The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission released a letter Aug. 10 opposing legislation proposed in California to close a loophole that allows religious universities and colleges to discriminate against students and staff based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The letter, signed by more than 140 religious, academic, legal, policy and media leaders from both inside and outside the Baptist denomination, claims that Senate Bill 1146 would harm low-income minority students seeking an education at private religious schools.
The bill would require religious campuses that receive state funding to follow the same anti-discrimination standards as their public counterparts. Its intent is to protect LGBT students from discrimination, but the ERLC letter said the measure in fact “results in its own form of discrimination by stigmatizing and coercively punishing religious beliefs that disagree on contested matters related to human sexuality.”
The bill, which goes before the Assembly Committee on Appropriations Aug. 11, is in response to an increase in the number of colleges and universities seeking exemption to non-discrimination standards in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
The exemption allowing religiously affiliated institutions that receive federal funds to adopt policies consistent with their articles of faith became controversial after the Obama administration expanded Title IX protections in 2014 in an attempt to combat student-on-student violence against LGBT individuals.
Opponents say the California measure would radically affect the mission of faith-based schools.
“If SB 1146 were to pass, it would deny students’ ability to participate in state grant programs — programs that exist to help low-income students, and which are overwhelmingly used by racial minorities — at schools that are found in violation of the bill,” the ERLC letter claimed. “Moreover, it would severely restrict the ability of religious education institutions to set expectations of belief and conduct that align with the institution’s religious tenets.”
“While we do not all agree on religious matters, we all agree that the government has no place in discriminating against poor religious minorities or in pitting a religious education institution’s faith-based identity against its American identity,” the letter continued.
“This legislation puts into principle that majoritarian beliefs are more deserving of legal protection, and that minority viewpoints are deserving of government harassment. Legislation of this nature threatens the integrity not only of religious institutions, but of any viewpoint wishing to exercise basic American freedoms, not least of which is the freedom of conscience.”
Fermin Whittaker
Individuals signing the letter included the presidents of six Southern Baptist Convention seminaries and several colleges and universities affiliated with Baptist state conventions.
California Baptist leaders adding their names included Fermin Whittaker, executive director of California Southern Baptist Convention; California Baptist University President Ronald Ellis and Rick Warren, founding pastor of Saddleback Church and author of the best-selling devotional book The Purpose Driven Life.