BJUnity

artwork by Dani Kelley

Jaclyn Walker

by Jaclyn Walker

This week, every chapel service at Bob Jones University is dedicated to the “Biblical response to homosexuality.” Upon hearing this news, my heart sank for every single student that has to sit through these services. The harm these services create in everyone who listens is impossible to describe.

I don’t remember a lot of details that dealt with homosexuality specifically from my time at Bob Jones University . What I do remember is, I believe, very telling.

My sophomore year, Bob Jones III read an “angry” letter from a lesbian woman as proof that homosexuality creates, or is possibly a result of, utter depravity. While I don’t recall everything the letter said, I know that the writer said she no longer believed the lies she’d heard as a student at BJU so many years ago. “Dr. Bob” ripped into her in a way that shocked me. At the time, I couldn’t say for sure what I believed about my own sexuality (doubting it, I’m sure, and at odds with myself), but the vitriolic tone he took toward her in his public response exhibited nothing of Christlike behavior. He took pride and pleasure at being able to tear her down. I remember my surprise, then anger, that a professed man of God could and would hide behind the mask of Christian superiority to mock and publicly humiliate, slander, and destroy the reputation of another human being. He, of course, followed this up with the familiar plea to the student body that if “this University ever falls away from God, close the doors of this institution,” or something like that.

Another incident I remember happened the second semester of my freshman year when George W. Bush was looking at making DOMA more hetero-friendly (as if it weren’t already). Bob Jones III begged us as students to write to our Senators and Representatives to back up the President and protect America for God. Much to my dismay today, I wrote to my Senator, pleading that she support marriage between one man and one woman. Today, I am so ashamed of this action on my part. What surprised me is that she wrote me back, explaining states’ rights and why DOMA violated these rights. She encouraged me to contact her with any further questions. Now, I don’t believe that if I would have written back that she would remember me. But I was impressed, and quieted, by her graceful response to my emotional outburst. I began to think that perhaps all I knew was wrong.

I remember the general attitude amongst the student body toward the “homosexual lifestyle” and “gay agenda” to be reflective of the administration’s attitude. First, everyone really thought that there is a “gay agenda” and that it is to tear down the family, the nation, and the will of God. Apparently this made it ok to vilify and mock those who “struggle with same-sex attraction.” My sophomore year, one of the biggest stories in the women’s dorms was of a group of five women who were kicked out for allegedly showering together in a massive lesbian orgy. People weren’t shocked so much; they were disgusted and made crude jokes. Another example of the culture toward the gay community was that for a period of time (maybe still today) one of the male dorms was known as the “gay” dorm. Guys would make jokes about being molested at night, waking up with sore rear ends, etc. At the time, it was all a part of being a student at Bob Jones University. Having been out of that for several years now, I see it as being, at best, a horrific denial of sexual abuse.

before BJUnity.org, there was  lgbt-bju.org
this was the banner image atop that blog — an artist’s representation of the many lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer, questioning, and intersex students, faculty and staff people who have attended chapel services — including “gay chapels’ — in BJU’s Founder’s Memorial Amphitorium,
artwork by Christopher Stribley

All of this and more to say, I know what it’s like. I know what it’s like to push down the feelings and the hurt and the reality that I didn’t fit in. And I remember when it all added up to enough, and when I started to stop caring, and when I got so depressed that my best friend dragged me to a counselor, and when the depression gave way to fury. Fury because I knew that somehow I’d been lied to about the nature of God, the nature of reality, the nature of religion and fundamentalism. Fury because people I’d trusted had knowingly hidden the truth.

I left. I had to. If I hadn’t, I would have been expelled though I’d done nothing wrong other than question the University. And leaving didn’t make the hurt go away. I had to search myself and everything I’d grown up with. Some of it I rejected, and some of it I held on to, and perhaps most importantly, I added to myself by embracing more than the limited perspectives of my childhood and my education.

When I was at Bob Jones, there was no group like BJUnity to help me. I came to the realization of myself mostly by myself. But becoming a part of BJUnity a couple years ago helped me heal the wounds I was still carrying around.

For some students at Bob Jones University, leaving is not an option for one reason or another. Please protect yourselves. Do not give in to the rhetoric of the pulpit. Do not surrender your rights thinking the administration will help you. Reach out for honest help. There is hope. There is always hope.

For those students, and for anyone else struggling with reconciling their faith and self-worth to their inborn sexuality or gender identity, let BJUnity help. We remember. We know.

You are not alone.

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Ed. Note: BJUnity is here for you. Reach out in confidence via e-mail to unity@bjunity.org, by direct message on Twitter to lgbtbju or by calling  (864) 735-7598 from your mobile phone or off-campus land-line.