Belmont’s making headlines again, but this time accolades aren’t raining down as usual. One could argue whether the school fired the soccer coach or the coach resigned on her own. I think we can all agree at this point that it’s just bickering over semantics: Lisa Howe was shown the door. She’s was a very successful soccer coach for Belmont. She is also a lesbian whose partner is expecting, and she saw fit to announce this to the students on her team. Belmont decided which of its responses to each of those two things was more important, and a chorus of moralists voices has risen up to denounce the university.
That’s right, that wasn’t a typo. I called the group of student protesters, news media, and upset donors a chorus of moralists, and I meant it. Take a step out of the emotion of the situation, and you’ll begin to notice something. This entire brouhaha consists of one group of people insisting that their moral standard is better than the university’s moral standard. Take, for example, this protest sign that made it into an ill-conceived op/ed in Sports Illustrated’s online edition.
The sign says, “Jesus loves Coach Howe.” I can’t imagine the university would disagree with this sentiment. I also don’t think this is what the sign actually means to say. The message, given that it’s authored and held by a protestor, is most likely that Jesus wouldn’t have held Coach Howe to the same standard as Belmont. It’s an obvious implication that Jesus would apply this student’s standard to Howe instead, whatever moral standard that student may have.
This morning in the Tennessean, I was grieved to see one of Belmont’s longtime donors, Mike Curb, send out a call for Belmont to change.
“Belmont has to decide whether they want to be a national recognized university — particularly with their school of music business — or they want to be a church,” he said.
Curb is asking Belmont to make a choice about what is more important: fame, glory and recognition or a university unwavering in its pursuit of the Truth. His condescension makes it clear on which side Curb wants Belmont to fall.
Like I said earlier, take a step back—beyond the appeals to one morality’s superiority over another—and examine what’s happening here:
On Sunday, Belmont University’s chairman of the board of trustees told the Tennessean, “We expect people to commit themselves to high moral and ethical standards within a Christian context. That includes members of the board, faculty and administration.” This should be no surprise to anyone with a modicum of familiarity with Belmont, employees certainly being no exception. In fact, to make clear the expectations Belmont has for its board, faculty and administration, each must sign a statement outlining the ethical expectations. Belmont University intends to be a private Christian university with an unwavering position on faith and morality; whether or not you agree with Belmont’s particular beliefs, one cannot argue that it doesn’t erode such an institution’s objective to have people in positions of authority flagrantly opposing its beliefs.
On the other side, people are upset. (And let me take a moment to address the “you can’t fire someone for no good reason” argument: Tennessee is not only an employment-at-will state, but Belmont is a private, religious institution.) There are a variety of reasons given, but when the layers of umbrage are peeled back, we find the protestors saying something they would never articulate: Our moral standard is better than yours. They could never articulate it because, ironically, their moral standard forces a sort of cognitive dissonance that tells them, No one belief is more righteous than another, and that’s really the only right way to think about such things.
So if you disagree with Belmont’s decision, ask yourself this: what’s my moral standard here and why does it trump Belmont’s moral standard?