Have you ever wondered why any self-respecting LGBT person would choose to attend the fundamentalist, virulently anti-gay Bob Jones University? What is life like for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered students at a school whose official code of conduct “classifies” homosexuality as a “perversion?” Do LGBT people face reprisals from the university even if they don’t come out of the closet until after they graduate?
I certainly have — about Bob Jones University as well as other anti-gay schools like Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University — so I very much appreciated author Becky Garrison’s latest piece for Believe Out Loud in which she tackles those very questions. It’s worth reading in its entirety, especially because Garrison delves into the complex and prickly relationship between Bob Jones University and its newly-formed LGBT alumni association, BJUnity (which, as Garrison noted in a recent column for the Washington Post, recently made history by marching in the New York City Pride Parade for the first time). Check it out. Fascinating, eye-opening stuff.
