Rabbi Sandra Lawson, "one of the first openly queer black women to be a rabbi," was invited to deliver the university's 2024 Pride Keynote Lecture on June 11.
Though she spoke about "building bridges across identities and communities," Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, says Rabbi Lawson's aim is to deconstruct Judaism.
"The LGBTQ activists want to get God out of the way, want to get the Church out of the way," Gramley asserts. "They think if they can do that, then they'll be OK. They feel that their lifestyle has been approved by … particular religions."
Gramley also thinks activities like Carnegie Mellon's Pride Month celebration should remind parents to remain on high alert.
"This is just another example of if parents are paying their child's tuition, they need to know what it is they're sending their child into, what it is they're spending their money on," she submits.
Campus Reform reports that Lawson's talk at Carnegie Mellon is not the first attempt of a college to blend religion with LGBTQ ideology. The University of California, Berkeley, for example, will be offering a course this fall called "From Perverts to Campy Queers: The Gender Troubles of Modern Jewish Culture."
Similarly, a 2023 course at the University of Chicago posed questions such as "Can God be an ally in queer worldmaking?" and "Is God queer?"
