Thursday, April 20, 2000 | 11:09 a.m.
Members of the Unification Church stood on the UNLV mall pushing fliers and talking about God -- and recruiting people to participate in a mass marriage in California.
But as they exercised what they called their right to free speech last winter, the group known as Moonies forced campus officials to examine policies regarding treatment of controversial religious groups.
In December half a dozen students complained that the Moonies' tactics were too aggressive. Campus police said the group was luring students off campus to a nearby apartment to watch church videos, as well as roaming dormitory halls and making repeated telephone calls to students.
The Moonies were banned from campus recruiting.
Church members alleged that the UNLV Police Department, which has drawn criticism recently for using intimidating tactics, violated their constitutional rights.
"These four campus police (officers) surrounded our two small, middle-aged women and repeatedly accused them of white slavery and kidnapping," says a letter from local church director Bill Starr to UNLV Public Affairs Director Tom Flagg.
In March the two sides met with ACLU representatives and negotiated an agreement under which the members of the church -- now renamed the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification -- can again hand out leaflets on campus.
The group recently has started a campus-approved student club called Pure Love Alliance, which promotes sexual abstinence before marriage.
"We were really happy just to get the club established," said Starr. "We made this big effort and hopefully, we've stimulated some thought."
The club is, he said, open to people of all faiths.
"But if you tell people abstinence only, you have to give them an alternative -- and that's matching (mass marriage.) It all fits together," Starr said.
Church founder the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, 79, -- a wealthy, controversial, convicted felon -- is renowned for conducting mass marriages in which strangers are matched up with one another according to church doctrine. More than 10,000 were married at a ceremony in Pasadena, Calif., in February.
Critics of the faith say that the marriages are a method in which vulnerable young adults are swept into the faith and pressured to stay.
"I think the controversy on campus came up because we do these large wedding ceremonies," said Starr. "But we weren't being too aggressive. It was just repeatedly talking to people -- inviting them to participate."
Although about 10 UNLV students began studying with the Unification Church as a result of last winter's recruiting, Starr said none participated in the wedding.
"But the next (mass marriage) is in December. We'll probably recruit again for that," said Starr.
Matched up
Bill and Susan Starr met in a crowded room in 1979, when the Rev. Sun Myung Moon called them together and announced that they should be married.
"We were in this New York City ballroom -- men on one side and women on the other, when Rev. Moon himself motioned to me and then to Bill, and we met in the middle of the room and he said, 'That's a match,' " Susan said.
"So then we went to a room together where we could discuss what's important to each of us, and we decided we were willing to give it a shot."
Today the Starrs have five children, and Bill works as an architect in Las Vegas.
The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification -- still listed in the Yellow Pages as the Unification Church -- has about 70 members in the Las Vegas Valley and has been in the area more than 25 years, Starr said. The church claims more than 45,000 nationwide and more than 500,000 around the world.
Susan had grown up as the daughter of Quaker missionaries and had left that faith when she went to college. "I was searching," she said. She considered joining the U.S. Peace Corps or slipping in with drug-enthused followers of Timothy Leary, but instead landed in the Unification Church.
The church was formed in 1954 by Moon, a North Korean electrical engineering graduate who said he had been visited by Jesus on a Korean hillside. Moon claims to be the new Messiah. The basic teachings of his church, written in the Divine Principle, include him establishing rule on Earth through the restoration of the family. Members are forbidden from drinking, smoking or having premarital sex.
Although the church's original compound is in Seoul, it began setting up in the United States in the 1960s, and now has a large center in Napa County, California. Moon has been accused of bribery, bank fraud, espionage, illegal kickbacks and illegal sales of arms in the United States. He was convicted of tax evasion in 1982, and served 18 months in a U.S. federal prison. Upon his release, several prominent religious leaders from other faiths called unsuccessfully for his pardon, including conservative Christian the Rev. Jerry Falwell.
Last fall Moon's youngest son, Young Jin Moon, a Las Vegas resident, fell to his death from a Reno hotel window. He was 21.
Young Jin Moon -- the youngest of six sons -- had been married in the church two years earlier. The Washoe County coroner ruled his death a suicide.
Campus politics
Many religious groups look to college campuses as a pool of potential members.
"We get all kinds of groups out there," said Flagg, who registers each group before they begin spreading their message among students in the campus "free speech zone" on the mall between buildings.
"It's not my role to censor people in any way. I know the Moonies are a controversial organization, but that's no problem. They can still do their thing as long as it's within the rules, not pestering students, and not in the dorms, and not taking anyone off campus," Flagg said.
Last fall a group supported by the Unification Church sued the state of Maryland, charging that a legislative investigation into campus cult activity was an unconstitutional interference with religion.
"We feel it's inappropriate to be designating groups with a derogatory term such as cults," Executive Director Dan Fefferman of the church-backed International Coalition For Religious Freedom told the Chronicle of Higher Education in September.
The lawsuit called the investigation a "religious inquisition" and sought to stop the legislative investigation from reporting their findings to the full Legislature. The legislative committee had been formed after parents complained that religious groups were harassing students at the University of Maryland at College Park.
Despite the coalition's efforts, the report was released and recommended only that students learn to "sort through their decisions" more carefully.
When Unification Church members were asked to leave the UNLV campus several months later, they sought help from the student chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"The ACLU said I had a case," said Starr. "But I just wanted to resolve it, I didn't want headlines."
Gary Peck, executive director of the Southern Nevada ACLU, said that he was "very troubled" by the university's actions toward the church.
"It has been my experience that the administration at this university too frequently infringes on First Amendment rights, only later to make a correction in the way they handle such matters," Peck said. "In fairness, they do seem to be moving in the right direction.
"But the way they handled the Moonies troubled me for three reasons: One, they were not given due process before being asked to leave. Two, the police were at least allegedly intimidating -- they physically got in the faces of these diminutive women. And three, they detained these women while they went to check out other Moonie activities (for about an hour)," Peck said.
Flagg said for the time being, church members and university officials have an understanding about the group's place on campus.
"We'll keep an eye on it," Flagg said.
Stacy J. Willis is a Sun reporter. She can be reached at (702) 259-4011 or by e-mail at [email protected]
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