FRANKFORT, Ky. (ABP) — Kentucky's governor has said he will hold, but not veto, $11 million in government funding for a Baptist college that made headlines by expelling a gay student.
Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) said he will not disburse the grant — earmarked to help establish a pharmacy school at the University of the Cumberlands — until questions about its constitutionality are settled in court.
Addressing Kentuckians on statewide television April 24, Fletcher said, “I believe we need to answer once and for all in Kentucky the legality of funding private faith-based institutions for public purposes.”
That case has already gotten underway. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, the head of a statewide gay-rights group sued Fletcher in state court April 25, claiming that direct government funding of a religious school violates the Kentucky Constitution. “Gov. Fletcher has failed to uphold his duty to protect Kentucky citizens and enforce the Kentucky Constitution,” Christina Gilgor, director of the Kentucky Fairness Alliance, told the paper.
Fletcher's office said April 25, it also had asked the same court to review the constitutionality of the issue.
The question concerns a part of the commonwealth's charter that expressly forbids government grants to sectarian institutions. “No portion of any fund or tax now existing, or that may hereafter be raised or levied for educational purposes, shall be appropriated to, or used by, or in aid of, any church, sectarian or denominational school,” the section reads.
The controversy over the grant to Cumberlands began after the Williamsburg, Ky.-based school expelled sophomore Jason Johnson in early April, after it was discovered he listed his sexual orientation on a website. Johnson's page on MySpace.com, a networking website popular among college students, classified him as “gay” under a section labeled “orientation.” The 20-year-old theater major and dean's list student is from Lexington, Ky.
Johnson told the Lexington Herald-Leader that he was disappointed with the governor's decision.
“I think [Fletcher] chose to fund bigotry and discrimination rather than to promote equality throughout Kentucky,” he said, noting he was upset “as a taxpayer, as a citizen of Kentucky.”
But Paul Chitwood, president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, affirmed Fletcher's choice April 25. “I think the governor took a very wise course of action that really does safeguard both the commonwealth and the University of the Cumberlands,” he told ABP, in a telephone interview.
Chitwood, pastor of First Baptist Church in Mt. Washington, Ky., said that while the constitutionality of the grant is an open question, he doesn't believe the university was unwise in pursuing it. The grant would help construct the building for a pharmacy school in a region with a pharmacist shortage.
“I don't see this as a problem because of the nature of the mission of the University of the Cumberlands,” he said. “There's a desire on the part of the university to serve the community and the commonwealth in addition to its service for the Kingdom, and those really go hand-in-hand…. We're really not talking about the furtherance of the gospel.”
Whatever the courts decide, Chitwood said, he believes the school 's future “is very bright. Enrollment is up, endowments are up, and they do have a very unique mission that they are accomplishing with their leadership.”
The controversy at Cumberlands echoes similar disputes in the past three years at other Baptist schools. Debates over discipline of students for homosexuality or support of gay-rights groups have erupted at Baylor University in Texas, Mars Hill College in North Carolina and Mercer University in Georgia.
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