Baylor University, Texas’ oldest and largest private university, has never been known as a free speech haven. For decades, the Baptist university has cultivated a buttoned-up reputation where official approval was needed for demonstrations and even chalking a sidewalk to promote a club meeting.
A pair of dueling political events on campus Wednesday evening will defy that reputation. Turning Point USA’s national tour makes a stop on campus with conservative stars such as U.S. “border czar” Tom Homan, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and commentator Benny Johnson.
Doors open for the “This is the Turning Point” event at 4:30 p.m. at Waco Hall, which has a capacity of 2,200.
At the same time, progressive student groups host the “All Are Neighbors” event featuring advocates for LGBTQ+ inclusion, among other issues. Both events were requested by student groups and approved by the university, and both have drawn controversy to a university that seldom courts it.
But some progressive students and faculty who initially criticized Baylor for approving the conservative event now see an opportunity to expand free speech on campus.
At a university that bars advocacy of any sexual relationships outside heterosexual marriage, organizers said they won official approval by appealing to Baylor’s commitment to civil discourse.
“This has very much been a positive thing,” said JW LaStrape, president of the College Democrats at Baylor and one of the event’s lead organizers. “I think that we’re going to get some speakers on campus who we might not have been able to get otherwise.”
The “All Are Neighbors” event begins at 5 p.m. on the fifth floor of Baylor’s Cashion Academic Center. A related prayer vigil is planned at Burleson Quadrangle at 6 p.m. Headlining the event are Kelley Robinson, president of Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group; Interfaith Alliance president Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush; and Rev. Susie Heyward, a Minneapolis-based minister and immigrant advocate. Robinson and Raushenbush consider themselves gay Christians.
But Baylor’s approval of an event with LGBTQ+ perspectives has strained its historic relationship with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, which represents more than 5,000 Texas churches.
”(Hosting) speakers who are Christian, identify as gay, and practice LGBTQ+ advocacy at a university-approved event is inconsistent with the convention’s long-standing views on biblical sexuality,” BGCT executive director Julio Guarneri said in an April 17 statement to member churches.
The opposing events occur at a time when public universities face political pressure from state lawmakers to clamp down on topics related to sexuality, diversity, equity and inclusion.
Turning Point’s Baylor chapter did not respond to several requests for an interview over the past week. College Republicans at Baylor, which is not part of the TPUSA group, also did not respond to requests for interviews sent Monday morning.
“Necessary to disagree”
Fourteen years before Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a Utah college campus in September 2025, he paid a visit to the office of Ken Starr, then Baylor’s president.
Kirk had been admitted into the university, but Starr advised him to forge his own path as an activist for debating political issues on college campuses, according to a recollection last year by Alice Starr, Ken Starr’s widow. Such vignettes paint a picture of a school guided by Christian conservative values, but they can also reinforce a simplistic view of Baylor’s culture and student body.
Charley Ramsey, Baylor’s University chaplain and dean of spiritual life said, both events on Wednesday and the school’s choice to platform them, speaks to a diversity of faith, thought and backgrounds on campus that might go unnoticed by outsiders.
“When you look at the campus and you’re trying to see who’s here, you’re going to see probably more diversity than you realize,” Ramsey said.
Ramsey noted that while about 40% of incoming students are Baptist and Catholic, the remainder draw their faith from nondenominational Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions. At least to a degree, that diversity extends into politics, he said. For example, Ramsey said three of his own children attend Baylor, and each has different political beliefs.
“There are not a lot of places where you can go where people are serious about faith, and yet can disagree on so many issues,” he said. “Disagreement is not only OK. It’s necessary to disagree.”
Students are exposed to different faiths as part of the university’s curriculum in order to sculpt students prepared for a world where people are different from themselves. Ramsey has lived in Pakistan and visited Iran in 2024. LaStrape, the student organizer, grew up in Waco and still considers himself a devout Christian.
He said the “All Are Neighbors” event reflected values of tolerance and global thinking instilled by Baylor’s approach to Christian education. LaStrape highlighted a school field trip to a Dallas mosque that showed him “how different people relate to the divine” as an example of an experience that enriched his faith but did not dilute it.
Ross Tullis, a 2020 Baylor alumnus and campaign manager for state Rep. David Cook, the Republican nominee for Senate District 22, is looking forward to the Turning Point event as a Republican. In the spirit of Kirk’s commitment to “free speech and free thinking,” Tullis said he saw value in allowing both events to move forward.
“But whether or not (‘All Are Neighbors’) aligns with Baylor University’s mission as a private Christian institution is another question,” he said.
Changing minds, changing policy
Progressive student organizers are not only interested in debate but more acceptance for LGBTQ+ people at Baylor. “Hopefully (administration) approving our event is a shifting point in Baylor’s views on sexuality,” said Hanna Al-Hayek, a Baylor senior and “All Are Neighbors” organizer.
But it’s far from clear that such a change is in the cards. Ramsey said it would be a mistake to read the university’s approval of either event as “some type of change within Baylor.” The question of human sexuality has a long, fractious history at Baylor, and the struggle over who controls the university goes back even further.
Baylor was founded in 1845 by Baptist associations that merged into the Baptist General Convention of Texas in 1886, the year the university moved to Waco. The BGCT is generally seen as more moderate than the Southern Baptist Convention, which took a turn toward fundamentalism starting in the 1980s.
Through much of the 20th century, Texas Baptists claimed control of the university and appointed its regents. But in 1990, President Herbert Reynolds oversaw a successful clandestine effort to rewrite the charter to limit BGCT appointments and give the university autonomy.
The BGCT continues to provide scholarships to students at Baylor and its Truett Seminary, but its financial support has dwindled in recent years to about $650,000 this year, compared to a Baylor budget of nearly $1 billion.
At the BGCT convention in Waco last year, motions to cut funding to Baylor and other Baptist organizations over LGBTQ+ issues failed.
In the early 2000s, student and faculty activism for LGBTQ+ acceptance led the university to adopt a “statement on human sexuality” that forbade students from advocating against “biblical” standards limiting sex to heterosexual marriage.
That statement continues to be an obstacle to discussions of sexuality, though Baylor officials point out that Gay Christian Network leader Justin Lee was allowed to speak on campus in 2019.
Over the years, Baylor has revised its school conduct policy to de-emphasize homosexuality as a violation, and in 2022 it chartered Prism, a student organization for LGBTQ+ people and allies.
But the ongoing tension over the issue surfaced last summer, when Baylor accepted, then rescinded, nearly $650,000 in grants to study how to better minister to LGBTQ+ people and women, as the Bridge reported.
Meanwhile, some progressive members of Baylor’s community still question if a win for free speech is overshadowed by the message sent by a high-profile Turning Point event on campus.
Retired Baylor religion scholar Blake Burleson has found himself asking that question despite his support for the “All Are Neighbors” event. “It’s a terrible look for the university, in my opinion, because Charlie Kirk said that universities are the enemy,” Burleson said.
One of the “All Are Neighbors” speakers, Baylor professor of creative writing professor Greg Garrett, is on Turning Point’s “Professor Watchlist.” “Kirk also said gay couples want to corrupt your children,“ Burleson continued. “At Baylor, we have students that are gay, faculty that are gay, staff that are gay, alumni that are gay. That kind of thing is an attack on Baylor.”
