So which side is the queer side, SMU or UMC?
The answer to your question is UMC.
Sadly this comes down to money as well. The main Methodist Church on SMU campus is Highland Park United Methodist Church. This is a church I attend and it is and amazing facility with first rate preachers and a lot of charitable giving such as habitat for humanity (over 100 house built in Dallas, Haitian outreach, etc). Check out Paul Rasmussen on line if you want (yes the sermons are online). It is very wealthy, prestigious and influential parish-the crown jewel in the UMC. They want the money, and prestige to force their LGBT morality on all Methodists and this church in particular.
The following quote is from another article here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/texas-supreme-court-to-hear-case-pitting-smu-against-united-methodist-church-leaders/ar-AA1swylq
In December 2019, SMU President R. Gerald Turner told The Dallas Morning News the school was preemptively distancing itself from its denomination ahead of an impending split over LGBTQ issues.“We’re trying to get this done before the church decides what kind of split they’re going to have, so that we can continue to educate everybody from all Methodist denominations and from other denominations, and people who don’t believe at all,” he said in an interview.
Turner didn’t want the school’s Perkins School of Theology to be associated with one specific sect of Methodism, he said.
SMU remains committed to its nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ students, he said. “We do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation,” he said. “We don’t discriminate against anybody. That can’t change.”