News

By James Tillman

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan, October 8, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Aquinas College, a Catholic college located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is planning to hold an event titled “Love is everywhere … AQ Celebrates Human Rights” this coming Monday.  The event features showings of multiple movies about homosexuals, a “coming out” story, and “ribbons and face-painting to celebrate our unique differences,” according to the college website.

The prospective event will take place “all day long” at various locations and times on the campus.

Founded by Dominican Sisters in 1886, Aquinas College is an institution “rooted in the Catholic Dominican tradition,” according to its website.  It states that on campus “Values, ethics, and morality are explored in the context of Judeo-Christian ethics and Catholic teaching with full respect for other religious traditions, academic freedom, and personal conscience.”

Nevertheless, despite professed adherence to the Catholic tradition, the proposed event explores views profoundly contrary to those advanced by the Church.

The two films that will be shown during the event are “Seven Passages – The Stories of Gay Christians,” and “Milk.”  The first movie features characters who advance revisionist interpretations of the scriptural passages that have traditionally been seen as evidence that sodomy is a sin.  Conversation with the key players in the film will follow the screening.  The second movie is a celebration of the life of Harvey Milk, the murdered homosexual “gay rights” activist elected to the San Francisco board of supervisors.

The event will also have training and information regarding how to be an “'AQ certified' Safe Zone advocate” for the Aquinas College campus.  Safe Zones have been established at colleges around the US as areas where homosexuals may feel welcomed and accepted.

The event, in addition to being sponsored by Aquinas' Campus Life, is also sponsored by the student organization The Alliance.  The Alliance is described on Aquinas College's website as having the mission of bringing “inclusiveness to the Aquinas College community.”  The Alliance's facebook page describes itself as “Serving Aquinas' LGBTQIA community by promoting education, tolerance, community, and love in their purest forms.  Let's all hug.”

The event will also feature a “coming out” story by Dave Craft, facilitator of Allies and Advocates Training.  Allies and Advocates Training is designed to bring about a campus climate in which homosexual students feel “respected” and “affirmed.”

Aquinas College has been previously been at the center of controversy due to similar issues.  In 2008 it cancelled the appearance of John Corvino and his lecture “What's Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?”  This lecture “examines and dismantles the most common arguments against homosexual conduct” according to an online biography.

In 2003, the college's commencement speaker was the strongly pro-abortion Roger Wilkins, who has served on NARAL's National Commission on America Without Roe and participated in a Washington, D.C. press conference presenting the commission's report.

A spokesman for Aquinas College declined to comment, disclaiming any detailed knowledge of the event.