Conservative Christians are outraged that the University of Texas at Austin plays host to a student-funded center which provides counseling, workshops, and other services to gay, lesbian, and female students. The Gender and Sexuality Center receives funding from student fees and conservatives want this to end.

The Sun Herald reports:

“They’re obviously trying to promote an agenda on one side of the political spectrum,” said Will Lutz, a columnist who wrote a scathing piece on the center for the socially conservative Texans for Texas group. “What we’ve created is a government-funded advocacy group for values a lot of Texans don’t agree with.”

I wonder if Lutz argues that no Texan should ever fund anything they disagree with? Or that the government should never fund anything that “a lot of Texans don’t agree with”? I doubt it — which would mean that Lutz is being hypocritical and dishonest.

What sorts of horrible things does the center do?

The Gender and Sexuality Center was created out of a blend of gay and lesbian support services and the campus’s women’s resource center, which deals with issues such as rape, harassment and domestic violence.

This fall, for example, the center worked to publish an arts journal in which students were invited to re-imagine gender roles “in a less sexist, less homophobic society.”

Center workers arrange panel discussions on topics such as safe sex and gay dating, run mentoring programs for gay students and stock a library of magazines, DVDs and books on sexuality.

That all sounds pretty bad, but it’s not the worst:

The center’s literature states that gay and lesbian people deserve “fair treatment” and “equal rights,” which could be construed to mean protection under the law from hate crimes or discrimination, a position opposed by many conservative and Republican groups.

This is what has religious conservative up in arms: the center actually argues that gays and lesbians should be treated fairly. According to Will Lutz and other conservative Christians, it appears that “a lot of Texan don’t agree with” the idea that gays and lesbians should be treated fairly.

The campus chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas wants the center privately funded because it argues that the center presents only one point of view on whether homosexuality is right or wrong, said Ben Fizzell, the chapter president.

I wonder if the campus chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas only presents one view on whether homosexuality is right or wrong. If so, then Ben Fizzell should immediately return any university funding he has received — otherwise, he’s a hypocrite. He should also work to ensure that all religious groups which have received funding from the university also have their funding terminated unless they include “diversity” in the views they present on the morality of homosexuality.

Somehow, I doubt he’ll do that. Somehow, I suspect that he and other conservative Christians only adopt this position when it comes to beliefs they don’t like.

“Certainly, students at a taxpayer-subsidized educational institution should not be forced to participate in funding a student center whose raison d’etre is sexuality, of any sort,” [Republican state Rep. Corbin Van Arsdale] said. “That should be privately funded.”

The “raison d’etre” of this center is to provide information and counseling, partially about sexuality but also about other issues. It should be noted that one of the original reasons why Christian fundamentalism got started in America was in reaction to growing education and information about sex and sexuality. Some things never change.

Aside from the rank hypocrisy in just about everything coming out of the mouths of conservative Christians complaining about this center, they are expressing a fundamentally unacceptable position: universities should not be funding a program in which ideas and positions are expressed that many Texans don’t like.

Universities should be a haven for the interchange of all ideas, not simply those deemed socially and religiously correct. What’s next on the Texan hit list, religious studies courses in which the literal truth of the Bible is questioned? Biology courses in which standard evolutionary theory is treated as the fact that it is? Pregnancy counseling services in which women learn about contraception options?

 

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