Just when you think that the state of Alabama has taken the summer off from providing fodder for desperate bloggers, Troy University— a public university, based in Alabama— goes and announces it's opening a brand new dorm just for Christians.

According to this July 23 news story, Troy's administrators had a great idea for the new $12 million dorm, slated to open this fall: "Let's have it be for Christians," they thought to themselves, smartly, while sitting in their offices on the campus of their publicly financed state university. "Let's have the RAs all be Christians, and let's put a Catholic ministry inside the dorm, and let's give preferential treatment to those espousing a belief in Jesus. That sounds like a fine idea," replied their hand puppet of Moses, who was made to talk using the art of ventriloquism.

The new facility gives preference to students who maintain an active spiritual lifestyle and are actively engaged in a campus faith-based organization...

Schmidt said students of non-Christian faiths will not be excluded "if there was space available" and that university officials have discussed the prospect of catering more to non-Christians.

Of course, haha, one week later, the story was updated with a statement from a university spokesperson saying, uh, no, we won't give preference to Christians. Although the school has funded the dorms using a private foundation, so, technically, who cares about all that "separation between church and state" mumbo-jumbo from the lips of heathens? It turns out that some people do, because they complained about it. Here you can read about the backlash from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which sent this letter to the school, pointing out that, hey, you bunch of dumb fundamentalist hicks, you are running a public university, for fuck's sake. But in much nicer language.

I can think of nothing that the average Alabama Christian would like to listen to less than the Freedom From Religion Foundation, except maybe a 2 Live Crew album. I strongly advise all non-Christians to flee Alabama before the locals really get angry.

[via Inside Higher Ed. Photo: Flickr]