Poor Erskine College. They recently had a successful volleyball season, then two of their players came out as gay — which shouldn’t be a problem, except that Erskine is in South Carolina, right there in the front flap of the Bible Tightie-Whities, and trustees and administrators and community supporters freaked out. What to do? Easy. They turned to the Bible and issued a statement.
They banned homosexuality on campus.
Christ affirms that marital union is to be between a man and woman (Matt 19:4-6). The Bible teaches that monogamous marriage between a man and a woman is God’s intended design for humanity and that sexual intimacy has its proper place only within the context of marriage (1 Thes. 4:3-5, Col. 3:5-7). Sexual relations outside of marriage or between persons of the same sex are spoken of in scripture as sin and contrary to the will of the Creator (Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; 1 Tim. 1:9-11).
We believe the Bible teaches that all sexual activity outside the covenant of marriage is sinful and therefore ultimately destructive to the parties involved. As a Christian academic community, and in light of our institutional mission, members of the Erskine community are expected to follow the teachings of scripture concerning matters of human sexuality and institutional decisions will be made in light of this position.
The article that I quoted from also made the interesting point that they aren’t really that observant of the Bible — if they were going be that obedient to the Holy Word of God, they would forfeit a tournament game scheduled for a Sunday…the Sabbath.
I do appreciate this kind of behavior on the part of reactionary Christians. It alienates gay people, so there they lose 10% of the population (much more if you count straight people who are sympathic to gay rights, a growing demographic). Their conservative views on women alienate about half the population (again, it’s messy, because some women happily go along with Biblical demands, and there are men who oppose the Biblical straitjacket).
It’s a shame that the atheist movement can’t recognize that fairness, justice, and humanist values are more important in appealing to the disenchanted demographic than obtusely asserting that there is no god. There is no god…so now what are you going to do with your life? If we can’t answer that question, the disaffected will get hoovered up by someone who can.
Actually the Bible says that Saturday is the Sabbath. Most Christian cults get this wrong.
They only used New Testament references. There’s a general agreement among all but the craziest denominations that the rules of Exodus, Leviticus etc were repealed, or only apply to the Chosen People, or some other version that avoids having to explain why they aren’t enforcing a totally impossible body of rules & practice.
Except for that part of Leviticus that says gays are icky.
The 10% figure is probably too high.
And 4% is probably too low.
So they expel male students who spend the night in a girls’ dorm playing kootchy-koo, and vice verse? They have no co-ed dorms at all on their campus? Do they actively monitor every student 24 hrs to enforce the “marriage only” stricture? If they are so eager to ban gays, then follow up with the hets. When creepy, be totes creepy!
Matthew also didn’t like divorce – is that a qualifier also for the university?
And it would seem the prohibition would apply to sexual activity not orientation. Do they throw the heterosexuals off the team if they are sexually active and not married?
lff
Wouldn’t a proper Biblical-purity scan have to go back at least seven generations?
It’s a tough number to measure accurately – critics of the 4% number note it’s a self-reported number, and say that behaviorally the real number may be higher. Morally, the number is irrelevant; LGBT people deserve fairness no matter how many there are. From a purely political standpoint, I’d guess those unwilling to self-identify as LGBT are also less willing to vote based on it.
of course everyone knows what the students think of the rules handed down from the administration: “lip service” is what they call it. Sayin the words the trustees want to hear, then do not enforce it, just say it, let it all pass unenforced. /cynical-optimism
I hope there’s a ton of backlash. Friends and team members of the gay volleyball players will surely speak out. I hope.
Meanwhile, the dunderheaded administrators at Erskine are not alone in their decision to live in religious fanaticism land:
So, yeah, to hell with the constitution when we want our own special theocracy, but otherwise of course we are constitutional conservatives … blah blah blah.
Talking Points Memo link
3.8% LGBT people in a given population? Pffffff….bollocks.
If I’m not mistaken, there is a typo in
I do believe it should read “the disaffected will get hoovered up by someone who lies“.
It’s pretty simple really. The various authors of the Bible did not agree on this. Paul for example, thought that we were vapor beings trapped in meat bodies and that Jesus was going to come down and rescue him and his buddies any day now. Hence marriage was not a great idea, we should all sell all our stuff and live in common and recruit as many followers as possible before it was too late, and you should only have sex if your general level of horniness distracted you from the mission at hand and you ended up with a net loss of time spent proselytizing.
You can put any of it you don’t agree with “in context” and elevate the rest of it to sacred. Of course Adam and Eve were monogamous! There were only two people in the whole world! The Bible makes it clear that polygamy is the way to go, so long as you stop short of stealing other Jew’s women. And so on and so forth until it means nothing. I can’t shake the feeling that if the Almighty really meant this book as the ultimate guide to life, he could have done a little better.
The relevant quote is:
“GATES: Well, so what I did was I found a variety of what we call population-based surveys. So surveys designed to try to estimate a characteristic that you can generalize to the population. And all of these surveys asked sexual orientation identity questions. So questions like, do you consider yourself to be – and then, you know, you can choose gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual. And across those surveys, if you average it out, it comes to just shy of four percent. So about 3.8 percent who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.”
So:
– Kinsey’s original claim, says the article, was that 10 % of males in the US were “more or less exclusively homosexual” (presumably 5 or 6 on his scale). (No idea how he defined “male”.) The survey says that 3.8 % of people in general in the US consider themselves L, G, B and/or T.
– I’m pretty sure Kinsey’s claim was about the attractions people feel. The survey, instead, asks for self-identification. There are several obvious reasons for why the results won’t line up even if we misinterpret Kinsey’s claim as “10 % of sufficiently binary people are 5 or 6 on the Kinsey scale” and (bizarrely) lump T with LGB:
– The closet. People who are deep enough in denial won’t necessarily come out of it for an anonymous survey.
– Sheer ignorance. There are still people who don’t know that it’s even possible to be LGB. When such people feel same-sex attractions, they either rationalize them away, or they assume (like Alan Keyes) that everybody is like them and fakes being hetero for cultural reasons, except for those sinners who sin against that culture and are therefore branded with the LGB labels.
– Stereotypes. “I’m not fabulous, so I’m obviously not L/G/B”…
– Subcultures. There is nowadays a L and a G subculture; self-identification sometimes refers to belonging to that subculture and presenting in public as a member of it, not strictly to sexual orientation – so you can find Kinsey-6 people who don’t belong to these subcultures and therefore don’t identify as L/G (and, though this is irrelevant for the survey, you can find Kinsey-4 or probably -3 people who do, and therefore identify as L/G rather than B).
I have no idea if these factors together can account for the discrepancy between 3.8 % and 10 %. But I’m sure they fill at least part of the gap.
twas brillig
Perhaps the male student would get expelled, but certainly the female student. My guess is they don’t have co-ed dorms and the “boys” aren’t allowed past the lobby of the “girls” dorm. Also, women students living in dorms could have a strictly enforced curfew, but not the men, and have to sign in and out. And yes, they monitor women 24/7. That’s the way it was at the Southern Baptist college I went to in the 60s and I ca easily imagine it’s the same there now and at Erskine. In fact, it was only a few years before I started in 1966 that the college allowed couples to hold hands on campus.
One would hope so, but you might be surprised at how conservative the student body in these institutions can be.
Outside of the OT* the anti-homosexual bigots have 2 letters from Paul to hang their bigot hats on and the translation of those is iffy. This all stinks of cherry picking passages to support bigotry rather than scripture dictating bigotry.
* The old covenant was replaced by the new, so any appeal to the old covenant needs proper new covenant justification.
cag (#13)
Why do you assume that a religious believer would lie when answering the question of what to do with one’s life as it concerns the topics of fairness, justice, and humanist values? Religious institutions also have programs and projects for actually doing those things they say should be done. So while you’re busy snickering about how wrong and dishonest believers are, they’re out there actually addressing people’s wants and needs.
Once again, they lead with the wrong thing. Romans 1:26 starts off with homosexuality being imposed as God’s will. “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.” It doesn’t say it’s good, it strongly implies that God gave it just so that he could then punish them for it, but it does clearly say that God gave it.
To start a rant about God’s will with a reference to a verse that starts by saying that God’s will is the opposite of the point of the rant, shows that these people do not read or comprehend the Bible. They are just verse-picking and quote-mining to support their own personal feelings. And they do that to condemn someone for acting on personal feelings that God obviously gave them, even if you don’t read Romans 1:26.
I got my degree from Erskine in ’85, and while it was an ARP private school, they had an insane acceptance rate to med school (something that I thought I wanted at the time…). About 4 or 5 years ago there was a purge of professors and administrators who refused to toe the (religious) party line that the church began demanding-consequently, I’ve pretty much washed my hands of them. My greatest fear now is that people will think that my biology degree is worthless although 30 years ago it was a very different school…
Well, there’s one thing they now can’t be critical of ISIL for. I’m sure there are more.
Actually, Jesus says in Matthew 5:17-20 that he came not to destroy the Law and the prophets, but to fulfill them…i.e., he is saying here (or being made to say by the author of Matthew) that he is the Son of Man and the manifestation of that prophecy in Jeremiah (I think it was) where “the law shall be written on their hearts.” He also says “…but he who breaks even the smallest of these commandments, and teaches other men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom.”
So any good Christian should be following the Mosaic Law’s mitzvot…all 613 of them…except maybe a few bits about when to wash hands, what you may do on Sabbath, and not taking oaths (“let thy yes be yes, and thy no be no, for more than this cometh of evil.”)
Of course, asking for this level of self-awareness from the average Christian is approximately as fruitful as expecting a sea urchin to help you up Mount Everest, so…
Fredfile @9
Small correction (although it doesn’t affect the point you’re making): Matthew is the one gospel that gives conditions for divorce (19:9), for what is called “unchastity”, although I believe there’s doubt about the meaning of the Greek word in question. Mark and Luke, on the other hand, make no allowances for divorce.
#2 Downpuppy
Those people usually don’t like explaining this snippet of babble Mat 5:17-19
twas brillig (stevem)@6
Apologies, first comment ever, and I’m not even going to attempt blockquoting, but I have been lured from years of avid lurking for this:
“So they expel male students who spend the night in a girls’ dorm playing kootchy-koo, and vice verse? They have no co-ed dorms at all on their campus? Do they actively monitor every student 24 hrs to enforce the “marriage only” stricture? If they are so eager to ban gays, then follow up with the hets. When creepy, be totes creepy!”
They are pretty totes creepy enough. I graduated from Erskine in 1989. We have new buildings on campus now, but other than that, as I understand it, nothing much has changed in this regard, except possibly to worsen in the recent years of extreme fundie take-over. There are no co-ed dorms, and we had specific times the opposite sex could visit in the dorms. A few hours in the afternoons on weekends, 7PM-midnight Friday-Saturday, and for the girls’ dorms, Wednesday nights from 7PM to Midnight. If I recall, it was Tuesdays for the boys. You had to sign your guest in, even when it was a fellow student, and directly from the student handbook (although not a direct quote) the door had to be kept ajar three inches if the room contained a male and female, even when it was a relative. If your roommate was there, or someone else, you could close the door. We used to joke that orgies were okay with the school, just not one-on-one. And then at the end of visitation, you had to walk the guest down, sign them out, and make sure they were seen leaving by the person on sign-in duty. There were strict rules on campus PDA, too. Like any such situation, you really had to be caught by the right person to get in a lot of trouble, but yeah, the powers that be attempted to monitor students a great deal. I am trying to remember if it was in the handbook about discipline/potential expulsion, though. I think I saw my old college catalog recently, I’ll see if I can find it again. It may have been in there, too. They actually made it easier for gay students to be together in private, provided anyone on campus managed to find each other, and connect. You know, except for all the ways it would not have been easy there at all, as evidenced by these athletes some 26 years after I left the place. I do know three of my classmates have come out in the years since I left there. I feel sure there are more, but they’re the ones I know for sure.
That said, I managed to as much as live in my boyfriend’s dorm room for a semester or so because it was so much more convenient to my classes. And there were many other ways the rules were circumvented, of course. He and I were also apparently the very first ever out-atheists on the campus in the history of Irksome College. It was…interesting, at times. Sometimes, it was pretty bad, usually just a consistent mild annoyance, but while I was a curiosity, a frustration, a concern, and a complete enigma to my classmates, I know now that I was welcome there to a degree that I would not receive in the climate on today’s campus.
flyv65@20, Erskine made Pharyngula when they fired Crenshaw, too.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2011/09/08/william-crenshaw-and-erskine-college/
My degree is in English, so I lack much of the concern you have over yours, but I am really glad neither of kids ended up following me to Erskine like both once planned to do. My daughter would be there now, if she had.
I’m old, retired, a female of little interest to the Republican “control the ladies trolls”(except for Social Security abuse), and I do so appreciate your comments on the disaffected. Setting up a tent with bells and whistles, and shouting, “Come on over-There is no god here”. might get the curious in, but what is the follow up message? I was the village atheist long ago, and that got old. I love a tussle with the Tony Perkins clones, but such as these are amenable to nuthin’ . We indeed need the “vision thing”, a coherent path that we have perhaps done well on. And an incoherent christianist path strewn with roses can be very appealing.
Erskine College is a fan of Joseph Stalin and the RCC Inquisition. They had a purge a few years ago of suspected heretics.
The usual. A bunch of creationists doing what they do best. Persecuting anyone normal they can. That happens when you have to pretend mythology is real.
I won’t ask where the science faculty is. I suspect they’ve been disappeared or sent to a Gulag somewhere.
To be fair, I haven’t heard of anyone at Erskine burning scientists at the stake. Then again, it’s South Carolina and not somewhere that I pay attention too.
By the way: roachiesmom, welcome! Interesting comment.
Maybe… but 1 Corinthians 18-20 make it pretty clear “sexual immorality”, which includes homosexuality, is the exception to the “new covenant” exceptions. “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both” means it’s okay to eat pork and snails (under the new covenant) but “All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body” means you still can’t fool around.
Maybe.
It still cherries and palimpsests but it is a bigger hat peg than I had previously expected.
I don’t get it. So their Book tells them God is a gay hating bigot, and still they obey and worship Him? Is the absence of morality a membership requirement?
rietpluim #31:
Wrong way around. Most people’s gods are made in their own image. They merely choose the appropriate snippets of scripture with which to back up their world-view.
Agreed. For example, the book also says judge not lest blah blah and take care of the branch in your eye before pointing out the dust in another’s. But they don’t like those parts. They like the gay = inferior parts.
Saad @ 33 “They like the gay = inferior parts.”
I”m sorry, I think you mean ABOMINATION!!!!!!!!!!
@Daz #32 and @Saad #33 – I agree too, it’s just not how the people at Erskine see it. So I try to see things from their perspective and assume, for the sake of argument, that there really is a God and that He really dislikes homosexuals. My reply is: why would that be an argument? So many people dislike homosexuals. Some dislike black, or Jews, or Muslims. Why would it be any different when God dislikes homosexuals? It doesn’t mean they are right, it just means that He is a bigot. And a bigot does not deserve to be worshiped.