35 years after making highly controversial remarks about homosexuality, Bob Jones III, the chancellor of a school named for his grandfather, has apologized.

Bob Jones University (BJU) is a conservative nondenominational Protestant school in Greenville, S.C. founded by Bob Jones Sr. in 1927. Today, Jones III serves as chancellor.

According to the Washington Post, he joined a group of fundamentalist ministers in 1980 that obtained 70,000 signatures for a petition blocking the Civil Rights Act from covering gays.

After bringing the petition to the White House, the Associated Press quoted him condemning homosexuality alongside crimes such as rape and murder.

"I'm sure this will be greatly misquoted," Jones said in 1980. "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. I guarantee it would solve the problem post-haste if homosexuals were stoned, if murderers were immediately killed as the Bible commands."

BJU posted Jones' apology on their website in response to a three-year-old online petition from a group named BJUnity calling for it.

"I take personal ownership of this inflammatory rhetoric. This reckless statement was made in the heat of a political controversy 35 years ago," Jones said. "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. Upon now reading these long-forgotten words, they seem to me as words belonging to a total stranger-were my name not attached."

Jeffery Hoffman, BJUnity's executive director, told WSPA the group is grateful for Jones' apology, but admitted they were not expecting it.

"Most people are just shocked. We never expected to see an apology," Hoffman said. "It's been the Gays versus the Christians, which ignores and erases a large number of Gay Christians who live in the upstate of South Carolina.

"We think that this is the time to start to talk about how to make Bob Jones University safer for its LGBT students."