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TOM CRANN: 12 minutes now before 5 o'clock. This is All Things Considered from Minnesota Public Radio news. Good afternoon. I'm Tom Crann. A cross-country bus tour by gay rights activists has arrived in Minnesota. The Soulforce Equality Ride is visiting 19 colleges and universities across the nation to protest what the organizers call discriminatory policies at those schools.

Yesterday, administrators at North Central University barred the activists from campus buildings at the private Pentecostal School in Minneapolis. Today, the group met with officials at Bethel University in Saint Paul. I'll talk with one of those administrators in a few moments. But first, we'll hear from one of the organizers of the equality ride. 23-year-old Jacob Brittan from Eden Prairie says today's meetings were productive.

JACOB BRITTAN: Unlike North Central University, Bethel University has welcomed the Soulforce equality riders onto campus. We're spending a day in dialogue and discussion with the students, administrators, and faculty. I just got off from a lunch where I ate with President Brushaber as well as other administrators talking about gay and lesbian issues. So it's been a good day of dialogue and discussion here at Bethel University.

TOM CRANN: Give us an example of a policy they have at Bethel, for example, that you'd find discriminatory.

JACOB BRITTAN: Well, anytime a school applies one sexual ethic for heterosexual students and another sexual ethic for gay and lesbian students, that's discriminatory. For instance, heterosexual students can meet Mary and fall in love here at Bethel university. Gay and lesbian students are called to remain celibate. And that difference is discrimination.

TOM CRANN: I take it from some of the descriptions I've read on your website that your welcome at Bethel has been slightly different from other stops along the way. Can you give us an idea of how it has differed?

JACOB BRITTAN: Sure. Well, Bethel has opened up their campus to us and said that this is a conversation that's important and needs to take place, that gay and lesbian people, particularly gay and lesbian Christians, need to have their voices heard in a conversation about gay and lesbian issues.

That is in contrast to the choice that, say, North Central University in Minneapolis made, which literally locked down every building so that we couldn't come in and just have lunch with the students. Liberty University, Jerry Falwell School was the first school we visited, and they arrested us as soon as we walked onto the campus. So it's been an interesting journey.

TOM CRANN: What would you say to someone who might say to you, look, there are differences in certain religious traditions about this and that we at certain colleges what their point of view will be, but there are other colleges, whether secular or state schools or other more moderate religious colleges who don't have this agenda, and gay students can choose to go there.

JACOB BRITTAN: Well, I believe that we live in a marketplace of ideas, and that we can't be afraid of each other's ideas, and that we can't be afraid of someone who questions what we believe to be true. That we have to be open to that. And so I'm not just going to sit on the sidelines anymore when a school actively discriminates against me or actively preaches that I am sick and sinful.

I'm going to stand up in defense of my humanity and involve myself in that conversation. Because I believe it's an abuse of the sanctity of religion to use the Bible to condemn me as a gay man. And so I'm standing up not only for my humanity as a gay person, but I'm standing up in defense of the Bible and of Jesus Christ.

TOM CRANN: Has anything happened along the way on your equality ride that surprised you or gave you some insight into the colleges that you might have seen as a sort of monolithic, forbidding entity. Well, of course, every time I go to one of these colleges, I learned something new.

I am continually being educated myself at every stop along the way about these colleges, about their theology, about the individual students. Today I just had a wonderful conversation with President Brushaber about theology and about gay and lesbian issues. That was wonderfully refreshing.

But I just came from Colorado Christian University, where I had a long, honest conversation with a group of heterosexual students, many of which I think changed their minds based on meeting me. You have to remember that these students have rarely, if ever, heard a religious apologetic for gay and lesbian equality. They've rarely have ever heard from an openly gay Christian who says, God loves me as I am with that reservation.

And so when they hear that, it's something new and it's something that they have to seek to wrap their brains around. And so at every stop along the way, these conversations, I think, are changing hearts and minds, are getting people to think critically about this issue, and are incredibly important.

TOM CRANN: That's Jacob Brittan, director of the Soulforce Equality Ride. And now Jay Barnes, Bethel University's provost who met with equality ride members today. Barnes says the school views the visit as an educational opportunity.

JAY BARNES: We really believe as an educational institution that part of our job is to help our students think clearly. And in our case, we think biblically about important issues in our culture. And this is one that is very much before us. So when the equality riders decided that they were headed our way, we wanted to use the visit as well as we could for a good educational outcome.

TOM CRANN: And what is Bethel's message for the equality riders?

JAY BARNES: Bethel's message is that God loves all people, that each of us is broken in different ways and our God is a God of restoration, healing, love, and truthfulness. And we want the equality riders to feel that they're treated as God's children when they come here.

We want them to be challenged like we challenge ourselves to look at scripture and what it teaches and try to figure out how to live it in today's world. And to go away feeling like we've had a conversation between people who respect each other, even though we have a pretty important disagreement on this one area.

TOM CRANN: Did they make any requests for any changes of policies at Bethel?

JAY BARNES: They would like us to change our view about what scripture teaches. Their goals have included things like making Bethel a more welcoming place for gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered students. They would like us to have a different view of academic freedom than the one that we have.

But we knew what their goals were coming in and they knew what our goals were. They have a better understanding of our care for all students and a better appreciation for our mission, even though we disagree specifically about what scripture teaches about homosexual behavior.

TOM CRANN: What do you have a better understanding of from talking to them?

JAY BARNES: That these folks are real people. They look a lot like our students. Most of them are college age. They're dealing with the same developmental issues that our students are. And again, we want them to feel treated fairly with the type of respect that we think Christ would treat people with.

TOM CRANN: What is Bethel's official position as to students who identify themselves as gay or bisexual on your campus? Are they welcome to remain on campus and enrolled at the university?

JAY BARNES: Yes. Our policy, Tom, is that we expect the same type of behavior for gay students and straight students, and that is that intimate forms of sexual behavior are only to be expressed within a monogamous heterosexual marriage. So whether our students are gay or straight, most of them are unmarried, and we expect them to remain celibate or chaste in their behavior. That's a kind of a countercultural perspective on most college and University campuses, but it is ours, and we think it's biblically based.

TOM CRANN: And if a young person realized that they were homosexual and they wanted to apply to Bethel or they were already at Bethel, let's say in early stages there, what would be the teaching of Bethel University officially? You're part of the evangelical Christian tradition and you identify with Baptist, the Baptist church specifically, am I correct?

JAY BARNES: That's correct, the Baptist General Conference.

TOM CRANN: Right. And would you then teach that this student would be somehow disordered or against God's will or any sort of language like that?

JAY BARNES: We would teach that student, like everybody else, is an imperfect being whom God loves and cares for, and is in the process of redeeming and changing. And in terms of the rightness or wrongness of the orientation, our teaching isn't about that.

I think we would all agree that we discover our orientation pretty early in life, whether it's same sex or opposite sex attraction. And what we do with that is the challenge that I think the Christian teaching puts before us. The challenge is to express our sexuality in ways that are biblical. And that's a tough challenge for people in our culture, whether they're gay or straight. And it's a high standard that we're called to live by. And yet that's what we teach at Bethel.

TOM CRANN: Jay Barnes is the provost of Bethel University in Saint Paul, which today received a visit from the Soulforce Equality Ride, a group of gay rights activists traveling across the country to college campuses that tour organizers say have discriminatory policies. Earlier, we spoke with the co-director of the Soulforce Equality ride, Jacob Brittan.

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