Salem Terminates Contract With Christian College Over Anti-Gay Stance
ByThe City of Salem, Mass., terminated Gordon College's contract to operate the city's Old Town Hall on Wednesday, Boston.com reported.
In a prepared statement, Salem Mayor Kimberly Driscoll cited the Christian college's "behavioral standards" for the institution, which ban sex outside of heterosexual marriage. She added that the city cannot legally work with "entities that maintain discriminatory practices because of the city's Non-Discrimination Ordinance, Boston.com reported.
"I am truly disappointed in the stance you have taken, which plainly discriminates against the rights of LGBT individuals, both on and off campus," Driscoll said in the letter to Gordon College President Michael Lindsay. "These actions fly in the face of the City of Salem's Non-Discrimination Ordinance."
Gordon's policies have been in the news because Lindsay had signed a July 1 letter sent to President Barack Obama asking that religious institutions be exempt from an executive order he is drafting to bar anti-gay discrimination.
The legislation would prevent groups with hiring practices that discriminate based on sexual orientation from receiving federal contracts. According to The Boston Globe, Gordon College's student handbook forbids "homosexual practice" and requires abstinence for unmarried students.
Lindsay said he was exercising his religious freedom when he signed the letter.
"Signing the letter was in keeping with our decades-old conviction that, as an explicitly Christian institution, Gordon should set the conduct expectations for members of our community," Lindsay said in a "personal message" posted on the Gordon College website. "Some have misunderstood this message as requesting something new or different. That's not the case. President Bush signed an executive order in 2002 that offered the same sort of religious exemption that we are requesting of President Obama."
Driscoll said that while she and the city respects Gordon College's rights to embed religious values on a private college campus "religious freedom does not afford you the right to impose those beliefs upon others and cannot be extended into a publicly owned facility or any management contract for a publicly owned facility, like Old Town Hall."
The college was contracted by Salem to operate the Old Town Hall, which housed the school's theater production of "Cry Innocent," a play about religious persecution during the Salem Witch Trials.