CHRISTIAN COLLEGE EXPELS LESBIAN, CHARGES TUITION

[xchrom]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OMAHA_COLLEGE_LESBIAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-06-15-04-22-58


Danielle Powell, right, and her spouse Michelle Rogers are photographed in Omaha, Neb., Wednesday, June 12, 2013. Grace University, a Christian college in Omaha, has revoked Powell's scholarship and expelled her because she was public about a same-sex relationship. The college also is demanding payment of tuition and won't send her transcripts to other schools until she pays off her bill. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- Danielle Powell was going through a hard time in the spring of 2011, just months away from graduating from a conservative Christian college in Nebraska. She had fallen in love with another woman, a strictly forbidden relationship at a school where even prolonged hugs were banned.

Powell said she was working at a civil rights foundation in Mississippi to finish her psychology degree when she was called back to Grace University in Omaha and confronted about the relationship. She was eventually expelled - then sent a bill for $6,000 to reimburse what the school said were federal loans and grants that needed to be repaid because she didn't finish the semester.

Powell is now fighting the Omaha school, arguing that her tuition was covered by scholarships and that federal loans wouldn't need to be repaid in that amount. She also notes she was kicked out even after undergoing months of counseling, spiritual training and mentoring insisted upon by the school following her initial suspension.

"I shouldn't have this debt hanging over me from a school that clearly didn't want me," the 24-year-old said.

[jollyreaper2112]

1. While I sympathize

What was she doing going to a school like that in the first place? Be like a Jew working for nazis and complaining about poor treatment. Conservative Christians having a bug up their ass about gays? It's one of their defining traits. This should not be brand new information.

[MNBrewer]

2. As she said

"No one was more surprised than me," Powell recalled of her relationship. "I had been very religious since I was a small child, and that did not fit in with what I thought I believed."

She hadn't even come out to herself when she went to the school.

[jollyreaper2112]

3. Ah

So she would have been fine with oppressing gays until she realized she was gay. I guess she really is conservative! Lol

[MNBrewer]

4. Lots of repressed gays are like that

until they accept that part of themselves how can they accept it in others?

[jollyreaper2112]

6. I know it's human

But it irks me. Like a republican who kicks crutches out from under cripples until suddenly he's got polio and what the hell is with all these dicks picking on cripples? Suddenly this issue is important because I'm one of these people. Am I ever going to be a black? No. Fuck 'em.

[dsc]

5. I don't have enough info yet to know if I agree or disagree with the school

the school has a very detailed moral code which appears to apply equally to gay and straight couples except for married gays. She began and was punished for this relationship before she got married. Now if, and I have no idea if they do or don't, but if they enforce the policy equally against gay and straight students then I feel they should be permitted to do that. What they likely shouldn't be getting is any federal aid.

[jollyreaper2112]

7. It's tricky

Morals clauses are tricky.

On one hand if someone enters an agreement and they are in breach, who are we to say anything? It's just like any other contract, right?

On the other hand, who the fuck are they to tell a person how to live their lives? If it has no material effect on their work, what of it?

I think of Rand Paul's defense of segregation. Don't patronize businesses that are mean to black people. But if it's the whole goddamn town, then what? There's only so far boycotts can go towards changing intolerable behavior.

I'm not a fan of using force to change behavior I don't agree with because it can set a precedent going both ways. Religious nuts could try banning dancing if they feel they have the ability. Sort of like how they're getting rid of abortion even though the Supreme Court said it's legal.

Conservatives talk about creeping sharia. That's what this shit feels like. I don't know if I'm right or wrong on this but I don't like it.

[johnnypneumatic]

8. schools that discriminate should lose accreditation

is it acceptable to have a whites only school?