Another article in the News & Record

Had another article published in the Greensboro News & Record today. My friend John told me it was published…

Gay rights activists endure tough road
By Tom Steadman, Staff Writer
July 16, 2007

He was arrested in Grand Rapids, Mich., and barred from a dozen college campuses, and he wondered if he’d ever get out of Clinton, Miss.

But UNCG sophomore Matt Hill Comer says the two-month bus trip he took this year as part of the 2007 Equality Ride for gay rights was worth the trouble. That’s why he left Friday for New York and another lobbying effort — this time in support of a gay-marriage bill in that state.

The Equality Ride, like the New York event, was sponsored by Soulforce, a national nonprofit group with an aim of ending political and religious persecution through nonviolent means. The Equality Ride was modeled after the Freedom Riders of the 1960s.

“I think we made some difference,” said Comer, 21, a Winston-Salem native who joined 51 other activists riding two buses traveling different routes during the protest.

“I know we made a difference in the lives of students at those colleges who are gay and lesbian and can’t be open about it,” Comer said.

“I think we made some progress with straight students. And I’d like to think that in some way the administrators of those colleges now have a different attitude on the issues.”

Not that it was easy for the activists to get their point across, Comer said. At most of the stops made by his bus on the eastern route, the Soulforce volunteers found themselves unable to legally walk onto campus.

“We went to 19 schools, and 12 of the 19 barred us from campus,” Comer said. That’s why riders on the two routes racked up about 100 arrests for trespassing, he said.

“We were told to expect things to be frazzled,” Comer said. “Quick decisions had to be made on the ground.”

Comer’s own arrest came at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Mich., when he entered the campus after police told him he could not.

“We had made contact with the school months in advance, and they had pretty much said we couldn’t come on campus,” Comer said. So the Equality Riders decided to make an issue of it, creating a cement stone that they said symbolized Christ as a cornerstone of the church.

Comer and another rider were carrying it onto campus to present it to the student body when they were arrested.

“We were in the county jail there for about five hours,” Comer said. They were released on $100 bail, paid by Soulforce.

But it was in Clinton, Miss., where the riders visited Mississippi College, that he feared real trouble, Comer said. “We had had threats of violence leading up to the day we left for there, through e-mail and the Facebook Web site,” he said.

“There were between 300 and 400 students who had gathered at the edge of campus to see us,” Comer said. “Luckily, there wasn’t any violence.”

But later that day, as the riders’ bus cruised around campus picking up the activists, local police stopped the bus three times in five minutes, Comer said.

“At one point they told us to leave, then told us the bus would be impounded if it moved,” Comer said.

“Then they finally told us to get out of town and escorted us away from the college.”

Contact Tom Steadman at 373-7351 or tsteadman@news-record.com

Posted in College/University, Greensboro, LGBT Youth, Media, North Carolina, Politics, Soulforce/Equality Ride, United States |