Gay Advocate Activists arrested at Brigham Young University

24 Gay Advocate Activists were arrested at BYU in Provo yesterday. The activists staged a march and demonstration and a die-in to protest the LDS church’s stance against gay LDS church members, a stance which is dubbed by some as “anti-Christ-like”.

The protestors carried lilies as they marched in rememberance of gay and lesbian LDS church members who have committed suicide.

from the Deseret News:
The marchers proceeded somberly and silently on a 42-minute walk past the LDS Missionary Training Center, the Marriott Center, Larry H. Miller Field and LaVell Edwards Stadium.
The procession ended at the campus entrance on the corner of Bulldog Boulevard and Canyon Road, where Soulforce conducted a rally to memorialize the deaths of 22 members of the LDS Church who committed suicide between 1965 and 2004.
Soulforce leaders read biographies of each of the gay men — 11 served LDS church missions and six were former BYU students or graduates. The rally included memorials for two other gay men who had ties to Utah or the LDS Church.
Each marcher represented one of the dead men and carried a lily. The rally lasted more than an hour, with each marcher waiting until a biography was read before walking from the street corner up onto campus and collapsing on the grass as if dead.
“People are dying, and we can’t ignore that any longer,” said Haven Herrin, a Soulforce organizer. “We offer the lilies to the university in honor of those who have killed themselves. They couldn’t reconcile their LDS faith and their sexual identity. We hope for a safer future.”

The event was part of a larger national series of demonstrations by a group called “Soulforce”.
The rally was part of the 2006 Soulforce Equality Ride. The Soulforce riders are traveling to Christian and military colleges and universities to use “relentless nonviolent resistance” to seek “freedom from religious and political oppression” for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people, according to the group’s Web site.
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Jason Olson, Deseret Morning News
A BYU police officer talks with a “die-in” protester on BYU property.
“We are young people from around the country who have come to BYU to say, ‘End religious-based discrimination,’ ” said Jake Reitan, co-director of the Equality Ride.
BYU was the 13th stop on the seven-week national bus tour. The group planned to leave today for Colorado Christian University in Denver.

Some of the participants in the event are gay LDS members.

I was pleased to see this as a headline in the Utah section of one of Utah’s major newspapers and not buried somewhere deep into the paper.