The students staging a sit-in for LGBTQ+ rights at a Christian university

The professor had explained that sex and gender were not the same, said Scanlan, 32, an alum.

There had been no talk of being transgender or intersex, Scanlan recalled to the group of current LGBTQ+ students. But the lecture had helped Scanlan, who described themself at the time as a closeted trans non-binary person, finally start to realize an important fact:

The policy stands out in the liberal Pacific north-west city, where, according to the Pew Research Center, more than one-third of residents reported no affiliation with a religion. But the school is certainly not alone in the US.

These policies can exist thanks to religious exemptions under Title IX, the federal education law barring discrimination based on sex, and Title VII, the law prohibiting employment discrimination based on sex, among other things, explained Evan Gerstmann, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University.

Last year, the Religious Exemption Accountability Project filed a class-action lawsuit against the US Department of Education, challenging the Title IX exemption. It names 46 plaintiffs, including a student who attended SPU.

The school has not filed for a religious exemption.

Before the board announced its decision, the Free Methodist church USA warned that if the university changed its policy, it would lose its affiliation with the denomination.

The Free Methodist church USA declined to comment.

Christopher TF Hanson, an assistant professor of music at SPU who described himself as the only out queer full-time faculty member at the school, said when he had interviewed for his current position, in 2019, he had not brought up being queer. When he questioned the policy, he said, he had been told not to worry about it because it was merely a historical document.

But after he started, he said, he began hearing of people who had left the school or dropped out of the hiring process because they are queer, as well as from current faculty members afraid to come out because of the policy.

Last year, after a nursing instructor at SPU sued the school, claiming it had discriminated against him because of his sexual orientation (the case was settled out of court), the stories only increased, Hanson said.

As of Monday evening, the students were still camped out. It is clear they have no intention of leaving.

They have coordinated meals and sit-in shifts through Google sign-up sheets, making sure there are at least three students there at any given time. They have created a kitchen area filled with bins of donated snacks and two large coolers.

Chloe Guillot, 22, an organizer and senior at the school, said they planned to stay into the summer. They have given the school until 1 July to reverse the policy, or the students expect to file a lawsuit arguing that the board breached its fiduciary duty. As of Monday, they had raised over $26,000 for the lawsuit (they plan to donate the money to the school if the policy is changed by their deadline).

But Guillot, who is Christian and non-binary, said it went beyond that.