Mel White’s Bizarre Campaign
by J. Lee Grady
A prominent gay activist is taking his Equality Ride campaign to America’s Christian campuses—to call for schools to change their policies on homosexuality.
At one time in his career, Mel White served as a ghostwriter for the most influential Christian leaders in the country including Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Billy Graham. At the same time he was working for these evangelical institutions, White—who was married with two children—struggled with his sexuality.
He finally decided to divorce his wife and enter into a gay relationship, a process he described as “taking the first steps toward integrity” in his 1994 biography “Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America”.
Today, White and his partner, Gary Nixon, are waging a propaganda war from their California headquarters. They want America’s Christian college students to embrace homosexuality as a normal lifestyle.
White’s campaign is called the Equality Ride, and it is driven by an organization he founded called Soulforce. The campaign involves 35 young adults who began a national tour of 19 Christian colleges and universities on March 10, including a number of Pentecostal schools. The activists have already stopped at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., (where school officials and police barred them from the campus) and at Lee University in Cleveland, Tenn., (where riders were denied a public forum).
On March 31, Soulforce planned to stage a protest outside the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities convention in Dallas. And riders will stop at North Central Bible College, an Assemblies of God school in Minneapolis, on April 17.
Soulforce’s goal is clearly stated on its Web site: “Never before have young activists banded together to challenge homophobia at the institutions that are largely responsible for GLBT discrimination.” (GLBT, by the way, stands for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.)
Soulforce has employed intriguing tactics to get out their message. At Lee University, they scheduled a concert with the pop group Jason and DeMarco. The musical duo includes Jason Warner, a Lee graduate who freely talks about his Pentecostal upbringing. He and his partner DeMarco DeCiccio have appeared on the cover of the gay magazine Advocate and have performed at numerous pro-gay events including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Awards.
Get the message? “You can be gay and Pentecostal! Come join us!”
White and his young disciples have targeted Christian schools because they don’t tolerate homosexual behavior. Haven Herrin, co-director of the event, told Charisma: “We do not question a private institution’s right to choose to enforce a discriminatory policy. Making these choices is fully within a school’s right, but we do see the choice to discriminate as a decision with moral weight.”
That is a slick argument. Soulforce uses terms such as “rights,” “discrimination” and “moral” to twist reality. Wrong becomes right. Right becomes wrong. A lot of Americans fall for that kind of doublespeak.
Thankfully, administrators on these campuses have been gracious in their dealings with Soulforce. At Azusa Pacific University, officials allowed the protesters a limited time for discussion and then used the dialogue to reinforce their conservative position. Nobody threw rocks or hurled epithets—which would have only created sympathy for the Soulforce riders.
Officials at Wheaton College in Illinois told Charisma that they will host a forum on homosexuality. They will then use the platform to stress “why Wheaton’s stance will not change from the historical stance of the church,” said campus spokesperson Tiffany Self.
Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., said the Soulforce riders will not be welcome on his campus, and he accused them of not acting in good faith. Soulforce, he said, “is simply trying to use such encounters on Christian college campuses as a media attraction and for their ultimate purpose of fundraising.”
How should we respond? These gay young people don’t need to be vilified, and campus officials are smart to avoid ugly confrontations. If anything, we should use this as an opportunity to demonstrate that Christians don’t hate gay people because, after all, many Christians have struggled themselves with that sin—and found grace to overcome it through the power of the Holy Spirit.
But we also need to make it clear to Mel White that he is fighting a losing battle. I can say this with authority because I have two daughters who attend a Pentecostal college in Georgia. Nobody is going to impose immoral standards on my kids while I’m paying their tuition.
Earth to Mel White: Christians are not going to rewrite the Bible or our campus moral guidelines just because you decided one day that it was “a step toward integrity” to leave your wife for a man. Shame on you for luring impressionable young adults into this deception.
J. Lee Grady is the editor of Charisma and an award-winning journalist.
