Christian Philly Group Going to Bat for Jesus Again This Year
by Jim Brown
August 18, 2005
(AgapePress) - A Philadelphia-based Christian ministry plans to protest the third annual "Gay Community Night" hosted by the Phillies Major League Baseball team.
Members of the group Repent America (RA) will be displaying signs and distributing literature tonight (Thursday) at Citizens Bank Park, notifying fans that the Phillies continue to promote the homosexual agenda by hosting Gay Community Night. RA members have been ejected from the ballpark two consecutive years for holding up a banner declaring: "Homosexuality is sin. Christ can set you free."
Repent America president Michael Marcavage says he plans to take the banner into the ballpark again this year and to peaceably display it, with no intentions of provoking any disorder. But Marcavage says a major difference this year is that RA's attorney has contacted the attorney for the baseball team.
According the RA spokesman, the Phillies' attorney has conveyed in a letter his belief that the wording of the banner would not violate the content requirements of signs brought into the stadium because it does not constitute "fighting words, per se." However, the team acknowledges the wording may "provoke breaches of the peace."
Marcavage says he believes the Phillies this year are siding on the side of caution to deter any legal action.
"We're thankful that they're extending information to us that clearly states that our sign would not be in violation of the content requirements," he says. "However, we have yet to find out what is going to happen once someone does become upset by the sign. So we'll have to see how the stadium deals with it at that point."
Marcavage contends that because Citizens Bank Park belongs to the city of Philadelphia and was created by millions of taxpayer dollars, the stadium is a limited public forum in which Repent America can exercise its free-speech rights.
Sponsors of tonight's event include the Gay and Lesbian Lawyers of Philadelphia (GALLOP) and the Philadelphia Chapter of National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLJGA). According to PhillyGayDays.com, approximately 1,500 "LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered] individuals and their friends" attended the pro-homosexual observance at Citizens Bank Park last year -- constituting the largest crowd of all the "gay day/night" observances at Major League Baseball parks in 2004.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
