45 police officers (numbers of police reported vary from 45 to 100+) blocked the homeschool college when SoulForce Equality Ride showed up. The 12th Equality Ride East stop was covered by The Washington Post and other media outlets.

And Newsbusters, marvelling the ‘gay-left group’ got front page coverage.

Newsbusters:

Yesterday it was Patrick Henry College, a seven-year-old evangelical institution in Purcellville, Va., with grand political ambitions.

This is an odd sentence. Is Rosin trying to suggest that evangelicals have “grand political ambitions,” but the Soulforce “equality riders” do not? Rosin then allowed Soulforce’s Robin Padrika Reynolds to unspool her theory of theocracy marching from Patrick Henry right into the Bush White House:

Oh.
The college has been running for seven years, it has about 325 students, all white except for one African American, and a dozen Latinos and Asians.  Media has given this college lots of coverage including the fact that in 2004, 7 of 100 students were White House interns were from Patrick Henry.
In 2006, 16 faculty resigned because of the restrictive religious policy (biblical worldview) that had to be signed. This is not a persecuted student body, not in the sense Newsbusters implies.

Newsbusters:

Typically, Rosin (Washington Post) did not acknowledge the views of Patrick Henry students and Farris until paragraph 16. She presented the student who spoke as not very well-spoken and embarrassed Farris by ending the story with this testimony: 

The Post not only provided a text article, it provided video. To say Patrick Henry was misrepresented or it’s students and staff were not acknowledged is disengenuus.

Newsbusters:

The Post also devoted a whole story to promoting the Soulforce tour last year, on March 11, 2006. Reporter Michelle Boorstein also failed to describe Soulforce with a liberal or anti-conserative label…

SoulForce is getting coverage world wide coverage because of how they conduct their visits to conservative religious campuses across the US and because of how they are received. Some campuses welcome them, some don’t. 
Newsbuster labels don’t quite work.

Commenters at Newsbusters aren’t shy about their opinions.

Homophobic and damn proud of it!

I’m guessing that the busses bathroom gets a real workout. Especially since the riders go in two at a time.

Do these people in the msn media ever quit…ever?

I am sick and tired of the religious bashing.

Newsbusters also fails to note the conservative Washington Times covered SoulForce’s stop at Patrick Henry College. But it’s so much easier to bash the Post and shoot the messengers.

(From Imperial Life in the Emerald City) This went before the Democratic Policy Senate Committee, September 18, 2006 regarding the Contract Abuses in Iraq and the Coalition Provisional Authority:

A 24 year old who had never worked in finance– but had applied for a White House job — was sent to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget, even though they didn’t have a background in accounting.

Newsbusters:

The Post website has a video story by Akira Hakuta titled “‘Equality Ride’ Hits A Roadblock.” It spotlighted the Soulforce organizers describing their publicity aims, but it eventually aired the views of Patrick Henry students and college founder Michael Farris.

Yes, the Post did; that evil, liberal, left, Christian persecuting media. There is no link to the article, no link to SoulForce, no link to any other media outlets that have been covering the Equality Ride. No link to Mel White’s latest book which explains the organization and it’s raison d’etre in detail. But that wouldn’t do now, would it?

The Washington Times notes:

A group called the Concerned Alumni of Patrick Henry issued a statement yesterday afternoon decrying the administration’s response of “overwhelming force, rather than dialogue and engagement.”

Patrick Henry College
Patrick Henry College Student Handbook
SoulForce Equality Ride blog
SoulForce Equality Ride - wiki
Patrick Henry College - wiki