Group Protesting Sodomy Ruling Ejected from Georgetown Campus

by Jim Brown
December 30, 2003

(AgapePress) - A family values group was recently kicked off the campus of a Catholic University for opposing homosexuality.

A Catholic group called the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP) was removed from the grounds of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, for what one school official called "grossly offensive and inflammatory" speech.

The pro-family group was collecting signatures for a petition protesting the Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court decision legalizing sodomy. Preston Noell, director of TFP's Office of Public Liaison, says the incident took place, ironically, in an area of the university known as Red Square, a so-called "free-speech zone" on campus.

"People who promote the homosexual agenda on campus get livid when they see young men who are clean cut, [in a] coat and tie, very polite, collecting signatures on this," Noell says. "Sometimes they lose it, as they did at Georgetown. That won't deter us. We'll continue our campaign, and we think we're being quite successful actually."

But apparently, as far as Georgetown's officials are concerned, TFP's message is not welcome at the university. Georgetown's interim vice president of student affairs Todd Olsen, who made the decision to have the two members of TFP ejected from campus, told the Catholic World News afterward that the two were "spreading a message that was grossly offensive, and I view the removal as entirely appropriate."

Noell feels that is a peculiar statement coming from a school that prides itself on intellectual and academic freedom -- a school that even welcomed pornographer Larry Flynt to speak on campus. That Georgetown officials would intervene to censor a controversial message strikes TFP's spokesman as curious.

"This is quite unusual at an institution that supposedly is Catholic, run by the Jesuits, that a free and open debate on these issues is not tolerated," Noell says. "So, in our mind, the intolerance of those promoting the homosexual agenda at Georgetown is something that needs to be explored and called into question."

Noell says TFP is undeterred and will continue to spread its biblically-based message. The group is also engaged in a campaign to convince the U.S. Catholic bishops to have priests deliver Sunday homilies opposing homosexual marriage.