This week, a graduate student’s acceptance from Union University in Jackson, Tennessee was revoked after the university found out that the student was gay and planned to live on-campus with his partner.
The student, Alex Duron, planned to get a Masters degree in Nurse Anesthesia before he got news that his acceptance had been rescinded.
“Your request for graduate housing and your social media profile, including your intent to live with your partner, indicates your unwillingness to abide by the commitment you made in signing [the university’s community values statements],” the letter sent to Duron said.
The “university’s community values” was a reference to Union University’s Community Value Statements of 2019-2020, where they denounce, “sexually impure relationships,” including “homosexual behaviors, even in the context of a marriage, remain outside Union’s community values.”
Alex shared the letter on a Facebook post.
“Union University was not ‘informed’ enough to not recognized that bigotry masked as religion was not Christian at all,” he wrote. “Union University may not be right for me. I can accept that, but I cannot accept that our government is giving them the money to discriminate against me.”
Alex’s story is one of many in which religion has been used to justify the discrimination of queer people in the United States.
