Join the Impact Chicago, the Gay Liberation Network and others demonstrate against the Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’s “Truth Academy,” a three-day training session for anti-gay rights activists. (Adapted from Andrea Crain’s account on FriendAtheist.com. Photo credit: Andrea Crain; Amy Harkness.)

1. Protesting the Anti-Gay Rights Movement Join the Impact Chicago, the Gay Liberation Network and others demonstrate against the Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’s “Truth Academy,” a three-day training session for anti-gay rights activists. (Adapted from Andrea Crain’s account on FriendAtheist.com. Photo credit: Andrea Crain; Amy Harkness.)

2. Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’ (AFTAH) is run by Peter LaBarbera, an anti-gay activist. Before forming AFTAH, he worked for the Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council, and most recently the Illinois Family Institute. He organized the not-so-aptly named “Truth Academy” to teach people as young as 14 how to follow in his footsteps. Peter LaBarbera.

3. We got to the Christian Liberty Academy, the school playing host to the event, right around 7:30 p.m. and there were already a lot of demonstrators.

4. The protest was co-sponsored by the Gay Liberation Network (GLN), DuPage NOW, Woodstock/McHenry County PFLAG, La Voz de los de Abajo, and the group I belong to, Join the Impact Chicago (JTIC). There were NOW folks and others on the corner, displaying signs to those driving by on Euclid Ave. There were GLN, PFLAG and Standing On The Side of Love folks with huge banners, lots of people with homemade signs like my own. Andrea Crain with her sign.

5. Andy Thayer of the GLN was there with his portable sound system, leading a picket line up and down the sidewalk chanting against homophobia and for equal rights. Andy Thayer.

6. About ten police officers were monitoring the situation, and some school staff hung out, watching us, from the steps leading to the entrance.

7. The school’s sign had been set up with a special message for us: “Truth is not hate except for those who hate truth.” Rubber and glue, AFTAH, rubber and glue.

8. I went over to talk to the Standing On The Side of Love group. This is a social justice campaign that was initiated by the Unitarian Universalists. I have seen their distinctive yellow signs at a bunch of rallies and marches, and I was interested in talking to them. These folks were from the Countryside Church Unitarian Universalist in Palatine. Their minister, Hilary Krivchenia, said the members of her church who’d come out this evening “believed that the United States can do better than fomenting hatred against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons.”

9. After I left the folks from the Unitarian Universalists Church, my partner, wearing our rainbow flag like a superhero cape, went to stand with the NOW and PFLAG folks. I wandered around taking pictures of some of the great signs people had made.

13. We noticed that the window on an upper floor had opened and a couple of AFTAH people were filming the crowd from above. A young lesbian next to me started jumping up and down to get their attention. She had heard one of the AFTAH people tell one of our people that we must have been molested to cause our homosexual behaviors. “I’ve never been molested,” the young woman yelled up at the cameraman. “No one abused me! No one’s ever touched me without my consent! I’m gay because I like it and because I can’t change!”

14. At its peak, our side had over a hundred people standing on the side of love, freedom from fear, and justice under the law.