Adam Britt’s Equality Ride Journey

Today was our day in the community in Ohio. We spent the beginning of the day at Antioch College, in the Coretta Scott King center. First, let me say something about this College. It might just be because I have spent the last 1.5 months in (relatively conservative) Christian Colleges, but this school was absolutely amazing, it felt like home, somehow. We stayed at the Coretta Scott King center for a while, talking to community members and Cedarville students. We then went to the bookstore and they had a section on Queer Studies and then we went into this amazing art building which had graffiti all through it and we went to a Transgender stencil exhibit, which was mind blowing. We went back and had some wonderful vegan pizza and then left the center to go back to the hotel to take a nap/get ready for the community dinner. We went to a Unitarian Universalist church and had more wonderful food and had more time to talk with community members. We also had a service for us and it was beautiful.

As usual, photos can be found here.

Love,

Adam.

Our day on campus of Cedarville was a very productive, welcoming day. I had good thoughts about the visit from the beginning, as both of my amazing hosts, Sarah and Jason both had contacted me a few days before the visit and I was able to see they were genuine people and very nice. The day began with us having breakfast with our hosts and having a short time to get to know each other, before we all got tours of the Student Center, which is the building where we spent the day. From there, we went into the Theater and talked a little about ourselves and spoke some about the ride (most people had Bob Jones Questions). Then we broke up into 4 different groups. One group went to a class on Human Sexuality, one to a class on Christian Worldview Integration (my class), one went to speak with faculty and the other went to a sociology class. My class, the Christian Worldview Integration class, was very interesting, as I honestly had no idea what to expect. We spent the first hour breaking the ice and talking about toothpaste. I had no idea that people were such big fans of foam, but apparently foam is something that many people look for in toothpaste. After that, we discussed morals written into law and had a few scenarios set up for us to see how we felt on the issue. Overall, it was very interesting; I just wish we could have stayed there longer. From there, we moved to Chucks and had lunch with a bunch of my host’s friends, which was really fun. Then we all headed down to the theater again and the Spiritual Violence group did their presentation. From what I was able to tell, it was well received by students. Because I have seen it to many times, it is hard for me to tell ho the presentation went, but others seemed to enjoy it. I left the theater for a few minutes and then went back to the theater for a panel discussion. Overall, I was very pleased with how this turned out. We had an especially short amount of time for questions at the end, however I think the few questions that were asked got the ball rolling for after the panel. We went to eat and we decided to go back to the second panel discussion, which I am glad we did. The actual panel was the same, however the questions after it were different and it was good to see both sets of questions, I think.

From there, I had to part from my wonderful and amazing hosts and all the Riders and faculty got together to talk about how the day went. Overall, we all agreed that the day was a very fruitful day. It was interesting, because one of the faculty made a comment about how he was worried that the friendship between the school and soulforce would not continue after and this was the first time that we had ever heard a school talk about our relationship afterwards, so it was great that he was talking about that.

We are now back in our hotel room and after conducting many scientific surveys, we are all absolutely exhausted. I don’t know what it was about this stop, but it seemed to have tired everyone out.

The Ride is almost over and I don’t really know what to do with that.

In a few minutes, photos will be here.

Love,

Adam Britt

At 11 we left the rain and cold of New York City and started to travel to Gordon College in Massachusetts. We arrived in MA and had a community dinner at a local church, where we ate, sang and worshiped. This was a very interesting place to be, as the town that we were in was Salem. Thats right, the Salem. Oubviousally the name has been changed, but being in a place that had so much history was both amazing and eerie, for some reason. My friend Neil met me at the church and drove down (up?) to Cambridge and ate, it was really good to see a familiar face. The next day, we drove to Harvard and ate with Congressmen Michael Huffington. We drove back to the hotel and at 2 we headed over to Gordon. We ate dinner with students and faculty and talked for quite a while with them. I had the schools Chaplin and the President of the student body, which was really good. It was good to be able to hear the Chaplin’s point of view on this issue and what she does when she has Queer students come to her. She is a very open person and that is a really good resource for the students. I also spoke to the student body president quite a bit and from this I found out about an amazing publication that is being distributed on campus, called “If I told you” and it is a zine containing the stories of Queer students on Gordon campus. He was talking about it and said that he was able to read it and it really changed the way be viewed the issue on his campus. It is one thing to hear people’s stories, but hearing stories from people and places you are familiar with, is very much different. I am very excited for this zine to be distributed on campus, I think it will change a lot of people’s views on the issue and open up their minds.

After dinner, we had a panel discussion in the chapel, which drew a huge crowd, something around 500 people. The Loving Like Jesus group did their presentation and the school had its chance to respond. Then we had a Q and A and a lot of great questions were asked, which I think were addressed very well. At the end of the presentation, I started to talk to one of the students who is publishing the zine and we ended up talking for about an hour. We talked so long that when we were done, everyone had already left the chapel and neither of us had noticed. We had an amazing conversation about Gender, Gender Identity, Feminism in the Gay rights movement, Feminism in general and a lot of other really amazing topics that I do not get to speak about very often. We left the school around 11 that night and were back on campus the next day at 8.

The spiritual violence group did their presentation to a packed dining area and then the school had its response. The responder was absolutely amazing and I think that he had a lot of really amazing things to say. I don’t think we have ever had such a wonderful response and I doubt we will ever have one this good. After this, the group split up and went to various places: one group spoke to the faculty about a safe spaces program at school, one group talked about neuro science and Queer issues, one group went to a Christian leadership class, one group to a sociology class and the last group spoke with the Student Government Association. The riders left over stayed in the eating area to talk to students, which is what I was a part of. From what I hear, all the groups had good conversations in the classes. We stayed in the eating area all day and all ate lunch and eventually left the school around 2.

Overall, it was another amazing day on campus. From what I have experienced and from what everyone else has said, this school seems to be one of the most responsive schools we have been to.

As usual, photos cam be found here.

Love,

Adam.

The New York City Fundraiser went really well. We managed to raise a lot of money (I am not sure of the exact amount) and meet a lot of interesting people. We had been hearing about a surprise at the Fundraiser for a while and it turns out that for now on, April 14 is Equality Ride Day, in New York City.

Not only did NYC declare a day Equality Ride Day, but in Seattle, April 11 is also Equality Ride Day. It is so exciting to hear this and it just helps affirm for me, the fact that people do recognize that what we are doing is very much needed.

Photos from the night can be found here.

Love,

Adam.

Our day on Messiah College was a wonderfully productive day. Out of 13 schools, this was the 4th school to let us on campus. The first thing we saw after getting off the bus was a group of women, it was wonderful. Many members of the administration are women and the president is a woman, which just does not happen at schools like this. This is the only college we are visiting (either bus) that has a woman as a president, it was amazing.

We started off the day with us having breakfast with various members of the Messiah community, which included both students and faculty. Our table spoke with the Provost for quite a while and we gave him various hypothetical situations and his answers were not promising. We asked him about a celibate gay couple of campus, a gay married couple, a gay couple holding hands on campus, etc. He did not seem to have any absolute answers of what would happen to these couples, which illustrates once again that these policies are not only discriminating, but also are incredibly vague and no one knows what they mean.

Around this time, we had two groups split off from the group and go to two different classrooms. One group went to a sociology class to discuss the Equality Ride as a social movement and one went to a Literature class to discuss Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple”. I was not in either of these groups, but from what I hear from riders and students, they went very well.

We then had a tour of the campus and then talked with our tour giver, Louie, for a while and then went to lunch and spoke with more students. We spent the rest of the day speaking with students and at 3 we had a panel discussion where 2 Riders and 2 members of the Messiah community spoke. For the first time on our experience, a student was on the panel discussion for the school. The 4 panel members spoke for a while and then the students were able to ask questions and the panel would answer them. Good questions were asked overall, however I feel that there were better questions that were overlooked. After the panel discussion, we found out that an underground GSA was forming at the school, which is AMAZING, I really hope they can get it off the ground.

The group Repent America was on campus and had their usual terrible things to say and had a few signs, however the students seemed to not be impressed with them, which was refreshing to see.

We had a debriefing with the administration and looked at the day and we all felt that the day was very productive. After the debriefing, we went to the ‘restoration house’ and had a potluck with lots of great community members, alum and students. The mix was really neat to see and I think that it was good for the students starting the GSA to see the alum and be able to talk to them.

Photos were not allowed on campus, so a few pictures can be found here.

Love,

Adam.

Here is Paul Owen’s responce to our presentation on Spritual Violence… all 14 pages of it…. I don’t expect anyone to read all of it, but please skim it. Read the rest of this entry »