InterVarsity does, of course, have positions on the Bible and righteous living. But the Bible condemns all sorts of behaviors, including drunkenness. Will InterVarsity now ask that employees who have too much Moet at a weekend wedding come forward and receive a pink slip? And what about divorce? InterVarsity’s 20-page position paper also prohibits divorce in most cases. So if an employee doesn’t believe divorce to be sinful, will they also be terminated?

Organizations like InterVarsity are not infrequently torn between older, conservative donors and powerbrokers, and the younger donors and activists who hold the key to their future.

If public-opinion polls are any indication, a polarizing position like this may sharply limit the field of future supporters. In fact, it may even repel some longtime donors in the process. When I posted news of InterVarsity’s move on my Facebook page, one Boomer asked whether he could keep donating to even though he supports gay marriage. While he concluded, “it would be wrong for me to stop giving,” he also lamented, “the world we have made for pastors and Christian ministers is all too often one where they can't speak their minds for fear of losing their livelihood.”

In addition to donors, the organization now faces the thousands of young people who are members of InterVarsity chapters across America. Convincing a college student to attend a ministry gathering is difficult enough already. Will the move create another hurdle to reaching the many de-churched and un-churched students who might want a moral voice and positive religious role models during their formative college years?

Of course, all of these concerns—lack of connection to InterVarsity’s mission and values, the impossibility of consistent application, and the creation of new challenges to membership and donor development—are really secondary to the damage the policy may do to the lives of employees and students.

The policy imposes a doctrinal standard to which employees never consented. The decision to work for a non-profit ministry often means forfeiting a cushy job in the business world and accepting a lower level of pay in order to serve others. Untold numbers of InterVarsity’s 1,300 staff members have made sacrifices to donate their best years to this ministry. Now the organization they love is moving the theological goalposts. While InterVarsity is offering one month of outplacement service costs to terminated employees, this will provide little comfort to the people who have given many more months of their lives to the organization only to be dismissed for their beliefs.

Ginny Prince, a 32-year-old mother with a transgender child, worked for InterVarsity for seven years when she learned of the policy. She promptly emailed her supervisor saying she could not affirm the policy and felt it was discriminatory. Her last day was filled with tears. “I thought that they would be more able to contain difference in this area as well, difference of opinion,” she told TIME. “I think what they do is very important, and I am very sad to go.”