Gay Rights Activists Protest MC | Jackson Free Press | Jackson, MS

Gay Rights Activists Protest MC

Photo credit: Brian Johnson

By Brian Johnson Thursday, March 22, 2007 4:25 p.m. CDT
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Photo caption: Soulforce co-director Katie Higgins was among those arrested at Mississippi College Thursday.

Calling for dialogue and reading scripture, members of Soulforce Equality Ride, a Virginia-based gay rights advocacy group, protested just outside the grounds of Mississippi College today. Five members of the group were arrested when they stepped onto MC grounds, trying to speak to students.

The protest, which began at 9:30 a.m., was attended by 100 students who listened from the grounds as Soulforce member and former Hattiesburg resident Michael Ide explained that the group wanted nothing more than open discussion.

Ide, who was later among those arrested when he stepped onto the grounds of the campus, held up a poster showing Soulforce members when they were young children. The poster was inscribed with a passage from the Bible, Mark 9:37, which reads: "Whoever receives one such child receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me but the one who sent me." Ide said that the poster was meant to express "that we are all God's children."

"The Bible says that we enter the kingdom of God as children. We must humble ourselves before God," Ide continued. "We must not rely too much on our own understanding but rely on the spirit."

Trace Roberson, who said she is a junior at MC, urged students to talk with members of Soulforce even if they disagreed. "Homosexuals are outnumbered in this country, but they have a lot of power and passion to help their cause. You have to wonder why we don't see that in our churches more often."

Roberson, 24, said she was married to a seminarian and believes homosexuality is a sin. "Christ on several occasions had people who were asking how to get into the kingdom to give up everything, everything their identity was founded on. That's hard, and a lot of them didn't do that."

The Bible passage to which Roberson referred is Matthew 19, in which Jesus said: "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

"To be a Christian," Roberson continued, "I believe it's necessary to believe in the infallibility of the Bible. To believe that grace and faith alone save us. … Sinners of all forms—drunkards, depression, homosexuality—are all things we suffer from because of our sin nature and because of our brokenness."

Roberson then spent the next hour talking to different members of Soulforce, but she said she still did not think the group should have been allowed on campus. "I think it was very smart of MC to restrict this," she said. "It was smart for the safety of the students and the comfort of the students. I believe they've chosen this university over others because this university does proclaim a Christian background and Christian morals. So students who are still growing in their faith have a safe place to do that in Christian community without threat before they have wholly dived into the doctrine."

Members of Soulforce, who sang church hymns and cited scripture throughout their protest, passed out pamphlets arguing that Christianity is compatible with homosexuality. The pamphlet, which listed Soulforce founder Rev. Mel White as author, points out that neither Jesus nor the Jewish prophets had anything to say about homosexuality, and "only six or seven of the Bible's one million verses refer to same sex-behavior in any way." White argues that we must remain open to "new truth from the Scripture," and cites Rev. Jerry Falwell's turn away from race segregation as an example. "Even when we believe the Scriptures are 'infallible' or 'without error,' it's terribly dangerous to think that our understanding of every biblical text is also without error."

White writes that fundamentalists who claim to believe the Bible is infallible still do not obey Deuteronomy 22, which mandates stoning to death brides who are not virgins and those who commit adultery, along with many other passages. Finally, White engages in a detailed analysis of those few passages that do pertain to "homosexuality" to argue that they have been broadly misinterpreted. For instance, regarding the destruction of Sodom, which gives us the root of the word "sodomy," White cites Ezekiel 16: 48-49 and its description of Sodom's sins, which do not include homosexuality: "This is the sin of Sodom, she and her suburbs had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not help or encourage the poor and needy. They were arrogant and this is abominable in God's eyes."

"All we ask the Mississippi College administration is to accept our voices and experiences as valid to this discussion," Ide said. "I'm from Mississippi, and I'm hoping that by coming here and talking to you today, we are helping to build a Mississippi where no more students in high school are told by teachers with ties to this college that they deserve to die. That's what I was told at Pearl River High School. I was told by teachers in the classroom that because I was a gay man, I deserved to be dead."

Soulforce member Amy Scott, who was arrested when she stepped onto school property, said her act was in the tradition of men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. "The students and the administration don't agree with us, but I feel like they're able to see the fruit of action. People who care about justice and faith can see us fighting for our rights, and we can build a dialogue with students," she said as she waited to be loaded onto a city van, her hands in plastic cuffs.

Article III Section B of the MC student handbook describes numerous forms of punishable "misconduct," among them Item 16: "Sexual Impropriety. Sexual impropriety includes but is not limited to participation in or appearance of engaging in premarital sex, extramarital sex or homosexual activities."

Soulforce member Stephen Krebs said that he'd had "friendly conversations" with the MC administration but that administrators were ultimately hypocritical. "(Dr. Eric Pratt, MC's vice president of Christian development) told me that this dialogue was very important to the campus, important to the students—he recognized that—but then he would come up with different excuses for why we shouldn't be allowed to share our perspective here. There were a variety of excuses: safety issues—he referred to us as 'bullies,' that we were trying to force ourselves on people. As I indicated to him over and over, we really just wanted to come and be able to talk. We realize that people can disagree, but it's still possible to have a respectful conversation. … I was completely honest, completely upfront and open about our goals and our intentions. We wanted an open line of communication with the school to work together to come to an agreement that would work for all of us. The line of communication was basically shut off."

Royce did not return calls for comment.

When called by the JFP, Pratt said that MC was consistent in its response to Soulforce. The college declined to extend an invitation to Soulforce, as the group had asked, but college administrators did say the group was welcome as visitors if they adhered to the visitor's policy.

"They declined, because they didn't feel like they could adequately communicate their message," Pratt said. "The next step was that they called back and said they wanted to talk about this more. We said, 'Well, we've already given you our response, and you've posted on your Web site for people who want to join you to come to our campus that day, for 25 people who have been trained and are committed to this. To us, this was a very simple thing. We have hundreds of visitors every day, but not knowing who's going to come in support of you or in opposition to you really does cause us a safety concern.' We didn't give a myriad of reasons, we just stuck with that same one."

Pratt said that the event went as well expected considering the circumstances, and he maintained that MC administrators do value dialogue. "We want dialogue and discussion about the issues," Pratt said. "I think every student generation needs to explore what they believe and why they believe it, and why the institution that they attend has the rules and takes the stand that it takes. I think that's part of what the educational process is."

Despite the arrests, the protest was orderly, with students and Soulforce members engaged in animated but respectful discussion. At least 20 Clinton police officers, some of whom arrived in a SWAT van, observed both protesters and the crowd.

Dean Genth, who served as Soulforce's liaison with the police department, said he was "very pleased" with the police department's demeanor and assistance. "The Clinton police force gave us a police escort from our hotel back in Jackson, and personally, I appreciate that. We had rumors that some organizations like Fred Phelps might be here, yelling and shouting at us. There were bloggers online who threatened some horrible things, and so for that, I think the police presence was good."

Later Thursday, around 5 p.m., a Clinton police officer stopped Soulforce's van and ordered the activists to leave the city and return to Jackson. "We were waiting for the five Equality Riders who had been arrested to be released," Krebbs said Friday. "A police officer pulled us over, and our bus driver got out to talk to him. The officer was real aggressive, yelling at him. It wasn't clear what the problem was, but he said to leave town immediately. We couldn't leave because we didn't have all the Equality Riders with us, so we pulled around the corner into a parking lot for a shopping center near MC. The (police officer) pulled up again and started yelling at our bus driver again. ... Another cop car pulled up and was yelling. He said, 'We gave you so many things this morning, you need to leave town.' The gist of it was because they had 'allowed' us to peaceably assemble on public property, that was some kind of gift."

Clinton Police Chief Don Byington did not return calls for comment.

In a March 23 letter to Attorney General Jim Hood, Soulforce co-directors Jarrett Lucas and Katie Higgins described the Thursday afternoon incident, writing that a Clinton police officer threatened their bus driver with arrest if they did not leave Clinton immediately. "Law abiding citizens should be allowed to safely assemble in any town in America," Soulforce wrote. "The role of a police officer is to protect members of the public, not threaten or intimidate them."

Lucas and Higgins threatened to sue for false arrest if any of their members were arrested while peaceably assembled. "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," they concluded.

In a March 20 letter, the City of Clinton set out a number of restrictions on the protest, some of which drew objections from the Mississippi ACLU. For instance, the city sought to force Soulforce to assemble "to a location selected and controlled by the City of Clinton." One provision warned that any attempt by members of Soulforce "to gather or travel outside of the established assembly perimeters in a group of four (4) or more ... will constitute a violation of the provisions of the Parade/Assembly permit thus causing the permit to become invalid and terminated." The letter also stated that any attempt by four or more member of Soulforce to come near the MC campus would constitute a "breach of the public peace."

Later that same day, Mississippi ACLU attorney John Williams sent the city a letter (PDF, 68 KB) objecting that the proposed restrictions were unconstitutional. Williams wrote that Soulforce had a constitutional right to assemble on public sidewalks. "t is unconstitutional and unlawful for your office to deny citizens the right to peacefully assemble on public property. … From a legal standpoint your licensing requirement is wrought with constitutional violations and restrictions on First Amendment grounds."

The city ultimately allowed Soulforce to assemble on a sidewalk adjacent to the MC campus.

This story has been updated many times.

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