By: PAUL SCHINDLER
04/10/2008
Bram Wispelwey and Micah Matthias. GAY CITY NEWS
Since 2006, young LGBT and allied activists engaged in Soulforce Equality Rides have visited 52 colleges and universities with histories and policies of silencing or excluding queer students. The young riders, many of whom come from religious and faith backgrounds, have brought Soulforce's unique style - combining what the group calls a "dynamic 'take it to the streets'" activism with the uncompromising non-violence principles championed by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. - to challenge religion-based and other homophobia, in schools ranging from Bob Jones University in South Carolina to the US Military Academy in upstate West Point.
This fall, roughly 25 activists will embark on a new Equality Ride through the South, and for the first time visit historically black colleges.
As part of its efforts to educate the wider LGBT community about its Equality Ride mission, Soulforce NYC will hold a benefit concert and party next Wednesday, April 16 at 8 pm. at Touch Nightclub, 240 West 52nd Street. The evening's headliner will be Ari Gold, the sexy R&B recording artist, whose own life has been, in part, a story of reconciling his gay identity with a youthful education in an Orthodox Jewish yeshiva.
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