Bob Jones III, in red, and his son, Stephen Jones, before Bob Jones University’s graduation in May 2013.
(Photo: Ken Osburn, The Greenville (S.C.) News)
A 2,000-signature petition has been sent to Bob Jones University asking for an apology for school leaders’ anti-gay comments, most notably one from Bob Jones III in 1980 calling for homosexuals to be stoned.
BJUnity, which offers support for past and present lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender students at the nondenominational Christian university, mailed the petition Wednesday, said Jeffrey Hoffman, the executive director.
Now the university’s chancellor, Jones was its president when he told The Associated Press: “It would not be a bad idea to bring the swift justice today that was brought in Israel’s day against murder and rape and homosexuality. I guarantee it would solve the problem posthaste if homosexuals were stoned, if murderers were immediately killed as the Bible commands.”
Jones made the comment after he and other fundamentalist leaders had been to the White House to deliver a petition bearing 70,000 names to protest extending protections of the Civil Rights Act to homosexuals.
University spokesman Randy Page said in an email Friday that he was unaware of the BJUnity petition. He didn’t respond to an email asking for more information on the university’s beliefs on homosexuality.
Hoffman, who was born on the Bob Jones campus and graduated from Bob Jones Academy, said BJUnity was founded after several former students started talking to one another about their experiences.
Before that, they kept their sexual orientation secret because they knew of students who had been asked to leave the school or graduates who were banned from campus.
“That’s the background I know,” Hoffman said. “I couldn’t trust information with them. We were all isolated from one another.”
One student sought counseling, and the next day his story was told to the student body during chapel. His name wasn’t used, but after chapel he tried to kill himself, Hoffman said.
“He’s fine now, but we all felt this has to stop,” he said. “We have to be visible.”
The organization began with a series of personal narratives posted to its website from an array of men and women, some children of employees or fundamentalist preachers.
People told of trying to pray themselves straight, of dulling their pain of not feeling normal with alcohol, of being labeled spiritually unstable. Some write of fulfilling societal expectations by getting married and coming out to spouses and children many years later.
Hoffman said about 200 people are associated with the organization across the USA.
The organization runs a crisis line for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people who need help, both emotional and financial. They take in young people who have been kicked out of their homes, such as an 18-year-old in a Columbus, Ohio, suburb.
He had no driver’s license, Social Security card, no means of supporting himself.
A lesbian couple took him in. He’s working in retail in Philadelphia now, Hoffman said.
“Thriving,” he said. “But he was set up for abject failure.”
Through the years, Jones and other university leaders have made statements, especially during weekday chapel services, calling homosexuality an abomination. Jones said homosexuals wanted the right to pedophilia and the right to go into schools and push their agenda.
“If somebody wants to be a murderer or a homosexual or a thief or a rapist, nobody can stop them but don’t ask law-abiding citizens to accept it,” Jones said in a chapel sermon. The day after Sept. 11, 2001, Jones said the attack on the United States was God’s punishment for homosexuality.
“He did a lot of prancing and swishing and making fun of gay people,” Hoffman said. “I believed being gay was the worst thing you could do in the world.”
A request to a university spokesman for a comment from Jones wasn’t answered.
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SOURCE: USA Today
Lyn Riddle, The Greenville (S.C.) News
