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preacher

Brother Jackson, one of the preachers who had appeared on Penn's campus spreading anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, was arrested after elbowing a student at the University of Georgia.

Credit: Julio Sosa

Brother Ross Jackson, one of the preachers who has appeared in recent weeks in front of College Hall spreading anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, was arrested Tuesday after elbowing a student at the University of Georgia.

Jackson hit the student during a verbal confrontation in which the two individuals stood eye-to-eye, standing about an inch apart, according to The Red & Black, the student newspaper at the University of Georgia.

The student who was hit at the University of Georgia, Keaton Law, said it was his “personal mission” to remove the preachers from campus, the newspaper reported.

Law screamed at Jackson and eventually received an elbow to the face, which prompted police to escort Jackson off the campus. Jackson’s wife and two children joined him in protesting, but after he was escorted away by the police, the wife and two children collected their signs and began to walk away towards the student center parking lot.

“I said ‘I’m going to drown them out. I’m going to talk over them,’” Law said in an interview with The Red & Black. “Eventually it just became too much for him and he elbowed me in the face and it pushed me.”

Law plans topress charges.

In early September, Jackson and other Christian preachers came to Penn’s campus and designated LGBTQ students, Catholics, Jews and Muslims as all bound for hell.

During the two times they visited campus, the preachers drew more than a hundred counter-protesters wielding signs and pride flags and playing Kanye West’s album “The Life of Pablo.”

Others took different approaches. One student threw a condom at Jackson. Another displayed gay pornography on his computer in front of the preacher.

LGBT Center Senior Associate Director Erin Cross and others handed out lip balm and cookies to pull students away from the extremist Christian preachers. Thalia Monteiro Parr, a first-year Ph.D candidate in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World program, said in a Daily Pennsylvanian opinion column that she filed a harassment complaint with Penn Police against one of the preachers, Evangelista, who came to campus with Jackson.

“While it may be entertaining to stand around listening to these preachers scream about the Bible, some of their words are incredibly hurtful,” she wrote. “I personally feel less safe on campus as long as their crimes are tolerated.

In an interview with the DP after the preachers’ first appearance, Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said, “The students are enjoying debating with these guys. We would prefer they don’t engage with them because all it does is give them a pulpit. They get off on it.”

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