes away, there was a community. Sure, they were all a little older than me, and it wasn't like they routinely met or anything. But they were there, and they were accepting, and I'd just spent 18 hours a day for a few weeks with them. I didn't want to lose that.

So I went to church.

Last week, it was announced that Texas Christian University would create a DiverCity Q Living Learning Community for LGBT issues within the campus housing options. Eight students had already committed to the housing program. The "Living Learning Community" concept has been a successful model at many other colleges and universities across the country. The program supports diverse student populations as well as provides a meaningful way to learn within a living learning community atmosphere. Such communities have been developed around religious issues, ethnic/racial minorities, academic disciplines, athletics, international students, foreign languages, etc.

After the decision was announced last week, TCU received praise and controversy surrounding the decision to extend the current living learning communities to also have DiverCity Q. Today TCU Chancellor released this statement:

"TCU will not launch any new living learning communities at this time," TCU Chancellor Victor J. Boschini, Jr., said in a statement. "Instead we will assess whether the concept of housing residential students based on themes supports the academic mission of the institution as well as our objective to provide a total university experience."

In reaction to this news and change in decision, Campus Pride Executive Director Shane Windmeyer released this official statement, as follows:

So we had our meeting Wednesday, and two members of a Christian student organization showed up. It was wonderful. They were very respectful, non-judgmental, and they invited us to a picnic along with another LGBT org, and we hear that they may be inviting other student organizations in general, so luckily this time nothing negative happened.

In preparation to avoid any negative circumstances, our E-Board decided to make this meeting "Closing the Circle". For our organization, at the beginning of the year we do "Crossing the Line" and advertise it to get as many people as possible there, and then a moderator reads statements of identity such as "I have or have had an eating disorder" or "I identify as a person of color", and people step forward as they feel it applies to them, then those who have crossed the line are given a chance to speak, typically encouraged to make their statement "I never want to hear..." and whatever they would like to fill that with. For Closing the Circle, we do not advertise so that it is only those members who have been active in our organization over the past year, and it is a silent activity, meant more for personal reflection and quiet contemplation. We did it at the meeting when the Christians came largely because it is a silent activity to discourage any outbursts or anything of that sort, and for them to see who we are... more than just gay or heathens or however we may fear being seen, but rather as everything we are as people... and a lot of us had things in common with the two who came to our meeting. For me, I was excited to see one of them step forward for "I am an ally". I'm not sure he knew what it meant in the LGBT sense, but even the fact that they participated with us was encouraging.

Congratulations to student leaders at Texas Christian University (TCU). TCU will provide theme housing for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues and is the first Texas college to do so. Campus Pride encourages colleges and universities to consider LGBT theme housing/communities as a way to support LGBT and ally students and ensure a safe living environment on campus.

Campus Pride is quoted in the Dallas Morning News article titled "TCU to provide special housing for gay, lesbian students" by Holly Hacker on Tuesday, April 7, 2009.

EXCERPT:

Texas Christian University offers special housing for students interested in world affairs. The environment. Foreign languages. And, starting this fall, gay and lesbian issues.

TCU is apparently the first campus in the state to reserve housing for gay students and straight students who support them. And that's earning kudos from advocates for gay students.

"It just basically says that TCU wants their campus to be safe for all students and wants everyone to feel welcomed," said Shane Windmeyer, executive director and founder of Campus Pride. The nonprofit group supports gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender college students.

Read the full article online at http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/040809...

So, update on my campus religious organization issue.

Quick recap: My campus's Christian organizations have recently been mobilizing- confronting non-Christian individuals on campus and challenging their beliefs, closing their doors to questioning students (only allowing in affirmed Christian students), and most concerning to my position questioning LGBT students on campus and trying to "save" us.

Most recently, the leader of a group on campus asked our President when our next meeting is, and after she told him she asked if he wanted time to speak at the meeting or what we could do for him, and he said he just wanted to "show up". One of our students was told that this person and some of the students in his organization are going to come to our meeting and pray over us. Well, we notified our advisor and she went to the director of student activities. Our initial plan was apparently to allow them 3 minutes at the beginning of our meeting to lead us in a prayer and hope that they made them happy. Now I'm going to preface this by admitting that I have some pretty "atheistic" views. I put that in quotes, because I'm not necessarily anti-beliefs, or an anarchist like some would associate with that term. Simply put, I don't believe in any sort of higher power, and I don't like those views being forced on anyone who doesn't seek them out. I think it's fine to have a personal belief system, and to share that with like-minded individuals... but persecution is definitely outside my "things that are OK" zone. So I kind of went crazy. I told our advisor in our meeting that there was absolutely no way we should allow them in our doors, no less allow them to pray over us.

So... I have an update on the religious issues with my campus. After our meeting this week, some members noticed a Christian group sitting near us discussing gays in the bible, and their leader followed our President to our office and asked her when and where we meet. According to some of our members, they are planning on sitting in on our meeting and praying over us.

Seriously.

So, I have a couple ideas for how to deal with this situation. My first was to let them, then I would get together a bunch of my gay guy friends and our President would get together her bi and lesbian buddies, and we'd go to their meeting and just make out. That idea got shot down. So I guess I'm going with my plan two: I just so happen to have a good relationship with the staff of our campus newspaper, and I'm inviting them to our next meeting. If they don't show up, hey at least they're covering our organization... but if they do, that's a hell of a lead in to our Hate Crime Awareness Week where we deal with issues of bias and hate on campus. Also, it'll be a great way to get the campus involved in taking action against organizations who at this point seem like they're stalking us, and making our members not only comfortable attending meetings, but being on campus at all.

I'll let you guys know how things shape up as they go... right now it looks like things are going to get more interesting before they go boring again.

The Westboro Baptist Church, for those of you who don't know, is an extremist group famous for things such as the "God Hates Fags" slogan, protesting soldier funerals, and apparently now making death chants at President Barack Obama. At this point it's hard to take these guys seriously for me really, because the only attention they get is either comical or just highlighting how extreme and out there they are. However, Kellan Baker in this article is my new hero. He put together the "Phelps-a-thon" (Phelps is the family name of those behind the WBC) which raised money as long as the WBC protesters were at the White House, netting $500 for Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence. FANTASTIC! And to top it all off, Fred Phelps is stilled banned from the UK. I don't often get chances to say this in life, but... neener neener neener!

So tonight is my last taste of sweet, sweet freedom... the Spring Quarter starts tomorrow. This entire week I've basically gotten to spend punishing my tailbone by sitting on my butt for extended periods of time, either in bed with a book, in my computer chair vegetating over old episodes of Buffy, Xena, and the X-Men cartoon from the 90s (PS: Did I mention I'm a crazed X-Men fanboy?), or other various prone, non-contributing-to-society positions. Tomorrow also means the resumption of my duties as Vice President of Rainbow Alliance. I'm actually kind of excited to get back to work. I get to reconnect with some fresh faces I'd only begun to meet, Spring quarter is our busiest quarter for events, and I get to take Intro to Sexuality Studies, the flagship class being tested to see if Wright State should offer a Sexuality/LGBT/Queer Studies major.

There are some drawbacks however. This year we seem to be facing more trouble than usual with our campus's Christian organizations. This is not to say that Christians are anti-gay, or that the Christian students in general are anti-gay... but there has been concerning activity with the Christian organizations on my campus lately. Last quarter, we got an e-mail from a former member of the main evangelical group on campus notifying us that members of the organization routinely pray for God to strike us down and destroy us, and the President of our Christian Student Union followed our President into our organization's office one morning and told her that God came to him and told him to save her, and to top all that off the Campus Bible Fellowship organized on Ash Wednesday to confront those on campus who weren't wearing ash and asked them why they had chosen not to accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior.