July 31, 2008
Faith-Based Killing: Come Here, Righties — We Need to Talk
Liberal Christians, I’m not talking to you here. You’re welcome to read along, but if you feel your hackles rising, remember that I’m speaking directly to the Radical Religious Right. Granted, I’m a little irked that you’re not taking them to task as loudly and frequently as we godless heathens do (and if you are, I can’t hear you above the din, so speak up!), but I understand your belief that emulating Jesus means you’re not supposed to judge anyone else. Well, as I just said in a comment (to a post you really should read) on my better half’s blog: Even The Ultimate Pacifist overturned the moneychangers’ tables in the temple.
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They attacked liberalism because it seemed to them the principal premise of modern society; everything they dreaded seemed to spring from it: the bourgeois life, Manchesterism, materialism, parliament and the parties, the lack of political leadership. Even more, they sensed in liberalism the source of all their inner sufferings. Theirs was a resentment of loneliness; their one desire was for a new faith, a new community of believers, a world with fixed standards and no doubts, a new national religion that would bind all Germans together. All this, liberalism denied. Hence, they hated liberalism, blamed it for making outcasts of them, for uprooting them from their imaginary past, and from their faith. Fritz Stern |
Dear Gay-Disdaining, Liberal-Loathing, War-Loving, Fox-News-Watching, Republican-Voting Dittohead Christians:
About that Jim Adkisson shooting up the Unitarian church: Seems y’all are having a bit of a struggle with cognitive dissonance lately, and I’m going to set you straight (so to speak).
First, let’s see what you righties have been saying about the tragedy over the past few days. I’ve touched on the initial wrong-o reaction (“An atheist did it! An atheist did it! An evil atheist attacked a Christian church!”) already, here. Of course, you changed your tune as soon as you learned that the shooter was raised in one of your hardcore-fundy, Christian churches; only then did you start crying that Unitarian Universalism isn’t a “real church” — as if you have the right to decide what is a “real church” and what isn’t, and as if that had anything whatsoever to with Adkisson’s actions.
“Now,” muses Fannie, “am I the only one having trouble connecting the dots between how noting this ‘fact’ is in any way relevant to noting that the shooting was heinous?
“But alas, this odd juxtaposition goes along the lines of ‘Now, I don’t condone this killer’s actions, but can I just say that Unitarians are NOT real Christians!’ Okay, neat-o. Like, you just had to throw that passive-aggressive little FYI in there for shits and giggles?”
Lori Heine manages to sort it all out, and then asks the obvious question: “Which is it, dimwits? Is it a hate crime because Christians have been brutalized and murdered, or is it not a crime at all because they weren’t ‘real’ Christians?”
I’ve even seen some of you zero in on the fact that a (gasp!) secular children’s musical was being performed inside a church (never mind that you don’t think TVUU is a “real” church), and on a Sunday, no less…!
Good God, you righties are just scrambling for any reason to escape accountability, aren’t you?
Next, you turned to attacking liberals for pointing out that Adkisson is a soldier in the Culture Wars your leaders invented, and which you perpetuate, that led him to this monstrous act of violence — and, frankly, you lied, to yourselves and to everyone within earshot, to find a little shaky comfort through the most convoluted hoop-jumping ever: You say liberals are happy to see human beings dead or traumatized for life (gee, that sounds familiar), because it gives us the opportunity to demonize you, which, among other things, is completely unfair, since this was an isolated incident of a single, whacked-out right-winger attacking liberals and gays.
First of all, boys and girls, nobody on the left is politicizing it; we’ve been warning you since the rise of your Limbaughs and your Coulters and your Savages that words have consequences — and now we’re saying, “We told you so,” and demanding you face the truth, and do something to stop it, damn it!
As Melissa McEwan put it so succintly, “this shit doesn’t happen in a void.”
And you know it.
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Metaphors of war and sex saturate the readings. [D. James] Kennedy says that the primary task of Christians is to recruit “soldiers in the army of Jesus Christ who are absent without official leave (AWOL).” He speaks of himself and other pastors as generals or admirals and of evangelists as soldiers. And he warns that it is Satan who convinces believers not to take part in the battle. |
You, O Martyrs of the Faith, gnash your teeth and rend your garments as you wail about the shocking displays of homosexual behavior in the streets (uh, yeah, we’re all just having sex on the streets, everywhere) influencing your precious children. You’re terrified that seeing two men holding hands is going to turn little Junior into a flaming fruitcake — which you know, damned well, is nothing but empty fearmongering (and so what if Junior were gay? which he could very well be already, with no “help” from us) — yet you won’t take responsibility for the consequences of the 24/7 hate-a-thon that rains down from your pulpits and from your airwaves. If you didn’t think — know — the power, the influence, you hold over your frightened sheep, you’d shut down your cable stations, cancel your book tours, and go find another way to bilk the gullible.
How is it we queers, just by being who we are and minding our own business, have the power to bring down all of civilization, yet you insist that your deliberate liberal- and gay-bashing has no influence whatsoever on your target audience?
Wayne Besen has you pegged:
What I find hypocritical is that the Religious Right will take any image it deems gay and claim it “promotes homosexuality.” This even extends to fictional characters such as Tinky Winky and Sponge Bob Square Pants. Yet, these same oversensitive preachers refuse to acknowledge that their mean-spirited sermons might lead to violence.The extreme right fuels anti-gay ugliness, but it is pervasive all around us. …
We live in a society filled with violently homophobic messages and images, yet the perpetrators — both religious and secular — feign innocence and say they can’t imagine how anti-gay hate crimes occur.
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Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission — both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state — especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life. Jonathan Hutson |
You, O Most Holy and Self-Righteous Righties, have been screaming nonstop, for decades, about the negative effect of violent movies and TV shows and video games, and heavy metal music, on young people — while glorifying “Christian” gorefests like Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ (a.k.a. Good Friday the 13th, a.k.a. The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre), in which the sadomasochistic, pornified depiction of your savior being lashed into bloody, ground hamburger for two hours had you shuddering in orgasmic ecstasy, and remaining conspicuously silent about such “Christian” video games as Left Behind: Eternal Forces (whose end-message — convert or die — appears little different from the Global Islamic Media Front’s Quest for Bush) and Catechumen, and pseudo-religious games as Halo.
According to you, secular video games caused the Columbine massacre, but your kill-the-godless-heathens games couldn’t possibly inspire violence, because, well, gee, they’re Christian!
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“[Left Behind: Eternal Forces] represents faith-based killing. It’s a manual for religious violence that’s being given to children.” Rev. Tim Simpson “In the war of good versus evil, based loosely on the biblical book of Revelation, a player tries to recruit others in order to fight the enemy of non-believers. Prayer after killing the opposition will essentially redeem you.” Dan Lothian |
This kind of “entertainment” is only a natural outgrowth of a mindset based on four factors:
1. A crevice of utter despair and hopelessness that makes one susceptible to “rescue” by an institution that promises redemption;
2. Group identity that ceases to exist without a clearly defined enemy;
3. Perpetual self-victimization and pride in suffering;
4. Glorification of war-as-religion (i.e., “Christian warriors,” the “battle” for souls).
Next, keep repeating the lie that the United States is a “Christian nation”:
“It is my firm belief,” writes some anonymous believer, echoing the oft-repeated sentiment of the Dobsons and the Robertsons and the Falwells, “that The United States Of America is in fact a Christian nation. By the term ‘a Christian nation’ I do not mean that this is a nations of only Christians or that everything about this nation is Christian. It is a nation specifically created by God to declare Christ to the world. The only other nation created for this purpose is the nation of Israel.”
“I know,” proclaimeth ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay earlier this month, “that America was created by God and it was created by God, not for wealth, personal wealth. It wasn’t created by God so that we would have the resources that we now have. It wasn’t even created by God to have the freedom that we have now. America was created by God to spread the Gospel; to spread the word of Jesus Christ and to propagate Christianity. And the reason I know that is because my entire political career is exhibited by that. The Lord walked with me … I came to Christ in the first year in Congress and now I’ve been walking with the Lord [and] he has trained me and showed me why he created this nation: to spread the Gospel.”
 Freedom Writer |
Next, morph patriotism into nationalism (”The difference between patriotism and nationalism,” wrote Sydney J. Harris, “is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war”), and now “defending” one’s country against an imagined enemy within is indistinguishable from “defending” the Kingdom of God itself.
Finally, throw into the mix a bunch of media whores who have figured out that capitalizing on this victim-turned-warrior mindset provides a very good living, unleash the whole putrid mess on the malleable brain of a man wrought by despair, and you’ve got all the makings of one Jim David Adkisson.
Still, notes Brave New Films:
The right has already begun and will continue to claim that Adkisson is just a crazy nut, is not really a conservative (or is actually a liberal), that his stated motive of carrying out right-wing ideology means nothing, and that it is “inappropriate” to discuss politics in relation to such a heinous crime. But they are wrong on all counts. While Adkisson’s money problems surely caused him to snap, it was the words of the right’s loudest voices and brightest stars that gave him the justification for his rampage. Some quick Google searches turned up these quotes from prominent right-wingers:
“I’ll tell you who should be tortured and killed at Guantanamo — every filthy Democrat in the U.S. Congress.” — Sean Hannity“To fight only the al-Qaeda scum is to miss the terrorist network operating within our own borders… Who are these traitors? Every rotten radical left-winger in this country, that’s who.” — Michael Savage
“Liberalism is the greatest threat this country faces.” — Rush Limbaugh
“It is not a stretch to say that MoveOn is the new Klan.” — Bill O’Reilly
“I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could.” — Glenn Beck
“We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too.” — Ann Coulter
“I don’t see any difference between [Arianna] Huffington and the Nazis.” — Bill O’Reilly
“The Islamofascists are actually campaigning for the election of Democrats. Islamofascists from Ahmadinejad to al-Zawahiri, Oba — Osama bin Laden, whoever, are constantly issuing Democrat talking points.” — Rush Limbaugh
“There are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of ‘em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn’t become the [House] speaker.” — Sean Hannity
Obviously, this merely scratches the surface of what issues daily from the mouths and keyboards of right-wing pundits. …
Let’s just call this what it is: the right wing openly, proudly, loudly, and repeatedly advocates violence against liberals and Democrats. In fact, they are paid millions to do it and are given national platforms to spread their message. You cannot say that liberals and Democrats actively and purposefully want to destroy the United States and equate them with Nazis, Al-Qaeda, and the Ku Klux Klan, then claim that you don’t want them to get hurt.
Now the right will claim that it is the left that is hateful and violent and that the left is “just as bad” or worse. To that I say: Prove It.
“Demagoging has consequences,” writes Myca. “Appealing to hate and bigotry creates more hate and bigotry. It creates riots. It creates vandalism. It creates murder.
“We have a president who campaigned for governor on the promise that in his administration, consensual sex between adult males would be considered a crime. We have an entire political party that sees nothing wrong with the idea that in the year 2008, gay people in most states still aren’t allowed to marry the people they love. We have respected (well, Jonah Goldberg, so maybe not respected, but tolerated) conservative pundits who apparently in all seriousness believe that Adolf Hitler was a liberal.
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“I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. “Leave enough so we can have two on every campus — living fossils — so we will never forget what these people stood for.” Rush Limbaugh |
“Do I think that they actually believe this? Sometimes, sure. Sometimes not. It doesn’t matter.
“As surely as I lay the Little Rock riots at the feet of Orval Faubus, I lay the assault on this church at the feet of those who have claimed that gay marriage would destroy western civilization and those who equate liberals with Nazis.
“See, it turns out that when you said all that shit … people were listening. Jim D. Adkisson was listening.”
That’s not so hard to understand. It is tough to admit it, I’m sure — but that’s just too bad. You have to face it, and you have to stop the spread of this poison that created the cancer in Jim David Adkisson — or by your silence, and your shirking of responsibility like a scared child, you will only be condoning Adkisson’s actions, and confirming that all conservatives really are like that.
No, not all conservatives are really like that. But this one, this Adkisson, this Frankenstein’s monster of the Far Right movement — he’s yours, righties. You own what he did. You own him. He is your baby.
Now, let’s turn to this blatant lie of yours that the Tennessee church shooting was an isolated incident.
As I wrote two days ago, if there’s ever been an atheist who ran around shooting at Christians, I can’t name him.
But I cannot begin to count the number of religion-”inspired” killers who’ve taken out scads of gay people and liberals — and African-Americans (Sara Whitman can think of no better parallel than the 16th Street Baptist Street Bombing, and neither can I), whether they were liberal or conservative (the AA’s crime being, of course, that they were “different” from the
I’ve already read down a very abbreviated laundry list of killers “inspired” by the words of religious leaders and pop pundits, but some of you righties keep inisting that Adkisson was an isolated lunatic, that “real Christians” and “real conservatives” don’t do such things, that you would never “blame the innocent for the actions of one man” (yes, I’m talking to you, Russ Knight) — and that liberals and queers aren’t targeted one-bazillionth as often as you poor, little persecuted martyrs for Jesus.
Jim Wallis proffers: “While many evangelicals celebrated Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott as martyrs who died for their Christian convictions at Columbine High School, I wonder if we will extend the same heroism to the victims in Tennessee?”
I doubt it.*
Let me tell you another story. As with the Unitarian tragedy, there was no outcry from conservative Christians — even those these victims were, without a doubt, Christians themselves.
I wrote this post for the now-gone Lavender Liberal Forums in the wake of the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech Massacre:
If all the victims had been gay, nobody would care. No, I am not being facetious.
I am deeply disturbed by any loss of life. The number of dead doesn’t matter; 2,800-plus dead on 9/11 is no greater a loss than 32 dead at Virginia Tech, which is no greater a loss than even a single, nameless corpse dumped in an alley. The "death rate" is 100% in all cases.
I’ve had some time to react to yesterday’s shootings. I’m in flashback mode, to the 101 California Street massacre, and even all the way back to Charles Whitman. There is no question that my mood is more than somber tonight.
Oddly, I almost, somehow, feel worse that this happened in Virginia. Oh, I hate the Commonwealth of Virginia with a passion that nearly matches the hate the Commonwealth of Virginia has for me. But there’s a difference between hating a government and hating a people. I’ve been to Virginia. I have friends in Virginia. Hell, [X] is in Virginia. And my dear, sweet, dead Scottie was in Virginia — until Virginia killed him.
But I almost feel like… Everybody expects this sort of shit to go down in California — or Texas. We have the greatest number of psychos simply because we have the greatest number of everybody, and everything. We’ll never grow accustomed to our mass murderers (and serial killers), but it always seemed that’s just the way it was. (One thing we are used to — most of us, anyway, even if we do a slow burn over it — is the ridicule we get from the rest of the country. But I always figured that was just another price to pay for living in near-paradise.)
There’s no question I’m grieving for the families of the dead tonight. You pay a big price for being empathic — and I mean empathic to the point that, when somebody tells you their ulcer is bothering them, your solar plexis starts to ache. So I’m feeling like I just lost somebody close to me, regardless of who any of these people were, or how they died. Neither "who" nor "how" seems to matter, outside the sudden-shock factor; dead is dead.
That said, there’s something else that’s troubling me deeply tonight: The sure knowledge that if 32 queers had been massacred yesterday, it would have made the news — but hardly anybody would have given a damn. Not like they’re doing now. You wouldn’t see the outpouring of sympathy, and horror, you are seeing everywhere right now.
How can I say such a thing? Am I playing victim here? Have I descended into the very stereotype of the self-centered queer who doesn’t give a fuck about anything unless it affects me directly?
Those of you who have known me for more than five minutes know better than that.
No, what bothers me so is this: They’re calling it the worst massacre in U.S. history.
It’s not. Unless the fatality count rises to 33, it’s a tie.
And I’ll bet no one reading this can tell me, without some Googling, what yesterday’s death toll ties with.
So I’ll tell you.
In 1973, the New Orleans-based "Mother Church" of the then-fledgling Metropolitan Community Church, without a facility of its own, held regular, Sunday-evening services in an upstairs lounge — a space called, as you might expect, the "Upstairs Lounge" — on the floor above the Jimani Lounge, a French-Quarter bar at 141 Chartres Street.
On the evening of June 24, 1973, the pastor, Rev. William Lawson, had just finished his sermon, when someone entered the building at street level and lobbed a Molotov cocktail into the stairway leading to the Upstairs Lounge. The perp ran off — but not before making sure to shut the street-level door… and padlock it shut.
The flames were contained to the stairwell until someone leaving the MCC service (perhaps just leaving to go home, perhaps alarmed by a noise — no one will ever know) opened the door to the Upstairs Lounge where the church service had just ended.
Do you know what a flash fire is?
Some twenty people escaped via the rooftop — how they did, I don’t know. The rest tried to make it out the second-floor windows, but were trapped; the windows were barred.
Reverend Lawson died that way, his body wedged half-in and half-out of the building, screaming as he burned to death.
It took just 16 minutes — although, I expect that, if those who died in the World Trade Center could talk, they would tell you even 30 seconds is an eternity in hell when faced with burning to death — for the fire to envelope and roast alive the remaining worshippers.
The bitter irony? Yesterday marked the "worst massacre in U.S. history," with 32 people dead at the hands of one assassin.
How many people do you think burned to death that evening in 1973 at the hands of a single assassin?
Thirty-two.
The Virginia Tech massacre was not the worst in U.S. history. It only tied the previous record.
But nobody knows about what happened one sultry summer evening in New Orleans.
What’s worse, I suspect nobody but us gives a goddamn.
Epilogue
Of course, MCC founder Rev. Troy Perry went to NOLA immediately. Every other Christian church in New Orleans — save only two — refused to allow Troy to conduct memorial services for the dead believers.
And all but the same two refused to take in — much less comfort — the 20 or so MCC survivors who desperately needed a place to congregate, and worship together, and search for a reason this happened.
And several (I do not know how many, but "several") families of the dead refused to claim the bodies of their relatives, as "exposure" was a far more horrifying thought than the visual of their "loved ones" burning alive.
That’s how ashamed they were of their filthy, disgusting, faggot sons and brothers, and dyke daughters and sisters.
In the years following the Upstairs Lounge fire, some 17 more MCC churches were set ablaze, including the church in San Francisco (on Guerrero Street, for my neighbors).
The only thought that crosses my mind tonight is:
Why didn’t anyone care then?
Because they weren’t your people, that’s why.
As for the question of who did it — who knows?
You can bet that silver crucifix around your neck it wasn’t somebody who loved his gay neighbors as himself — but the real point is: What happened on Sunday was not an isolated incident. What happened 35 years ago in New Orleans was the worst massacre of gay people in modern times, but it was not an isolated incident. You didn’t know about it because you just don’t care when the victims aren’t your people.
And some of you are downright delighted when we get beaten or murdered.
And you can take the shameful rejection of the bodies — and the survivors — by the “traditional” churches in New Orleans as evidence of just how far your “Christian love” extends.
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Reagan had learned that political activists had reportedly been sending letters and DVDs to troops in Iraq, advancing the theory that the U.S. government had carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks. For promoting this unpopular view, the talkshow host advocated that these activists should be killed as “traitors”: “We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them. Really. You take them out, they are traitors to this country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that? Deal with it. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that’s what they are, and you shoot them dead. I’ll pay for the bullets.” Even more troubling was the call for violence against a specific individual: “How about you take Mark Dice out and put him in the middle of a firing range. Tie him to a post, don’t blindfold him, let it rip and have some fun with Mark Dice.” |
No wonder Gene Robinson needs a bodyguard and bulletproof vest.
* Steven Hart also reminds us: “When Susan Smith drowned her little boys in South Carolina, when the halls of Columbine High School ran red with blood and when a vicious freak shot down students on the Virginia Tech campus, the smoke barely had time to clear before Newt Gingrich waddled in front of the nearest television camera to announce that liberalism was the root cause of each horror.”
I certainly remember what Gingrich said at the time of the Smith child murders: “I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things. … The only way to change is to vote Republican.”
The highest irony of all was that Susan Smith’s stepfather, Beverly Russell — who carried on a nine-year “consensual” sexual relationship with Smith — was a prominent South Carolina Republican Party leader, and Christian Coalition coordinator.
Further reading:
Right-Wing Pathologies Revealed After Adkisson Shooting at Unitarian Church
John Dolan, AlterNet, July 29, 2008
Why It Matters That O’Reilly’s Book Was in Adkisson’s Home
Jeffrey Feldman, DailyKos, July 30, 2008
Hate speech on display: Lesson we must learn
Anniston Star, July 31, 2008
Our beliefs are empirically correct and true, until someone acts on them
Dymaxion World, July 31, 2008
The Straw Liberal and the Knoxville Church Shootings
The Vanity Press, July 31, 2008
Filed under: Hate Crimes, Hate Speech, Homophobia, LGBT History, Media, Race/Ethnic Issues, Radical Religious Right
