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Legal Expert: Christian Schools Should Not Welcome Militant 'Gay' Activists

By Jim Brown
March 17, 2006

(AgapePress) - A Christian attorney is advising schools not to roll out the welcome mat for a group of young homosexual demonstrators that are now in the midst of a bus tour of 19 Christian colleges and military academies.

Last weekend, 24 members of the group Soulforce were arrested on trespassing charges as they tried to enter the campus of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Liberty was the first stop on Soulforce's nationwide "Equality Ride" tour, during which the group has plans to "confront" colleges that bar homosexual students from enrolling.

Mat Staver, president of the Florida-based group Liberty Counsel, says Christian schools like Liberty University are willing to share the gospel message of Christ with homosexuals who are not acting confrontationally. However, he contends, Christian schools have no obligation to welcome militant homosexuals on campus.

"When people like Mel White and his group Soulforce decide to make a very political, highly publicized event -- and not simply to come on campus but to make a political statement as they are doing with this so-called tour across the country -- I believe it's the right of private universities and colleges to exclude their entry into the university or college area," Staver says.

Last year, the Liberty Counsel spokesman notes, students at Liberty University greeted peaceful Soulforce members amiably with cookies. But now that the group has initiated its "Equality Ride" to protest Christian schools' enrollment policies barring homosexuals, he says the militant gay activists should not be allowed to disrupt these campuses or turn them into a platform to promote their radical agenda.

This year, Soulforce appears to be "trying to hijack the civil rights movement by suggesting that they are somehow aligned with civil rights by taking this nationwide tour and then making a very political, very confrontational attack on Christian schools and universities," Staver asserts.

The head of Liberty Counsel believes this change of tack by Soulforce affects the school's obligations toward the group's activists. "I think under those circumstances," he says, "Liberty University and any other university has the clear right to be able to deny them that forum to make a confrontational affront to the students on campus."

The Soulforce members involved in the so-called Equality Ride tour are acting militantly and not peacefully, Staver contends. Therefore, he feels Christian schools have ever right to refuse to welcome these activists on their campuses.

Legal Expert: Christian Schools Should Not Welcome Militant 'Gay' Activists (http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/3/172006e.asp)