IN GOD’S OWN IMAGE: LGBTQ+ STUDENT ACTIVISM AND LIVED EXPERIENCE AT LIPSCOMB UNIVERSITY

Abstract

This thesis examines the historical relationship between Lipscomb University, a liberal arts college in Nashville affiliated with the churches of Christ tradition, and its LGBTQ+ student population. Though LGBTQ+ individuals have always occupied space at Lipscomb, the school has not always recognized this, and in the early twentieth century, issues of sexuality were not on the school’s radar. An incident recalled by Norman Parks, a dean in the late 1930s and early 1940s, showed that when the school hired a gay man by mistake, the school was unsure of what to do about the situation or if it could even be true. By the 1960s and 1970s Lipscomb had a system in place for dealing with same-sex attracted students, but it was exceedingly punitive. The school routinely expelled gay students when it discovered them, and in one well-publicized incident from 1978, it also outed the two students involved to their parents and suggested they enroll their sons in conversion therapy. This culture of fear was so strong amongst students who experienced feelings of attraction to people of the same sex that even those who never acted on those feelings were afraid of being discovered by the school.

By the year 2000, Lipscomb had begun to budge, but just slightly. Instead of outright expelling students who they were gay, the school gave them a chance to change. If a student enrolled in conversion therapy and thought of their queerness as a sin to give up rather than an identity, they could stay enrolled. It was not until the mid-2000s, when Lipscomb made a conscious decision to open itself up to the wider world and stop existing as a conservative island, that queer activism found an environment in which it could take root. As Lipscomb spent much of the late 2000s and early 2010s opening up, queer students recognized that the school’s culture and the wider world’s perspective had shifted in such a way that they could finally begin to push for the school to change its stance on LGBTQ+ issues. Now, nearly ten years after the first act of overt queer activism at the school, LGBTQ+ students have organized to an extent that the school can no longer control.