Ahead of Illinois’ gay marriage law going into effect in June, Loyola University Chicago has adopted a new policy that will restrict same-sex couples from wedding on campus.
The university is refusing to comment and distancing itself from seeming antigay by also restricting wedding access to any couple who isn’t Roman Catholic-sanctioned and has ties to the school.
But the timing sure is convenient. The move comes only months after student Christine Irvine filed a petition to persuade the school to honor the state law by allowing same-sex ceremonies.
“It’s really disheartening,” she told the Windy City Times. “It’s a sign of the non-acceptance and non-tolerance of the LGBT students on campus … a sign of disrespect of our love compared to our peers.”
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It’s also a backwards-thinking move at a time when 58 percent of American Catholics approve of gay marriage (higher than the national average).
We get that change is hard to fathom for deep-rooted institutions, but the wave of gay marriage has already begun to swell and universities of all places should be riding it to shore before it crashes over their heads.
Cam
They’ll be remembered just the same as the businesses that doubled down on rac-ism right after the civil rights laws changed, or the Mormon church.
You would think that these businesses and organizations would learn that digging in on bigotry never works for them.
Chris Vogel
While the Roman church has an unbroken history of doing whatever it can to damage the lives of homosexuals, but, really, this is the one kind of thing that they should be entitled to do. Since they consider their “university” a religious institution, its services can legitimately be restricted to the church’s members who have not offended it in some way. If not that, then religious freedom is really threatened. (Such a threat, of course, does not exist in all of the other ways that they are whining about.) Keep in mind that Roman Catholics have never genuinely subscribed to anything that might legitimately be called “education”, particularly critical inquiry, always preferring indoctrination. And, after all, modern secular governments no longer permit their traditional, homicidal, responses to difference.
Cam
@Chris Vogel:
Nobody said that they didn’t have the right to do it. Just like the Mormons had the right to exclude blacks from their church and from full participation at BYU.
I am saying that they will be remembered for it the same way that the Mormons can’t escape what they did to blacks. Considering they are losing membership fairly quickly holding the banner for an unpopular bigotry is a short sighted decision on their part. Especially in Academia.
Harley
Now, come on! Where am I going to hold my gay-Wiccan-Buddist-Muslum-Catholic wedding now. That is REALLY a violation of my “deeply help religious beliefs.” Yes, yes. They can do that. Just don’t keep me from putting up MY idea of a nativity scene at city hall during the end of the year holiday celebrations otherwise known as the busiest shopping days of the year.
beachcomberT
Please edit your second paragraph so that it makes sense.
EGO
And they call Loyola a university? They must teach dark ages thinking that even the pope is against.