Boston College’s positions on LGBTQ+ issues—especially regarding the possibility of a standalone resource center—have recently come under renewed examination in the wake of articles from The Heights and The Gavel.
The incoming University president, Rev. Jack Butler, S.J., said the following: He is a relationship-focused leader that believes dialogue is important. But he states that BC is unlikely to have an LGBTQ+ Resource Center, even though everybody deserves to feel safe and appreciated on campus.
Butler specifically said, “All people are made in the image and likeness of God and deserve the inherent dignity that should be given because of that fact.”
The Gavel did not cite a specific reason behind Butler’s stance on an LGBTQ+ Resource Center at BC. Is it Catholic doctrine? Is it a lack of physical space? Insufficient funding? All of these have been cited as reasons in the past. These were the reasons he and Dr. Cooper-Whitehead gave in a Heights article from 2023.
But the precise reason does not matter because the administration has fostered a system through which it escapes accountability nor does it have to justify its decisions, except to the will of the Board of Trustees and influential donors.
I would like to specifically address why I was deeply offended by what Fr. Butler said. You cannot claim to love everybody and then discriminate in how you give your love and who you give your love to. Jesus asks us to love unconditionally, without discrimination, and with special care for the most vulnerable. Matthew 25:40 makes this clear: “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Butler said in his The Gavel interview, “everybody deserves to be loved, welcome, [and] respected.” The policies that he is advocating for, however, are creating an arbitrary and subjective hierarchy for BC students—where every student is equal, but some are more equal than others.
The Catholic values and beliefs argument in opposition to a resource center is one that grows weaker by the day. Catholic and Jesuit higher education institutions around the country have established—and are establishing—LGTBQ Resource Centers to support their students. For example, both Georgetown and Notre Dame have LGBTQ+ Resource Centers. BC, meanwhile, is feigning ignorance and choosing to actively and passively harm its LGBTQ+ students.
My sexuality may seem paradoxical to BC’s identity as a Catholic university. This university was not designed for people like me, but it can be for people like me and it must grow in the same ways that it asks its students to do. My values—and queer students’ values—are parallel to the true Judeo-Christian Catholic Jesuit values Fr. Butler claims to be upholding. I strive to better myself—I care for others, I pursue the uncovering of truth, which is the essence of the Catholic intellectual tradition, and I work to enact my imagination of the world for what it ought to be, and refuse to settle for what it is.
As an LGBTQ+ student, I exemplify an inherent tension at BC, yet I am also everything that a BC student is. I applied, I was accepted, I committed, and I paid my dues. I deserve to be here just as much as any other student at BC. BC should recognize me as a full human being simply because I am.
Butler’s stance on an LGBTQ+ Resource Center stance is neither Catholic or Jesuit to me and is not how I want the next University president to govern.
Fr. Butler also mentioned in his Gavel interview that he is concerned about polarization at BC, and I am too. He said, “We’ve forgotten that you can hold different opinions and different views, but you can still have friendships with people, and that you can still value people, and that we’re seeking truth,” and I absolutely agree.
But his stance on an LGBTQ+ Resource Center contradicts the exact ideas that he preaches. He did not say that he was open to the idea of a resource center, he said he did not see it happening. The former is an invitation to conversation, while the latter—his stance—is a rejection of conversation.
Perhaps I am reading too much into Butler’s comment. Instead of assuming malintent, I would like to invite Father Butler to demonstrate the opposite. During my freshman year orientation session, Fr. Jack spoke in Robsham Theater and invited anybody that needed it to reach out to him and have a conversation. And it is now, three years later, that I am calling in that favor, and would like to have a conversation with Fr. Jack.
It is with the privilege of a BC education that I have truly come to appreciate the art of conversation and engaging with other people in meaningful ways. Let the LGBTQ+ population be your neighbor—come and be our neighbor. By exchanging stories, we will only come to love each other more.
As members of the BC community, we must always be conscious of the core mission of this university: being men and women for others. This means to push in resources instead of pulling out students who we mark as “others” or “different.” To create a loving community means to object to actions and systems that are discriminatory. Otherwise, we are complicit in the oppression of God’s children.
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