In high school,
when Jake Reitan first learned of the 1960s' Freedom
Riders, he was in awe. "It was an incredible era of
youth activism," he says of the young black and
white activists who traveled by bus through the South
in 1961 protesting segregation. "A small group of
youth came together and said, 'We're
going to change the world'--and they did. I
wanted to do that today with gay and lesbian youth."
Now 24, Reitan
has realized that dream. He is codirector of the Soulforce
Equality Ride, which began March 9. With codirector Haven
Herrin and 31 other young, queer, and mostly Christian
activists, the riders have been traveling to 18
Christian universities and military academies that bar
openly gay students--plus Texas A&M University,
home to the largest Reserve Officers' Training
Corps program at any state school.
They arrive not
to confront and condemn but to open dialogue to show that
being Christian and queer are not mutually exclusive.
Resistance from administrators has been
considerable--and arrests for trespassing
frequent--but they've also had countless
productive meetings with students, professors, and
others about religion-based oppression of gay people.
"I
don't want to see social prejudice wrapped in the
sanctification of the Bible," says Herrin, 24.
"I want to say, 'We can question things
without destroying your religion as you know it--that
choice and information and science and exploration and
thought have always been a part of defining what your
religion is, and that faith is always
evolving.' "
Though many
riders were arrested at the first two stops in
Virginia--Jerry Falwell's Liberty
University in Lynchburg and Regent University in
Virginia Beach--other schools on the seven-week trip
have been more welcoming, including Abilene Christian
University, two hours west of Dallas, where an
Advocate photographer caught up with the riders.
At Abilene riders
were able to mix freely with students and give
presentations, leading to some surprising personal
encounters. "We see individual acts of youth
heroism across the country, but what is lacking is an
interconnectivity, where we're all on the same page
moving as a common force. That's what creates a
movement," says Reitan, who will attend Harvard
Divinity School in the fall. "The first day, I said
to the riders, 'When I had the dream for the
Soulforce Equality Ride, one person dreaming it is a
beautiful idea, but that's all it is, an
idea.' Now that we have 33 people dreaming the
same idea, it's the beginning of a
movement."
As the Equality
Ride culminates April 26 at the U.S. Military Academy at
West Point, The Advocate asked some of the riders and
those who support them to relate their experiences in
their own words.
