How to end a 314–0 losing streak.
Student athletes at Pomona-Pitzer College tackle the peculiar power that Christian schools lend to the right’s “religious exemption” tactic.
If we are keeping score, the tally reads 314 for Christian higher education and 0 for gender justice, taken broadly as feminism, LGBTQI rights, and reproductive justice.
That is how many religious exemptions from Title IX were granted to Christian colleges and universities since 1972, when the law was first implemented to protect against sex and gender discrimination in school.
These exemptions have provided a range of consequence-free scenarios for Christian campuses, including refusal to ordain or hire women, the “right” to expel or fire LGBTQI people, and the “freedom” to discipline or expel pregnant people.
LGBTQI students in particular face a heavy burden to attend classes, keep campus jobs, and graduate with their well-being intact at hundreds of campuses that cast themselves in the Christian mold.
“The first time I joined a gay club at my conservative Christian university, it was held at a senior’s apartment after dark, and we literally crept across campus housing in groups no bigger than two at a time, because we were so afraid someone would find out about us,” says Elizabeth Cirelli, an Azusa Pacific University graduate.
That scoreboard won’t change again for some time, as one of this administration’s first acts was granting a blanket Title IX waiver to religious schools. Schools no longer have to fill out the paperwork; the exemption is already theirs.
Though the Christian campuses’ claims have historically been rubber-stamped (the text of Title IX allows for a religious school to “claim” rather than “apply for” an exemption), the public at least had access to data on which schools were especially pro-active about maintaining unbridled discrimination.
The track and field team at Pomona-Pitzer College, a particularly LGBTQI-friendly school, is heading into year three of their challenge to religious exemptions. The athletes have worked diligently with the Soulforce Give Back IX campaign since 2016 to engage members of religious campuses that compete in their school’s annual NCAA-level track and field invitational.
The spirit of solidarity behind Give Back IX is aimed at reducing isolation for LGBTQI students facing intense opposition on their campuses.
When not running or jumping on April 7, the athletes will be tabling near other teams’ tents.
The Pomona-Pitzer team wants to talk about how the NCAA contravenes its stated values by allowing 84 discriminatory schools to continue to play in its ranks. They are also eager to hand out educational resources that affirm LGBTQI people.
In so doing, they embody a picture of what a safe, inclusive school can be, where students can not only identify as LGBTQI but also advocate for justice.
They have new tactic this year. The track and field athletes are working with other teams on their campus to create a booklet of “solidarity love letters” for LGBTQI students at religious schools.
The letters are part of long-term strategy to amplify the voices of students in this debate, including LGBTQIA and allied students at secular schools who are dismayed at having to compete on campuses where they are otherwise not welcome.
Runner Maddie Bennet, who is leading the letter-writing initiative, invites student groups, athletic teams, and community activists across the country to join in during the spring and fall semesters.
Here is her team’s open letter:
The NCAA claims to stand for diversity and inclusion, yet they allow Christian schools to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) athletes using a Title Nine exemption due to religious reasons.
At Pomona-Pitzer, we do not stand for this. We believe everyone has a place on our sports teams no matter what their gender or sexual identities are. If the NCAA will not make changes, we must start within our own teams.
Pomona-Pitzer recently had diversity consultant, Nevin Caple, come to speak to coaches and athletes on diversity and inclusion in athletics. During college she was afraid to come out due to a fear that her teammates and family would not accept or respect her. This is heartbreaking and unacceptable.
We want to share with LGBTQI students that we will accept them for who they are and there is nothing to hide. We love you and support you no matter what. Join in our movement to spread love and support instead of hate and discrimination by writing solidarity love letters to LGBTQI students.
This all started when 30 Christian schools claimed specifically anti-Trans Title IX waivers in reaction to the Obama era guidance that the law should also protect gender identity and expression.
In response, Soulforce, in partnership with Campus Pride, has worked with students and community activists in several cities to ramp up more aggressive direct actions, like banner drops inside major NCAA games. The actions put a spotlight on the NCAA’s duplicity in retaining discriminatory member schools while positioning itself as the LGBTQI community’s dubious ally in state-level “bathroom bill” debates.
Since the Give Back IX campaign began, the NCAA has implemented new rules for championship host sites, making the games more Trans-inclusive, at least for fans.
And one school, Pepperdine University, essentially gave back their exemption.
The athletes’ work at Pomona-Pitzer matters to the broader national conversation on gender justice because Christian colleges and universities play a unique roll in reifying the right’s preferred tactic of “religious exemption.” It is currently at the heart of many threats to reproductive and LGBTQI justice in state and federal arenas.
Christian campuses wrote the book on religious exemptions during a time when the legal concept shifted from a primarily liberal issue to a bipartisan one, and then finally toward a conservative bent.
That shift parallels the re-engineering of the meaning of religious freedom from protection for religious minorities and “live and let live” pluralism to what we have now: the privileging of Christian right doctrine that seeks both exemption from the social contract and the imposition of its rules on all of us through laws and international human rights norms.
These schools–campuses like Wheaton College, Liberty University, and Biola University–are, at minimum, a network of influential institutions that have proven just how much discrimination the public and the government can tolerate for the sake of the historically wide berth that weaponized Christianity receives in both the private and public spheres in the United States.
Professors from the 100 plus campuses Soulforce has visited since 2005 have been explicit in their guidance: Access to NCAA sports, and the money that status represents, carries significant weight. To challenge their NCAA memberships is to pose a credible threat to their discriminatory theologies and policies, and by extension the right’s primary legal tactic right now.
The track and field team at Pomona-Pitzer College are doing their part to dismantle religious freedom as a catch-all excuse for discrimination against women and LGBTQI people–and ultimately people of color if we scrutinize the right’s long game. Perhaps if we can bankrupt this tactic at the campus level, that too can be an object lesson for our country.
Join in our challenge to the right’s strangled version of religious liberty today.
Soulforce works to end the political and religious oppression of LGBTQI people through relentless, nonviolent resistance that wields radical political analysis, spiritual healing, and strategic direct action in the pursuit of collective liberation. www.Soulforce.org
