Being a Gay Student at a Christian University
(Image: Katie Doucette)
One of the safest places I have been since coming out as a lesbian shortly after my 21st birthday in early 2020 is The King’s University. While I cannot speak, nor do I claim to speak, for any other 2SLGBTQ+ students here, I personally have experienced nothing but overwhelming respect, love, and support from both staff and students.
Despite the 1991 court case over the firing of Dr. Delwin Vriend from King’s for his sexual orientation, I like to think that the university has since redeemed itself on many levels, even if it still has very far to go. Growing up, I never experienced a Christian organization/church that welcomed LGBTQ+ people to be who they are out loud. I am a Christian myself and have been since the age of eight, and that will never change, but I have seldom encountered Christian places (churches, schools, etc) where I have not been shut down, ignored, or asked to reconsider my “sinful choices”…as if sexual orientation is a choice. However, King’s is one place that defies that negative Christian stereotype for the better. The staff and students here are, for the most part, supportive and understanding. In fact, the seventh person I came out to in January of 2020 before I came out publicly to the world was Prof. Rebecca Warren. There are people here who will support you here, and you really don’t have to look far to find them.
Lab instructor Delwin Vriend was fired from King’s in January 1991 because of his sexual orientation. (Image: Edmonton Journal)
Nevertheless, King’s still has work to do. Many non-binary and transgender students I know have been dead-named in class, and while often an “innocent mistake” on the professor’s account, it is still a hurtful and harmful practice to the queer population here at King’s. Furthermore, the SPEAK group I am a part of is, to my current knowledge, not permitted to wave or hoist up a Pride flag at any events or hallway table displays, nor are we allowed to host a campus Pride parade. While the staff here may be welcoming, the policies are not, and this is an inherent problem that goes deep and deliberately unnoticed.
King’s also does not have an official statement on marriage, gender, or sexuality, and I see this is a bit of a problem. By leaving the statement ambiguous to everyone’s personal worldview interpretations, this allows for students who are homophobic and transphobic to see King’s as being permissive of their comments and beliefs, and while everyone of varying beliefs should be welcomed here, inherent hate speech should never be permitted based on sexual orientation or gender. By cracking down on their statement and taking an anti-homophobic and anti-transphobic stance instead, King’s could bravely promote a more welcoming environment, ingrained in its very policies. It is not enough to be open to welcoming LGBTQ+ students, we must instead actively support and accept them too, and this is found within the systems and policies hidden deep inside the establishment itself.
To close my discussion, I would like to give a short encouragement to any struggling students here at King’s. Whether you are in the closet, out of the closet, an ally, or even rigidly set against the 2SLGBTQ+ community, I would ask you to consider this: what are you afraid of? Is it the systems in place at King’s, the systems in place in our greater society, what your family and friends will say, or is it your own ideologies? For me, and again I can only speak for myself, coming out was fearful due to my own constructions of what it meant to be gay. I hid and hated myself for twenty years for fear of being the very thing that society hates: different. In reality though, we are all different and unique. Unless we can come together as a community of allies and supporters of one another, we will never abolish homophobia and transphobia. Are you afraid of gay people like me, or are you afraid of what you have believed your whole life about people who are different from you? I can assure you, I am not someone to be afraid of, and neither are any of my 2SLGBTQ+ friends here at King’s, whether they are “out” or not. Like King’s vision, I pray for a better world; a better world for all.