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The board of Whitworth University, a Christian institution in Spokane, Wash., has added sexual orientation to its list of protected classes, The Spokesman-Review reported last week.
The university explained its decision in an email to students.
“The board voted yesterday to resolutely uphold the Christ-centered commitments required of Whitworth staff and faculty; safeguard the campus environment to allow for civil discourse on topics about which faithful Christians disagree, including God’s design for sexual expression; and add ‘sexual orientation’ to the university’s list of protected classes, which already includes color, gender, ethnicity, social or economic class, and nationality,” the email said.
The change comes after about a year of student protests. Advocates have urged the university to be more affirming of the LGBTQ+ community, inspired in part by a New Yorker profile of a gay Whitworth professor who described what it was like to come out at a university that did not explicitly support LGBTQ+ students and employees.
In the email to students, official explained that the board had been mulling the decision to add sexual orientation as a protected class for over a year and had consulted a range of stakeholders throughout the process.
Whitworth is a member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, which previously placed member college Eastern University on hold for changing its policies to allow the hiring of LGBTQ+ people.
