Posted on

Protest at ‘Pride’ event leads to shocking turn of events

Protest at ‘Pride’ event leads to shocking turn of events Protest at ‘Pride’ event leads to shocking turn of events

A young man arrested while preaching in public? Here in America? Apparently, the answer is yes.

It happened two weekends ago in Watertown, Wis., when a group of Christians held a prayer and protest event at the same time as “Pride in the Park” July 29.

“About 150 people came peacefully. We started praying, we started to go into different areas of the park, we started to witness the Gospel. One guy had a little speaker and was sharing Scripture,” said Gene Schmidt, one of the organizers of the prayer and protest event. Teenager Marcus Schroeder was standing on the sidewalk reading Scripture into a microphone (at the moment he was reading Gal. 5:14-15) when a group of police officers approached him. One officer pulled down his hand with the microphone and proceeded to arrest him for violating an ordinance about noise “amplification devices.” However, Jason Storms, who was part of the Christian group and recorded a video of the encounter, said his group was never informed of the rule, and the only ordinance he knew of referred to noise that exceeded a certain decibel level. Wisconsin Family Action President Julaine Appling is from Watertown and has friends on the police force who were involved in the incident. According to her, police explained that the arrest was not due to the young man reading his Bible, but because he was using an amplification device that interfered with a previously permitted event, which is not allowed per city ordinance.

For my part, I couldn’t find anything in the City of Watertown municipal code online prohibiting the use of a public address system, whether at a previously permitted event or otherwise. All I found was a general statement: “No person shall make or cause to be made any noise disturbance within the City of such volume or nature as to annoy or disturb any other reasonable person of normal sensitivities.” But, I could have missed something. Taken at face value and especially if there is no ordinance on the books prohibiting noise amplification devices, the arrest looks like a clear violation of Schroeder’s First Amendment rights. At the very least, it’s a bad look for the city and everyone involved.

Schroeder wasn’t the only one arrested that day. Storms and Schmidt reported that three others in their group were arrested.

“We had people by the fence who were witnessing and another young man had signs and was sharing, and he got arrested. And in the park two people got arrested. They actually got arrested for attending the drag show and simply voicing some opinion of how bad and destructive this was for our kids,” said Schmidt in a radio interview with Jim Schneider of Crosstalk America. “No one in our group threatened anyone; no one was obstinate. And yet four people got arrested.” For context, “Pride in the Park” was billed as a family-friendly event and included a drag queen story hour, kids’ dance party and drag shows, including drag queens dancing provocatively and reportedly receiving dollar bills from kids.

There was also a Neo-Nazi group with weapons on them that came to disrupt the event. They chanted things like “blood, blood, blood” for about 20 minutes and waved Swastika flags. Ironically, no one from that group was arrested. The Christian group had no connection with that group.

When looking at this incident, besides the initial shock of what took place, it definitely provides a stark contrast between at least two scenes — grown men dressing like women and dancing in a sexual manner in front of children in broad daylight, versus a teenager reading from the Bible and sharing the Golden Rule: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” One has to question what kind of warped world we live in where the first one is considered totally fine and the second one, reprehensible.

However, we shouldn’t be surprised when looking at the state of society and how God has been taken out of everyday life. Scripture has been removed from public places like courthouses. Church attendance is at an alltime low. There is a lack of Christian influence in spheres of society like academia, the media, the arts and the entertainment industry. A bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Has our society gotten better or worse in the last 50 years? We see the results of moral decay.

French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, after visiting America in 1831, said, “I sought for the greatness of the United States in her commodious harbors, her ample rivers, her fertile fields, and boundless forests — and it was not there. I sought for it in her rich mines, her vast world commerce, her public school system, and in her institutions of higher learning—and it was not there. I looked for it in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution — and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.

“America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great!” But he also wrote, “As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?”

Perhaps that’s part of the problem: As a country we’ve made idols out of wealth, and pleasure, and forgotten about God.

So where do we go from here? There are a few takeaways to be had from an incident like this. For one, probably we need to check the mindset of “Oh, it could never happen here” because it has already happened and will likely continue to happen. Times are changing and there will likely come a point where a person has to take a stand. Two, know your rights and don’t allow them to be taken from you. Three, pray for America. Four, show love. We are called to love everyone — even, and especially, those with whom we disagree. Loving someone is not the same as condoning their behavior, but it is wanting what’s best for that person and seeing the humanity in that person.

Have a good week.

Striking a

Chord...

LATEST NEWS