Sunday, May 31, 2009

Why Dr. Tiller Was Killed

Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, makes a statement about the murder of Dr. Tiller:
Tiller's death comes at a time when all recent polling data shows that the peaceful proLife message has the support of a majority of American voters. We hope this terrible news does not hurt the steady progress that the proLife movement has made by peaceful legal means over the years.

Really? Let’s take a look at your “peaceful proLife message,” shall we? Terry has given us a wealth of examples, most recently at his protest of President Obama’s Notre Dame commencement with Alan Keyes:

Shortly before noon, on the last day of final exams for Notre Dame students, Keyes and a few dozen others gathered at the entrance of Notre Dame to pray. The protesters were holding signs and most were pushing strollers containing baby dolls covered in fake blood.

Lovely. And then there’s this:

Another group, the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, has been sending a plane to fly over Notre Dame for hours at a time with banners featuring pictures of fetuses and sometimes unfortunate grammatical errors ("This is what your honoring," said one banner two days ago.)

This is the “peaceful proLife message”? Gee, can’t imagine how that kind of rabble-rousing wouldn’t set someone off. Someone a little unhinged to begin with.

Meanwhile, my friends on the left are doing their best to piss me off with remarks like “put down the bible & grow brain cells” and “I'm pretty sure I saw a Jesus fish on the back of the captured suspect's car.”

Enough.

Let’s just quit the Bible-bashing here, okay? Dr. Tiller was murdered while handing out programs at his church before Sunday worship. So before we start bashing Christians it would be helpful to remember that Dr. Tiller was one. Don’t bring the family any more pain than they already must be experiencing by trashing their religion in the name of supporting a fallen man.

The problem is not religion. The problem is inflammatory rhetoric that incites people to violence.

You know, we’re just about at the one-year anniversary of the day James Adkisson shot up a Knoxville Unitarian church in an anti-gay, anti-liberal rage. Since that time we have seen the inflammatory rhetoric from the right escalate even further. President Obama has been hung in effigy, been called a murderer and a socialist. We have had innocent baby animals killed and we have had a newspaper apologize for running an advertisement calling for President Obama’s assassination. We have seen Glenn Beck pretend to set fire to a person in "demonstration" of Obama Administration policies with which he disagrees.

On the left we have seen Wanda Sykes wish for Rush Limbaugh to have kidney failure.

People need to calm the fuck down or none of us is going to get out of this decade alive. When is it going to stop? How much longer are we going to tolerate the vitriol? Who's going to be the first to say "enough, already!"