The Life and Death of Title IX on Christian Campuses
Athletes at Pomona-Pitzer College practice Queer and Trans solidarity with LGBTQI people, on and off campus.
I. “You are living beautifully! And God completely approves!”
Maddie Bennet, a runner at Pomona-Pitzer College, spent her weekend doing something many students on religious campuses already know is forbidden: advocating for LGBTQI justice in a colorful, public way.
Maddie and her team at their school’s annual track & field invitational continued their tradition of calling on both the NCAA and Christian colleges and universities that attend the event to do better by their LGBTQI students.
Each April, her campus plays host to a dozen or so teams, many coming from schools that are hostile towards LGBTQI people and even allies.
Bennet’s teammates, leaders in the Soulforce Give Back IX campaign, have evolved their style of outreach each year since 2016, when the campaign launched. This year, their goal was to “spread awareness about the discrimination going on and to spread love to the students being discriminated against,” says Bennet.
She and her team staffed a table and invited fans, athletes, and students to create solidarity love letters to Queer and Trans students carrying a heavy burden of repression and spiritual violence on campus. These letters will be compiled from all participating Give Back IX events and forwarded to LGBTQI and allied youth on discriminatory campuses.
II. “You are strong. You are important. You will make it through this.”
Seventy
The number of cards crafted with messages of healing, hope, and solidarity — to be bundled together each semester and sent to LGBTQI students on religious campuses.
Eighty-four.
The number of NCAA member schools that have anti-LGBTQI and anti-feminist policies on the books
Thirty.
The subset of those 84 Christian schools that secured specifically anti-Trans religious exemptions from the federal government in the last three years.
Two Hundred (and counting).
The number of religious campuses in the United States that marginalize, monitor, expel, and/or fire LGBTQI and allied students, faculty, and staff. As one athlete from another school who dropped by the Pomona-Pitzer table said, “I would love to do something like this at my school but it would never be allowed.”
III. “Jesus was a feminist who fought for the marginalized. We love you, we see you, we hear you, we value you, we stand with you.”
Bennet reached out to Soulforce earlier this year to discuss how she and her team could continue their efforts that have contributed significantly to the Give Back IX campaign since 2016. The campaign has included banner drops in major NCAA championship games, vigils directly on Christian campuses, and other efforts which have led to some positive policy changes at the NCAA.
“For this event, we wanted to focus on positivity, which is why we chose to write solidarity letters. It is important to voice to religious colleges and the NCAA that EVERYONE should be accepted and religion should not play a role in this. I think it is important to continue providing support for LGBTQI students but also demand change,” says Bennet.
The campaign works with students to expose the effects of systematic religious exemptions (314 thus far) to Title IX and other laws. Those effects are felt both on Christian campuses–in hiring, discipline, policy, curricula, and culture–and in the broader reality off campus.
Christian Higher Education plays a unique role in proving out the efficacy of exemption-based legal strategies, such as using “religious liberty” as an excuse to deny employment or benefits. Such exemptions are, in turn, driving dozens of legal battles at the federal and state levels.
IV. “I love you, and the people that will love you will always stick by you.”
In their open letter inviting schools everywhere to join them in writing “solidarity love letters,” the Pomona-Pitzer track & field team laid out their calling:
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.
It is no accident that the Give Back IX campaign is working with students and athletes in the context of sports. The NCAA confers prestige, ranking, great PR opportunities, and championship games steeped in wealth. With high profile, anti-LGBTQI schools like Brigham Young University and Liberty University on the NCAA roster, discriminatory campuses and the NCAA benefit from the looking the other way when school policies don’t align with NCAA values of safety and inclusion.
Indeed, professors on the 106 campuses that Soulforce has visited since 2005 have been blunt about the lever that is NCAA membership–threaten NCAA dollars and we will start to see changes in theology and policy on campus, they say.
V. “You can only fail at achieving justice when you stop the fight. Never quit, never stop the fight.”
Bennet was wonderfully shocked by how many people stopped by the table, even more so that the majority of people took the time to write a letter.
“My favorite conversation was with two students from California Baptist University who told me how horrible their school treated students who identify as LQBTQI. This broke my heart, but I loved to see that they were still passionate about the cause. Some students had no idea LGBTQI students were being treated like this and others said their school was culpable of this,” Bennet shared.
So where do we go from here?
Students at other schools, and even seminaries, have already joined Pomona-Pitzer College by signing up to join in this next wave of the Give Back IX campaign. Community members, athletic teams, and students groups, whether affiliated with a religious school or not, are welcome to join in.
Soulforce aims for nothing short of fulfilling the best clandestine and strategic guidance from the professors on Christian campuses.
Maddie Bennet is graduating this year but leaves a legacy of activism in campus athletics that has the power to reach students at a school like California Baptist University or hundreds of others like it to say, “Hey, we’ve got your back. You are not alone.”
Her team’s work, especially as other campuses join in, also has the power to shift a major national debate on who deserves education, healthcare, employment, and, in short, recognition of their full humanity.
Read more about Soulforce, a national LGBTQI social justice organization dedicated to sabotaging Christian Supremacy and supporting youth and students in claiming their full power as activists through seed grants, collective campaigns, and activist accompaniment at www.Soulforce.org.
