Democratic students at St. Louis’s Washington University organized a protest and created a “discussion space” to counter a Lutheran pastor whom they labeled an “unabashedly homophobic, ultra-conservative, anti-choice fear monger,” The College Fix reports.
Lutheran Pastor Jonathan Fisk was in town Monday night to talk about traditional marriage.
His lecture, entitled “The Original Diversity: Man & Woman in Christ,” talked about the importance of having children in a traditional marriage between a man and a woman — the only kind that was officially recognized for millennia.
The subject matter so outraged the student Democratic club that it organized its own “demonstration of inclusion” and a “discussion space” that didn’t exactly demonstrate inclusion because it could only be accessed by “LGBTQIA-identified and questioning Wash U students.”
The exclusive group was tasked with reflecting upon and responding to Fisk’s offending presentation.
Fisk is a pastor with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Washington University’s Lutheran Student Fellowship hosted the event.
The College Democrats quickly assembled their protest, which they even christened “Nothing But Love: A Demonstration of Inclusion.” They announced the event in the college newspaper, where they also eviscerated Fisk for not sharing their opinions on homosexuality, marriage and abortion.
The inclusion demonstration kicked-off with the singing of the Woody Guthrie chestnut “This Land is Your Land” and featured numerous speakers who stood before a large rainbow flag.
One student, who identified herself as a member of the Lutheran Campus Ministry, said news of the traditional marriage lecture left her feeling “angry, sad and frustrated,” and claimed the “hateful” pastor did not represent the majority of either Christians or Lutherans.
A member of the College Democrats went further, proclaiming that the pastor’s lecture had propelled her into a state of “shock.”
Faculty members came to blast the pastor too, with Prof. Jeffrey McCune saying that opposing Planned Parenthood is a racist policy because “when people refuse Planned Parenthood…they’re saying I care more about white fetuses than I do about the services to minority folk.”
Meanwhile, Fisk apparently violated the students’ safe space because he tweeted:
Original Diveristy – Man and Woman in Christ going live in 15 min from Wash U. Official protest of me down below.#doesnthappeneveryday pic.twitter.com/spv9UaJNFY
— Jonathan Fisk (@RevFisk) February 21, 2017