So-called “Gender Neutral” University Housing Will Only Bring More Trouble
Last fall, a New Jersey college student named Tyler Clementi committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington bridge to his death. Tyler’s suicide was revealed to be the result of shame and harassment he felt over his homosexuality. Now the college Tyler attended thinks they can avoid further similar incidents by going “gender-neutral.” They couldn’t be more wrong.
Starting this fall, Rutgers University will implement so-called “gender-neutral” housing on campus, which means students will be able to select any roommate they want, regardless of gender. In a stunning snub of parental rights, the school will not allow parents to overrule their child’s decision to live with a member of the opposite sex.
Though the school has been considering this change for some time, Tyler’s suicide was the deciding factor in the move. According to the administration, “In the aftermath of the Clementi tragedy, members of the university’s LGBTQ community told the administration that gender-neutral housing would help create an even more inclusive environment.” Sadly, the university bowed to those pressures, as many schools are doing nowadays.
The move to “gender-neutral” housing is becoming somewhat of a national trend for colleges and universities. Spearheading the effort to pressure schools down this unwise path is a group called the National Student Genderblind Campaign, which, according to their website, envisions “a fully inclusive and free society in which labels matter less—a world in which our social institutions and policies reflect the fact that social identities are not experienced in static, bounded, and homogeneous ways.”
The group’s mission is a wholesale rejection of God’s creation. By shedding the Biblical teaching of the “labels” male and female, the group is striving for a deconstruction of the idea that God created the sexes with purpose, meaning, roles, and boundaries. They are fighting a battle in American society to ensure that our culture will fully reject God’s created order. They would do well to heed the words of woe from Isaiah pronounced upon those who call good evil and evil good.
“Gender-neutral” housing will not necessarily prevent further suicides by homosexual or transsexual students. Indeed, as pastor and theologian John Piper noted, “responding to Tyler’s tragic suicide with gender neutral dorms is like pushing others in [the Hudson River] after him.” Enabling and encouraging Biblically-forbidden behavior will never result in greater happiness and stability, but only the opposite.
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CNN
In the wake of the high-profile suicide of a gay Rutgers University student last fall, the New Jersey college will implement gender-neutral housing in an attempt to make the university more inclusive.