Belmont Abbey College on Title IX: Legitimizing gender identity ‘spiritually harmful’
Following charges of “discrimination” from a national LGBTQ
activist group, Belmont
Abbey College defended its request to the U.S. Department of Education
(ED) for a Title IX exemption in an interview with The Cardinal Newman Society,
saying the ED’s broadening of Title IX to include “gender identity” threatened
the College’s religious mission and would force the college to advocate
practices that are “spiritually harmful.”
“A policy which would legitimize gender identity issues,
particularly according to the interpretation put forward by employees of the
Department of Education, would, first of all, abdicate the responsibility of
the college community as a whole to act in accord with its fundamental identity
as a community which publicly identifies itself as in communion with the
Catholic Church,” Abbot Placid Solari, O.S.B., chancellor of the College, told
the Newman Society.
He added that, based upon the “essential characteristics” of a
Catholic college outlined in the Apostolic Constitution on Catholic
universities Ex corde
Ecclesiae, such a policy “would abdicate the college's responsibility as
an educational and intellectual community to contribute the insights of
Catholic faith and reflection to the public discussion on the issues of gender
identity … would contradict fidelity to the Christian message as it comes
through the Church” and “would abdicate responsibility to serve the
transcendent goal of life by advocating practices which, according to the
Church's teaching, are spiritually harmful.”
“The teaching of the Scriptures as it comes through the Church
is clear on the creation of human beings as male and female, which is
intrinsically connected in Genesis with being in the image and likeness of
God,” said Abbot Placid. “Furthermore, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is clear
on the intrinsic relation between body and soul and the complementarity of male
and female in God’s creation.”
Abbot Placid told the Newman Society that “gender identity
issues do have the potential to harm students” because of the intrinsic
relationship of body and soul.
“There is already a psychological disconnect between body and
psyche in questions of gender identity. … Because human beings are a unity,
psychological and physical issues inevitably impact one's spiritual life,” he
said. “To foster identities which are essentially untrue will inevitably cause
spiritual harm.
“Furthermore, the contemporary culture, which detaches sexual
activity and expression from fruitful intimate communion, and objectifies the
body, and thus the person, can lead to physical harm and danger,” he added.
Despite this potential harm, the Newman Society has documented a
number of recent instances of Catholic colleges and universities promoting and
embracing gender identity issues on campus, such as Georgetown
University, Saint
Louis University, Fordham
University, DePaul
University and Marquette
University.
The psychological issues associated with gender identity
confusion have been written about extensively by Dr. Paul McHugh, former
psychiatrist-in-chief at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and current professor of
psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Presenting his research, Sexuality
and Identity: Scientific Findings, at a conference in Rome last
October, McHugh said:
The differences [between men and women] are not just
physiological and anatomical, but also psychological; … These truths have
become increasingly clouded today by a nonscientific gender ideology, which
claims that ‘gender’ can be divorced from our biological sex; it claims that
gender is not limited to male and female but exists on a spectrum; it even
claims that individuals can choose to radically remake their gender according
to their subjective preferences. But scientific evidence runs contrary to this
sharp division between biological sex and socially constructed gender.
“There is no credible scientific evidence that people suffering
from gender-identity disorder or gender dysphoria were somehow ‘born in the
wrong body,’” he added, saying, “The personal distress of individuals with
gender dysphoria is analogous to the distress found in other psychiatric
conditions like anorexia or body dysmorphic disorder — which involve believing
that one is obese when the opposite is true, or focusing obsessively on
physical traits that one hasn’t accepted.”
Abbot Placid said that while a Catholic college must be
committed to insuring that all members of the college community are treated
with equal respect and dignity, “The college must make its policy on gender
identity issues clear, so that persons considering joining the college
community can make an informed decision.”
“Given the difficulties and even harassment that persons
struggling with gender issues often face, there should be a sensitivity to
their vulnerability and support offered in keeping with this vulnerability,” he
added. “The college should offer counseling and assistance in keeping with the
beliefs and teachings of the Church on human sexuality.”
The U.S. bishops issued a new
resource on gender identity this month for “[t]eachers, catechists,
youth ministers, family life directors, and parents” that highlights important
Church teachings on human sexuality. The seven-page document is “a compilation
of quotes from the last three pontificates, as well as other Church documents
that address this phenomenon of ‘gender ideology’ or ‘gender theory,’ which is
a position on anthropology (who a human being is) that is in conflict with the
Christian one.”
Charges of “Discrimination”
Title IX of the Education Amendments was signed into law in
1972, and was designed “to
avoid the use of federal money to support sex discrimination in education
programs and to provide individual citizens effective protection against those
practices.” The ED broadened Title
IX in April 2014 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity,
supposedly in an effort to protect transgender students.
“Congress did not intend, when it adopted Title IX in 1972, to
reach the question of gender identity. If Congress wants to change that, they
can, but it’s inappropriate for an administrative branch agency to rewrite the
law under the guise of interpretation,” Greg Baylor, senior counsel and
director of the center for religious schools at Alliance Defending Freedom,
told the Newman Society. He added that Congress also decided in 1972 “that if
compliance with Title IX would be inconsistent with a school’s religious
tenets, then the schools will be exempt from those requirements that are in
conflict with their religious beliefs.”
Documents obtained through
a Freedom of Information Act request revealed 36 colleges have applied for the
exemption since mid-2014, including the Catholic colleges Belmont Abbey College
in Belmont, N.C., Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio and
St.Gregory’s University in Shawnee, Okla. All three of these Catholic colleges
are recommended by the Newman Society in its Newman Guide
to Choosing a Catholic College, and were approved for the
exemption.
“Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of
discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to
stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity and OCR accepts such
complaints for investigation,” a question and answer document produced by the ED’s
Office for Civil Rights (OCR) stated. “Similarly, the actual or perceived
sexual orientation or gender identity of the parties does not change a school’s
obligations.”
“All public and private elementary and secondary schools, school
districts, colleges, and universities receiving any federal financial assistance
… must comply with Title IX,” according to the document, but, “An educational
institution that is controlled by a religious organization is exempt from Title
IX to the extent that the law’s requirements conflict with the organization’s
religious tenets.”
Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, an
organization based in Charlotte, N.C., that develops “resources, programs and
services to support LGBTQ and ally students on college campuses across the
United States,” said he believes that the colleges that requested a Title IX
waiver are being discriminatory, and specifically criticized Belmont Abbey
College in an interview with
the Gaston Gazette,
saying the College “went out of its way to discriminate against transgender
people.”
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The Newman Society contacted Windmeyer and asked for clarity on
how Belmont Abbey College’s request for a Title IX exemption was
discriminatory.
“Any time we create an environment that a student can’t learn,
or impacts negatively the student’s learning — such as applying for a Title IX
exemption to tell them that they don’t have a right to be who they are on
campus as a trans-student, as a gay student, as a lesbian student — that’s
wrong, and as our organization said, it’s shameful,” he told the Newman
Society.
Windmeyer’s organization published a “Shame List” of the
colleges and universities that recently applied for the Title IX exemption,
encouraging students on the campuses to file a formal complaint with the ED
OCR.
He said Belmont Abbey College likely has students on campus who
consider themselves transgender or are attracted to members of the same sex,
and “this exemption creates a hostile environment for those students to succeed
academically — to feel welcome [and] safe on campus.” The College insists that
all students are treated with charity and respect, "including those whose
beliefs and behaviors differ from those of the Catholic Church."
While Windmeyer said he respects the fact that private colleges
can create and enforce policies on campus in-line with their religious mission,
he doesn’t think the colleges that requested Title IX exemptions should be
allowed to receive taxpayer funding — which, at the moment, is legal.
According to the Association
of Catholic Colleges and Universities, “Catholic colleges and
universities had at least 39 percent of full-time, first-time undergraduates
receiving Pell Grants (the federal need-based grants program for low-income
students).”
However, “There are people who want to amend [the Civil Rights
Act of 1964] to add gender identity and sexual orientation so that recipients
of federal financial assistance would have to give up their religious beliefs
and conduct in order to get federal money,” Baylor told the Newman Society.
Companion measures in the House and Senate were
introduced in July 2015 aimed at doing just that, under the title of the
“Equality Act.”
To pass this measure into law “would be a grave violation of
religious freedom that is utterly unwarranted on the merits,” Baylor said.
So while Belmont Abbey College and the other colleges that
requested Title IX exemptions are still legally able to receive federal
funding, Windmeyer hopes his efforts to highlight what he believes is
discrimination will cause parents and students to think twice about supporting
and attending these colleges.
Windmeyer, who said he is a practicing Catholic, was also
critical of the Church and its approach to “LGBTQ issues,” saying the Church
“has been wrong” on these issues, that “there’s a huge disagreement in the
Church around LGBT individuals” and that there is room “for dialogue and
conversation within the Catholic Church.”
He said he believes Belmont Abbey College “shut down that
dialogue and conversation” on campus by not initiating a campus-wide discussion
with faculty and students on the issues involved in the new interpretation of
Title IX before applying for the exemption “because they wouldn’t have had
agreement.”
“It would’ve created that conversation, that dialogue that they
probably don’t want on their campus around how Catholic people feel about this
issue,” he said. “That means we have to question our faith, we have to look at
our faith in a really deep and meaningful way, and try to find out what would
God want us to do.”
But Abbot Placid told the Newman Society he was “not aware of
any ban on dialogue of the matter.”
“The proper place for discussion in the college community is how
one treats any and all members of the college community with dignity and
respect,” he said. “As the president wrote in his letter
requesting the exemption, the College is committed to treating all
people with respect, even those who are not in agreement with the teachings of
the Catholic Church.”
And the proper opportunity for dialogue, according to Abbot
Placid, “would have been one initiated by the Department of Education, since
employees of that federal agency have made regulations binding with the force
of law and supported by the power of sanctions on the people they are supposed
to serve, yet with no accountability to those they are supposed to serve.”
“I don’t recall Mr. Windemeyer initiating any dialogue to
ascertain whether his postulation regarding the College’s motives or the
position of the College community was correct,” he added.
Abbot Placid said the matter of requesting the exemption “goes
to the identity and mission of the institution, which, in the governance structure
of the College, is the responsibility of the board, administration and
chancellor.”
“If Belmont Abbey College presents itself publicly as a Catholic
institution, then honesty and integrity require that it operate in keeping with
the publicly proclaimed faith and teaching of the Catholic Church,” he said.
Reprinted with permission from The
Cardinal Newman Society.
