Hi Brian, I’m also a Biola student and I appreciate you viewing these comments. Your skepticism on this issue is well-merited. I grant that Biola has not explained the bill well. They see it as a frontal assault on religious freedom. I see it as more of a funding interest, and I also wonder if funding is a quiet concern of Biola’s behind their objections as well. Biola would be wrong to think that a crowd with a weak argument is better than a few people with a strong argument. So I agree that they should be more explanatory and show what they know about this issue.

However, you are critically mistaken about this bill. Section 2–3 is about the transparency you mention, and no parties are opposed. Biola has clearly stated this in their FAQ. That is how they plan to meet Senators Lara’s concerns: by being transparent about their exemptions. That solves the stated problem of the bill, which is hidden LGBT discrimination. (They also first mentioned this bill in “Christian Education Holds a Place in Democracy,” May 3. It would be fair to link to this instead.)

Biola and like schools oppose section 1. Section 1 proposes narrowing a funded school’s religious exemption from the Equity in Higher Education Act (EHEA, not Title IX) only to certain PROGRAMS or ACTIVITIES that teach theology or train for ministry. That means that such programs- Biola’s arts and sciences, for example- cannot be exempt from total blindness to real or perceived sexual identity and even religion. This will cause severe conflicts over enrolling Christian students, housing students and teaching Christian values in class. Biola can “opt-out” and lose funding, but they can also respectably think that the government is wrong to confine Biola to those options, as many other religious colleges do.

Via federal law, Biola is able to be considered as run by a religious organization. They can meet at least one of those qualifications in the letter you linked. Since Biola has applied for an exemption, please be charitable to Biola if they expect this bill to apply to them. Even if it didn’t, Biola is right to be nervous about the ideological dismissal of institution-wide religious conviction that section 1 shows.

I’m with you that Biola should be more explanatory about this bill, and that unfair treatment of LGBT people should not happen. But the bill as written has stepped way beyond that problem. It is ideologically reducing what it perceives as appropriate religious practice, beneath the institutional level into the level of degree programs.

Is this a proper move from the government? Should individual rights be more financially compelling to the government than institutional rights? Is it in the interest of a better society that government should discourage religious pluralism? I don’t think so. Even if you disagree, please consider the corrections I offer.