Catholic Culture Overview
Catholic Culture Overview

Joe Biden: Annihilating Christian Colleges

By Robert G. Marshall ( bio - articles - email ) | May 07, 2021

Using language reminiscent of wartime generals operating under a “take no prisoners alive” order, Joe Biden’s deputies at the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) stated earlier this year that they “will forge a path to the eradication” of sexual orientation/gender identity (SOGI) “discrimination” at any public or private or religious college.

This menacing message was sent to the College of the Ozarks in Missouri, but it applies to all public, private, and Christian colleges.

HUD’s “eradication” term bluntly describes President Biden’s draconian intentions spelled out in other HUD documents that the 115-year-old College would be subject to dictates which seek to eliminate the moral standards and teachings of Jesus Christ from the College. Courses, speech, configuration of the physical plant and anything that remotely hints of past, present or future allegiance to Christian practices and public expression of beliefs must be “eradicated” by the College, per the Biden Administration dictates.

College of the Ozarks Challenge

The College of the Ozarks’ court filing indicates that HUD is imposing an immediate prohibition on their College’s policies made “on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity both in occupancy of their dwellings and in policies governing those dwellings,” even though these policies have been in place for more than a century!

At the college, all faculty, students and administrators “are expected to adhere to Christian values … and its code of conduct.” The College teaches that biological sex “is a person’s Godgiven, objective gender, whether or not it differs from their internal sense of ‘gender identity.’” This is based on Old and New Testament teachings including the Biblical teaching that sexual relations are for the dual purpose of having and raising children and strengthening the marital bond between one man and one woman in marriage.

The College believes that gender expression and attempted “sexual transition” contrary to biological sex, as well as sex abuse, sexual harassment, sexual assault, marital infidelity, heterosexual misconduct, homosexual conduct, and possession of pornographic materials are moral problems.

The College’s Code of Conduct imposes disciplinary action on students or faculty members who engage in or encourage gender expression inconsistent with biological sex, gender transition, non-marital sex, and same-sex relations. The College accepts students who experience same sex attractions provided the Code of conduct is not violated. In short, the College adheres to Biblical sexual morality.

College employees use only pronouns which reflect an individual’s biological sex, not pronouns that might reflect an individual’s gender “identity” which conflicts with their DNA. The College instructs present and future students, parents and the public that the College does not and will not permit biological males in female residence halls and spaces even if a biological male claims to be female.

What HUD Requires from the College of the Ozarks

In a direct challenge to the College’s Christian character and teaching purpose, the HUD Directive “requires a [student] housing resident to be treated according to the person’s stated gender identity, including use of the person’s preferred pronouns, and it prohibits as discrimination because of gender identity using pronouns according to the person’s biological sex.”

The HUD Directive compels the College to allow biological males claiming female status, full access to female resident halls, female showers and bathroom facilities in residence halls reserved for biological females.

The Directive goes on to further forbid the College from conditioning “access to its student housing on a commitment to abide by its student code of conduct, including…to avoid all sexual relations outside of a marriage between one man and one woman.” The Biden Administration is mandating that the College make its dorms available for sexual promiscuity and immorality in contravention of clear Biblical teaching in order to conform to the Biden Administration’s hedonistic regime mandates.

Instead of encouraging fidelity to a future spouse, respect for timeless moral values, such as permanent love, marriage and family, the Biden Administration is pushing immoral behavior that leads to cancer-causing hormonal birth control use, abortion, STD’s, infertility, conscience-numbing substance abuse, and physical, emotional and spiritual harm to teens and young adults.

The College is forbidden from issuing any statements or notices “of discrimination because of gender identity…to current and prospective students expressing the fact that occupancy and access in the College’s residence halls are or should be separated by biological sex, not gender identity.”

The College of the Ozarks’ court filing notes that the HUD Directive also prohibits

the College from expressing the fact that occupancy and access in the College’s residence halls depends upon or should depend upon compliance with its code of conduct, including the commitment to avoid all sexual conduct outside of a marriage between one man and one woman.… The Directive compels the College to make affirmative statements to current and prospective students expressing the fact that occupancy and access in the College’s residence halls is not separated by biological sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

HUD mandates that the College and its employees treat students in College housing in conformity with a person’s stated gender identity and preferred pronouns, and not according to the person’s biological sex. The Directive seeks to compel the College to communicate to its students messages contrary to its Christian beliefs and policies. The HUD Directive forbids the College from even mentioning on its website that HUD requires Ozark College to agree with HUD’s anti-Christian mandates under civil and criminal penalties including imprisonment!

Thus, HUD’s mandated sexual orientation and gender identity “protections” directly threaten penalties if the College seeks to uphold the requirements of Christian virtue at the college, and fails to implement HUD’s SOGI mandates. [As of May 19, 2021, a Federal court denied immediate injunctive relief, ruling that, as the College had not yet been harmed, a preliminary injunction was not warranted.—ed.]

Hostility against persons of Faith

Practically speaking, serious learning is not possible if teachers and students must constantly check every word to ensure only acceptable pronouns are used. Does each “trans” student get to pick personal pronouns? What if the preferred pronouns change mid year?

Joe Biden’s totalitarian HUD “pronoun police” seek to “eradicate” homophobia, transphobia, and other phobias (not Christianphobia) using methods of totalitarian regimes of the past, ignoring procedural due process and condemning anything Christ-related as bigotry. Tactics used in the past by totalitarian governments to wear down moral inhibitions and secure compliance with totalitarian goals include the following:

Nazi Germany: On February 27, 1936, the Nazi Department for the Promotion of German Literature approved a physical culture book in these words:

The author lays special and reiterated stress on the fact that promiscuous bathing and play of the sexes in a nude state leads to the routing of any false and hypersensitive eroticism, and thus provides a remedy essential for establishing of healthy sexual feelings and relations.

Previously, the German Communist Party endorsed the same book. [The Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich: Facts and Documents, 1940, p. 474]

Communist Russia: A study of totalitarian theory in Communist Russia explains:

When Russia became Communist…the Communist concept of morality was known as the “glass of water” theory. As Madam Kollontai, the Soviet Delegate to the League of Nations states: “love is a glass of water one swallows to satisfy a thirst.” You drink the water, and forget the glass, so you enjoy the pleasure, and forget the person. The Matrimonial Codes of 1918 and 1927 affirmed that “all children belong to the State”. The family code of October 22, 1918 “declared that all church marriages were invalid.” [Communism and the Conscience of the West, 1948, p. 141]

Yugoslavia: Under Marshal Josip Broz Tito after World War II, a contemporary account describes Yugoslav Communist actions as follows:

Religion is banished from public life and Atheism is imposed on all functionaries, soldiers and all those who by their employment have any connection with the State, etc. While all religious propaganda is forbidden, anti-religious propaganda is not only permitted, but looked upon with favour in public life…. The Yugoslav Communist regime, which remains anchored to its position of ideological Materialism, remains faithful to its programme of de-Christianizing the people…. [The Red Book of the Persecuted Church, 1957, p. 448]

East Germany: In 1950, the Catholic Bishop of Berlin, Cardinal Conrad von Preysing, pointed out that:

In the German Democratic Republic, Materialism is in fact the exclusive world-outlook professed by the State; it is the exclusive religion of the State, to which both in theory and in practice all activities of the nation are subject.… In kindergartens, in schools, in universities…in a word, everywhere only the materialist outlook on life and on the world is tolerated in the education of individuals.
Liberty of Religion…is being limited to an ever greater degree…to the interior of the churches.... The restricting of religious activity solely to acts of worship, together with the development of the materialist spirit in public and private life, is part—this is admitted in materialist literature—of the processes that of their nature bring about the liquidation of religion…. The monopoly which Materialism enjoys in the formation and direction of public opinion destroys in practice liberty of religion and of conscience. [The Red Book of the Persecuted Church, 1957, pp. 136, 137, 138]

Soviet Union: Joseph Stalin, a former Georgian Orthodox seminarian and the de facto dictator of the Soviet Union, noted in 1927 that the Communist “Party cannot be neutral in relation to religion; it conducts a campaign against all religious prejudices, since it is in favor of science.” [The God of the Gulag, Vol. 1, p. 119.]

Mexico: Under the efforts of Plutarcho Calles, who was previously a general and later President of Mexico (1924-1928), atheistic policies were widespread and lasted through the late 1930s, years after Calles had left office. During 1935, in the Mexican state of Yucatan, every teacher was required to sign the following pledge of animosity to the Catholic Church and, by implication, other Christian denominations:

I…solemnly declare, without any reservation whatever, to accept the program of the Socialist School and to be its propagandist and defender; I declare myself an atheist, an irreconcilable enemy of the Roman, Apostolic, Catholic religion, and that I will exert my efforts to destroy it, releasing the conscience from every religious worship and to be ready to fight against the clergy in whatever field it may be necessary; I likewise declare myself ready to take a leading part in the campaigns of disfanaticizing and to attack the Roman, Apostolic Catholic religion wherever it manifests itself; also I will not permit in my home any religious practices whatever, nor will I permit any images; lastly, I will not permit any of my household to take part in any religious act whatever. [Blood Drenched Altars, 1935, p. 357, citing La Prensa, 2/23/1935]

What can people of Faith do?

Monsignor (later Bishop) Fulton J. Sheen authored seventy plus books, hosted NBC’s radio program The Catholic Hour for 20 years (1930s to 1950s), received two Emmy Awards for “Most Outstanding Television Personality,” and was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. Fulton Sheen foresaw our present time:

If a time ever comes when the religious Jews, Protestants and Catholics have to suffer under a totalitarian state denying them the right to worship God according to the lights of their conscience, it will be because for years they thought it made no difference what kind of people represented them in Congress and because they never opposed the spiritual truth to the materialist lie…and woe unto us, if the believing element in the country does not allow its belief in God and morality to seep down into its action in the polling booth. [Communism and the Conscience of the West, 1948, p. 126]

Action Item—Protecting religious liberty at private religious colleges

We must implement Bishop Sheen’s prophetic election advice in upcoming elections. Recall that the last phrase of the First Amendment affirms our right, “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” President Biden’s attempts to force Christian citizens to pay through their tax dollars for government officials to destroy America’s Christian colleges surely is a most serious grievance.

Besides prayer and fasting to change hearts and reverse such radical policies, we must act by writing and calling our U.S. Congressman and two U.S. Senators who represent us at the federal level to demand they support amendments to Congressional appropriations bills to prohibit the expenditure of federal tax dollars to implement the President’s SOGI policies either by Presidential executive orders, or by the Equality Act, (H. R. 5) which President Biden strongly supports.

In addition, we must contact like-minded friends and family members and ask them to call/email their own U.S. Congressman and two U.S. Senators. We cannot wait for others to resist these blatant and heinous attempts by the Biden Administration to persecute us for our religious beliefs recognized in the Bill of Rights.


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Bob Marshall served 26 years in the Virginia House of Delegates and was the chief House sponsor of the 2006 voter-approved Virginia Marriage Amendment and a ban on late term abortion. He recently wrote Reclaiming the Republic: How Christians and Other Conservatives Can Win Back America (TAN Books). Previously, he co-authored Blessed are the Barren, a social history of Planned Parenthood (Ignatius Press). Finally, don’t miss Bob’s Civics Lesson for Catholics in the Catholic Culture Podcast Episode 17. See the full bio.

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  • Posted by: TheJournalist64 - May. 11, 2021 6:59 PM ET USA

    God help us. I have sent this to all my adult children and grandchildren.

  • Posted by: christosvoskresye5324 - May. 10, 2021 4:14 PM ET USA

    They should just use the quote from the character Maleficent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd-35dZItNM.