It should be no surprise that as time passes certain policies and procedures must be updated to reflect certain changes in both the student body and the world in general.  Baylor’s policies are not immune to such changes.  It was only a few years ago that the school’s HIV/AIDS policy read:

The Baylor community will seek in all prudent ways to witness to God's love by ministering to persons with AIDS, their families, and their friends, as they face the hardships and certain death associated with this disease. We will seek to incarnate God's comforting, supporting, and forgiving presence.

Not surprisingly, that was changed to its current form following a student and faculty outcry at the archaic and doomsayer nature of the policy.

Following that same nature of change, the Sexual Misconduct Policy has gone through a bunch of makeovers over the years.  The latest states:

In all disciplinary procedures, Baylor University will seek to be redemptive in the lives of the individuals involved and to witness to the high moral standards of the Christian faith. Baylor will be guided by the understanding that human sexuality is a gift from the creator God and that the purposes of this gift includes (1) the procreation of human life and (2) the uniting and strengthening of the marital bond in self-giving love. These purposes are to be achieved through heterosexual relationships within marriage. Misuses of God's gift will be understood to include, but not be limited to, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual assault, incest, adultery, fornication and homosexual acts.

While the policy does sum up Baylor's Sex Policies fairly well, it could use some work.  Putting homosexuality in the same breath as sexual abuse and incest is simply ignorant and offensive. This should be changed. 

Now, this is not an argument for Baylor to overturn its policy on homosexuality, though that would solve this problem in an easy fashion.  This is an argument for Baylor to move its anti-Homosexuality policy somewhere different.

Baylor is completely within its rights to ignore the American Psychological Association’s declaration of homosexuality as a normal variation of sexual orientation, the American Medical Association’s condemnation of ‘reparative’ therapy, or even the forthcoming law that will make the hate crime legislation include homosexuals.  All of those things are outside entities. 

Baylor students, however, are a different matter. 

The university has openly acknowledged that it has LGBT students, and while its stance on homosexuality is well known, this does not mean it needs to further belittle and diminish its own students by tying them in with those who commit incest and sexual abuse.

Overall, this policy says a lot about the mindset of Baylor in regards to human sexuality.  Any deviation from what Baylor sees as good is immediately construed as evil, and no order of degree is given to this laundry list of misconduct.

Like the archaic HIV/AIDS policy, it is time for a change, a change that reflects the times.  If you must condemn homosexuality, and for that matter fornication, do it somewhere else other than the place where incest and sexual abuse are condemned. 

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A further note of interest on the sexual misconduct policy is the absence of bestiality from the laundry list.  This could be written off as something that Baylor sees as not really a problem, but a survey done of 186 random college students published in the Journal of Adolescence magazine in 2007 revealed that almost 8% had engaged in bestiality.