By The FirstCancel culture has a new target, and it’s setting its sights on NCAA basketball tournament darling Oral Roberts University.
ORU is currently in the tournament’s Sweet 16, an incredible feat for the small school in Oklahoma. But that notoriety is now coming with calls for them to be cancelled because of their Christian heritage. A writer for USA Today’s sports site For the Win didn’t hold back on Tuesday. That’s when Hemal Jhaveri wrote that ORU’s orthodox Christian beliefs on sex and marriage should disqualify the team.
She said that “the university’s deeply bigoted anti-LGBTQ+ polices can’t and shouldn’t be ignored.”
The Christian Post has more:
“Now, as Oral Roberts gains national attention, the focus shouldn’t just be on their very good men’s basketball team, but on their prejudiced teachings and moral regressiveness,” wrote Jhaveri.
“The NCAA has always been more about paying lip service to ideals of equality and inclusion than action, but Oral Roberts inclusion in the men’s tournament proves how little they actually care about those words, which are emblazoned on their basketball courts.”
Jhaveri went on to argue that ORU’s stance on LGBT issues was “nothing short of discriminatory and should expressly be condemned by the NCAA.”
“The fact is, any and all anti-LGBTQ+ language in any school’s [policies] should ban them from NCAA competition,” she argued.
“However accomplished its young student athletes are, the school is a hotbed of institutional transphobia, homophobia with regressive, sexist policies.”
“It’s always nice to root for the underdog, but in this case, there’s very little to actually cheer about,” Jhaveri concluded.
To USA Today’s credit, they published a response from popular Christian author Ed Stetzer of Wheaton College.
“This is a stunning 180 from the arguments we heard in 2009 when LGBTQ+ advocates maintained, ‘All we want is the right to marry. How will my gay marriage hurt you?'” he wrote. “Now, it’s “We want your college accreditation, your athletic participation, and more.”
Read Stetzer’s full response here.
