Trans Dorms are Coming to Universities this Fall


The transgender bathroom issue raging coast to coast is now front and center in the halls of universities and colleges as well.   Two-thousand one-hundred residential colleges or universities residential colleges or universities received “dear colleague” letters from the Obama Administration, pulling the Title IX card, to force compliance.

“Title IX and the ‘dear colleague’ letters make all of us, all institutions, more accountable for students who may be on the margins,” said Darryl Holloman, dean of students at Georgia State University, which offered gender-inclusive housing options for the first time in the 2015-2016 academic year.

Although hundreds of universities had begun to offer gender-inclusive housing in response to student demand in recent years, many are now reviewing or expediting their plans so they can provide the option to incoming students for the first time this fall.

These policies are not just for students, but also for the siblings, as well as gay students who want to live with their straight buddies of the opposite gender or mixed-gender housing.

Campus Pride, a non-profit that pushes the rights of LGBT students on college campuses, said that 1 in 10 schools offer gender-inclusive housing.  Genny Beemyn who conducted the study said only 203 offered this inclusive housing.

“More and more schools are grappling with it,” Beemyn said. “It’s only a matter of time until this becomes a much bigger issue.”

The left coast universities and those in the Northeast have been quick to allow this gender-inclusive housing movement.

The same letter that has universities examining their transgender housing policies sparked a broader fight by telling U.S. public grammar and high schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that reflect their gender identities.

Thirteen U.S. states joined a lawsuit accusing the Obama administration of overreaching, attempting to add transgender protections to a 1972 law that never mentioned the subject.

The numbers of students who are choosing transgender housing is minimal compared to the rest of the school population. Although college age students tend to accept this controversial issue with less resistance, the numbers of students catered to in this transgender debate are a tiny segment of society as a whole.

Few students are choosing gender-inclusive housing. At Georgia Tech’s Atlanta campus, 42 out of some 4,100 students housed in dorms sought it last year.

 When Johns Hopkins University first offered it in the 2014-2015 academic year, 30 out of some 2,500 students enrolled, a number that doubled to 60 the following year.

“There are certainly some transgender students for whom it matters a lot but if it’s a gay man whose best friend is a lesbian and they decide they want to live together, this is an option,” said Demere Woolway, director of LGBTQ life at the Baltimore university.

Not to worry non-transgender students, college officials do not have plans to “phase out traditional gender-segregated housing”.

“We have students … who want to maintain spaces where they are with people who have the same gender identity,” said Elizabeth Lee Agosto, senior associate dean of student affairs at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, which has offered gender-inclusive housing since 2007. “It’s important to have the full spectrum.”

The religious freedoms of Christian universities are threatened by this strong arm from the government. Many have had to seek partial Title IX exemption in response “to the law created by the United States Department of Education and Office of Civil Rights regarding sex discrimination in the form of transgender and gender identity.”

California is making religious freedom an existential threat to the integrity of Christian schools with SB 1146.

The first is limiting the religious exemption from the Equity in Higher Education Act to educational institutions that are controlled by a religious organization specifically to train ministers. Seminaries would still be allowed to retain the exemption, but most Christian colleges and universities in California would no longer qualify.

The second stipulation is that it would require post-secondary educational institutions that receive the exemption to post a notice of it in a “prominent place” on campus, on their websites, on all brochures, and so on.

An amendment removed the language that would have allowed students who were “denied equal rights or opportunities on the basis of gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation” to sue the schools for monetary damages.

Students may choose a Christian education over the public university to avoid dealing with federally imposed gender identity and sexual orientation propaganda, yet, should laws like SB1146 pass in California, not even Christian colleges are within their rights under the First Amendment to practice their beliefs as their faith dictates.

Source: Yahoo   The Gospel Coalition

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/college-dorms-front-u-battle-over-transgender-rights-110309908.html?nhp=1



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