“It’s difficult enough when working with LGBT students,” he said. “A lot of people are closed off to the church because of past experiences where they’ve been shunned or closed off. But Christianity is about love and faith; it isn’t just about what can be proven or found, but also what we believe in our hearts and minds. This event is just a way for a small minority of Christians to dominate the conversation.” 

Advertising for an event in the Marshall Student Center next week has caught the attention — and concern — of some students:

Blue posters and a banner advertising a lecture on “Homosexuality and Christianity,” a lecture that will be given by Dr. Rosaria Butterfield, a self-proclaimed former “leftist lesbian” professor at Syracuse University who became heterosexual after becoming a devout Christian.

According to Butterfield’s website, she advises people to “have no contact with pornography or with secret lovers—physical, non-physical, virtual or real,” not to “misuse Christ by asking Him to baptize your feelings” and to stay away from ministry if “you are experiencing out-of-control lust or sexual temptations” in order to “kill, at the root, same-sex attraction.”

The event, sponsored by the Reformed University Fellowship (RUF), a national Presbyterian church with chapters on college campuses, including USF, where the chapter does not receive student-paid Activity and Service fees, has drawn much concern because of the speaker’s allusions to practices similar to conversion therapy — a practice of trying to subvert non-heterosexualities that has been frowned upon by the American Medical Association and American Psychological Association and declared illegal in some states.

Lucia Baker, a senior majoring in chemical engineering, said the event could be detrimental to students who may be questioning their sexualities or identify as a part of the LGBT community.

“It’s a big deal because by USF allowing (the speaker) to preach some kind of hateful and discriminatory message, they are implicitly condoning that it is OK and that they are going to stand for that kind of speech and actions, when the university is everything against that,” she said.

But Dean for Students Michael Freeman said the issue is one of free speech.

“It is always our opinion that we have different points of view — views that may be repugnant to some, but that align with others. But universities are places to have all ideas out there. That’s what makes universities what they are and that’s the kind of environment we want to create.”

Read More

Read a commentary on this event at the University of South Florida by Dr. R. Scott Clark.

Watch an interview with Dr. Rosaria Butterfield in which she shares her testimony and talks about her book.