Antigay protests
fail to deter attendance at Padres game

Groups of Christians and conservatives gathered outside the San Diego Padres' Petco Park to protest Pride Night, an event for gays and lesbians, on Saturday, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

"We're here to inform parents, to warn them about what's happening inside [the ballpark]," James Hartline, a self-described Christian activist who spearheaded the protest, told the Union-Tribune. "Bringing together homosexuals with baseball and kids is beyond bounds. We're trying to get people to turn around, not go to the game, and we're succeeding."

Contrary to Hartline's claim, the stadium was actually filled near capacity. Of the 42,685 seats available, 41,026 were filled, the article reports.

J.D. Loveland, a development director of Set Free Ministries, a Christian group based in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, announced in June that his company would withdraw 42 workers from Petco concession stands to object to Pride Night.

"We are not boycotting. We are not protesting," Loveland said in the article. He continued, "But our bottom line is that Christian folk believe in the sanctity of marriage as stated in the Bible, one man and one woman. Homosexuality is a sin, and promoting it with a Pride Night when thousands of kids are also going to be [at the ballpark] is wrong. So we took a moral stand. We're not antigay. We're anti-anti-Christian."

One major gay rights activist was unfazed by the protests.

"We're talking about a baseball game. That's all this is," said Ron deHarte, executive director of San Diego Pride, which bought 1,000 tickets for the game and advertised them on its Web site as "Out at the Park with the San Diego Padres, an official San Diego Pride event." (The Advocate)