News :: GLBT
National Tour of Christian Colleges Faces Harassment in the Heartland by Ben Monopoli
EDGE ContributorTuesday Mar 13, 2007The Equality Ride includes two buses full of young adults - former students of conservative Christian colleges, straight allies and gay evangelical Christians - visiting Christian colleges as part of ongoing pro-gay activism. Their target: colleges with policies that silence or exclude LGBT students. Their goal: to open a dialogue about the consequences of discrimination and the religion-based prejudice that sustains and even encourages it.
In the first two days of Equality Ride 2007, the 50 young Riders faced a series of grim reminders of the discrimination and prejudice that the ride is designed to expose.
On Friday, March 9, six Riders were arrested for walking onto the University of Notre Dame campus in a show of support for gay and lesbian equality. The day before, Notre Dame campus police had issued trespass warnings to two Riders for speaking with students in the cafeteria. Those Riders were the first arrested Friday for misdemeanor criminal trespassing.
"As a gay Catholic man who was once in seminary, I walked onto Notre Dame today to help make my church a universal church. I did as Jesus Christ did and went all the way for love," said Rider Delfin Bautista, who helped organize the stop.
"It saddens me that people have such hatred in their hearts, but this just demonstrates why we feel called to spread our message of the inherent worth and dignity of all human beings." On March 7, when the eastbound Equality Ride bus made its first stop in Sioux Center, Iowa, Riders were harassed at their hotel by three circling vehicles. The Riders awoke the next morning to find their bus defaced by graphic anti-gay graffiti, along with a message on a piece of cardboard: "God does not love fairy f****."
Katie Higgins, co-director of the Eastbound bus commented, "This is the reality created by fear and misunderstanding. It saddens me that people have such hatred in their hearts, but this just demonstrates why we feel called to spread our message of the inherent worth and dignity of all human beings."
In spite of the harassment, the Equality Riders remained determined to bring a message of inclusion to their next stop - Dordt College, a school whose student handbook identifies "sexual activity with someone of the same gender" as possible grounds for "an employee’s discharge or a student’s dismissal." The Riders had conversations with students about faith and sexual orientation, and many Riders spoke from personal experience about the pain of discrimination. During the visit, Dordt’s president publicly apologized for the harassment that the Riders experienced in Sioux Center.
Both buses continued their journey on March 12.
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