At Christian college Azusa Pacific University, gay is A-Okay.

Again.

They’ve lifted the ban on same-sex relationships.

Again.

As reported by Christianity Today, the institution of higher learning revised its code of conduct last week to permit “romanticized” man-on-man and laaaaady-on-lady heart-throbbin’, cuddle-gettin’ shenanigans.

Nonetheless, provost Mark Stanton claims, the school’s values ain’t changed one iota:

“APU is an open-enrollment institution, which does not require students to be Christian to attend, and the handbook conveys our commitment to treating everyone with Christ-like care and civility,. Our values are unchanged, and the APU community remains unequivocally biblical in our Christian evangelical identity.”

The modification comes as a result of protest by LGBT student group Brave Commons.

Not everyone’s super psyched about the school’s malleable standards, as per CT:

In December, two board members resigned, due to “a personal belief that APU has drifted from its orthodox principles,” board chairman David Poole told World magazine. Poole released a statement to the APU community saying he disagreed with their characterization.

The ban was lifted as well last fall, but the board of trustees later said it had never approved the alteration.

The school’s statement of faith — which faculty are required to sign — has also been amended:

Around the same time that the ban on student same-sex relationship was lifted for the first time last fall, APU had also dropped longstanding language from an eight-point statement on human sexuality, which declared “homosexual acts” (among others) are “expressly forbidden” by Scripture; “heterosexuality is God’s design for sexually intimate relationships”; and “humans were created as gendered beings” to be fruitful and multiply. These revisions have remained on the website.

Unsurprisingly, the change has brought outside criticism:

Evangelicals who have followed the flip-flop from outside the APU community worry that what the school sets up as nondiscrimination violates core beliefs on biblical sexuality.

“The fundamental problem here is that Azusa’s student handbook fails to make a moral distinction between homosexual and heterosexual relationships,” wrote Denny Burk, president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. “Even when abstinent, they are not morally equivalent.”

In the last several months, I’ve covered stories of clergy blessing abortion clinics (here), a college banning Chick Fil-a (here), feminists retranslating the Bibles (here), and a city hall Pride flag beating out a Christian one (here).

School reps can call it what they wish, but the reality is this is the direction the culture is moving. And educational — and even religious –institutions are following suit. Azuza Pacific University is changing its values. You can believe that’s a terrible devolvement or a fantastic evolution; either way, it’s a change. And it’s one occurring in an ever-changing world. A world that isn’t strengthening its embrace of Christianity.

-Alex

Relevant RedState links in this article: here, here, here, and here.

See 3 more pieces from me: Greed New Deal, Jenna Jameson on abortion, and a Parkland survivor confronts the “Broward Coward.”

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