Monday, April 28, 2003

Tripartite hate

Checking in with our friends from the theocratic right ...

Three Different Colored Gloves -- One Fist
By Flip Benham
Homosexuality, Islam, and abortion have something in common. They are three different colored gloves covering the same fist. Abortion is a crimson glove (stained with the blood of our pre-born children). Homosexuality is a pink glove (stained with the blood of young men and women given over to their own lust, and stained with the blood of nations that approve of such behavior). Islam is a black glove (stained with the blood of Christians, Jews, and anyone else who dares disagree with the false "god" Allah and his demon possessed prophet Mohammed). Three different colored gloves, yet the same fist. It is the fist of him who robs, kills, and destroys. That's right, I'm talking about the devil himself! We are not unaware of his schemes.


Flip Benham, for those with long memories, was one of the guiding lights of the former Operation Rescue, the radical anti-abortion group that advocated violence against abortion clinics and providers, including the murder of doctors. Three of its former members are now in prison.

Benham's new gig, for those who choose not to click on the source link (perfectly understandable), is called Operation Save America. It openly advocates a theocratic Christian state, outlawing abortion and declaring war on Islam. He's become much more marginal a figure than he was in the 1990s, but the memes he trots out have a way of working their way into the broader fundamentalist circuit. And he maintains considerable clout in the radical anti-abortion underground, which is still hiding such domestic terrorists as Eric Rudolph.

This most recent piece is a "three-fer": It targets pro-choice liberals, gays, and Muslims, all of whom evidently are the allies of America's true enemy, Satan. What, no Tom Daschle?

Well, Benham should be easy to dismiss, but I'm troubled by his concluding paragraph:
We must stop relying on Conservative and Republican mercenaries to fight our battles for us. It is said that politics is the "art of compromise." The Gospel of Christ, however, is not up for negotiation. There can be no compromise when it comes to any one of the issues mentioned above for they are simply different colored gloves camouflaging the same fist. It is the fist of the devil. We must take this battle to the streets in the Name of Jesus Christ and win it there before we can ever expect to win the battle in Washington, D.C.

This is not very dissimilar to Paul Weyrich's call for cultural conservatives to withdraw from the mainstream in 1998, setting up an alternative system that operates by its own rules. Benham likewise is no longer willing to let secular politicians or public officials handle matters, and appears to be calling for "Christians" to take matters into their own hands. Taking this "battle to the streets" to Benham's true believers likely means engaging in guerrilla terrorist tactics of the type formerly favored by Operation Rescue.

The problem is that there only need be one or two people who take Benham seriously and act on his advice to wreak a lot of misery.

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