Southwestern Christian University Expels Student for Marrying Same-Sex Partner
A Christian university in Oklahoma has expelled a student, who was one semester away from completing her degree, for marrying her same-sex partner.
Christian Mynard, the student, said her school, Southwestern Christian University, gave her a letter after she and her "wife" came back from their honeymoon, saying she will no longer be attending the university.
"Due to this recent event, you will not be able attend SCU in the future," the letter read.
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"I've never seen anything like that before," KFSM quoted Mynard as saying Monday. "I was utterly in shock."
The school's lifestyle covenant is against same-sex marriage, but the student says she is being discriminated against.
"It compares gay marriage to being able to smoke a cigarette in a restaurant, and I felt like it was a very degrading letter," she said.
"It wasn't something I just signed and went on with, but the desire to play basketball and remain in sports and be a part of the team was there, and the desire to continue my education with a scholarship was there," she added, according to ABC News.
"Also in the handbook it says that not maintaining your health is against school policy," she went on to say. "Well they're not punishing the obese students in our school, or they're not punishing students who are having premarital sex."
The school learned about Mynard's marriage after she posted a picture on her marriage on her Facebook page.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Education closed a complaint by a transgender student, Jayce Marcus, granting the George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, "religious exemption" and thereby the right to deny the student school housing.
The Education Department granted the school a religious exemption from having to follow portions of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act that conflict with the school's religious views, according to PQ Monthly, a Portland-based LGBT magazine.
Marcus, 20, had filed a complaint in April after being refused the permission to be housed with other male students. Marcus, who had been in the female dorms, completed his sexual transition to become a "man" over the last year.
The school earlier told FOX 12, "George Fox strives to be a Christ-centered community, and our residential facilities are single sex because of our theological commitments. The student's request to switch from female-only on campus housing to male-only on campus housing is one that many institutions would struggle with."
