Jason Johnson, a student at the University of the Cumberlands, a Kentucky university affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, was recently expelled due to a myspace.com posting discussing his homosexuality.

Administrators confronted him last week about it and cited the university’s policy:

Any student who engages in or promotes sexual behavior not consistent with Christian principles (including sex outside marriage and homosexuality) may be suspended or asked to withdraw from the University of the Cumberlands.

The president Jim Taylor confirms the official policy of bigotry:

At University of the Cumberlands, we hold students to a higher standard. Students know the rules before they come to this institution. We've followed our policies and procedures in keeping with our traditional denominational beliefs. ... We are different by design and are non-apologetic about our Christian beliefs.

Johnson, a theatre major and honors student, must be glad he’s done with this toxically backwards institution (the Baptists are definitely NOT fabulous). Indeed, he said as much in his post:

I am so ready to be out of here. When you get to the point where you almost wish that your school will kick you out, then you know you've got it bad.

Obviously, this is deplorable. That any school would expel a student for their sexuality is contrary to the entire idea of a university: tolerance, inclusiveness, exploration, curiosity, etc. Furthermore, it’s not really Christian either. If they are to follow the letter of the law—the same law that forbids lying down with other men—well don’t they have to stone people who wear two different types of cloth, as the sage advice in Leviticus admonishes us to do? Is that a polyester and cotton mix in your J.Crew sweater? Time for a stoning!!!!

But hey, it’s a private institution, let them flout human decency and be cruelly indifferent to the civilization around them. That’s freedom, right? Letting people be idiots and allowing moronic, Bible-thumping bullies head universities. But the snag here is that the university receives some public funding:

[T]he 2006-08 [Kentucky] state budget contains a $1 million scholarship program for pharmacy students at the University of the Cumberlands.

Not cool. No one’s tax money should go towards funding this pathetic excuse for a university or the slack-jawed yokels who run it.