Azusa Pacific University again has lifted a ban on LGBTQ relationships on campus.

The university Board of Trustees directed administrators to update the student handbook for undergraduate students, campus spokeswoman Rachel White confirmed. The changes specifically removed language that barred LGBTQ relationships as part of a standing ban on pre-marital sex.

The update, enacted Thursday, demonstrates Azusa Pacific’s commitment to “uniform standards of behavior for all students, applied equally and in a nondiscriminatory fashion,” according to university Provost Mark Stanton.

“APU is an open-enrollment institution, which does not require students to be Christian to attend, and the handbook conveys our commitment to treating everyone with Christ-like care and civility,” Stanton said in a statement. “Our values are unchanged and the APU community remains unequivocally biblical in our Christian evangelical identity.”

In November, the student government on campus called for the board to clarify the language of the ban or to remove it entirely. At the same time, Brave Commons, a nonprofit organization that supports LGBTQ students at Christian colleges, filed a similar grievance with university administrators.

The student handbook now features “no stigmatizing of queer people specifically,” said Erin Green, co-executive director of Brave Commons and an Azusa Pacific alumna. “This is what we asked for all along.”

A series of flip-flops

In time for the Aug. 27 start of the fall semester and following months of discussions between students and university leaders, Azusa Pacific had removed a section from its student conduct policy which outlawed LGBTQ relationships on campus.

However, by the end of September, Christian media outlets and pundits levied harsh criticisms on the university over the move, and the Board of Trustees reinstated the ban because it had never voted on the ban’s removal, according to a statement issued on the board’s behalf.

‘Theological drift’

Days later, students protested on campus, coming together in prayer and song to decry the ban’s reinstatement.

Amid the turmoil over the ban, two members of the Board of Trustees — Pastor Raleigh Washington of Chicago and businessman Dave Dias of Sacramento — resigned in December.

Washington and Dias said they did not resign as a result of the ban being lifted and reinstated but instead as a result of broader concerns regarding financial mismanagement and “theological drift.”