Posted on 05/16/2004 10:58:24 AM PDT by Theodore R.
For gay Baylor University student, graduation day comes with a price
WACO (AP) — A Baylor University student who organized an off-campus gay rights rally graduated Saturday, but he says he doubts he would have received his diploma if he had not admitted violating the Baptist school's conduct code.
Darrin Adams, 22, found out last month that Baylor was charging him with misconduct for organizing the March rally in downtown Waco. A letter from an administrator said the event was "part of an advocacy group that promotes understandings of sexuality that are contrary" to biblical teachings, Baptist beliefs and Baylor's Christian mission.
Punishment for misconduct — which includes drinking, gambling, premarital sex, cohabitation, homosexuality and using weapons — ranges from a reprimand to expulsion, according to Baylor's student handbook.
Adams, who is gay, said the administrator told him if he signed a document admitting wrongdoing, his punishment would simply be a written warning. Otherwise, Adams said, he was told he would go through the university's disciplinary process, in which a committee of faculty and students would decide his penalty.
Adams said he consulted with an attorney, then reluctantly signed the form admitting that he broke the conduct code at Baylor, the world's largest Baptist university with nearly 14,000 students.
"Going in, I knew what was at stake. I just wanted to graduate," said Adams, a journalism major. "But the rally was off campus and nonviolent, and I feel like I had the right to demonstrate."
Adams believed Baylor should adopt an anti-discrimination policy for gay students. He started planning the March rally after his friend Matt Bass, who is gay, was forced to drop out of Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary in December. Administrators confronted Bass about his sexuality and revoked his scholarship.
"Baylor and other schools use religion as a means to discriminate against other people," Adams said.
Baylor officials declined to comment on the situations involving Adams or Bass, but Paul Powell, the seminary's dean, has said that homosexual behavior is forbidden in the Bible and thus inconsistent with Baylor's mission.
"If a person, according to Scripture, which is our standard, is not a part of the kingdom of God, how can they be in training for a minister?" Powell said earlier this year after Bass transferred to Emory University's seminary in Atlanta.
Baylor, founded in 1845, is controlled by an all-Baptist board of regents and is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
Adams, who grew up in a Baptist family, said he started telling friends he was gay in high school. He said he didn't think much about his sexuality when considering a college. He said Baylor offered him an academic scholarship, and he liked that it wasn't too far from his Pawnee, Okla., home and had smaller classes than large universities.
But when he arrived at the central Texas campus, Adams heard some fellow students make fun of gay people, so he decided to keep his sexuality a secret. Although Adams never was physically injured, he heard snide remarks and didn't feel like he fit in.
He considered transferring schools his sophomore year, but then Adams started meeting other students who were gay, and he and a friend founded a group called Baylor Freedom to help gay students feel more accepted.
Although the campus climate started changing, attitudes of professors and the administration didn't, Adams said.
He received a verbal warning from a school administrator last year after he marched in a Houston gay pride parade holding a Baylor Freedom banner. And a dean barred Adams from speaking to a class about homosexuality, although he had been invited by a class member, he said.
When the student newspaper in February endorsed gay marriage in an editorial, Baylor President Robert Sloan said a number of students, alumni and parents were "justifiably outraged."
Sloan said a university publication should not "advocate positions that undermine foundational Christian principles upon which this institution was founded and currently operates." But he has said the school respects "the right of students to hold and express divergent viewpoints."
Adams said he has no regrets about attending Baylor because the struggles have made him stronger and have helped others, including one student who said he was lonely and suicidal before getting involved in Baylor Freedom.
"I still love Baylor," Adams said. "But it can be better than what it is."
Do we all have to live in a thrall to homosexuals now?
It is amazing that an aditted practioner of homosexuality would go to a PRIVATE university which does not condone such lifestyle choices.
The University was TOO generous. However as a business decision and as a PR view, they may have made a reasonable choice in eliminating this nobody from their lives.
""Baylor and other schools use religion as a means to discriminate against other people," Adams said."
Oh by all means, do not go to another school. Use your intolerance to force your behavior on others.
substitute the words "value judgments" and watch the result:
""Baylor and other schools use religion as a means to discriminate against other people," Adams said."
In other words, the homosexual/sex fetishists want to prohibit value judgements that are negative to their chosen sexual practices. Prohibiting value judgments is just another means of IMPOSING acceptance.
Sound track available in the lobby.
What the he!! is a homo sexual doing going to a Baptist university which bases it's teachings on The Bible?
The reeking stench in Denmark with this scenario is overwhelming me.
Hear, hear! You have cut to the core. They want to impose a view upon others under the penumbra of "tolerance" and "understanding." Whatever happened to keeping one's private life, well, private?
So9
Such private universities which provide scholarships should be able to not only recind scholarships, they should be able to get the money back and have it treated like a non-dischargable student loan.
Baylor should have asked, and regardless the homosexual should have told.
Private sex lives do not give one access to someone else's social security benefits.
Private adult sex does not give access to recruiting children converts to a particular sexual fetish.
It would not be surprising that some ADULT recruited/facilitated this child's death road into homosexuality. Whoever that adult is, they should be prosexuted.
Even so, why, oh why, would a homo sexual want to be admitted into a Baptist college?
It would be like a life long devout Catholic seeking entrance into an atheist university.
Perhaps, the "gay rights" rally helps to explain why.
I just love the line another Freeper gave in a thread about the homo "Day of Silence" activities:
"The love that dare not speak it's name won't shut it's mouth now."
Something along those lines!
Ahm, Baylor FOLLOWS religious doctrine and YOU sir are USING "discrimination" as a tool.
I would imagine it was either 1. he got money and just kept quiet to get the money OR 2. like many homosexuals, he gets excited (arroused?) at the prospect/attention he derives by admitting in public that he likes to do sexual things with other men's penises.
He blinked.
He was sent there to break Baylor like the ACLU broke the military institutions (women enrollment).
He didn't have the stomach for it.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was his idea in order to "settle" it, and now Baylor won't have to deal with a costly legal defense since he admitted guilt.
The article still doesn't mention the "price" he paid.
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