Erskine College, a small school in rural South Carolina, made headlines last year after two players on the men’s volleyball team came out to teammates. The team was accepting of the two men — Drew Davis and Juan Varona — and the team went on to appear in the NCAA tournament.
What a difference a year makes.
Even though the team accepted the Davis and Varona’s lifestyle choice, and the entire campus welcomed them and their announcement. (EDITED — There was some confusion with my statement here. By saying lifestyle choice, I didn’t mean that either man chose to be gay, I meant they both chose to live as an openly gay person on a college campus that wouldn’t be as receptive as other colleges. Apologies for the poor word choice.)
The school dropped a bomb this week by banning homosexuality on campus because of, yeah you guessed, God.
Here’s the official statement from the school, reprinted on Out Sports:
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.
So why the sudden reaction to two men? Pressure from the those who thump bibles and probably sign donation checks.
The school is clearly reacting to pressure from a group of conservative Christians who have been pressuring the school to eradicate gay people from the campus. Erskine College is associated with the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.
I’m not going to get into my own opinion on the issue, or religion in general, because this isn’t the proper forum so I’ll just let a fictional president say what needs to be said about taking the bible so literally.
God Bless most of America.
[H/T: Out Sports]