TO THE EDITOR:
I am very discouraged by Chancellor James Moeser's decision to allow (the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship) to disallow students who are LGBTQ to hold office under some archaic notion of "freedom of expression."
First, this would seem to indicate that Christianity and Christian beliefs exclude gays and lesbians and/or condemn us. For those of us who are gay and Christian we differ greatly in that belief and are willing to put that forward. Not to mention that mainstream Christianity is moving away from Levitican ridiculousness and we are seeing changes everyday.
Secondly, and I think most importantly, this is not an issue of freedom of belief or speech. IVCF certainly has the right to feel and to think and to say as it pleases and to operate in a University setting where we think and grow and learn from difference. However, to receive University funds or student funds and not allow all students to participate at every level is not acceptable.
No student should be excluded from any group if he or she chooses to participate, and his or her status under the nondiscrimination policy should never prevent him or her from participating at any level.
Should a student be prevented from participating at any level, that group should be excluded from receiving funds.
If you allow this ruling to go unchecked, you set a precedent for what we are seeing nationally with President Bush's faith-based initiatives and other areas of our country where biased, bigoted and racist groups will have access to our federal money regardless of their openly discriminatory behavior or action.
In seeking equality in areas of public policy we are not seeking to squelch opinion or feeling. That would work against the ability for us to converse with one another and hopefully come to consensus.
However, when you are talking about the distribution of funds that are derived from the representative body of people, there should be equal access within the receiving agencies for any qualified person to participate whether it be the local town, state or national governments as well as on our campus.
