NOTE: This article has been edited from a previous version.

Employees at a Southern Baptist university in Georgia are being told to sign a statement declaring they aren’t gay or be fired, the school’s president has warned.

“We understand that there are those who do not agree with our beliefs,” Shorter University President Donald Dowless said in a statement.

“Anyone who chooses not to sign the documents will be choosing to end their employment with the university.”

The documents are among a batch of new policies passed by the board of trustees on Oct. 21, including a “personal lifestyle statement” current and new employees are required to sign that says:

“I reject as acceptable all sexual activity not in agreement with the Bible, including, but not limited to, premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality.”

The statement also requires the 200 Shorter employees to be active in church, not use or deal drugs and not drink around students.

The trustees also adopted a new logo featuring the motto “transforming lives through Christ.”

An employee who asked to remain anonymous told the gay newsletter GA Voice: “Adultery and pre-marital sex are, in fact, choices. Homosexuality is not. I know this point is up for debate in the fundamental Christian world, but to the rest of the world, we know that it isn't a choice.”

He said he would likely quit his job rather than lie and sign the statement.

Shorter’s board and president originally had threatened reprisal “up to termination” for not signing. A week later, Dowless issued a clear statement that not signing the statement meant being fired.

But Hubert Krygsman, president of the Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario said this type of policy is not at all common.

“While most Christian universities and colleges in both Canada and the USA (many of which are members of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities) do have some form of conduct policy for employees, board members, and students, these policies are expressed in many different ways. I have never seen a case where an employee has been asked to sign a statement stating specifically that they are not homosexual,” he said.

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“I think they’re allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation,” said a man working at Burkhardt’s Pub, a long-established gay bar in Atlanta, 112 kilometres south of the university.

“Maybe they should look inside themselves, at their own hypocrisy.”