LGBTQ+ Students At Religious Schools Are Suing Over Discrimination

LGBTQ+ students and recent alumni of Christian universities are filing a lawsuit with the Department of Education.
Elizabeth Hunter a former student at Bob Jones University
Kevin Truong

In 2004, as a student at a small Christian college, Paul Southwick sought out spiritual guidance for his “struggle with same-sex attraction.” A campus pastor and university counselor told him to watch heterosexual pornography and go through conversion therapy, Southwick says. He describes what followed as “two of the darkest years of my life.”

Nearly two decades later, Southwick directs the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, the group behind a class-action suit of 40 LGBTQ+ students and recent alumni of Christian universities who allege that the schools discriminated against them.

“I know exactly what it’s like being one of these students,” Southwick tells Teen Vogue. “Terrified, being sent to conversion therapy, being taught to hate yourself, and feeling like you have nowhere to go.”

One of those students, Elizabeth Hunter, a recent alumna of Bob Jones University, had chosen the school believing it to be the most progressive option her parents would accept. In her junior year, Hunter says, she came to realize she was gay, and at the time hoped to stay in the closet indefinitely: “I could, like, never come out to my family, and it was gonna be fine.”

But in the fall of her senior year, Hunter says, she was called into a meeting with university administrators and greeted with a manila envelope full of printouts of her past social media posts. An administrator told her, “You must be homosexual because why else would you tweet ‘Happy Pride,’” Hunter recalls. “I was just sitting there, completely overwhelmed. I didn’t know what to say.” (Bob Jones did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

After the three-hour confrontation, most of which Hunter says she spent sobbing, the fallout was swift. In the lawsuit, Hunter said she was fired from her beloved job at the campus TV station, forced to pay a fine, and required to attend counseling — all of which left her “depressed and suicidal.”

Hunter is now the lead plaintiff in the class-action suit, arguing that Title IX — the 1972 law banning sex-based discrimination at schools that receive federal funds — should have protected her. Bob Jones, along with approximately 200 other colleges and universities, has been granted a religious exemption from Title IX by the U.S. Department of Education.

“If our case succeeds, then the Department of Education can no longer turn a blind eye to the discrimination,” Southwick explains. “Religious colleges won’t be forced to change their policy; but if they want to continue receiving federal money, then they will be forced to change their policy.”

Elizabeth Hunter on the Bob Jones University campus

Kevin Truong

The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU), a group comprising most of the schools involved in the case, decries the suit as a threat to religious freedom. The organization contends that if the suit succeeds, low-income students who wish to attend Christian colleges will lose access to federal aid.

The case is the latest front in a series of legal battles pitting religious freedom against civil rights. To Nelson Tebbe, a constitutional law professor at Cornell Law School, the suit exemplifies a “conflict between two fundamental rights” — the religious freedom of the colleges and the rights of queer students.

Shirley Hoogstra, the CCCU’s president, tells Teen Vogue that the group has a “zero tolerance” policy for bullying, and stresses that when queer students are subjected to harassment on campus, they can and should report it.

Some of the plaintiffs involved in the case tell Teen Vogue that they have frequently been asked why they have chosen to sue, rather than transfer to a nonreligious school. Asked whether she believes LGBTQ+ students who feel harmed by college policies on gender and sexual norms should consider transferring, Hoogstra says, “Students should think about and be encouraged to attend the college that is the best fit for them in a diverse educational landscape.”

But Lauren Hoekstra, one of the plaintiffs and a senior at Dordt University, feels like transferring isn’t an option. “If I transfer, some of my credits might not transfer; I might lose all this money, all this time. And I’ve made really good friends here,” Hoekstra tells Teen Vogue. “If I just give up now, that’s telling Dordt that they can keep on doing what they’re doing — treating queer people like trash.”

Throughout her time at Dordt, Hoekstra said in the lawsuit, she received harassing messages, heard professors say homosexuals “will burn in hell,” and was told by an administrator that she could come out only if she didn’t “promote homosexuality.” Via email to Teen Vogue, a spokesperson for the school says “there are statements made in the complaint that do not represent” Dordt’s practices.

Dordt’s statement emphasizes that the school seeks to maintain community standards that model “Christ-like behavior” for its students. Despite her experiences, Hoekstra says she also doesn’t want to leave the school, in part, because her faith remains important to her.

At Yeshiva University in New York City, a separate lawsuit filed in April has exposed a similar tension. Some LGBTQ+ Jewish students at the officially nonsectarian but Jewish-centered institution feel similarly to Hoekstra: Their sexual and gender orientation are not in conflict with their faith, several of those students tell Teen Vogue, and they refuse to accept the two core parts of their identity as mutually exclusive.

Molly Meisels, a recent graduate of Yeshiva, says the largely modern-Orthodox school had a “culture of silence and culture of fear around coming out, around what will happen to you.” What empowered Meisels to get through the experience was an “underground” group of a couple dozen LGBTQ+ students, many of whom were part of an unofficial club, the Y.U. Pride Alliance.

According to Katie Rosenfeld, an attorney for the students, the Pride Alliance, without official recognition, is unable to meet on campus, receive funding for hosting activities and speakers, and advertise via email and flyers. “Everything requires 10 extra steps of difficulty for them,” Rosenfeld tells Teen Vogue. 

In September 2020, Yeshiva rejected yet another attempt by the group to gain official status. “The message of Torah on this issue is nuanced, both accepting each individual with love and affirming its timeless prescriptions,” school administrators said in a statement, adding that recognizing the organization would “cloud this nuanced message” of Jewish law.

This spring, with Rosenfeld’s help, LGBTQ+ students at Yeshiva have filed a suit against the university, alleging it has violated New York City Human Rights Law by refusing to recognize the Pride Alliance. The university contends that the suit amounts to “government interference” in how “religious values are applied on campus,” a Yeshiva spokesperson writes to Teen Vogue.

More than 1,600 miles away in Texas, a similar story is unfolding on Baylor University’s campus. The school’s administration had for a decade consistently rejected petitions for formal recognition to Gamma Alpha Upsilon, an LGBTQ+ campus group, so named because the Greek letters spell gay. But last October, the Baylor student senate passed a resolution, co-authored by then-sophomore Veronica Penales, paving the way for the club to gain official status — and thousands of students, alumni, faculty and others associated with the school rallied in support of it.

In May, Baylor’s board announced they would explore “the possibility” of sanctioning an LGBTQ+ centered club. While Penales is “encouraged” by the move, she stresses to Teen Vogue that Baylor has yet to “walk the walk,” i.e., to officially recognize Gamma Alpha Upsilon.

“We’re just a bunch of LGBTQ students who just want to officially have a room that we can call ours,” Penales says, “to just hang out with each other, play games, do what every other club does.”

Meanwhile, at Yeshiva, Rosenfeld feels hopeful that queer students will have a formal club by this fall. Legal questions presented by Hunter v. Department of Education and the Yeshiva suit are distinct, but Rosenfeld notes that, fundamentally, “they are both about discrimination against LGBTQ students at religious institutions.”

Those who see themselves on the side of religious freedom argue that potential harm to LGBTQ+ students can be prevented by the transparency of religious colleges, presumably helping queer students choose colleges whose values align with theirs. “The campuses are up front,” Hoogstra says, referring to the stated theological beliefs at CCCU colleges. “Campuses are generally transparent about their policies and behavioral guidelines, which students voluntarily agree to when they choose to attend the institution.”

Jamie Lord, one of the plaintiffs in Southwick’s suit, says she had a different experience. Prior to enrolling at Regent University School of Law, a CCCU member institution, she says she disclosed that she was a lesbian and was assured that her sexual orientation would not be an issue. Looking back, Lord feels she was misled.

“A teacher told me I would go to hell for being a lesbian, and that if I prayed hard enough, God would save me from my sinful ways,” reads the first sentence of the Title IX complaint she eventually filed — and which, she says, has yet to be acknowledged by the school. (A spokesperson for Regent declined to comment on Lord’s claims, citing federal privacy laws.)

According to the complaint, professors at the Virginia law school called LGBTQ+ people “pedophiles” and “child molesters.” 

A spokesperson for Regent says in a statement that all students are “required to sign a document agreeing to fully accept the university’s Stand of Personal Conduct” upon enrolling. The handbook expressly prohibits “sexual misconduct,” which includes “homosexual conduct” alongside pornography, premarital sex, and adultery. Now, after Lord got engaged to her girlfriend in June, she finds herself on the cusp of explicitly violating the rules — and risking expulsion.

Many closely following the federal judiciary are skeptical that the students’ suit will succeed. Tebbe, the Cornell law professor, says that in recent years, whenever there has been a conflict between LGBTQ+ rights and religious freedom before the Supreme Court, “the religious interests have prevailed.”

But despite seemingly long odds in court, the student plaintiffs feel hopeful simply by having joined the suit. After the case went public with her as the lead plaintiff, Hunter says, students and alumni reached out to her, including those she says had once been expelled for their sexual orientations.

“I went out to a local gay-owned hostel,” Hunter recalls, “and there were a bunch of current students at the hostel who connected with me. It was so encouraging — they’re watching the case because they want the same rights as everyone. It was very hopeful for them to see someone who stood up.”

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