Moments of Permanence - A couple of things, neither of them good.

From: keeva Date: June 1st, 2009 04:11 am (UTC) (Link)

Can I quote your latter point?

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From: sami Date: June 1st, 2009 04:20 am (UTC) (Link)

Absolutely.

You can always quote me so long as it's a public post and you give proper attribution, for the record.

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From: keeva Date: June 1st, 2009 10:21 am (UTC) (Link)

Wow, saying this on my LJ has cost me several friends already. There's an awful fucking lot of hate for all Christians out there.

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From: sami Date: June 1st, 2009 11:28 am (UTC) (Link)

*blinks*

*goes to look*

This Christian calls that bigotry, for the record, and would not personally mourn friends who departed on that basis.

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From: sami Date: June 1st, 2009 11:38 am (UTC) (Link)

... good grief.

Those are not nice people, keeva. Not nice at all.

Taking a post to point out that Christianity is not a monolith, that there are good Christian people and George Tiller was one of us so please stop using his murder as some kind of argument against Christianity to do exactly that?

Epic fail.

He was a Christian. You don't become an usher at a service a) if you're not, in fact, a Christian and b) if your church has a problem with your very well publicised pro-choice activities. Attacking him at church can only be a deliberate provocation, a deliberate message to Christians that they will have no respect for our faith, no respect for a religion that does not agree entirely with theirs. It's a sign that their war is with everyone who isn't a crazy fundamentalist.

*sighs*

Tomorrow, I must go to church and light a candle for Dr Tiller.

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From: lady_ganesh Date: June 3rd, 2009 12:57 am (UTC) (Link)

That's pretty epic fail, there.

Thank you. I don't believe myself, but I know he'd be honored that you lit a candle for him.

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From: lauredhel Date: June 1st, 2009 06:13 am (UTC) (Link)

YES. This. Anyone who's getting "wry humour" from this is ... I have no words.

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From: sami Date: June 1st, 2009 11:41 am (UTC) (Link)

Seriously. It's not "ironic". It's a declaration of war against people who disagree with them, in the timing and placing of the attack.

But, and this is still the critical point, it is the tragic murder of a good man, a Christian man who was courageous in the face of serious opposition in his dedication to doing what is right.

Today was a writeoff for me, but tomorrow I plan to go and light a candle for him at church.

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From: mmoa_writes Date: June 1st, 2009 01:40 pm (UTC) (Link)

I don't understand where the irony is when someone is shot dead by people who hate them and what they stand for/do. I hate how our political and religious labels seem to distract people from that fact.

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From: fred_mouse Date: June 1st, 2009 02:50 pm (UTC) (Link)

embarrassed to say I have no idea of who George Tiller is.

but murder and irony don't go together, surely, regardless.

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From: elspethdixon Date: June 1st, 2009 02:58 pm (UTC) (Link)

It's not irony. Not even close. It's a hate crime, an act of terrorism against Christians who do not adhere to extremist insanity.

This.

Honestly, one of the things this drives home to me (yet again) is that people who do these kinds of things are motivated predominantly by hate, and that whatever principles they claim to be espousing are more excuses than motivations. People who are truly pro-life/anti-abortion because they have a deep respect for human life and consider unborn fetuses to be the same in that regard as already-born people* do not murder people. People who are truly motivated by their Christian faith do not murder people in church (I'd say "at all," but I think the entire history of Western civilization contradicts me there).

Extremist far-right Christians of the sort who participate in these kinds of atrocities (and also often in a hell of a lot of racist creepiness on top of their sexism, witness the towering WTF of the "Obama is the antichrist" meme) don't really acknowledge non-fundamentalist Christians as Christians, though. Only their kind of Christianity is 'real' Christianity -- the rest of us are just as hell-bound as all those godless atheists and people who practice any religion that's not Christianity.

Even other Christians who *agree* with them, sometimes. Official Catholic doctrine is uncompromisingly anti-abortion, but some of the more rabid fundamentalist Christians out there think that the Pope is the anti-christ and the Catholic Church worships the Whore of Babylon rather than the Virgin Mary.

*not my opinion, but I can respect people who hold it if they really do want to protect unborn children rather than just punish women for having sex -- my test for that is whether they also want to help said children and their mothers once they're born, which many conservatives don't seem to. Spend money on women and childrens' health care? Why would we want to do that?

Edited 2009-06-01 02:58 pm (UTC)

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From: susanreads Date: June 1st, 2009 03:50 pm (UTC) Oh ... heck (Link)

I read about that, and I'd never heard of him, so I was stuck for words.

People say what? (I'm not going to look, I believe you.) People who can't tell the difference between Christians and terrorists are stupid, as well as being bigots.

I'm irreligious/agnostic: I was raised as a Christian, don't call myself Christian any more, but I know some born-again Christians; they follow the principles, you know? Whereas the terrorists obviously don't. If I had to call them Christians (to distinguish them from some other variety of terrorist), I'd put the word in scare quotes.

Sorry, I seem to be waffling. I don't know what to say except that you're right, and stupidity on the internet seems to know no bounds.

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From: silk-noir.livejournal.com Date: June 3rd, 2009 04:48 am (UTC) (Link)

I have to disagree. I'm sure that Roeder couldn't care less that Dr. T was in church. All he cared about was that Dr. T was not covered by security, that he was accessible.

(What I never fail to find disgusting though, is that so many folks have expressed surprise over the past 20 or so years that Dr. Tiller went to church.)

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