Cameron Martinez


La Sierra University

Cameron Martinez lives in Riverside University. They identify as a queer, non-binary person.

They attend La Sierra University and expect to graduate in June 2022. La Sierra’s student handbook outlines rules of behavior for students and includes several specific anti-LGBTQ+ policies, including regulation of romantic and sexual relationships between people of the same sex.

Cameron knows that when LGBTQ+ students at La Sierra have made complaints of discrimination, the complaints are often ignored, with faculty and administrators justifying the lack of change on the campus. The school does not allow an LGBTQ+ student group to be an official club, and professors often use hate speech about queer identities during lectures.

The official school position is in support of the Seventh-Day Adventist position on homosexuality, which states, “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

Cameron is raising their voice to protect all LGBTQ+ students at La Sierra University and religiously affiliated colleges across the country.