Christian College Tweets Its Anti-Gay Position Update Directly To Its Two Openly Gay Students

Erskine College, under fire for a new anti-gay statement, decided to tweet an updated statement directly to its two gay student athletes.

Last week a private Christian College in South Carolina took center stage for its newly-published policy statement banning homosexuality. Erskine College quickly became the locus of attention on social media when Outsports published a follow-up to its 2014 profile of two of Erskine’s student athletes, who are openly-gay. That follow-up included the college’s homosexuality ban.

LOOK: Christian College Bans Homosexuality After Two Gay Athletes Come Out

In what many believe is a response to the news that the 176-year old college has two openly-gay athletes, Erskine published the new anti-gay policy – which it insists is a “position,” not a policy.

A firestorm quickly errupted.

Erskine late last week moved the position statement to a different web location, and issued a “context” statement insisting that it has neither banned any gay students nor discriminated against any protected classes. LGBT people are not protected under South Carolina law. It also bragged that the new position statement did not specify minimum standards of punishment, such as expulsion, merely for being homosexual.

LOOK: Christian College Under Fire For Banning Homosexuality Wants You To Know They Didn’t Ban Homosexuals

The position statement also threatened that “institutional decisions will be made in light of this position,” suggesting action against LGBT students or faculty could be taken.

In an attempt to put out the fire it had caused by publishing a new position statement and an explanation, Erskine College took to Twitter at least 45 times to “correct” the record. For example, this tweet to the New York Daily News:

Shockingly, as Outsports reported Sunday, Erskine College tweeted a link to the context statement directly to its two openly-gay athletes:

 

That tweet has since been deleted.

It should be noted that aside from interviews with Outsports, neither of the athletes, Drew Davis and Juan Varona, had said much of anything publicly against their college, and in fact in the interviews had been very positive about their teammates and the support they’ve received from them.

So in response, both students took to Twitter:

Fortunately, both students are getting a good deal of support:

 

Tweet screenshot via Outsports, used by permission
Image, top: Erskine President Paul Kooistra, via Facebook