The message to Janis Price came through loud and clear: Don’t let your convictions guide you when a student asks your opinion about subjects like Christianity or homosexuality — at least not unless our convictions have been pre-approved by your boss. The message was hard to miss when she found her job scaled back and her pay slashed by $10,000 — all, she says, because she made copies of a Christian magazine available to students.

But just because Janis got the message, that didn’t mean she had to accept it.

Price, who has been an administrator and professor in DePauw University’s Education Department for 15 years, filed a lawsuit against school officials in Putnam County (Indiana) Circuit Court April 17. She charged them with religious discrimination and harassment after her pay was slashed by 25 percent and she was stripped of her administrative duties.

Price says she’s well known among the 2,000 liberal-arts students on the Greencastle, Ind., campus as a born-again Christian who has sponsored several discipleship groups. Each year she taught one senior-level class, Field Experience. And each year, she would tell her students about Teachers in Focus — a now-defunct monthly education magazine written from a Christian perspective that was published by Focus on the Family — and leave sample copies on a table for anyone interested.

This was hardly high-pressure stuff, Price told Boundless. No assignments were ever given involving the magazine, and no one was forced to read it, take it home or subscribe to it. And for 14 years, no one complained about it.

That all changed May 16, 2001.

At the end of the Friday class period, Price put four sample copies of Teachers on a table, gave her short annual spiel, and told the students they were free to go.

The trouble was that the content of one issue was far from politically correct. That issue featured a cover story on how the homosexual movement tries to propagandize children as young as 8 by teaching about “alternative lifestyles” in the classroom. It provided arguments against the idea that homosexuality was healthy and natural by authors including Boundless contributor J. Budziszewski and psychotherapist Joseph Nicolosi, perhaps the leading specialist in helping people come out of homosexuality.

Before anyone left the room, one of Price’s students thumbed through the homosexuality article, then asked her what she thought about homosexual teachers.

“I simply said to her that if a school hired someone to teach English or math or science, they needed to do the best job they could teaching English or math or science,” Price told Boundless. “She seemed satisfied. Never called me, never signed up for an appointment, never talked to me about it again.”

And that, Price thought, was the end of that.

Seven weeks later, she found out her troubles were just beginning.

‘Anti-gay literature’

In early July, Price received an invitation to meet with Neal Abraham, DePauw’s vice president for academic affairs. Only then did she find out that after leaving her class, the student had complained about the homosexuality article to another education professor, who then complained to the department head — who then complained to Abraham.

According to the lawsuit, during that meeting Abraham quizzed Price about both her teaching practices and her faith.

“Do you teach Christianity in your classes?” he asked her. “How do students know that you’re a Christian?”

Price said she told Abraham she discussed ethics in her classes — which are part of the state education board’s exam for teachers — but not her personal relationship with Jesus; and that students knew she was a Christian the same way they knew other people on campus were Christians. At that point, Price said, Abraham pulled out the Teachers article about classroom homosexuality.

“He’d read parts of the article to me and say, ‘Do you believe that?’ Then he’d read a little more and say, ‘Do you believe that?’ ” Price said. “In every case I agreed with what the article said.”

Price thought the line of questioning was one-sided and unfair.

“Tell me,” the lawsuit says she asked Abraham, “how is it that I am to be tolerant of others’ beliefs, but they don’t need to be tolerant of mine?”

“We cannot tolerate the intolerable,” Abraham told her, indicating the magazine article. He then dismissed her, asking her not to mention their meeting to anyone else “out of respect for the student’s privacy,” according to the lawsuit.

Two weeks later, Price was called back to Abraham’s office for another meeting and told to be prepared to stay there for up to two hours. This time, she said, he didn’t make eye contact with her, but read from a set of notes. He told her the administration “was going to be cutting back my position, cutting my pay 25 percent, that I’d no longer have my class, that while certain duties would be taken away from me, other duties would be added — and I could either accept that or I could resign.

“I was just devastated.”

The day after the meeting, Abraham sent Price two letters accusing her of “professional intolerance” for providing students “with certain magazines” he described as “anti-gay literature.”

After reviewing her options, Price decided to accept her $10,000-a-year pay cut, but started exploring legal options within days.

“It’s a very clear case of religious discrimination,” Price’s attorney, John R. Price (no relation) of Indianapolis told Boundless. “I know that universities tend to be myopic when it comes to religious topics. They don’t see any problem with discussing religion unless it’s Christianity, and then suddenly they see a separation of church and state.”

The university referred all comment to its attorney, John Neighbours, also of Indianapolis, who was not available to return calls from Boundless. The school has until the end of May to respond to the suit; a hearing date will be determined afterward.

For her part, Price sees her case as only the latest example of anti-Christian harassment by officials on college campuses nationwide. But if it’s far from the first time something like this has happened, she wants to make sure it’s one of the last.

“This is typical,” she said of her punishment. “And it also has to stop.”