In his junior year at Oral Roberts University, a conservative evangelical college in Tulsa, Okla., Andrew Hartzler was summoned to the dean’s office. He’d been reported for having his boyfriend in his dorm room.

Hartzler, who is gay and enrolled at ORU at his father’s insistence, could have faced expulsion for violating the school’s honor code that prohibits homosexuality. But the Covid shutdown brought him a twisted stroke of luck: He managed to avoid the meetings, move off campus and finish his degree in psychology, graduating in May 2021.

Now Hartzler is part of a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Education, asking the court to strike down the religious exemption that allows universities like ORU to sidestep laws protecting students from discrimination.

At a secular school, discrimination against LGBTQ students violates Title IX, a 1972 federal law that protects against sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funding. But none of those protections exist for an estimated 100,000 LGBTQ students at over 200 religious colleges and universities that have taken advantage of the law’s expansive religious exemption. Despite policies that LGBTQ activists call discriminatory, Oral Roberts University received a $7.3 million award in 2020 under the CARES Act, and another $9.1 million under an Education Stabilization Fund, according to a federal funding database. That’s in addition to regular financial aid dollars.

In this partnership between POLITICO Magazine and Type Investigations, Sarah Posner explores the history of religious exemptions to civil rights laws at Christian universities — and the coming legal battle between LGBTQ students and evangelical institutions that are increasingly at odds with broad cultural mores, even among white evangelicals themselves — 61 percent of whom favor nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people, according to recent polling.

Read Posner’s story.

“[His argument is] as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.”

Can you guess who said this about Democratic Sen. Stephen A. Douglas during the 1858 senatorial campaign? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.

From Gen X Rocker to Trumpy Pol … Cherielynn Westrich’s life has been a Gen X dream: She signed to Madonna’s record label, toured with Alanis Morissette, fixed cars on a reality TV show about mechanics and made funny videos with Maya Rudolph. Now she’s doing the most Gen X thing of all: Republican politics.

In the most ’90s story we’ve read all year, Ben Jacobs reports on Westrich, the Iowa state representative who was inspired to enter politics by Donald Trump, and the rightward trend of her generation, which has turned out to be even more conservative than Baby Boomers. “First [Gen Xers] were latchkey kids and then they were slackers,” Jacobs writes, “but now, they’re Republicans.”

This week, Congress held its first hearing in more than 50 years on UFOs. Head in the clouds? Here’s what you need to know to sound like you read all the reports. (From POLITICO’s Bryan Bender.)

- First of all, “UFOs” are so 1966. The Pentagon now calls them “unidentified aerial phenomena,” or UAP. Speaking of terrible acronyms, it calls its congressionally mandated effort to standardize military data on UAP the “Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group,” or AIMSOG.

- Scott Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence, mentioned some 400 documented UAP incidents dating back to the early 2000s and at least 11 near misses with U.S. military aircraft.

- Need examples? Just mention the “flying silver sphere” and the “glowing red orb.”

- Delight #UFOTwitter with a reference to “undersea UAP,” on which Bray intriguingly declined to comment publicly.

- Don’t worry about bucking your party line. Curiosity about UAP seems to be the only issue in Congress with bipartisan consensus.

Who Is Responsible for Radicalization? … In the wake of the racist Buffalo shooting last week that left 10 people dead and three wounded, Katelyn Fossett spoke with former Department of Homeland Security official Elizabeth Neumann, who now works at a company that combats radicalization, to learn more about how strains of extremism spread.

“What extremist researchers are saying is, ‘The conditions are ripe for violence,’” Neumann says. Uncertainty over globalization has played a role, as have politicians and public figures, particularly on the right. “They know what they’re doing. They’re choosing to ignore it, or they think they can get away with it,” Neumann says. But she hasn’t given up hope.

67 percent … of registered voters who bought a home appliance that cost at least $5,000, a car or a home in the past year say Republican members of Congress involved in the events of Jan. 6 should have to testify under oath before a congressional committee. In comparison, 58 percent of people who didn’t buy a major appliance, car or home think those Republicans should have to testify.

Every week, The Weekend inserts a question in a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll and see what the crosstabs yield. Got any suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

Marlon Brando Returns … If you’ve heard of the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, it’s probably because of the 1954 Marlon Brando crime drama “On The Waterfront,” a lurid story of mob violence and union corruption among longshoremen. Now, the obscure commission, a special bistate police agency created to combat such crimes, is causing conflict between two Democratic governors: New Jersey’s Phil Murphy and New York’s Kathy Hochul. In this silver screen-worthy tale straight out of mob history, Ry Rivard reports on the charged conflict over the future of waterfront commerce.

This photo of peanut- and Jimmy Carter-related souvenirs up for sale in Plains, Ga., where the former president was born, originally ran in U.S. News and World Report Magazine in April 1977, the first year of Carter’s presidency.

After his father’s death, Carter resigned from the U.S. Navy and took over the family peanut business. The caricatured peanut emblazoned with his smile became a feature of his 1976 presidential campaign.

Memorabilia on sale included a “Pet Peanut” kit with care instructions; “Peanut Power” cleaning spray, suitable for use on “atomic submarines” and “lemonade stands” according to the label; glass peanut pendants and gold peanut earrings.

Thanks to the Library of Congress and the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum for providing information on this image.

**Who Dissed? answer: Future President Abraham Lincoln lobbed this zinger at Douglas’ “popular sovereignty” position on the expansion of slavery to U.S. territories, which would have allowed settlers to adopt slavery, rather than putting the matter to Congress.

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