Ruben Rivera was dropping off papers to charter a new gay unity club at Los Angeles City College one recent day when he spotted half a dozen middle-aged people milling around the campus quad.
"God Hates Gays," their signs read. Memories came flooding back of fleeing New Jersey after his mother discovered his sexual orientation and threw him out of the family.
"I was almost transported to my adolescence in Vineland, N.J., feeling less than, feeling unworthy, feeling ashamed," said Rivera, 36, of Los Feliz.
The protesters appeared in support of Jonathan Lopez, a Christian student who has sued the Los Angeles Community College District, alleging that an instructor kept him from finishing a classroom speech about his religious beliefs and opposition to same-sex unions. Lopez has said he was discriminated against because of his religious views.
The late-November incident came at the height of emotional protests against the passage of Proposition 8, the gay-marriage ban. Lopez said the instructor, John Matteson, called him a "fascist bastard," told him to "ask God" for his grade and later threatened to retaliate against him for complaining. College officials said in court filings that disciplinary proceedings have begun against Matteson, but declined to be more specific.
The suit, filed Feb. 12, has inspired a wave of blog and media commentary. Lopez's lawyer from the Alliance Defense Fund, co-founded by James Dobson of Focus on the Family, has appeared on the popular Fox News show "The O'Reilly Factor."
A dozen nasty e-mails winged their way to a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York biographer, who had the singular misfortune of sharing a name and occupation with Lopez's instructor.
"Some of them threatened my life," said the New York-based John Matteson, an associate professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Attorney David French said he and Lopez didn't know the protesters or approve of their methods. He said he believed that Lopez's suit struck a chord because conservative and religious voices are often silenced on liberal college campuses. The suit seeks to strike down a university code prohibiting speech that could offend classmates.
"If you take a position outside campus orthodoxy, you can be punished," French said.
Last year, the Alliance Defense Fund won a court injunction stopping San Francisco State University from punishing pro-Israel students who stomped on a flag bearing the name Allah, according to court papers French supplied.
