Hundreds of teenagers in hoodies and fauxhawks gathered on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, holding placards that said, "I have a voice!" It would have been a rather boring thing to say, here in this agitprop-saturated city, except that their voices were nearly drowned out by angry boomer hippies. The kids had just launched a "reverse rebellion" against drugs, sex, and ungodliness--in San Francisco, sort of akin to kicking a puppy.

"Say it again so everyone in San Francisco can hear you," a teen activist yelled as a driver in a passing car flicked her off. "We won't be silent! Our voices will be heard!" The crowd primed, she handed the mic to rally organizer Ron Luce, a youthful preacher in a casually hip, Euro-cut blazer who would be bringing some 20,000 teens into the city's baseball stadium that weekend for a Christian rock rally called BattleCry.

"A man in a gray ponytail began yelling at Luce through a megaphone; in response BattleCry cranked up its speakers. "This is a battle," Luce intoned as someone blew an ear-splitting whistle, "and we are not going to take it anymore! We are not going to let these guys shape our generation!"

The teens erupted in cheers. Some crossed their arms in gangsta poses. One sported a sweatshirt that read, "I (heart) hardcore Christianity."

Luce, the charismatic leader of the $25 million, Texas-based Teen Mania Ministries and a veteran organizer of rock-fueled revivals, created BattleCry as a Christian-rock youth movement that channels the slick, pop-culture militarism of a Che Guevara t-shirt. (He declined to be interviewed for this story.) At the debut event in San Francisco last year he rode onto a sandbag-lined stage in a Humvee. The event sparked a roaring counter-protest by gay activists, catapulted Luce onto the "O'Reilly Factor" and united the conservative blogosphere in outrage. Some critics believe Luce is a brilliant provocateur who is using San Francisco as a foil for recruitment--the more people protest, the more teenagers flock to his controversial campaign. "Protest has an inherent appeal to many teenagers," notes child psychiatrist Tom Jensen. "And protest is more interesting if the people you are protesting respond."

Activists with the Maryland-based anti-Teen Mania group, Acquire the Evidence, had tried to convince San Francisco organizers to avoid the protest. Lauren Sabina Kneisly of Acquire, who has tracked Teen Mania for eight years as part of a wider effort to investigate religious fundamentalists, noticed that Teen Mania filmed the counter-protests last year and quickly spliced images of the rally onto the rock concert's JumboTron. Teen mania also peppered its recruitment and fundraising drives with images of cross-dressers and quotes from city Supervisor Mark Leno, who'd said of BattleCry, "They're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco." Kneisly observed: "They basically used San Francisco as set dressing in their script.

"They're painting San Francisco and queers as a dominant culture, which we are not, and then they are saying to these kids: 'You are rebelling.'"  

Digg
del.icio.us
Newsvine
Reddit
stumbleupon
Facebook