Protest planned outside Baptist convention

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI - Homosexual rights supporters plan to rally outside the Southern Baptist Convention, which opens Tuesday at the Edward Jones Dome. <br> <br> Several thousand representatives of the Southern Baptists, the nation&#39;s largest Protestant denomination, are meeting in Saint Louis Tuesday and Wednesday. The voluntary association represents 42,300 churches with 16 million members nationwide. <br> <br> Up to 150 protesters are planning an act of nonviolent civil disobedience over concerns about comments and policies they say promote hatred and violence against homosexuals. <br> <br> Soulforce -- the Laguna Beach-California based gay rights groups -- also protested at Southern Baptist Conventions in 2000 and 2001. <br> <br> At the root of this year&#39;s protest is a legal opinion written by Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, a Southern Baptist. <br> <br> In February, the Alabama Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision that awarded custody of three children to their lesbian mother rather than to their heterosexual father. As part of the ruling, Moore wrote that homosexuality makes a person unfit to be a parent.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/6/202135