Today has been such a long, confusing, weird, interesting, exciting day. The day started off as a normal Equality Ride day. Half of the group went to chapel and the second half went to a local coffee shop to talk with students. I went to chapel and they had a person come play piano and sing and it was really nice. He apparently was pretty famous, but I had never heard of him before. We meet a few really nice people at chapel and had an overall good experience. We went back to the coffee shop and then went back to the hotel lobby to discuss what was going to happen later on in the day.
(Some history)
A few years ago, Baylor had an underground group (like a Gay/Straight Alliance) that was called Baylor Freedom. The school refused to acknowledge the group and they would flyer, and they would get torn down. They would chalk on campus and maintenance would follow them and wash it away, which was not something they did with other groups.
With this knowledge, the plan for today was to get the riders and students together and go to chapel and chalk in front of chapel. We were going to chalk affirming messages and say the things that Baylor Freedom and Queer students on campus wanted to say and want to say, but can’t (photos, as usual, can be found here). After meeting the students who were interested and talking to them about what we were going to do and talking about the tactics of non-violence, we formed a line and walked across campus to chapel. We had quite an impressive group and after Amanda said a few words, the chalking started. It all happened to fast and we had so many students helping, its hard to explain what it felt like to see such a beautiful thing happening. As I was running around in the distance taking photos, I didn’t have much time to think about and process what was going on. We chalked for about 8 or 10 minutes and then men that didn’t look like they belonged started to show up. At first it was one man, demanding that we stop chalking. We did not stop. Baylor Freedom was silenced and we were not going to be silenced that easy. More men started to show up with backpacks filled with handcuffs (and who knows what else) and started to demand more that we stop chalking. A few people stopped, however a group of Riders and one student did not stop chalking and they were placed under arrest. At this time we had quite a large group of students watching the events and they were starting to question who we were and why we were so passionate about this, you could see it in their faces. After the 5 riders and one student were taken off campus, we went back to the coffee house and talked to more students, some were there, and some weren’t. It was a time for both Riders and students to process what they had just seen and bounce questions off each other.
After talking for a while, we heard the news that the people who were arrested would not be released today. They were going to be kept overnight. Hearing this news was very troubling and almost scary, as this is something that has never happened in Equality Ride history. I am still so worried about the 6 in jail and they are all that I can think about. Hopefully we will have a large group of students and community members to get together to get them in the morning.
We have meet so many amazing people here in Baylor; I honestly do not want to leave. The students and community members that I have been able to find are truly amazing people and I hope that I will be able to keep in contact with them (please e-mail me if you are reading this!).
Today, I got wind of something that made me so incredibly sick, I don’t even understand how to process what people are thinking. Here is an excerpt from this website.
“What if you could know that your unborn baby boy is likely to be sexually attracted to other boys? Beyond that, what if hormonal treatments could change the baby’s orientation to heterosexual? Would you do it? Some scientists believe that such developments are just around the corner.”
What. What is going on? I don’t understand. I don’t understand at all how people feel that changing who these unborn people were supposed to be, is part of god’s overall plan. It makes me so sick that people are even considering doing this to children that have absolutely no say in this. Being Queer is something that is beautiful and completely part of god’s plan, I just don’t understand how a parent could even consider doing this to their child.
After all of this, for a while we thought that the city (not school, but city) of Clinton, Mississippi was not going to allow us to gather in groups of more than 3, anywhere in the city. They had this list of rules for us and if we broke them we would be arrested. However, we have no found out that the city is now going to be more cooperative and now we only have to worry about the school it’s self.
Today has been such a heavy and emotional day for me and all of the Riders. Tomorrow we will be getting our friends out of jail and then will be driving for 8 hours and hopefully I will be able to be awake for at least a small part of that time, so that I can try to digest everything that has happened today.
Photos from today can be found here, as usual.
With all of my love,
Adam