WACO, Texas (AP) – Nearly 200 people, including the president of the ACLU of Georgia, gathered at a gay rights rally organized by a former Baylor University seminary student who lost his scholarship because he is gay.

Matt Bass had to drop out of Baylor’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary in December 2003 after administrators confronted him about his sexuality and then revoked his financial aid.

Bass and other gay students and alumni say they have faced discrimination at the world’s largest Baptist university. They say they don’t expect the private school to shun the Baptist tenet that homosexuality is a sin, but they want an anti-discrimination policy for gay students.

“I believe I am gay and that God made me that way,” said Bass, 25, who is from Dallas. “... I believe this is a civil rights movement. We’re not looking for any special class or treatment but equal protection under the law.”

One person at the rally in downtown Waco waved a large rainbow flag, and others held signs that read “The Church Is Not Our State” and “Freedom to Speak and Be What You Are.”

The president of the ACLU of Georgia, Cherry Spencer-Stark, urged the crowd to hold Baylor accountable for what she called hypocrisy.

“America’s strength is in its diversity, and the Baylor University campus is no different,” said Spencer-Stark, whose husband James Stark is a Baylor alumnus.

Baylor officials declined to comment.

Baylor, founded in 1845, is controlled by an all-Baptist board of regents and is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas. It has nearly 14,000 students.

According to the school’s “statement on human sexuality” in the policies handbook, Baylor students should not be part of advocacy groups promoting lifestyles that are contrary to biblical teaching.

“Christian churches across the ages and around the world have affirmed purity in singleness and fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman as the biblical norm,” the statement reads. “Temptations to deviate from this norm include both heterosexual sex outside of marriage and homosexual behavior.”

According to the handbook, punishment for any misconduct – including drinking, gambling, premarital sex, cohabitation, homosexuality and using weapons – ranges from a written warning to expulsion.

In February, a student newspaper editorial endorsing same-sex marriage created an uproar because it violated another school policy, which states that no student publications editorial should “attack the basic tenets of Christian theology or of Christian morality.”

Robert Sloan, Jr., Baylor’s president, then said he was “justifiably outraged” over the same-sex marriage editorial because it “is so out of touch with traditional Christian teachings.”

But Baylor officials said no staffers overseeing the newspaper would be disciplined and no students would be punished.

While there are no reports of gay students being expelled, some say discrimination is prevalent among professors, although sometimes subtle.