Earlier this month, the head of Iowa’s Center for Faith, Sexuality and Gender, Dr. Preston Sprinkle, gave a talk at Tennessee’s Lee University (a private Christian school) about how people of faith needed to show compassion for LGBTQ people. Given the Center’s Christian foundation and knowing the audience, Sprinkle spoke in full-on Christianese, celebrating how a trans person he knew had left the church but later returned due to the love he received from a pastor.

My first reaction to that was rolling my eyes, as if the trans person’s worth was entirely dependent on whether or not he was sufficiently Christian.

But people affiliated with the school had a different problem with it: Sprinkle never told the audience that being trans was a problem. He never said same-sex marriage (or any sexual relationship between two people of the same gender) was a sin. He talked about compassion but never about how LGBTQ people who aren’t ashamed of themselves are destined for hellfire and eternal torture.