Temple faces student's civil rights lawsuit

A Temple University student has recently become the poster boy for conservative Christians throughout the country. The American Family Association is organizing support for Michael Marcavage, a Temple senior who is suing the university for allegedly violating his civil rights. Marcavage claims that Temple administrators unlawfully assaulted, restrained and transported him to Temple University Hospital for psychiatric evaluation in 1999. The alleged incident occurred after Temple Vice President for Operations William Bergman reportedly denied Marcavage a stage to protest a campus play he found blasphemous. Bergman has denied Marcavage's account of the incident. "We deny what he has to say and we are aggressively answering him in court," Bergman said. Marcavage was demonstrating against a Temple Theater Department play called "Corpus Christi," which portrays Jesus Christ as a homosexual. "This lawsuit will bring to light what is happening to Christians and other religious groups at Temple," Marcavage said. Marcavage said that after exiting Bergman's office, he went into a bathroom to collect his thoughts, and moments later Bergman and Campus Security Director Carl Bittenbender, demanded that he come out. When he did, Marcavage alleges, they forced him into Bergman's office and onto a couch. When he tried to get up, he says he was tripped and restrained until campus police arrived, handcuffed him and escorted him to the Temple University Hospital. "We believe this was a retaliation for expressing his free speech rights," said Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the AFA's Center for Law and Policy. "The violence with which it was met is disturbing." A Temple spokeswoman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the school supported Marcavage's protest and actually provided him with a microphone and sound system. She said the controversy arose because Marcavage requested a 70-foot stage at the last minute, which the University could not reasonably provide because of its size and cost. She added that Temple officials asked Marcavage to come out of the bathroom after he had been there for 15 minutes because they feared he might harm himself. She also alleges that Temple officials sent him to the hospital only after campus psychologist Denise Walton recommended he be taken in for observation. At this point, the spokewoman said, Bittenbender signed an official form -- known as a 302 -- requesting Marcavage's involuntary commitment for observation. Marcavage disagreed with this account, saying he had only requested the standard stage used at Temple demonstrations and that the university invented its story to discredit him. "The 70-foot stage was created to make it seem like I was requesting something out of the ordinary," he said. In addition, Temple University Hospital documents from the day of the incident -- provided by Marcavage -- indicate that Walton "claims that she did not see any overt sign that the [patient] will hurt himself" and while he was upset after the incident "there are no apparent ground for 302." Through its Web site, the AFA has been requesting money for the lawsuit and providing contact information for Temple officials. "The AFA's commitment is to the preservation of the traditional family and that often involves defending the First Amendment rights of Christians," Fahling said. "That's all that's at play here, nothing less and nothing more." Timothy Duggan, president of Temple's Campus Crusade for Christ and a friend of Marcavage, said the incident was part of a larger pattern of anti-Christian bias at the university. "The reason this had become an issue is because of the rebellion of the university to the Christian point of view," Duggan said. "The purpose of the law suit is to change the disrespectful view of the university."