University cancels Ken Ham event after complaint from LGBT group

Ken Ham is seen in a screen capture of a video from Answers in Genesis. | YouTube/Answers in Genesis

The University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) has decided to cancel an event featuring Creation Museum CEO and President Ken Ham after a complaint from an LGBT campus group.

Ham, the president and founder of Answers in Genesis (AiG), was scheduled to speak on the Edmon campus on March 5, but the famed creationist was later informed of the cancellation even though he was initially invited to speak and had a contract with the university.

According to the AiG website, Ham was supposed to make his presentation titled "Genesis and the State of the Culture" on the UCO campus, but an LGBT student group reportedly objected and pressured the Student Association and university officials to cancel the event.

In the proposed talk, Ham would have discussed two different worldviews when interpreting scientific evidence, similar to his arguments during the classic evolution/creation debate with Bill Nye "the Science Guy" four years ago.

Ham denounced the cancellation of the event in a press release saying, free speech in the U.S. is "under increasing attack by some very intolerant people."

"In this case of discrimination, I find it highly ironic that after being booked to speak in the school's Constitution Hall, our constitutional right to free speech and the free exercise of religion, guaranteed under the First Amendment, have been denied," Ham stated.

"A small but vocal group on campus put up a fuss about my talk and the university caved in, tearing up the contract and contradicting its policies of promoting 'free inquiry' and 'inclusiveness' on campus," he added.

Paul Blair, pastor of Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, had worked through a campus group to organize the event in Constitutional Hall. He noted that the university spends tax dollars on other events such as drag queen shows and a "Safe Sex Carnival."

After learning about the cancellation, he agreed to hold the event instead at his church near the UCO campus on March 5.

Blair stated that a tenured professor, who sponsors LGBT campus clubs, was one of the leading figures behind the effort to persuade the university to cancel Ham's event, but the pastor declined to provide the professor's name. The pastor noted that the same professor also sponsors a Safe Sex Carnival.

He went on to say that such an "obvious discrimination against Christianity on campus" should "outrage" citizens of Oklahoma.

Ham had drawn the attention of LGBT advocates in July last year when he announced that his life-sized Noah's Ark replica at the Ark Encounter in Kentucky would be permanently lit with rainbow lights in an attempt to reclaim the rainbow symbol. The creationist contended Christians need to take the symbol back as God had decreed the rainbow as a sign of His covenant with man after the great flood.