By Bob Allen
Two alumni of Carson-Newman University have written an open letter urging the Baptist-affiliated school to revoke its waiver from a federal law banning discrimination.
Travis Cooper and Jared Champion, who graduated from the school located in Jefferson City, Tenn., in 2003, said it sends the wrong message for a Christian college to seek the legal authority to discriminate against people that Title IX is designed to protect.
“In a moment when division and hate abound, we were heartbroken to learn that Carson-Newman University missed an opportunity to show love and acceptance, values that are actually taught by Jesus,” they said in the open letter to selected media outlets.
Carson-Newman is one of a number of Christian colleges across the country requesting exemption from Title IX, a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.
Carson-Newman, which is affiliated with the Tennessee Baptist Convention, recently received an exemption for “religious tenets regarding marriage, sex outside of marriage, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy and abortion.”
Cooper, who teaches at the New School of Northern Virginia, and Champion, a professor at Young Harris College in northern Georgia, said by successfully petitioning for the waiver, Carson-Newman officials “have shown that the college has no interest in protecting those who have been persecuted (sadly, often by those claiming to be Christians).”
“Rather than using your power to fight discrimination and to demonstrate the strength of Christ’s love, you have taken a stance of weakness and argued that your rights to exclude people should trump those of the persecuted,” the duo said.
They said they chose to address the issue in an open letter “because we want the world to know that the values you label ‘Christian’ are not held by all, and there are plenty of Christians who accept everyone without qualification.”
They critiqued Carson-Newman President Randall O’Brien’s explanation for the decision as a way to “further make us a Christian school.”
They advised the president and board of trustees to instead identify Carson-Newman as a Christian institution “by loving and accepting all people, especially the vulnerable.”
“We ask that you revoke Carson-Newman University’s waiver so the CN community can be a beacon of love for those who suffer at the hands of the same misogyny, homophobia and bigotry that Title IX seeks to combat,” they said.
Cooper and Champion said “in the same way that a person cannot eat a turkey sandwich and claim to be vegetarian,” Carson-Newman cannot claim to be a Christian college while securing the ability to discriminate.
According to Campus Pride, an LGBT-rights group that compiled the “shame list” of colleges and universities requesting a Title IX exemption, Carson-Newman, with 2,362 students, received more than $3.3 million in federal funds in 2014.
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