people like this give christians like me a b.a.d. name.

Students protest anti-gay religious demonstration
Members of evangelist group criticize homosexuality
Kevin Rector
Posted: 10/11/06

More than 50 students protested three preachers who were zealously condemning homosexuality and other behavior they deemed immoral outside of Nyumburu Cultural Center yesterday.

The three demonstrators were members of a Christian evangelist group called Soulwinners Ministries International who came to the campus as part of a college tour that began in early September. They wanted to warn students that God "does hate some people," and denounced homosexuality, masturbation, smoking, drinking and sex outside of marriage.

Co-group founder Michael Venyah, 38, said they stopped here because "the vast majority [of students] say they sin everyday and feel they can still get to heaven anyway."

"In the same way a fireman would rush into an inferno and say there is a fire around those inside and give them a choice to leave we too are giving students a choice to avoid the fires of hell," Venyah said.

Students gathered to show opposition, holding signs with anti-hate slogans and challenging the demonstrators' views.

Justin Choe, a letters and sciences major, shouted verses from the Bible warning of false prophets.

"[Venyah] takes parts of the Bible and interprets it for his own message," Choe said. "I feel that people who don't know much about Christianity will have this misconception."

"He's deceiving himself to actually believe he's doing the work of God," Choe said.

Venyah and his wife, Tamika, 31, came to the campus with their infant son and "brother in Christ" Chris Lemieux, 31, as part of a campus tour called Save Our Students that will last eight months and stop at 64 campuses across the nation, according to their website.

They told students the Christian religion is the only path to salvation, and brought a two-sided posterboard that listed things "God says," including "abortion is murder, homosexual sex is evil," and things "Satan says," such as "Sodomy is Normal, God Loves Everybody."

Lemieux called the campus a "university of masturbators."

The three first started demonstrating without a permit on the campus yesterday on McKeldin Mall. University Police responding to complaints directed them to get a permit for demonstrating in the amphitheater.

The Pride Alliance, a group that supports gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students at the university, also obtained permission to hold an adjacent silent protest - which falls in line with the university's rule for counterprotests.

"We did the silent protest because we feel people need to know we oppose this," said sophomore Chris Revelle, the Pride Alliance's director of programming, who held a sign reading "HATE IS NOT A UMD VALUE." "They came here with a lot of hateful rhetoric toward our community."

Other students' protests were more vocal.

Derron Thweatt, a junior American studies major, who started a chant - "Gay, straight, black, white, same struggle, same fight!" - said that what Soulwinners Ministries was doing was "not free speech" but "psychological torture."

As a gay student, Thweatt said he was particularly angered by Soulwinners' message against homosexuality because it "invites hate crimes" and could "embolden" people to hurt homosexuals.

"People like this shouldn't have a forum," Thweatt said.

Giselle Amezquita, a junior German studies and linguistics major, also held up a sign that read "Your Hate Only Makes Me Love More" and hugged a member of the Pride Alliance draped in a rainbow flag.

"He needs to shut up," Amezquita said of Venyah.

Soulwinners isn't the first anti-gay group to have made their presence known on the campus.

In 2002, Fred Phelps, the anti-gay pastor and leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., that protested homosexuality at the 1998 funeral of Matthew Shepard, protested the university's choice of The Laramie Project as a First Year Book. The book deals with Shepard's murder, one of the most publicized hate crimes in the nation, by interviewing residents of Laramie, Wyo., where the murder occurred.

Much like yesterday's showdown, students argued back and forth with Phelps and his followers and held counter-demonstrations.

Yesterday, the Venyahs and Lemieux claimed to be perfect. They never sin, they said, and have devoted their lives to spreading the gospel.

Students disagreed. When Tamika Venyah started to tell students they had "given all the power in their lives to the devil," one student shouted out that she was the devil.

Yesterday was Soulwinners Ministries' last day at the university. Today - National Coming Out Day - they plan to head off to the next campus on their tour. For the protestors, their departure is the only blessing they could provide.

Staff writer Alan J. McCombs contributed to this report. Contact reporter Kevin Rector at rectordbk@gmail.com.
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