US: Lesbian expelled from Oklahoma college after marriage

Southwestern Christian University’s covenant prohibits ‘homosexual behaviour’

Oklahoma’s Southwestern Christian University has expelled a lesbian student who married her partner in New Mexico in March, The Washington Post reports.

Christian Minard, who was a semester away from completing a sports management program, had reportedly signed the university’s covenant that, in part, bans “homosexual behaviour,” a requirement for admission to the school, which has ties with the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, the Post notes.

“I was informed that you recently married someone of the same sex and saw a few pictures from Facebook,” the university’s vice-president of student life, Brad Davis, says in a letter that was sent to her parents’ home. “Of course, this is opposing to our view as an International Pentecostal Holiness denominational university as well as the Lifestyle Covenant that all students must agree and sign.”

While Minard acknowledges that her relationship violates the covenant, she points out that its tenets are not applied with consistency, noting that other students flout other aspects of the measure “all the time” with impunity.

Natasha Barsotti is originally from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. She had high aspirations of representing her country in Olympic Games sprint events, but after a while the firing of the starting gun proved too much for her nerves. So she went off to university instead. Her first professional love has always been journalism. After pursuing a Master of Journalism at UBC , she began freelancing at Xtra West — now Xtra Vancouver — in 2006, becoming a full-time reporter there in 2008.

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