A former president of Bob Jones University, a conservative Christian school in South Carolina, has issued an apology for a statement he made in 1980 on stoning homosexuals. BJU Chancellor Bob Jones III was president of the university in March of 1980 when he and a group of fundamentalist ministers brought to the White House a petition signed by 70,000 people who opposed extending provisions of the Civil Rights Act to gays. His statement came after the university earlier this week received a 2,000-signature petition asking Jones to apologize for the anti-gay comments he made to the Associated Press while at a White House press conference. “But it would not be a bad idea to bring the swift justice today that was brought in Israel’s day against murder and rape and homosexuality. Thirty-five years after he made them, Bob Jones III, one of the country's most influential evangelical Christian leaders, has apologized for comments calling for gay men and lesbians to be killed "as the Bible commands." In his apology, issued through the college his grandfather founded in 1927, Jones, 75, said: "I take personal ownership of this inflammatory rhetoric. “This reckless statement was made in the heat of a political controversy 35 years ago.” 
 
 “It is antithetical to my theology and my 50 years of preaching a redeeming Christ Who came into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved,” Jones said. “Upon now reading these long-forgotten words, they seem to me as words belonging to a total stranger — were my name not attached.” 
 
 Jones said in the statement that he wishes he could erase his earlier words. “The Bible I love, preach, and try to practice, does not present today the stoning of sinners as God’s way,” he said in his statement. BJUnity, which offers support for past and present lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender students, mailed the petition Wednesday, said Jeffrey Hoffman, the executive director, according to the Greenville News. BJ Unity accepted Jones' apology, saying in a statement: "We are grateful that Bob Jones III has taken responsibility for these words; words that have caused deep harm for many more people than any of us knows. “This means a lot to us because it represents the beginning of a change in the rhetoric and conversation.” 
 
 In December, school leaders apologized to victims of sexual assault. The school also received national attention when then-presidential candidate George W. Bush visited in 2000, prompting the school to drop its ban on interracial dating, which it had unsuccessfully tried to defend before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1983. He added: "I apologize for the reflection those remarks bring upon Jesus Christ, Whom I love; Bob Jones University, which I have loved and served; and my own personal testimony."
– Bob Jones III, a former president and current chancellor of Bob Jones University, is apologizing for comments he made 35 years ago, NBC News reports. In a push against Civil Rights Act measures for gay people, Jones called at the time for "the swift justice … that was brought in Israel’s day against murder and rape and homosexuality. I guarantee it would solve the problem post-haste if homosexuals were stoned, if murderers were immediately killed as the Bible commands." A petition has called on him to apologize for the comments, and this weekend, the 75-year-old did so, the Washington Post reports. "I take personal ownership for this inflammatory rhetoric," he said, noting that it was "made in the heat of a political controversy 35 years ago." The statement, he said, now seems like the words of a "stranger": "It is antithetical to my theology and my 50 years of preaching a redeeming Christ Who came into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." The petition was the work of BJUnity, a support group for LGBT students at the school, the Greenville News reports. The apology "means a lot to us because it represents the beginning of a change in the rhetoric and conversation," the group says. The school recently faced controversy when rape victims said it called them sinners; in December, it apologized for the treatment of victims, the Post reports.