Baylor University is the largest Baptist university on the globe. Our fourth stop on the ride, we arrived not knowing just what to expect. The administration took a most effective position on our visit, from their perspective at least. In effect, they decided to ignore us—to put their heads to the sand like ostriches and hope we just passed on by. No police, no swat cars, but also no panels, no classroom visits. We were permitted to be on campus while forbidden from entering buildings or handing out literature.

Initially, I think a lot of the riders found our position on the Baylor campus incredibly frustrating. Sure, we could walk around, approach people and chat with them. However, the very nature of our interactions with students provided them with tactful means of avoiding or dismissing us (e.g “Sorry, I’m late for a class” or “Gotta make a meeting”). However, it seemed that as the day wore on, word got around to students and many of the riders found ourselves involved in meaningful conversations with many students.

What caused the shift? I believe part of it was thanks to the university, albeit they provided aid unintentionally. The morning of our visit a cryptic mass email went out to students. The purpose of it was to reassert the university’s viewpoint (i.e. that Baylor follows Biblical teachings on human sexuality, and thus imply that we do not). What it ultimately accomplished was sparking curiosity among much of the student body.

Late in the afternoon we moved from campus to a nearby park in order to hold a rally of sorts. I was part of a presentation group that was scheduled to speak. About half an hour before the rally was slated to begin, the group and the organizers of the Baylor stop decided that we needed to provide something different. This decision was a heartening one, and we made if for the best of reasons. We had encountered so many supportive students that to offer a presentation targeted at those who still view lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons as “sinful” was pointless. Instead, we used the time alloted for the presentation to talk with students about forming a gay-straight alliance. Hearing students talk about ways in which they were prepared to cohere into a unified community of affirmation was one of the best parts of the visit.

Video from the occurrences at Mississippi College and Clinton, MS. For more details on how we were told to “get out of town,” see the previous post.

Today the Equality Ride hit a bump in the road. We ran into police intimidation in Clinton Mississippi. Prior to leaving the town of Clinton Mississippi, the Equality Ride bus was confronted three times by the same police officer who told the Equality Ride bus driver to “go on and get out of town.” The final time the officer interacted with the bus driver he threatened to arrest him if he did not follow his order.

The right to peaceably assemble without fear of arrest is a central right protected by our constitution. Moreover, the behavior on the part of the Clinton Mississippi police officer concerns not only the civil rights of the Equality Riders, but more importantly the general safety and well being of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people within the town of Clinton, Mississippi.

Below is a letter that Jarret Lucas and Katie Higgins, the two co-directors of the Equality Ride east bus, sent to the Mississippi Attorney General expressing our concerns.

The Equality Riders will be returning to Clinton today for a preplanned community forum and picnic.

March 23, 2007

Attorney General Jim Hood
MS Attorney General’s Office
Carroll Gartin Justice Building
450 High Street
Jackson, MS 39201

Sent Via: Facsimile

Re: “Get out of town”

Dear Attorney General Hood,

We write today out of deep concern for the actions of the Clinton Mississippi Police Department. We are the Co-Directors of the Soulforce Equality Ride, a bus tour of college students who are crossing the country to advocate for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender equality. As a group we are committed to and trained in the principles of nonviolence, and have a history of peaceful dialogue and respectful interaction with college students and administrations across the country. Soulforce has an outstanding relationship with many police departments and honors the hard work that law enforcement officials put into their lives everyday.

Last night, while in the town of Clinton, Mississippi, we experienced a distressing form of police intimidation. After a day of dialogue at nearby Mississippi College, we parked our bus in downtown Clinton. We were waiting for the return of some of the members of our tour from area coffee shops. While waiting, a police vehicle approached the bus with its lights flashing, signaling us to move. Our bus driver immediately turned down the nearest road and into a church parking lot to await the Equality Riders. The same officer once again followed us into the parking lot, with his lights on and asked our driver to speak with him. The officer was quite aggressive in demanding that we “go on and get out of town.” Our driver explained that we were still waiting on the remainder of our group, but was still forced to move the bus. At that time, we drove and parked the bus in a lot that was previously designated by the city of Clinton. For the third time, a police vehicle approached us with flashing lights. The officer who approached us was extremely indignant and asked us “what is your problem? We have already given you breaks today.” Our driver explained that we were in the space the City provided for us. In response, the officer asserted that our driver would be arrested if he were to take us anywhere else and not leave the city of Clinton immediately. Soon after, a community member arrived with the rest of the Equality Riders and we left promptly. We are prepared to provide sworn affidavits from ten people who can attest to the above series of events.

This behavior on the part of a Clinton police officer is unacceptable and we consider it a violation of our civil rights. Law abiding citizens should be allowed to safely assemble in any town in America. Such actions on the part of a law enforcement agent serve to make gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people feel unsafe in the city of Clinton. The role of a police officer is to protect members of the public, not threaten or intimidate them.

These concerns are augmented by the fact that several days prior to our arrival in Clinton, we received a document from the Clinton Police Department that set restrictions on our First Amendment right to assemble. After being contacted by the American Civil Liberties Union, the city rescinded the unconstitutional restrictions and shamefully applauded Soulforce for “playing the game well.”

We are planning on returning to the city of Clinton today for a preplanned community picnic and we will not tolerate a repeat of this sort of behavior from the Clinton Police Department. If threatened with arrest for lawful assembly today members of the Soulforce Equality Ride are prepared and willing to submit to such an arrest. Any arrests for lawful assembly would be challenged by us in court and followed up with a lawsuit on our behalf against the city of Clinton for violation of our civil rights.

We hope that you will take swift action by informing the city of Clinton that such behavior by the Clinton Police is unlawful and will not be tolerated in the State of Mississippi.

Jarrett Lucas & Katie Higgins

cc. Dunn Lampton, U.S. Attorney, Southern District of Mississippi
Chief Don Byington, City of Clinton Police Department
Sheriff Maclom McMillin, Hinds County Sheriff Department
John S. Williams, Staff Attorney, ACLU Mississippi

Day 2 at Baylor began with the group splitting in two. About half of us headed over to the nearby coffee house, Common Grounds, while the other half went to the Truett Seminary chapel service with our gracious 3rd year seminary host, Daniel. Fernando Ortega was the special guest, singing hymns and some of his own piano-driven Christian tunes. Our re-congregation in the hotel lobby led to a fascinating discussion of our plans for the day. For the first time on the ride, we lacked unanimity in deciding how the day should proceed and how we could best serve our goals and the LGBT community at Baylor. Should we follow up the apparent good will shown us with another day of small-sided conversation on campus? After all, our first day on campus had led to many positive interactions and a couple prominent, encouraging articles in the school newspaper. Or was Baylor simply attempting to appease us to the point where we were willing to acquiesce and become nearly invisible and inconsequential to the students and to the future of LGBT discussions on campus?

In an exceptional display of courtesy, clarity, honesty, and integrity, the Riders opened up about their concerns and thoughts on following through with our plan for civil disobedience, eventually deciding it was the correct course of action. A couple years after an underground GSA, Baylor Freedom, was finally forced into complete silence by the school, we wanted to bring back their spirit in messages chalked onto campus pavement. Chalking is a popular way for student groups to spread information about themselves and about their events to fellow students, faculty, administration, and other employees. But Baylor Freedom’s messages were always quickly sprayed away in passive-aggressive, cowardly displays of power and denial by the university. We wanted to write all the things Baylor Freedom had been kept from expressing, what every LGBT student at Baylor could never see written at their school: words of Christ’s love and affirmation of LGBT people. God loves you as you are. God loves this gay man. Christ is an ally. I am gay and a Christian. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, gay nor straight, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

After 5 minutes of chalking, the police showed up (in street clothes, apparently to follow us in secret) to put an end to our messages of love and peace. A few of us stopped after they made their demands. Josh Polycarpe, Amanda Harris, Mandy Matthias, Vince Cervantes, Shawn O’Neil, and a courageous Baylor student would not quit. They refused to allow an oppressive policy upholding the climate of fear on campus to dictate when they would stop spreading their messages of truth. Each was arrested in front of Baylor’s chapel, in plain view of many students. Tears were shed by Riders and students alike as we sadly broke into songs of freedom, love, and equality. The arrestees were held for over 24 hours on charges of criminal trespassing.

The story will not end there, however. The following day, the Soulforce Young Adult symbol, “Q”, was chalked in 3 prominent campus locations along with a message about the beginnings of a new underground group. There are hundreds of LGBT students at Baylor, and I know that this time the university will not be able to silence them. The time is right and the truth will no longer remain veiled. It is encouraging to know that our brief presence and civil disobedience were not in vain. Indeed, our short visit may create the impetus for a strong, steady community push toward achieving open, fearless, equal, first-class status for all Baylor students.

Advocacy of a homosexual lifestyle (whether implied or explicit) or any behaviors that indicate homosexual conduct, including those not sexual in nature, are inappropriate and violate the Honor Code.

As demonstrated above, the Brigham Young University Honor Code is unclear in its policy toward LGBT students and their allies. What exactly is homosexual conduct and, aside from genders involved, how does homosexual conduct differ from heterosexual conduct? As a straight ally, where are the lines for me? Can I celebrate the loving relationship between two same-gender partners? Can I participate in a rally? Can I wear a rainbow, even as a small pin on my purse?

Today, unwelcomed from Brigham Young University, we headed to Utah Valley State College (UVSC), an open and safe state college not far from BYU. In their grand ballroom, we were able to host our presentations about Christianity and its role within the LGBT community as well as the LGBT community and its role within Christianity. Interested BYU and UVSC students littered the audience with attentive ears.

This evening, we headed to the Provo Library to host a panel discussion. Among the panelists were Mike (an Equality Rider and BYU alumni who identifies as a gay man), Melissa and Lauren (current BYU students who both identify as lesbians), Tristan (a current BYU student who identifies as straight) and Daniel (a BYU alumni who identifies as a gay man). They were asked heated questions: if you had the chance to change anything about BYU to make it a better place for LGBT students, what would you do and why? How have the school’s anti-LGBT policies affected your student life at BYU and, most importantly, how has this affected your own faith journey with God?

Overall, the consesus is clear: the limitations placed on students by Brigham Young University’s Honor Code restrict academic freedom and personal and spiritual growth. Unable to discuss LGBT issues (either positive or negative) and clearly distinguish expectations for all students equally, students are unable to progress personally and academically. They are unable to learn the truth about sexual and gender identity and carry their misinformation like heavy crosses into society. They take these school-implanted prejudices into the work world as teachers, counselors, social workers, doctors, parents. The seeds planted on campuses like BYU are harmful to our families, to our communities, and to society as a whole.

It is estimated that approximately 4 LGBT individuals, many of them unable to reconcile their identity with their faith, commit suicide every day.

The seeds planted at BYU blossom into the knives, pills, nooses, guns and other devices that our youth are using to destroy themselves. These are the seeds that sprout into hate, discrimination, and prejudice. Schools like BYU that openly discriminate against LGBT students by creating hostile and unsafe enivronments, are also creating the farmers who will continue to sow these seeds. This must stop. New seeds must be planted. Lives depend on it.

Seeds of love, understanding, and inclusion–seeds that recognize all people as equal and as children of God–are available to us, but too few schools are willing to plant them. As a result, at BYU and schools like it, the old seeds of hate and discrimination continue to take root and spread through our fields like dangerous weeds.

It is my desire as an Equality Rider to replant these fields and yield new crops of inclusion, love, and understanding.

I want to open with a meditation and a series of questions that I posed in a recent letter to my friends back home, honoring the two-week mark of the 2007 Equality Ride.

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart (Luke 2:19).

One week of training. One week on the road. I search within myself for a place to begin this entry.

How do I recreate for you, with any accuracy, the profound sense of self that I feel when I stand vigil outside a property line, or step onto a closed campus, creating with my body that space which has been denied?

How do I recreate for you the moment when a student says, “Thank you. No one has ever done this before. Most people just ignore our school” – the moment when a student joins the vigil line – the moment when a student stands up in the face of so much hostility and says, without apology, “This is who I am”?

How do I recreate for you the moment when a community member says, “We are going to continue what you started” – the moment when a hotel worker says, “I should be out there with you; thank you for standing up for me” – the moment when a trucker honks and waves in solidarity as our bus rolls through Iowa?

How do I recreate for you the pride that I feel when I am associated – through uniform, proximity, and/or company – with the slogan: Social Justice for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People?

How do I recreate for you a student’s tentative steps out of the closet – whether that be a closeted identity or a closeted mind, well-meaning but steeped in misinformation?

How do I recreate for you the significance of having my own grandparents, my sister, and my sister’s boyfriend in attendance at Equality Ride events, personalizing this journey for me in a way that I could never have imagined?

How do I recreate for you the waves of love and respect that flow over and through me when I stand and survey my courageous Equality Ride community – fifty-six people who have sacrificed so much (promotions, jobs, homes, relationships, comfort, control) to put themselves physically in the gap between condemnation and hope?

These are the things I hold in my heart: 14 days, 336 hours, 20,160 minutes, 1,209,600 moments to treasure and ponder.

There is so much to say. I hope that, over time, in conversation and in letters like this one, I am able to share with you the breadth and depth of the work that alternately (and often simultaneously) consumes, exhausts, excites, depletes, and rejuvenates me.

As we commenced our training day in Denver, CO, I could not help but make note of the parallel between our environment and the work that we do. Colorado is arguably THE most beautiful state in our nation (I say this with the biased pride of somebody who lived in Colorado for part of my childhood). It is also a stronghold for a fundamentalist Christianity that actively seeks to deny lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people equality and full fellowship in the church and in society. The disconnect between such a beautiful creation and such ugly prejudice is jarring.

In much the same way, the disconnect between the beautiful people that we meet and the ugly prejudice that many of those same people hold is both jarring and deeply motivating. The communities of faith that we visit are populated by students, faculty, and administration with a tremendous capacity for love, service, and hospitality. I can sense the beauty of their hearts and spirits as I walk among them. At the same time, I am aware that many of these individuals suffer from misinformation that leads them to actively discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people on their respective campuses. I recognize that the oppression their policies and beliefs perpetuate is as destructive as their hearts and intentions are sincere.

I also recognize that they are capable of so much more. This is where the motivation kicks in. MidAmerica Nazarene confirmed to me that many well-meaning and genuinely loving people continue to be dangerously misinformed, putting my people at risk for physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual violence. It is a privilege to bring my newfound friends and others like them a message of hope and reconciliation, knowing that the love they have as a community, when liberated from oppressive thinking, can be channeled into a truly powerful force for good.

The Westbound bus visited Wisconsin Lutheran on March 12-13. Six riders and two community members (one of whom was a local pastor) were arrested for talking with students on campus on the second day. Since then we have stopped in four more states and traveled through many others. We have been very busy in the time since then, but as I made this video and watched it all the way through for the first time, I was still chilled. I don’t think I will ever forget the icey reception we received or the pit in my stomach as I watched my close friends arrested for talking about the Bible with other Christians.

I hope you are equally moved.

Being an openly gay East Coaster, I learned much of what I thought about Kansas from a movie involving red, sparkly shoes, and the repetitive mantra that there’s “no place like home.” After all, what self-respecting man with a fascination for aromatherapy candles and an undeniable “artistic temperament” wouldn’t love the concept that somewhere over the rainbow lies a magical land filled with opportunities to make a difference? Needless to say, I was a little surprised to find out that there are hardly any tornados here in Kansas.

I did, however, find the majority of Kansonians to be gracious, hospitable people, willing to go out of their way to help you find a bottle of Mucinex at a local drugstore, and point you in the general direction of a Golden Corral restaurant for lunch. What was even more surprising was our unequivocal welcome onto the campus of MidAmerica Nazarene University. We as Equality Riders had not been granted this kind of respect and encouragement to continue our work from any other campus thus far. It is clear that there are people who do hold the love of Jesus Christ above the condemnation of humankind.

We were met outside the dining hall by faculty and administration with genuine smiles and outstretched palms, then enjoyed breakfast with our hosts (students and staff people who helped us to find classrooms and introduced us to others). My host was Paul, a computer science major and an all-around great guy. We talked about faith, about love, and about scripture, about computers and robots, and about our common interest in taking care of children.

My presentation group was on at 9am, and we made our way to Mr. Haye’s class after breakfast to present In God’s Image, a look at love in scripture. I was floored to see rows of open eyes and ears like sponges that early in the morning. Students and faculty were frantically writing down information and questions to ask us. When it was all over the students shook our hands and we ended in a prayer of solidarity. There was interaction, involvement, and wholesome dialogue that lasted well after class, as we made our way to the Fireside Room for continued conversation.

Paul introduced me to countless students, and there was a real sense that who we are as people, as children of God, did not alter an individual’s perception upon meeting us for the first time. There was a real sense that our differences were not as apparent as one would assume, and that everyone in the room, no matter our sexual orientation or gender identity, desired the same love and affirmation.

At 11am, I went with Paul to hear Amy and Alexey’s presentation on International Perspectives on LGBT issues. I can say, with all honesty, that I learned more about my people, my community at large, and my fellow comrades than I ever thought possible. Who would have known that diversity within our group could continue to amaze even those with whom we share our most intimate moments, our joys and our fears, and our bad hair days? Grassroots activism…no one ever said it was glamorous!

At 12pm we had lunch and I met even more of Paul’s friends at our table. I didn’t feel like I was on show or was forced to answer outlandish questions. I was treated as a guest, but more importantly as a person. I observed, listened, introspected, conversed, ate, laughed, sang, and made friends. I learned what a Granger cookie was and that every school has its unwavering opinion regarding the inappropriateness of wearing sweaters sporting the names of rival schools on campus. It’s a big no-no, wherever you go.

Lunch ended and the Equality Riders made our way into a smaller room with beautiful chandeliers and round tables. We discussed with the minister ways in which the school could improve, with special attention given to the reason for our visit. We discussed the policy and ways in which students on campus could feel accepted regardless of their orientation or identity.

It is clear by our presence, and by letters received from current and former students, that this discussion is needed, is warranted, and is vital to the future of humanity. If we are to coexist, there must be discussion involving those issues that face our society today. We can no longer hide behind the veil of uncertainty or in the shadow of traditional understanding regarding the complexities of human nature and newfound research if we are to fully prosper as an ever-changing world and a thriving community of believers.

I feel strongly that the impact of our visit has left a huge impression, not only on the administrators, faculty, and students, but on us as well. Our visit had been so fulfilling throughout the entire day that we felt an obligation to hold on to our collective happiness for as long as we could, making our next stop, BYU, that much more tolerable, and our call to action that much more important.

We walked outside in the cold, crisp air toward our bus. Everyone circled up, said our goodbyes, and ended with a prayer of solidarity. It was too perfect, and I was just waiting for Fred Phelps to come along with one of his famous signs. But, that never happened. What did end up happening were a lot of hugs, a few tears, and a lot of love. We eventually got onto the bus and reluctantly said goodbye to the campus we called home for a day.

All in all, I realized that assumptions might be the root of all evil, if you believe in that sort of thing. The only way to fully live is to learn to love in a way that includes rather than excludes. But, it’s awfully difficult to learn this important trait if we do not have the means to educate ourselves properly by getting out there and meeting the world with open arms and an open heart. Perhaps, this ride is offering me much more than a two-month chance to make a difference in the world. Maybe the one who’s changing the most is myself. I guess you can you take the girl out of Kansas, but I think I’ll hold on to Kansas for a little while longer.

Three other OBU videos on the way this evening and in the morning.