Wheaton College as “Least Gay-Friendly”: A Game of Words

Well, the Princeton Review was released. After looking through the rankings, I am astonished at all the things they surveyed. The positives: best college library, best financial aid, best career services, best campus food, etc. Then the negatives: least happy students, least religious students, least accessible professors, etc. It’s a thorough list. And, of course, there are some winners and losers. Wheaton College had some interesting results. First the positives:

#1 Best Campus food
#2 Stone-cold Sober Schools (the non-party school)
#4 Most Religious Students
#2 Future Rotarians and Daughters of the American Revolution (this is a good thing, right?)

And now the negative: #1 LGBT-Unfriendly. Ouch.
The school released this statement:

Our goal is to follow God’s truth, including what the Bible says about sexual ethics. While some may interpret this stance as hostility to the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning) community, our aim is to stand respectfully and graciously for biblical truth.

From the Daily Herald:

The statement also says that the school “strives to treat all students with respect” and that students, faculty and staff sign a community covenant that is based on the Scripture, particularly the sections that “condemns sexual immorality, such as … homosexuality.”

It’s very interesting what words can do. The label “LGBT-Unfriendly” obviously carries an agenda. Are there reports of anti-gay violence on campus? No. But being called “unfriendly” doesn’t exactly make Wheaton out to be an example of Christian charity. And it certainly is not the greatest marketing slogan to put on your campus-visit pamphlet.
Nevertheless, Wheaton and other institutions, churches, and Christians like them will still need to be faithful to God. Certainly, to be wise in the eyes of the world, we will need to accommodate to a number of things, sexuality being one of them. But to take this route, Paul’s words to the Romans would be all too true of us: “Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22).
To be “LGBT-friendly” could carry with it something we’d be uncomfortable with as well. But there is something to it. When Jesus ate with sinners, it was a small hint that he would one day die for them. That, of course, should be characteristic of his followers. Jesus loved, served, and identified with sinners and then he told them to “go and sin no more.” I imagine Jesus would not do well in the Princeton Review either. But we still call him Friend of sinners.