SAN MARCOS, Texas — Texas State University students and faculty counter protested two campus demonstrators who held signs with homophobic and misogynistic messages on Wednesday.
The demonstrators, who are not affiliated with the San Marcos school, showed up on campus around noon Wednesday, less than 24 hours after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, My San Antonio reports. One man held a sign that said, “Homo Sex is Sin” on the front and “Romans Chapter One, reads your sin of sodomy is ‘Worthy of death'” on the back. The other held a sign that said, “Women are Property” on the front and “Types of Property: Woman, Slaves, Animals, Cars, Land, etc,” on the back.
The men are affiliated with the Official Street Preachers, an organization that, according to its website, seeks “to share the gospel every day” and focuses on analysis and news coverage from a “Christian perspective.”
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The incident drew a crowd of appalled counter protestors. Eva De Arment, a 19-year-old sophomore, told The Independent that she ran into the school’s English building to grab a marker and wrote on a flyer, “There is still love in the world! LOVE THY NEIGHBORS.” Photos from the scene show other counter protesters holding signs that read, “Jesus values and respects Texas State women” and “Jesus loves all ya’ll” with an LGBTQ+ pride flag emblem.
De Arment said when she looked into the crowd, she saw people wearing both Republican and Democratic apparel but noted they put their political differences aside and began chanting in unison, “Love wins” and “Love over hate.”
“Those people came on campus to try to sow division, and instead, they kind of brought us together,” she said.
De Arment noted people threw drinks at the men and some counter protestors took the men’s signs and discarded them. One video shows someone trying to light one of the signs on fire while it was in a trash can. Rich Penkoski, a media coordinator for the group, told The Independent that students threw coffee on his members and kicked and spat on them. He said his group intends to return to campus with more members and that the protest had nothing to do with the presidential election. De Arment disagrees.
“I do believe that there is a nuance that the election made them comfortable enough to come onto a campus with signs like that,” she said. “I am afraid.”
Texas State University President Issues Statement
In a statement issued Thursday, TSU President Kelly Damphousse called the men’s behavior “runs so contrary to the values we hold” and said he condemns “the hateful words these two men wrote and spoke.” However, Damphousse said, the public university is legally required to allow expressive activities in outdoor campus spaces, even by external groups. He did note the school is exploring potential legal responses.
The university deployed a trained response team and campus police officers to monitor the situation, according to MSN. The men remained on campus for about two hours before being escorted off the property. State Representative Erin Zwiener commended the university’s response, noting officials protected the free speech rights of both the demonstrators and counter protestors.
“I’m also so proud of the students for speaking back to the heinous misogynistic, racist, and homophobic words of the demonstrators,” Zwiener wrote in a social media post. “The students responded loudly and with love and support for their fellow students.”
