During his recent appearance at Cottonwood Creek Church in Allen, Texas, David Barton added a new anti-transgender wrinkle to his standard presentation that, unsurprisingly, contains a blatant falsehood.
After repeating his false claim that the Supreme Court banned mandatory Bible reading in public schools over concerns that it was causing “brain damage,” Barton claimed that it is actually society that has been suffering brain damage since removing the Bible from schools, pointing to a policy at Wesleyan University that he said bans separate student housing for male and female students.
Recounting that he had recently participated in a cattle drive where “none of us had any difficulty telling the difference between male and female” cattle, Barton said that “there was no gender identity crisis that we had; only in America as we become more secular do we have difficulty seeing what’s obvious throughout all of nature.”
Barton then pointed to a Newsmax article about an “Open House” option at Wesleyan University that “works to create a Wesleyan community that appreciates the variety and the vivacity of gender, sex, and sexuality, and we work to be an anchor of the amorphous, chaotic, and beautiful queer community” and used it to falsely claim that all student housing at the university was “based on 15 different sexual orientations and you know what’s missing? They do not offer housing for male or female, but they’ve got everything else, just not male or female.”
This is, like so much of what Barton says, entirely false, as the Wesleyan website makes perfectly clear:
As students move through their years at Wesleyan, they have an opportunity to choose an increasingly more independent living option from residence hall doubles to singles to program houses, apartments, and eventually wood frame houses. All of these options are within a 5-10 minute walk to campus. All of our units house both men and women; however, some residence halls are coed on each floor, while other halls offer single-sex floors. Smoking is prohibited in all University Housing. Residential facilities vary by size, room type, and ratio of first-year to upper-class students.
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Student housing at Wesleyan is designed so that first year students live together in residence halls near the center of campus. Residential facilities vary by size, room type and ratio of first year to upperclass students. In all locations, first year students comprise at least 50% of the residents. All of the buildings are coed, however some halls offer single-sex floors.
Gender Neutral Housing:
Wesleyan University assigns roommates for incoming students based on legal sex. Students choose among the following three options on the housing preference form: to be assigned according to this policy, to request an exception to this policy, or to be available as a potential roommate for someone who has requested an exception. Gender neutral housing is available in all student residences.
