GROUP TARGETS BAPTIST UNIVERSITIES

Baptist Press

ALEXANDRIA, La. — The homosexual activist group Human Rights Campaign has targeted 23 institutions of higher learning with Southern Baptist ties in a report that also names 35 other colleges and universities with distinct Christian identities. Among the schools targeted are Carson-Newman University, Jefferson City, and Union University, Jackson.

Released just before the 2015 Christmas season, the report, “Hidden Discrimination: Title IX Religious Exemptions Putting LGBT Students at Risk,” asks Obama Administration education officials to increase reporting requirements for these 58 schools because each was granted “exemptions of interest” relating to either “gender identity” or “sexual orientation” or both.

Unlike President Obama’s 2014 executive order on LGBT rights, affecting federal employees as well as contractors, which did not allow exemptions for religious organizations, the Title IX law does not apply to an educational institution “controlled by a religious organization” that has “contrary religious tenets.”

However, individual schools must apply for specific exemptions and confirm they are either a divinity school or department, or, an educational institution that requires faculty, students, and employees to be members of a specific religion or a college or university that essentially is an extension of a religious organization.