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(Lynchburg, Virginia) Twenty members of the
Soulforce the Equality Ride were arrested Friday as they attempted to discuss
LGBT civil rights with students at Liberty University.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the university's
chancellor warned Wednesday that members of the non-denominational group were
not welcome at the school. (story)
Campus police, on instructions from Falwell, were
waiting Friday as the bus carrying the Equality riders stopped in front of the
campus. As members, mostly young people, one by one read from a prepared
statement and then stepped onto the grounds they
were arrested and charged with trespassing.
Liberty University is the first stop for the
Equality Ride.
Thirty-five young adults are crossing the country
visiting schools that ban the enrollment of LGBT students. Outside Liberty
University they were met by about 30 supporters.
Invoking the memory of the civil rights movement,
Soulforce member Jacob Reitan said: "We want to come to the school today to
say, 'learn from history.'"
"We have a right to be here, because this
school teaches that being gay is being sick and sinful," Reitan,
co-director of Equality Ride told the Associated Press. "We have a right to
question and to show how we are children of God."
The ride departed Thursday from outside the
offices of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) which
represents fifteen of the eighteen schools on the Equality Ride route.
Reitan and other Soulforce members said they did
not intend to be arrested at the campus, but just hoped to talk to Liberty
students.
Two of those arrested were also charged with
inciting trespassing. They were restrained in plastic handcuffs before being
taken to a local magistrate.
It is not the first time Soulforce has
demonstrated at Liberty University.
Last spring the group was greeted with cookies
not police when members met with Liberty students on campus.
The Soulforce Equality Ride is expected to take
51 days.
©365Gay.com 2006
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