http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/18/biasLong-Fought Win for Gay Rights
Missouri State University’s board on Friday added sexual orientation to the list of factors on which the institution barred bias. The 5-3 vote followed debate that included denunciations of the gay “sexual lifestyle” and years of intense discussion of the issue.
Missouri State’s board — pushed by the university’s former president — had for years rejected the idea that the university needed to protect its gay students and employees from discrimination. And the board did not act even when a letter from the former president surfaced in which he called homosexuality a “biological perversion.”
With Friday’s vote, Missouri State joins hundreds of colleges — 562 according to the latest study by the Human Rights Campaign — that bar bias based on sexual orientation. That group includes Missouri’s flagship, the University of Missouri at Columbia.