Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival 2008

Infamous televangelist Jerry Falwell once said that he would rather have his school, Liberty University, burn to the ground than have gays on campus. Liberty University is just one of 200 colleges and universities in the U.S. that practice religion-based discrimination, using policies banning homosexuality. So in 2006, a group of three dozen young Christians-—some of whom had been expelled from college for being gay—-founded the Equality Ride in the hopes of starting a dialogue with students at these schools. EQUALITY U chronicles their cross-country bus tour that ultimately visited 19 schools, spanning the country from Virginia to California to Minnesota. Some schools met the protesters with heckling, arrests, and even locked doors. But other institutions welcomed the debate. “I realized that it wasn’t God that was rejecting me, it was one of his children,” one student is later able to admit. Even with 10,000 students reached on the tour, the fight is just beginning.