Yesterday morning the Equality Ride drove up a windy mountain road to Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. It was a beautiful place, with morning mist and a now routine scene of police cars and officers lined up in anticipation of our arrival. They gave us the warning: step onto Covenant College’s grass and you will be arrested.

We lined up at the curb and stood looking up the hill at a distant hedge with little student faces peeking over. Someone waved. We waved back, and then more and more people waved. After a while a couple guys walked down and struck up a conversation. A couple more followed. Eventually we had fifty or so—at least two Covenant students for each rider.

They said some typical things about disagreeing with the administration’s response to our visit and desiring to show a more Christian hospitality. Many
people came down looking for specific members of our group, because they have read about us online and adopted us for their prayer groups. They even brought us boxed lunches and water, and it was fantastic food.

The two men who talked to me were interesting and remarkably different. The first told me that he wanted to leave because of the expectation for blind adhesion to dogmatic rules. The other talked about the importance of living by law and in obedience to the church, and said that new revelations from God will only exist in the forms prophesied in the Bible. I couldn’t figure out how the change in stance on race, gender equality, divorce, or even the nature of sexual orientation (it used to be a choice and a sin to be gay, now it’s not a choice but still a sin) fit into that rubric of Biblical prophesy, or how someone could accept the value of those changes without being open to new ones. He didn’t get a chance to explain because I left with a reporter.

The reporter wanted to interview me because I was one of four people planning to deliver a covenant to the administration. The covenant followed the form of the school’s own covenant and described our ideals for the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students.

I was a bit hesitant for a minute to go through with this plan. It was pretty clear that we would be arrested and I was having good conversations, which is
our goal. I went back to my conversation, though, and the legalist told me about his gay friend at the top of the hill who wanted to come talk to us but didn’t have the nerve. Some other people nearby were continuing to express their shock that we weren’t actually allowed on campus. I asked the first, disillusioned student how his impression of us would change if we broke the trespassing restriction. He said that it would improve, and that he was almost
willing to walk beside me.

Jarrett Lucas, Adam Britt, Rachel Loskill and I read the covenant aloud and then walked toward the administrator who had specifically made the arrangements for the day. He had so far avoided any contact with us. Other staff had come out to our place on the asphalt, but he had stayed far off on the grass.

We didn’t make it more than twenty feet before the police caught our wrists and put the flexi-cuffs on. We rode down the winding road in the back of a van
with little circular holes in the door. I have heard that Covenant students carried on the discussion all day in a local café.

The four of us got booked into jail quickly, and settled into two cells (one male and one female). We each had a vinyl mat and a blanket, which was nice.
The cell was a cinderblock room with a high ceiling, florescent lights, a toilet, and a concrete bench. We briefly had a companion who was arrested for driving with a suspended license, but for the most part it was just me and Rachel alone for 21 hours. The food was okay. It came twice in Styrofoam take-out containers. The noises were very jail-appropriate: keys turning, big metal doors slamming, some profanity, a few cowboy imitations, and people pacing up and down and talking.

I dreamt that I was in jail, and woke up in jail. Rachel and I stretched and I stood on my head. We both handled the experience very well; never got in a bad mood or got tired of each other.

This morning a judge magistrate made out our bonds and the bus came to pick us up. We went through the gauntlet of hugs and hit the road again, and now we’re driving to Greensville, South Carolina to visit Bob Jones University.