JACKSON, Tenn. (ABP) — Three Christian gay-rights activists were arrested Nov. 10 on the campus of Southern Baptist-affiliated Union University.
The arrests occurred during the next-to-last stop on the 2008 Equality Ride, an outreach bus tour of 15 religious schools across the South by Soulforce Q. The organization is the young-adult division of a group that fights discrimination against gays with nonviolent protest.
Police arrested 21-year-old Zak Rittenhouse of Frankfort, Ohio; 22-year-old Manny Lampon of New York City; and 22-year-old Jarrett Lucas of Minneapolis, Minn., a co-director of the 2008 Equality Ride, on trespassing charges. The arrests came after campus security warned them to leave an area declared off-limits to the riders.
University officials offered to let the activists into Luther Hall, a building located across a public street from the main campus, and told students, faculty and staff interested in dialogue about their presence. Instead, the riders chose to stand vigil inside one of three entrances to the campus.
After meeting only three students, the marchers chose to march toward a higher-traffic area of campus. They were stopped and told to turn back or face prosecution. Three refused to retreat. They were handcuffed and driven away in a police car.
"Although Union University cannot affirm this group's message, the university leadership made an attempt to offer dialogue and Christian hospitality to Equality Riders," Union officials said in a statement. "It is regrettable that the leadership of Soulforce responded by rejecting these offers."
Katie Higgins, the other Equality Ride co-director, said the goal of the effort is to communicate with as many students as possible, and the university's limiting their access made it necessary for them to move to parts of the campus offering more interaction.
One of the activists, Rachel Watson, is a Union University graduate. "It was heartbreaking to have my alma mater turn me away from campus," Watson said. "I wanted to talk to students about my life and the pain I experienced as a lesbian on Union University's campus, but instead I was locked out of my own school."
Watson, 22, of Jackson, Tenn., is a former member of Union's soccer team. She said she knew she was a lesbian even before deciding to attend the school, but she had been a fan of Union's athletic teams and thought she would feel safe attending a Christian university that encourages students to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
Watson said that is far from the treatment she received from several of the faculty and students, who she said looked down on her as a disgrace. "It was difficult, but I feel like I never lost sight of who I was," she said.
Watson said she made it through by "staying true to my faith and always knowing God came first regardless of judgment and what people said about me."
Another rider, Mindi Monroe of Minneapolis, grew up attending a Southern Baptist church in Tennessee. She said for the most part it was a "very pleasant experience," but she learned love and acceptance from fellow church members came with conditions when she grew old enough to begin dealing with questions about her own sexuality. After her parents moved to another state, the family joined a church of another denomination.
Still, she said, "It's impossible to write off my Southern Baptist brothers and sisters as my people."
"They are my family," Monroe said. She said she took part in the vigil at Union University because it's important to make Southern Baptists aware of "people who suffer from their teachings."
Soulforce was founded by Mel White, a formerly well-connected evangelical minister who ghost-wrote books for religious figures including Billy Graham, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. The group says more than 200 colleges and universities in the United States have explicit policies that discriminate against students who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
Now in its third year, the Equality Ride has visited more than 50 of those schools, where riders say even students often are unaware of such policies. Union University, for example, has a policy prohibiting "sexual impropriety," which is defined as "engaging in premarital sex, extramarital sex, homosexuality, homosexual activities or cohabitation on campus or off campus."
Arrests are nothing new for the 17 young adults ages 18-26 participating in this year's Equality Ride. Four of the riders were arrested Nov. 3 attempting to talk to students at Central Baptist College in Conway, Ark. Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Texas pressed trespassing charges against three of them. Two were arrested at Baptist-affiliated Mississippi College Oct. 20. Three were jailed Oct. 17 at Heritage Christian University Florence, Ala. Six were arrested for trying to enter the chapel at Palm Beach Atlantic University, a Christian school with ties to the Florida Baptist Convention.
Some campuses, however, were more hospitable. At Baptist-affiliated Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. — the first stop on the Oct. 2-Nov. 13 tour and the location where 20 people were arrested on the first Equality Ride in 2006 — this time five riders were allowed to enter campus to deliver books affirming LGBT people to the library.
Dallas Baptist University allowed dialogue termed "unprecedented" Oct. 24, engaging students, faculty and administration. Blair Blackburn, executive vice president at DBU, said at a press conference that while the school's "established beliefs may not coincide with the viewpoints of Soulforce on these issues, we understand anyone's right to disagree and their desire for an opportunity to discuss."
The following week Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, organized what Soulforce Q termed "a limited and formal exchange of ideas" with students, faculty, staff and administrators hand-picked by the seminary to represent a cross section of the campus community.
Prior to his arrest, Lucas said it's important to give conservative Christian denominations "space to grow" on the issue of homosexuality, but increased dialogue with Baptist institutions is evidence that religious organizations can change.
"I think it's been very productive," he said of this year's Equality Ride. "If we have impacted the life of one student for the better, it's worth it."
Following a return visit to Union University Nov. 11, this year's Equality Ride wraps up Nov. 13 at Simmons College in Louisville, Ky.
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