Gay rights activists picketed the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting for the third year in a row, this time trying to disrupt President James Merritt’s address and promising to escalate their level of protest.
The past two years, demonstrators with Soulforce organized civil disobedience outside the meeting hall, resulting in dozens of arrests. This year, in addition to protests and 38 arrests outside, police arrested 12 activists inside the convention hall.
Individually, and at varying times during Merritt’s address, the protesters stood and walked down the aisles toward the podium, shouting slogans. St. Louis police responded quickly, arresting the demonstrators and walking them outside the convention hall. Activists did not resist arrest but continued shouting their slogans as they were led away.
“My sisters and brothers, hear us please,” shouted one woman. Another woman yelled, “My gay son’s not sick.”
“Don’t let this happen to your children,” a man shouted as police led him from the arena. “People are being done violence by Southern Baptist teachings. Listen to me,” screamed another.
Merritt referred to the protesters during his address, noting, “They have let me know in their correspondence, ‘We are not going away.’
“Well, I’ve got news for the pornographer, the adulterer, the homosexual, the pedophile and the abortionist: We are not going away either,” Merritt added, drawing a standing ovation.
Earlier in the day, Merritt told messengers of the protest outside and asked them to pray.
“I want to make this statement, and I want to make it as plainly as I know how: We love homosexuals. God loves homosexuals,” Merritt said. “But he loves them too much to leave them homosexuals.”
Rick and Karen Patrick from Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church in Hueytown said they had a long talk with their oldest son, Rick, 8, when he wondered aloud why “the people across the street were saying these things about us?”
“We had the opportunity to explain to him about the persecutions that Christians face, and that when we tell people the truth, sometimes they don’t like it, because they didn’t like Jesus,” said the elder Rick Patrick. “We told him that we like these people, but we don’t like what they do.” Patrick added that his little boy did feel safe with the extra security around.
For more than 30 years, Soulforce founder Mel White was a pastor, seminary professor, communication consultant and ghostwriter for such clients as Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Oliver North and Pat Robertson.
During this year’s demonstration outside the SBC meeting hall, Soulforce protesters stood across the street from the America’s Center as groups of four to six demonstrators walked toward the main entrance. There, they were met by police who said the meeting was open only to registered messengers. When the protesters refused to leave, officers arrested them.
The 38 protesters arrested outside were charged with demonstrating and with failure to obey the reasonable direction of a police officer, according to Schron Jackson of the St. Louis City Police.
The 12 demonstrators arrested inside were charged with first-degree trespassing, motivated by discrimination, a class-D felony, Jackson said. Those charges later were reduced to misdemeanors, and the 12 demonstrators were released on recognizance bonds, she added.
Claiming violence
Through their slogans, T-shirts, pamphlets and banners, Soulforce organizers repeatedly claimed Southern Baptist teachings result in violence against gay and lesbian people.
In addition to the protests at the annual meeting, White said the group also is planning to hold protests at strategic churches.
“We hope, by the end of this year, we’ll have a vigil at every (SBC) Executive Committee member’s church, month after month after month.”
(Baptist Editors’ News Network, BP)
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