 | Name: Biola University Location: La Mirada, California |
Concerning GLBT Equality:
Homosexual prohibition falls at the top of the standards of contact for Biola University.
Standards of Conduct
Biblically speaking, the following behavioral expectations apply to all members of the Biola Community:
1. Those acts, which are expressly forbidden in Scripture (including premarital/extramarital sex, homosexuality, drunkenness, theft, profanity, occult practices and dishonesty), will not be practiced by members of this community.”
Students are expected to agree to this standard of contact in their application and violation of these standards of contact can result in dismissal. The application reads as follows:
“These standards apply to the student while enrolled in any of the schools or programs of the University on and off campus. In addition, these standards apply to the board members during their term of service on the Biola University Board of Trustees, and to faculty and staff during their term of employment with Biola University. Biola therefore reserves the right to discipline or dismiss any student or employee who, in its judgment, does not conform to these conduct standards or to other expressed principles, policies, programs and expectations of the university governing employee conduct.”
A PDF of the full Standards of Conduct and application can be viewed here.
The Biola University student handbook also makes clear that homosexuality will result in disciplinary measures:
Misconduct Subject to Disciplinary Action
The following examples of violations of the Life Together Standards are not exhaustive but are intended to give a student an idea of the types of behaviors that may result in disciplinary action:…Sexual activity outside of a marriage between husband and wife, including but not limited to, premarital, extramarital or homosexual conduct.
The full student handbook is available as a PDF here.
The following is a section of a New York Times Magazine article on Biola University addresses the issues of homosexuality at Biola:
“John is a film major at Biola, and the movie he was shooting, “Becoming Peter Pan,” was his senior thesis. It is the story of his struggles with homosexuality. About a year ago, John came out to his friends and a few teachers. Homosexual activity is strictly forbidden at Biola, but John is not the only gay student there. One gay student dropped out last year. Another, deep in the closet, sought out a secret meeting with me at Biola’s back gates just to make sure I didn’t leave without realizing he existed. Driving across campus, John pointed out a male student he kissed freshman year. The student had decided to be celibate, John said, an option he said he often considered.
Since John came out, his friends told me, he had been “heavily monitored” by the school. He was placed in mandatory counseling, which, he said, aimed to teach him that his sexuality is the correctable byproduct of growing up the son of missionaries, a third-culture kid who never knew a real home. John takes his counseling seriously and hopes it will work. “My gay friends are like, ‘Oh, you poor thing, you have to get out of that crazy counseling,'” he said. “But I am not so sure they’re right. Meanwhile, my Christian friends will tell me: ‘Don’t go to that gay bar. Don’t meet that guy.'”
John is charming and relentlessly enthusiastic on nearly every topic he brings up, from an artsy West Hollywood coffeehouse he recently visited to a six-month-long program he enrolled himself in at a nearby church to cure his gayness. He has made three films during his career at Biola, all of which were considered too outre to be shown at the school film festival. In the first, John personified anorexia as a succubus lesbian demon: a scene in which the succubus licked a girl’s ear seductively was deemed inappropriate by the judges. His second film, about a girl who, after a freak car accident, can see people’s souls outside their bodies, was too long. “Becoming Peter Pan” would not be shown at the film festival, either, because, John said, “it’s too long, and it would offend a lot of people.” He was nervous about even showing me the movie in the Biola film department, and when we sat down to watch it, he anxiously fast-forwarded over a scene of two men in bed. “This would make the school die,” he whispered. “In Christianity, homosexuality is as bad as murder.”
The entire article is available as a PDF download here.