Post by Jesse Morrell on Oct 5, 2007 16:23:57 GMT -5
www.southernvoice.com/2007/10-5/news/localnews/7522.cfm
Anti-gay preachers target local campuses
Protesters descend on colleges over student objections
By ZACK HUDSON
OCT. 5, 2007
Dozens of street preachers denounced the perceived evils of homosexuality, masturbation, Judaism and Islam — among others — during four days of local protests coinciding with the Southeast Open Air Preachers Association’s annual conference.
About 50 preachers, including some who advocate the death penalty for gay sex and childhood rebellion, gathered in the Holiday Inn Express in Kennesaw for the convention held Sept. 25 through Oct. 1.
In addition to conference sermons and discussion groups, the street preachers used the Atlanta visit to spread their often-caustic message in very public spots on the campuses of Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Kennesaw State University.
“When a man sticks his penis in the behind of another man, that is a perversion. God designed it to go into a vagina” for reproduction, preached one of the men from the Georgia Tech amphitheater adjacent to the busy student center.
The in-your-face messages the preachers spouted were met by laughter and confusion from most of the students gathered at Georgia Tech and Kennesaw, where the preachers found few friends of their ideologies.
“If we had a tract table, a table with tracts on them, they would just walk by us,” explained Ruben Israel, one of the preachers who showed up at Georgia Tech. Tracts are comic-book style pamphlets that narrate religious principles.
“These students are in a stupor. Hopefully we are planting a seed or watering a seed and someone else will reap the harvest,” he said.
At Georgia Tech, about 50 students showed up to the afternoon sermons — most seemingly there to antagonize the visiting preachers.
“I was raised that God loves everyone. I’m here because we need to show them there are a lot of people who don’t believe what they say,” said John Lyle, a gay chemical engineering student at Tech.
One Georgia Tech student, dressed in a bathrobe, shouted equations from his calculus book while following a street preacher shouting through a megaphone about the “sodomites” on campus.
A group gathered among the 50 students at Kennesaw staved off tense moments during the demonstrations by combating the sermons with jokes.
“How many of you masturbate?” asked Jim Gilles, one of the Kennesaw preachers, from a ladder platform with a megaphone.
Gilles’ retort to the dozens of affirmative hands and voices that shot up was to declare that the students “are in serious danger of becoming homosexuals.”
One male student’s reply to Gilles from the crowd as the student latched on to another male student standing next to him: “My God, I think it’s already happening to me!”
Much of the preaching and many of the preachers' signs focused on the purported ills of homosexuality, but the messages also pinpointed drunkards, masturbators, Jews, Hindus and Muslims as sinful groups.
“We’re out here for the liars, the thieves, the adulterers too. We’re out here for everybody,” said Zach Baxter, a Marietta preacher and the conference organizer.
According to Kennesaw Pride Alliance President Jessica Bull, who is a lesbian, the faces of at least some of the preachers are familiar sites on campus, where she estimated some of the preachers gather at least twice per month.
State law allows public, peaceful demonstrations on public property where any permit requirements have been met.
Frances Harrison, a KSU spokesperson, said that the school closely monitors the events, but is required to allow any group that follows a published set of requirements onto campus.
“It’s crazy because these people are out here — I would say at least twice a month — and all they do is drone on and on and on,” KSU student Ginia Wood said of the preachers.
“We have a really big gay and lesbian community here at Kennesaw with lots of straight allies. And I honestly don’t think anyone wants to hear this,” Wood, who is straight, said about the demonstration.
Gilles said the preachers were hitting college campuses, as well as sporting events in Athens and Atlanta, because of tradition, and because they expected to encounter large numbers of gay men, lesbians and masturbators.
“Oh yes, there are plenty of people who need to hear the word of God,” he said.
Plenty of people stopped by to look at the demonstration for its curiosity value too, according to KSU students.
“The freshmen are like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve never seen anything like this before,’” said Mary Frances, a lesbian KSU student who, along with Wood and others, helped organize the presence of counter-protesters at the demonstration.
The preachers’ messages seemed to fall on mostly deaf ears.
“I was the president of my GSA in high school and I’ve never distinguished people who you should love based on gender. I don’t think anyone at Tech agrees with them,” said Chirley Quillen, a bisexual Georgia Tech freshman.
Bull said that despite frequent visits from preachers to the KSU campus, she’s satisfied with the state of gay affairs at the school.
“I have never felt threatened on campus. This campus is extremely LGBT friendly,” she said.
She organized a membership drive for the KSU Pride Alliance, a group for gay students and their straight friends, during the demonstration. She also took up the task of monitoring and documenting the event for KSU administrators.
With enough legitimate complaints against them, the groups who preach on campus will have their permit applications more closely scrutinized in the future, Bull said.
Until that time, she said, “We can’t stop them from coming.”
Dyana Bagby contributed.
Anti-gay preachers target local campuses
Protesters descend on colleges over student objections
By ZACK HUDSON
OCT. 5, 2007
Dozens of street preachers denounced the perceived evils of homosexuality, masturbation, Judaism and Islam — among others — during four days of local protests coinciding with the Southeast Open Air Preachers Association’s annual conference.
About 50 preachers, including some who advocate the death penalty for gay sex and childhood rebellion, gathered in the Holiday Inn Express in Kennesaw for the convention held Sept. 25 through Oct. 1.
In addition to conference sermons and discussion groups, the street preachers used the Atlanta visit to spread their often-caustic message in very public spots on the campuses of Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Kennesaw State University.
“When a man sticks his penis in the behind of another man, that is a perversion. God designed it to go into a vagina” for reproduction, preached one of the men from the Georgia Tech amphitheater adjacent to the busy student center.
The in-your-face messages the preachers spouted were met by laughter and confusion from most of the students gathered at Georgia Tech and Kennesaw, where the preachers found few friends of their ideologies.
“If we had a tract table, a table with tracts on them, they would just walk by us,” explained Ruben Israel, one of the preachers who showed up at Georgia Tech. Tracts are comic-book style pamphlets that narrate religious principles.
“These students are in a stupor. Hopefully we are planting a seed or watering a seed and someone else will reap the harvest,” he said.
At Georgia Tech, about 50 students showed up to the afternoon sermons — most seemingly there to antagonize the visiting preachers.
“I was raised that God loves everyone. I’m here because we need to show them there are a lot of people who don’t believe what they say,” said John Lyle, a gay chemical engineering student at Tech.
One Georgia Tech student, dressed in a bathrobe, shouted equations from his calculus book while following a street preacher shouting through a megaphone about the “sodomites” on campus.
A group gathered among the 50 students at Kennesaw staved off tense moments during the demonstrations by combating the sermons with jokes.
“How many of you masturbate?” asked Jim Gilles, one of the Kennesaw preachers, from a ladder platform with a megaphone.
Gilles’ retort to the dozens of affirmative hands and voices that shot up was to declare that the students “are in serious danger of becoming homosexuals.”
One male student’s reply to Gilles from the crowd as the student latched on to another male student standing next to him: “My God, I think it’s already happening to me!”
Much of the preaching and many of the preachers' signs focused on the purported ills of homosexuality, but the messages also pinpointed drunkards, masturbators, Jews, Hindus and Muslims as sinful groups.
“We’re out here for the liars, the thieves, the adulterers too. We’re out here for everybody,” said Zach Baxter, a Marietta preacher and the conference organizer.
According to Kennesaw Pride Alliance President Jessica Bull, who is a lesbian, the faces of at least some of the preachers are familiar sites on campus, where she estimated some of the preachers gather at least twice per month.
State law allows public, peaceful demonstrations on public property where any permit requirements have been met.
Frances Harrison, a KSU spokesperson, said that the school closely monitors the events, but is required to allow any group that follows a published set of requirements onto campus.
“It’s crazy because these people are out here — I would say at least twice a month — and all they do is drone on and on and on,” KSU student Ginia Wood said of the preachers.
“We have a really big gay and lesbian community here at Kennesaw with lots of straight allies. And I honestly don’t think anyone wants to hear this,” Wood, who is straight, said about the demonstration.
Gilles said the preachers were hitting college campuses, as well as sporting events in Athens and Atlanta, because of tradition, and because they expected to encounter large numbers of gay men, lesbians and masturbators.
“Oh yes, there are plenty of people who need to hear the word of God,” he said.
Plenty of people stopped by to look at the demonstration for its curiosity value too, according to KSU students.
“The freshmen are like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve never seen anything like this before,’” said Mary Frances, a lesbian KSU student who, along with Wood and others, helped organize the presence of counter-protesters at the demonstration.
The preachers’ messages seemed to fall on mostly deaf ears.
“I was the president of my GSA in high school and I’ve never distinguished people who you should love based on gender. I don’t think anyone at Tech agrees with them,” said Chirley Quillen, a bisexual Georgia Tech freshman.
Bull said that despite frequent visits from preachers to the KSU campus, she’s satisfied with the state of gay affairs at the school.
“I have never felt threatened on campus. This campus is extremely LGBT friendly,” she said.
She organized a membership drive for the KSU Pride Alliance, a group for gay students and their straight friends, during the demonstration. She also took up the task of monitoring and documenting the event for KSU administrators.
With enough legitimate complaints against them, the groups who preach on campus will have their permit applications more closely scrutinized in the future, Bull said.
Until that time, she said, “We can’t stop them from coming.”
Dyana Bagby contributed.