The Clarion Ledger of Jackson, MS:
The First Amendment protects the right of peaceably assembled persons to debate controversial issues like abortion, stem-cell research, gay rights, civil rights and other hot button issues in the public square so long as the assemblage remains peaceful.
Free speech even protects such activities as burning of the Bible, the U.S. flag or the Quran, the holy book of the Muslim faith. But as in the flag-burning debate, the right to burn a flag or a Bible or the Quran doesn't mean the act isn't offensive and stupid.
Members of the national anti-abortion group Operation Save America have been in Jackson to protest the state's only abortion clinic. As part of that protest, members of the group burned a Quran during a gathering at a Pearl church.
The linkage of that action to the abortion debate is curious at best. The Muslim faith clearly opposes abortion.
Operation Save America officials said they burned the Quran because "it condones violence."
That's an intellectually dishonest argument - claiming to desecrate the religion of another in the name of Jesus Christ.
WTF? This has absolutely nothing at all to do with abortion. Which leaves the question, what the hell is it about?
Simple intolerance. Clearly, Operation Save America isn't just about abortion. It's about hating just about everybody. From the Clarion Ledger again:
Anti-abortion activists over the last week have trotted out an aborted fetus in a vacuum-packed bag, torn up then burned a Quran, shredded a gay pride flag, and preached Jesus' message over loudspeakers in the street.
While their style of activism has gotten attention, it also has left some Christians and anti-abortion supporters in the state unsettled, worried these out-of-town protesters have given them a bad name and distorted their message.
"Anything that anyone pro-life does that does not show respect for all human life - born, unborn or dead - does not represent our movement," said Terri Herring, a longtime anti-abortion activist in the state and former head of Pro-Life Mississippi. "It's important not to judge the entire pro-life movement based on the events of this week."
Shredded a gay pride flag? Maybe they don't really understand gay sex all that well - not a lot of abortions there.
Like I say, it's not about abortion. An offshoot of Randall Terry's Operation Rescue, Operation Save America is all about being a religious nutjob. From their site:
Operation Save America unashamedly takes up the cause of preborn children in the name of Jesus Christ. We employ only biblical principles. The Bible is our foundation; the Cross of Christ is our strategy; the repentance of the Church of Jesus Christ is our ultimate goal. As the Church changes its heart toward unborn children, God Himself will hear from heaven, forgive our sin, and bring healing to our land. We believe that Jesus Christ is the only answer to the abortion holocaust. It is upon our active repentance in the streets of our cities that the Gospel is visibly lived out. We become to the church, to our city, and to our nation living parables which rightly represent God's heart toward His helpless children.
There are no cheap political solutions to the holocaust presently ravaging our nation. Like slavery before it, abortion is preeminently a Gospel issue. The Cross of Christ is the only solution.
Screw ya if you're not christian, I guess; 'The Cross of Christ is the only solution'. Which explains the Quran burning, but not the thing with the gay pride flag. On the Mississippi campaign, OSA has this to say, " The Gentle Revolution is making its way toward Jackson, Mississippi, this year, July 15-22, 2006. Pro-life leaders from across our nation will be joining us at the “last abortion mill ” in the state of Mississippi. We will be storming the gates of hell in the strong Name of Jesus Christ. Little did any of us know, as we ran to the roar to help those devastated by Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi and Louisiana, that God was preparing us to return to Mississippi to deal with an even more deadly foe – Abortion! "
'Gentle', my ass.
--Wisco
4 comments:
Never underestimate the stupidity of protesters - both liberal and conservative.
These are the same people that were they muslim would be conducting bombings and labeled terrorists.
Fundamentalists of any stripe do more harm than good.
I find it odd that they use the abolition of slavery as an example of a Gospel-founded political movement. Many thinkers of the time took the first couple verses of First Timothy to be Paul's support for slavery; most of the anti-slavery scripture (e.g., the tradition of the Jubilee year) is from sources older than the Gospel, and Christian groups like the Quakers often opposed slavery for reasons other than scriptural precedent.
Never underestimate the stupidity of conservatives, period.
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