The Christian college infamous for its long-running ban on interracial dating put out a lengthy and seemingly heartfelt apology on Thursday for its bigoted past policies.
Nowhere in the apology, though, does the university mention anything about its current bigoted policies toward gays.
We guess that in Arizona, where the conservative electorate double-downed on its ban of gay marriage in the last election, nobody's surprised that a Greenville, South Carolina Bible college wouldn't want gay students hanging around in its dormitories -- though we find it hard to believe that any self-respecting gay would seek to matriculate at the school.
It was only last year that three homosexual activists were arrested at the BJU for trespassing in their bid to talk to Bob Jones administrators about the school's ban on homosexuality. The school does not explicitly reference homosexuality in its policies, but generally bans all "sexual perversion," which would include homosexuality, according to a school bulletin quoted in an article on the right-wing Christian Web site World Net Daily.
"Scriptural teaching on homosexuality is consistent in the Old and New Testaments," Stephen Jones, BJU president, told the Web site.
At least, that's what the scholars at Bob Jones believe today. Funny thing is, it was the school's narrow-minded views on scripture that led to the ban on interracial dating and marriage, too.
According to a 1980s lawsuit that threatened to take away the school's tax-exempt status because of its racial policies, "the sponsors of the University genuinely believe that the Bible forbids interracial dating and marriage. To effectuate these views, Negroes were completely excluded until 1971."
Give the school another 20 or 30 years, and it will be apologizing for its ban on gays, too. -- Ray Stern
