Early Rides
Jacob Reitan, a 23-year-old Christian activist from Minnesota and director of youth programs for Soulforce, initiated the rides. In 2005, he conducted trial runs at Liberty University in the spring and at the U.S. Naval Academy in the fall. At Liberty University he spoke informally students. According to organizers, they tried without success to donate books about homosexuality to the library. Reitan said they asked the University to designate some place on campus where students could talk about being gay without fear of being expelled or having their parents informed. They were also unable to turn over to Jerry Falwell, the university's founder and chancellor, anonymous letters written, they said, by gay Liberty students. When asked about the school's policies toward gay students, a spokesman said "we follow Scripture."
Read more about this topic: Equality Ride
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or rides:
“Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans—which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Commuter—one who spends his life
In riding to and from his wife;
A man who shaves and takes a train,
And then rides back to shave again.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)