In his junior year, he was summoned to a dean’s office after he was reported for having his boyfriend, who was not an ORU student, in his dorm room. Vicky Hartzler, who has pushed for some of the most expansive restrictions on gay people, was suspended from Twitter for an anti-trans post, and is now running in the Republican Senate primary to replace the retiring Roy Blunt.ĭuring his time at ORU, Hartzler, now 23, assiduously concealed his sexual identity from school officials in order to avoid a punishment that would jeopardize his degree. His parents live on the same property in suburban Kansas City, Missouri, as his father’s brother and his wife, Rep. At home, church, and the Christian schools he attended, he was consistently taught that homosexuality was sinful, and that gay people were ungodly and even criminal. But his father, who had raised him in a deeply conservative Christian environment, told him it was the only university he would pay for his son to attend. ORU wasn’t Andrew Hartzler’s first choice for college. Under a change made by the Trump administration, a university can even request the exemption after being accused of discrimination. To qualify for the exemption, a religious college or university need only notify the Department of Education of how complying with the law’s nondiscrimination provisions would conflict with its religious tenets. But none of these protections exist for an estimated 100,000 LGBTQ students at over 200 religious colleges and universities that have taken advantage of the law’s expansive religious exemption. Since the mid-2010s, as courts and policymakers began interpreting “sex” in federal civil rights statutes to include gender identity and later, sexual orientation, these protections have expanded to LGBTQ students. I will not be united in marriage other than the marriage between one man and one woman.”Īt any other non-religious college, such a pledge would be a violation of a 1972 federal law that protects against sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funding. Like all students, Hartzler had signed a pledge: “I will not engage in or attempt to engage in any illicit, unscriptural sexual acts, which include any homosexual activity and sexual intercourse with one who is not my spouse.
Hartzler, who is gay, did not raise his hand, acutely aware that at ORU, being gay is an honor code offense punishable by expulsion.