House Republicans are attempting to include a conservative "wish list" in a wide-ranging education bill working its way through Congress, The New York Times reports.
The bill, known as the Promoting Real Opportunity, Success, and Prosperity through Education Reform Act, or the PROSPER Act, would allow religious colleges to openly prohibit same-sex relationships, stop universities from punishing fraternities and sororities that refuse to admit members of the opposite sex, among other changes.
"Colleges and universities, both public and private, have long been considered environments that support robust debate and freedom, and Republican members of Congress share that belief and are sending a message to the higher education community that these important issues cannot be ignored," a spokesman for House education committee chair Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said in a statement.
Despite the support from the GOP, college administrators have expressed concerns that the bill will undermine their authority, and pro-LGBT groups worry that the bill grants schools a right to discriminate.
"You're not just talking about a little Bible college," said David Stacy, director of government affairs for the Human Rights Campaign. "When you think about Catholic universities, there are a lot of those, and quite a few of these universities would discriminate against same-sex student relationships."
"Here is this legislature in this anti-regulatory mode that purports to want to liberate institutions from the overreach by the federal government, and here we are with essentially non-germane stuff," Barmak Nassirian, director of policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, told the Times. "What does this have to do with people going to college and receiving aid?"
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