It's Friday, December 5th, I'm Tara Jean Stevens.

And here are this week's headlines from the Heaven Bent Universe.

Religious Discrimination or Bad Essay.

Samantha Fulnecki is a junior at Oklahoma University. Last week, she filed a discrimination complaint with the school

after getting a zero grade on a psychology class essay. I just did the assignment and turned it in,

and I talked about the Bible in it. That is, I view all my opinions in the world through the Bible.

That's from Samantha's interview with an ABC affiliate in Oklahoma City.

And the assignment was meant to be a response to some scholarly research on the ways

gender norms affect friendship and mental health when we're kids.

I gave my opinion and not just my opinion, but that's like the Bible says that God created

male and female and anything that's not from God or glorifying to God is glorifying to the enemy.

The graduate instructor, Mel Kirth, who is a trans woman, says the essay lacked empirical

evidence, that it was at times offensive and that it contradicted itself.

She says this essay was about Samantha's personal ideologies rather than the data and ideas

that had been presented in the study itself. And that's why, in going public with her complaint,

with Samantha speaking to media, writing government officials, all in doing that, she's opened

up her essay to enormous critique.

I want us to settle in now for a few minutes and just hear out one of these critiques. And this is one

that I thought had an interesting point of view. It's from an influencer named Connie Chen.

And she just, I thought this was interesting. She describes herself as a theological witch. She wants religious freedom, right? Fine. I have a master

of divinity from Harvard. Let's grade this paper with complete religious freedom. As a theology paper,

where citing the Bible is exactly what you're supposed to be doing.

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