Religious college dismisses student for being gay

John Brown University in Arkansas dismissed Michael Guinn from college on 13th January, he contends, because he violated campus 'lifestyle' guidelines which Mr Guinn believes were tougher than those required of other students, specifically tailored to the fact that he is gay. John Brown University has declined to discuss the case in detail.

It appears some of the disquiet felt by John Brown University may relate to Mr Guinn's online 'blog' as well:

"They said they didn’t check up on me, but they would pull out three-ring binders full of my blog entries printed out."

Steve Beers, vice president of student development, commented (sorry, this is a very lengthy article) upon the reason for his dismissal thus:

"We work redemptively with all students who struggle with behavior issues in their lives, and we discipline students after we have credible, substantial and typically repeated evidence of violation of our Community Covenant."

Not how Mr Guinn sees it:

"There are many blogs with JBU students smoking hookah pipes, gambling, drinking beer and smoking in pictures."

- all it seems are violations of JBU's code of conduct. None of this particularly surprises me because one often hears surreal stories about the social pressures of living in Bible Belt America; even though I live on what are the finges of what I sometimes refer to as Scotland's Bible Belt I have to say that this culture is not quite so pervasive, although I know that some of my friends who had more personal experience of it when growing up believe differently.