Nero Fiddled

Christian Terrorism and the Murder of Dr. Tiller

Wichita police have detained Scott Roeder, a 51-year-old white man, as the prime suspect in the murder of Dr. George Tiller (see yesterday's post). Roeder, who lives in the Kansas City area, is expected to appear in court early this week. Little is known, at this point, about Roeder. In 1996 he was arrested near Topeka for possession of explosive devices. His ex-wife -- they were divorced twelve years ago -- told a Kansas radio reporter that she had broken up with Roeder due to "his radical views...He was very vocal about his feelings of abortion…he has been like this for several years. He was a part of different militia things…anti-government, anti-abortion, obviously, and just a lot of anti-stuff." Roeder's 22-year-old son, emphasized the former Mrs. Roeder, "doesn't share any of his dad's views…religiously or politically…neither do I." And what kind of sick person would?

So in all likelihood, Scott Roeder, another God-fearing Christian with a gun, pulled the trigger. But there is an entire movement complicit in the death of Dr. Tiller. At the top of that list is Operation Rescue, which split into two separate cells, Operation Save America and Operation Rescue (Kansas), after its leaders found that even they couldn't stand each other. Susan Peters, the reporter who spoke with Roeder's former wife, reports that in a May 2007 post on Operation Rescue's website, Roeder wrote: "Sometime soon would it be feasable [sic] to organize as many people as possible to attend Tiller’s church (inside not just outside) to possibly ask questions of the pastor, deacons, elders and members while there?"

But asking questions would require a functioning mind, something these people abandoned long ago, in favor of the voluntary brainwashing that is organized religious extremism. Operation Rescue can smell the blood on its own hands, which is why the group scrubbed its website within minutes of the shooting of Dr. Tiller. The infamous "Tiller Watch" section -- dedicated to keeping track of Tiller's whereabouts -- disappeared right away, along with references to Tiller elsewhere on the site. Today, the entire Operation Rescue website is down. Got something to hide, there, folks? One article, hastily removed, urged supporters to "press in with prayer and ask God to finish the work He started and bring a final end to Tiller's horrific abortion business." Yeah, but prayer just doesn't seem to work, does it? That's because there's no God listening. That's why these religious people get so frustrated, and why they so often seem to reach for a gun, a bomb, or a hijacked airplane to make their point.

Troy Newman, of Operation Rescue, admitted that Roeder had posted messages on the group's website, but claimed, "He is not a friend, not a contributor, not a volunteer." I suppose Roeder's utter lack of connection with Operation Rescue, and Operation Rescue's commitment to nonviolent protest, is why you suddenly had to remove your entire website from public view after the murder, right, Troy? Newman's claim is almost as big a lie as the Book of Genesis. The truth is that the pro-life movement has consistently encouraged acts of violence against women and their doctors, by absurdly characterizing abortion as sadistic and systematic mass-murder. Operation Save America's statement on the Tiller murder begins, "He died the way he lived. His was a bloody death...someone 'chose' to end George Tiller’s life this morning, in his church." The statement goes on to describe "Mr. Tiller’s murderous rampage against preborn children," and to claim that Dr. Tiller "is now bowing before Jesus and confessing that He (Jesus) is right and that he (George Tiller) was wrong!"

They actually believe this shit. No matter how much lip service they give to condemning murder and advocating nonviolence -- and that's not even as much lip service as you might think -- you'd have to be completely unthinking (or "faithful") not to see their rhetoric as implicit encouragement to end the supposed "murderous rampage." The truth -- and even the law -- says something very different: Abortion is not murder; it is nothing like murder. The true murderous rampage has been committed by so-called Christians, against abortion providers and the women they serve. Dr. Tiller himself was shot in both arms in 1993 by a God-fearing, churchgoing, Bible-reading Christian terrorist from rural Oregon. Tiller's clinic was bombed by Christian terrorists in 1986, and Christian terrorists have barraged Tiller and his family with threats and vandalism for more than twenty years.

But Christian terrorist cells like Operation Rescue could not accomplish so much if their cause weren't passionately supported by mainstream conservative voices, such as those which spew venom every day on the Fox News Channel. Writing for Salon, Gabriel Winant asserts that "there's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists" than Bill O'Reilly. Twenty-nine times since 2004 -- and as recently as one month ago -- O'Reilly and his guest hosts have opined about "Tiller the Baby Killer." O'Reilly has declared that Dr. Tiller "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000;" that he was guilty of "Nazi stuff" and "the kind of stuff [that] happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union;" that he ran a "death mill." In an attack on former Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius (now Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services), O'Reilly condemned "any Kansas politician who supports Tiller's business of destruction" as "not fit to serve." "I wouldn't want to be these people if there is a Judgment Day," O'Reilly concluded, predictably lacing his political rage with references to bizarre Christian mythology.

One Pastor Mark Holick, of the Spirit One Christian Center, is quoted in Operation Save America's statement, asking, "What was an abortionist doing in church, any church...being allowed, welcomed, even venerated? This man killed babies for a living." Obviously Pastor Holick is a demented man living in a twisted alternate reality, but he has accidentally stumbled upon an important point: What was Dr. Tiller doing in church? The answer is that he was a religious man who believed in God. Look, nobody's perfect. The world is full of intelligent, compassionate, otherwise rational people who are still inexplicably religious. But there is no good reason why someone capable of getting a degree in medicine should also be capable of believing the ridiculous things people are told in church or temple.

Events like the murder of Dr. Tiller teach the rest of us -- the rational thinkers of the world -- that we are making a grave mistake if we fail to confront religious people with the truth about their dangerous beliefs. When someone says they believe in God, or that Jesus Christ "died for our sins," or that the Jews are "the chosen people," or that Mohammed was "a prophet of God;" when people tell us that they attend religious services, or that they intend to pray for something, we have a responsibility to respond as though they have just said something completely fucking crazy, because they have. We should slowly back away from them, and politely ask them what the hell they're talking about, and what era they think they're living in. We should encourage them to complete their educations by rejecting the ignorance and irrationality that religion requires.

Until then, the terrorists -- Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and every other kind -- win.

Noah

10:53 AM

Comments

well put, man.

i feel like a closet anti-religious most of the time, but then i'm spurred on by you, and carlin, and maher, to continue putting my faith in common sense.

keep up the amazing essays. i'm a faithful follower.

# posted by aver : 6/05/2009 5:35 PM

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Monday, June 01, 2009

Christian Terrorism and the Murder of Dr. Tiller