Dr. Tiller was killed in a church.

[saltpoint]

[Stargleamer]

1. Not on the way to church. . .

as some early reports mentioned.

[saltpoint]

2. The jolt of the location of his death set against the "Christian" bent of

his detractors is just blowing my mind.

[HughMoran]

4. I'll be reminding my Christian right-wing friends about this for the rest of my life

They are going to regret this day.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

13. He was in the vestibule,

not right in the chapel itself, handing out programs to incoming church-goers.

He was in the church, though - yes, he was in the church.

I'm with you, old friend. I've been torn apart by this all day. I don't recall ever feeling like this, not since June 5, 1968. Not the deaths of loved ones, not 9/11, not the worst news in the world has affected me like this one, and I'm still trying to figure out why. It's got me completely stunned and enraged. I was close to tears earlier.

Then I found the beer.

But, seriously, how can any sane person get his or her mind around this one? We can't. We'd have to be as nuts as the shooter to get with this one, and how I'd love to be his lawyer. There is a "temporary insanity" plea coming up - a real possibility - but now that DU has helped to unearth his previous posts about violence, I doubt that would fly.

It defies everything we know, saltpoint. It's beyond insane.

And it would seem, as some here have noted, that the rightwingnuts are going to get more and more violent as Obama's popularity rises, as the economy keeps tanking, as they continue to have to bite down on the bitter reality that they lost, that they continue to lose, that a woman's right to choose is still, thankfully, the law of our land.

They're Al Qaeda, killing those who dare to defy their own, twisted religious beliefs.....................................

[saltpoint]

20. This post should have begun with your words above rather than those of

the nitwit who actually started this thread.

It's stunning to me. Serving as an usher in a (likely) mainstream Lutheran church and shot down by what appears to be (I dont have the hard facts yet) an Operation Rescuse-affiliated and possibly unstable right wing kook. Who may have felt that violence was justified because he, the assassin, was acting on behalf of the Almighty.

It is disheartening and frightening and sickening all at once.

Your assessment of the desperation out there among those most threatened seems disconcertedly plausible to me.

Say. Is there any of that beer left?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

25. For you - always ..........

I'm usually a Yuengling Lager LaBamba, but a pal turned me on to this Michelob Ultra-Light Pomegranate-Raspberry brew, and for as sissy as it sounds, it's really, really good.

Did you see this?

http://loree920.dailykos.com/

And, hey, how was that pizza last night?

[saltpoint]

27. As good as the pizza was, it is instantly eclipsed by the eloquence of

that post.

Thank you for sending that link along.

Tiller's loss is even greater once the whole range of his accomplishment as a citizen is learned.

Damn whoever it was who pulled that trigger this morning.

[Dappleganger]

65. He sounds like a man led by kindness.

What a fitting tribute from one of the women he helped.

[struggle4progress]

55. Reformation Lutheran in Wichita is ELCA

http://www.reformation-lutheran.org/

[bicentennial_baby]

29. I've been on the verge of tears, or in tears, all day

I am despondent over this murder. What a sad, sad day for American women. I weep. :cry:

I'm going home to the woods tomorrow. Clean air, silence. I need that.

:hug:

[Tangerine LaBamba]

30. You and me both, honey .........

This is how it felt on June 5, 1968 - long before your arrival - when I landed in Miami International Airport after an overnight flight from Lima, Peru, and found out that Bobby Kennedy had been shot.

I stayed in the airport for the whole day, waiting with hundreds of others who just stood and sat, staring at the ceiling-mounted TV sets, waiting until the announced he had died.

I don't remember the flight home to Philadelphia at all.

Is the address I have for you where you'll be this week?

[saltpoint]

31. I can understand your remaining at the Miami Airport, staring at the

tv coverage of the death of Robert F. Kennedy.

And would not have blamed you if you had bought another ticket for some faraway place overseas, got on it, and just flew away.

This country was a far less noble place without Bobby.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

32. He was our last hope............

I was at Machu Picchu when I got the news of MLK, JR's. assassination. That was just a few days after LBJ's announcement that he would not run again.

Understand, I was just a college student thousands of miles from home. Communication in 1968 wasn't quite as good as it is today, uh-huh?

So, all this happened in my young political life, all of this which had begun on November 22, 1963, when I had just lost both grandparents that October, thirteen days apart (they had raised me), and when Bobby died, something inside me died.

Today, it feels like that again. I never expected it again, this feeling .........................

[saltpoint]

35. I hear you, too loudly and too clearly.

In one of the better books on journalism in the Vietnam era (Michael Herr's DISPATCHES), there's a powerful passage citing the death of the Kennedys. The author concludes that those assassinations left an entire generation with "the lonely gift of trusting no one."

The Kennedy doubters and bashers on this cite have no effing idea what it felt like to trust that man and his time. They have no clue.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

36. No, they don't ..............

Our generation knows only too well. Can't even explain it to the kids. I've tried and tried, and they get glimpses, bits and pieces, but the entire gestalt of that time is impossible to translate in words.

It was so much bigger than we were, and it was so possible - everything was possible.

And then everything was lost, and we've never gotten it back.

We had our innocence torn out of us far too young ......................

[jwirr]

56. And how innocent we were. I cannot believe that I had such hope

back then until that fatal day June 5 1968. That day I stopped believing that it was all going to work out okay. I still worked in politics but never with the same hope. This last election I saw some of that hope in others but I have basically been just setting here doing what I could to further the dreams of others along while I help my family hunker down for the rough times ahead. I hope I am wrong but the death of Dr. Tiller is a pretty good sign that things are not what they seem.

[saltpoint]

67. John and Bobby were not intimidated by scholarship and the range of

scholarship, and saw it as a point of essence in public service.

I think of the Kennedy White House gatherings and then compare them to the ones Dubya threw together. The comparison is jolting.

Barack Obama is every bit that sort of scholar / respecter of scholars, but he has become president of a country which no longer has even a courteous respect for learning and ideas. The GOP used to be represented by people like Chuck Percy. These days it's represented by people like John Cornyn and those two fools from Oklahoma, etc. That's a precipitous drop on the food chain right there.

In an anti-intellectual landscape, hate-mongers hold greater sway. What passes for Christianity among its most virulent, foaming-at-the-mouth believers is persuasive correspondent to how far fundamentalism has drifted from New Testament tenets.

I have no idea in hell how to persuade someone who thinks he speaks for God that he does not in fact speak for God.

This week and next I'd like to see a very large hose turned upon the stables of fundamentalism. It's been quite a while since the last clean-up.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

78. What I miss most about that era

is the feeling that things were steadily improving, the hope that we could eliminate poverty and discrimination.

[BuyingThyme]

3. Does that matter?

[saltpoint]

6. See my first response. It presents a juxtaposition rich in shock.

It matters if Tiller's detractors try to claim higher "Christian" ground, yes.

[BuyingThyme]

12. I suspect many of them lobby for guns in church.

[saltpoint]

15. I've never attended that church and can't say how they feel about guns.

But one of their congregation was murdered this morning in the church as he served as an usher.

[BuyingThyme]

19. I was speaking of the detractors.

[saltpoint]

22. Ah. I missed the turn. My fault. Apologies.

[Dappleganger]

66. One thing about Lutherans

at least that I recall, and I could be wrong but most don't believe in mixing politics and religion *at all*.

[saltpoint]

68. I didn't know that. But it's interesting in the after-math of Luther himself

taking on the Church.

Condolences to Tiller's friends and family, and that whole congregation.

[Maru Kitteh]

5. His wife was in the choir, he was shot in the foyer of the church

according to AP. Sorry I can't link to it, cause it's on my phone.

[saltpoint]

8. Yes. He was said to have been serving as an usher.

[Maru Kitteh]

23. I can't imagine sitting up there with the choir, heart full of music and peace,

and watching my husband die. It's too horrible to think about.

[saltpoint]

24. Agree. Tiller was a bright man and by all counts quite dedicated to both

his friends and family and his community.

For his assassin to debase that true work and dedication with a hateful and violent act is exactly what you called it -- horrible.

[Maru Kitteh]

57. You termed this correctly. It is not a mere murder, it is an assasination.

These thugs that shake their fists with venom and hate in their eyes - demanding with sanctimony that they be allowed to deprive women of the human right of sovereignty over their own bodies and their reproductive rights - I'll always be worlds away from understanding them.

Dr. Tiller appears to have been a man of true compassion and light. He gave his life in service of the rights of women everywhere to obtain safe and professional health care. His tragic loss has spurred in me the resolve to fight harder.

A few months after I became a very young bride, I became pregnant. I was too young, and we were dirt poor, but I was happy. Three months in to the pregnancy, I just didn't FEEL right. I was only 18, and I didn't know what a pregnant woman was supposed to feel like, but I just knew something was wrong. My doctor didn't want to do an ultrasound because I was young and healthy and I didn't have any concrete S/S to point to. Then the pain started.

I was pregnant with a mass of flesh that would never be a baby, just a parasitic glob of teeth, hair, and random tissue that almost robbed me of the chance to bear future children. I was now 14 weeks pregnant with this ......thing. It's called a molar pregnancy.

The only hospital in town is Catholic, so I had to travel to a clinic. I remember well the faces of those people shouting at me, spitting in my face, begging me not to "murder" my "baby." I was so numb, so scared, and so very young. If it happened to me today I think I'd ask the doctor to save the mass, put it in a jar and then I could show up and wave it in THEIR faces.

The skill and compassion of a doctor just like Dr. Tiller saved me. I will not sit by quietly any more. I will speak often and loudly.

[saltpoint]

70. Your own narrative speaks to the core of control the Far Right is demanding,

and especially through groups like Operation Rescue.

We may learn more about Operation Rescue this week in relation to any association Roeder may have had with it. I don't want to make one before I know it's there, but the climate of vengeance the Far Right encourages clearly includes the potential for violence.

I will happily shut up while you continue to speak often and loudly. You've earned the right on all counts.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

33. Fortunately,

she didn't see it happen.

Small comfort .............

[aquart]

52. Is the foyer of the church IN the church or OUTSIDE the church?

Don't go along with the assholes trying to minimize this outrage.

[Maru Kitteh]

58. I'm not. In our church the foyer area is quite visible from the choir seats

It breaks my heart.

[msongs]

7. the friend of my enemy is my...enemy and so is his church evidently nt

[physioex]

9. I think the church should be held responsible.

Get some lawyers togethor and file a lawsuit going all the way to the top.

[realisticphish]

11. the church that gladly had him

as a member, even with all the protests, threats, etc, where he served as an usher, should be sued because someone who wasn't a member of the church shot him?

[physioex]

16. Hmmm....

No the church that spewed the rhetoric and violence than led one of their sociopathic followers should be.

Edit: How many degrees of separation are there between the two?

[realisticphish]

17. oh, my bad

misunderstood you

[physioex]

21. No worries....

To me all organized religion is one in the same.

[Dappleganger]

69. But it isn't.

Please focus on those who actually did this evil act and not deflect on the ones who go to church but are as appalled by the violence as yourself.

[saltpoint]

14. Tiller's church membership plays against his (alleged) assassin's possible

(likely?) affiliation with Operation Rescue, supposedly a "Christian" organization.

The burden falls on Operation Rescue, IMO, if Roeder is the assassin and is also linked to Operation Rescue, to defend an indefensible position -- that one cannot on one hand defend a pro-life moral position and on the other (allegedly) assassinate physicians.

[physioex]

18. Exactly...

The real trigger men are Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Although Falwell is now dead.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

34. That's not funny ..........

I don't think this is a subject that lends itself to levity right now..........

[physioex]

37. The Church incites violence.

This is an undenyable fact and they should be held criminally and financially responisble. Its not about money either.


This wasn't written in a joking mood.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

38. It's not the church -

it's not any specific religious denomination backing all of this violence.

There are groups, different groups, without any religious affiliation whatsoever, who are spewing their filth under the guise of "God's word."

They're just gutless thugs hiding behind the skirts of God, but there is no church backing them in any visible - or legally culpable - way........

[Quantess]

64. No. Why should the church held responsible? For not being armed with security guards?

[Baikonour]

10. The MSM will spin it tomorrow, I promise you.

"The abortion doctor was on his way into a church when he was killed."

[Dappleganger]

26. I applaud this church, too.

My prayers are with those who were there and were traumatized, along with the family.

[saltpoint]

28. Good point. Necessary point. Those folks were there of their own accord

and minding their busines and likely pleased to be in each others' company.

And in the most instant of moments one of their community was taken from them, very possibly by a man strongly influenced by a radical hate group.

Trespass is too vividly realized in the events this morning in Wichita.

[JeffR]

39. The single most resonant fact out of this unspeakably evil crime.

You cut to the chase in as terse and elegant an OP as I've seen here in 6+ years.

For anyone who disagrees with me, take the OP as your starting point and watch the ripples spread out from there.

The whole baroque significance of this tragedy is that the victim was in church and the alleged criminal was purportedly steeped in the same religion. That in and of itself is sufficient to meditate on for a long time.

How is it that the religious beliefs of both the alleged perpetrator and the victim could be one and the same? Evidently, they weren't. What follows is: Why not? How were they not?

[saltpoint]

41. JeffR. I don't know what you do for a living but whatever it is they don't

pay you enough.

In the 'why weren't they the same' phase of this issue comes the men and women in that community who depended on this doctor. When many of them were at low points they drew from his strength to balance themselves, to find their feet again on firmer ground.

He was one of the healers. We could all use more of them than fewer of them.

[JeffR]

43. You're right on both counts, my friend.

I don't get paid nearly enough, and...

... secondly, the old question of "What would Jesus do?" is a specious construct, when what the question for Christians ought to be is: "What would Jesus think?" I read The Imitation of Christ many years ago and I've always wondered why it is so that many supposed adherents of Jesus would so disregard His teaching and live their lives so antithetically to what their Savior called for, to the point that they will even commit murder.

[saltpoint]

44. True words. And it is not as if "the liberal media" or "the hippies" or

anyone else is hiding the New Testament from them and preventing them from reading it.

They could like, order a copy from Amazon.com or someplace any time they wanted. Or they could risk encountering secular humanists at their public library and read it there. Who knows -- there may even be a copy at their church.

Operation Rescuse (if Roeder is the assassin and his link to Operation Rescue is made) may have killed one doctor but may have lost the larger war. The fundie nutbags have fewer cards to play these days than they had just a few short years ago. A large and much younger generation of voters is more self-informed via the web and appear to have little use for the fire and brimstone approach to problem solving. We've always felt that people like Randall Terry were fools, but now that view is shared by an entire generation of people.

On the subject of your salary, you tell your boss to give me a call.

[JeffR]

47. We can only hope that more people actually READ the New Testament

and putting aside the psilocybin hysteria of Revelations, start to think about things more deeply.

Oh, and as a freelancer I don't have a boss, but rather a series of people who communally but in total isolation decide whether I sink or swim. God bless them all, of course.

[saltpoint]

49. "God bless them all, of course." LOLOL.

I also love the association of psilocybin with the Book of Revelation and am left to wonder which of the two is the most hallucinogenic. I'm thinking psilocybin is the milder agent and far less addictive.

[JeffR]

51. That question will only be answered when an authorized

Third Testament is released, with concomitant film rights to Ron Howard, of course.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

60. Their beliefs in God may have been the same,

but their loyalty to the laws of man were not.

Dr. Tiller was doing a legitimate and valid thing in performing late-term abortions. They are legal, thanks to Roe v. Wade, the law of our land.

The assassin decided that his religious beliefs - I have no indication that he belonged to any church - were superior to the law of these United States, and that they trumped his religious beliefs. To kill someone he perceived as a killer made his murder justifiable, quite conveniently skirting the pesky issue of "Thou shalt not kill."

I don't recall anywhere in my Roman Catholic upbringing that taught me that it was permissible to kill a killer.

The religious beliefs of both men aren't relevant here; their fealty to the laws of our country is the issue, and, while Dr. Tiller obeyed all the laws, the thug who shot him in cold blood decided they were wrong, and Dr. Tiller should be killed for obeying them.

Judge, jury, and executioner, the murderer will be accorded a kind of due process he denied Dr. Tiller......................

[NanceGreggs]

40. 'Nuf said ...

... and you just said it - all.

:patriot:

[saltpoint]

42. Hey there. It is a sad night when the hate-filled arrogance of one man

can visit this degree of trespass onto an entire nation.

I think an awful lot of folks on DU and elsewhere are very upset over this. I am. I'm buoyed by guests from up north dropping by to visit and offer moral support. Thank you both.

[JeffR]

45. And goddamnit , if this OP doesn't make the Greatest Page soon

I'm going to be ticked.

[saltpoint]

46. ! An example of a thread which is the sum of its parts, JeffR, with a lot of

DU's very major players playing those parts.

When this joint is at its best, it is a crackling crossfire of sensibilities. Tonight it feels like we're greatly saddened by the news from Wichita and have gathered around the village fire to hold hands.

I'm glad you're here, good person.

[JeffR]

48. And your presence here is deeply meaningful in dealing with this horror

and I appreciate what you've contributed to the discussion about this.

[saltpoint]

50. Thank you. Now we need a night's rest. Let me double that 'thank you'

and wish you and everyone else here a quiet night.

[JeffR]

53. And same to you

kind sir.

[MagickMuffin]

54. Thy Shall NOT Kill: isn't this one of their commandments

Of course they labeled Dr. Tiller as a "baby killer" although he was within the law to preform his duties as a physician, if a woman chose to go that route.

They conveniently ignore this known fact. By choosing to ignore the law they think they can enforce upon everyone else their ill conceived notions of when conception begins, although once a baby is born they no longer care about the life of a "child of god" only their narrow-minded concepts of life.

Do they no longer consider themselves as a "child of god"?.?.?

What would their god think about gunning down one of his children while in the church of worship?.?.?

If they "think" they are following god's orders then they have mistaken what their god is all about. Jesus would NOT have condoned them making judgments in his name and carrying out an act of violence that claims another man's life.

‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’
—Matthew 22:34-40


Pretty simple I think.

[Missy Vixen]

61. They also forget the verse

"Justice is mine, I will repay."

I think some of these people will get a horrible shock if there is such a thing as an afterlife.

In the meantime, my favorite party trick with those who claim to be pro-life? Ask them how many of the in excess of a quarter million abandoned kids in the foster care system they're adopting. It's fun to watch the blank stares.

It is sad that such a staunch advocate for the right of women to have control over their own reproductive system is no longer with us tonight.

[saltpoint]

71. Well ya can't trust that Matthew fella. He was a FORNER.

One of them trouble-making liberals from back east. Way back east.

- - -

Agree with you, MM. The Far Right has some sorting out to do. With any luck at all the beauty parlor and barber shop talk this week will center around how conflicted and violent religious extremists are -- meaning the ones we grow here on our own soil.

For folks who claim to believe in the Bible they surely do appear to have missed several key passages.

[MagickMuffin]

73. I don't consider these people as christian, but more akin to Paulian theology

They ignore the teachings of Jesus or don't understand his teachings. But they hang onto the OLD testament, even though they don't understand it anymore than they do christianity. As for the new testament they prefer Saul/Paul's teachings over what Jesus spoke of "loving thy neighbor" "judge not lest ye be judged" "pray in isolation" all these things they cannot comprehend. I suppose that is why they aren't critical thinkers. It's just too much work to think for yourself, and knowing right from wrong.

[saltpoint]

75. MM, I think you are on target with that interpretation. There is less of

Matthew and Mark and Jesus and way too much Paul.

For the Paul fans out there, I'm sorry, but I never liked the guy much.

You also cite passages where the far-right almost always fails. And not just on the question of reproductive rights or Roe v. Wade, but across a wide spectrum.

[FlyingSquirrel]

59. I wonder

If the killer somehow thought he was making a salient point by choosing the church as the location for this murder?

Perhaps he was (wow, this is twisted) trying to say that the doctor was a hypocrite using the church as his shield.

Psychotic.

[Quantess]

63. Absolutely. Shooting the man in church was no accident.

My first reaction, was that the killer made a point of targeting the doctor in church, to really hammer home the idea that this doctor was offending his beliefs.

Psychotic? Maybe, maybe not. Did he hear "god's voice" telling him to kill/shoot the doctor? If so, then he might be certifiably insane.

Or, did he think that killing the doctor was his duty to fulfill his God's mission? That line of thinking does not differentiate him from any other garden variety religious terrorist.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

62. The Operation Rescue people are DANGEROUS.

Very dangerous.

I had to look at them in court, unfortunately, in the trial of Planned Parenthood of Southeast Texas, etal. v. Operation Rescue, etal. in 1994. They started protesting at Planned Parenthood in 1992 at the Repub Convention. The trial judge in that case lost her bench and was beaten by a bible thumping fundie who hangs the ten commandments in his courtroom.

I had to look at Randall Terry, Flip Benham, and Don Treshman.

They asked Treshman if his group condoned the murder of Dr. David Gunn.

He said, on the stand under oath, "Neither do we condemn it, nor condone it".

Whereupon, the jury slid out of their chairs onto the floor of the jury box, in shock, almost.

I heard sickening details of flyers for protests on Sunday at doctors' houses, like it was a Sunday picnic, bring the kids, a good family time, yada yada.....

Testimony of Joshua Graff's mother was read. She was so very proud of him. He was eighteen and went to prison for 39 months for firebombing an abortion clinic in Houston in October of 1993. They caught him b/c he left his wallet at the scene.

These people are wild eyed and really horrible.

Planned Parenthood and other plaintiffs got a judgment for over $200,000 for damages to their building, and interference with their business and the cost of the security measures they had to implement.

I wish I could have sued them for intentional infliction of emotional distress, but I was working in court. :cry:

[GeorgeGist]

72. That fact makes no difference.

[saltpoint]

74. Not in the harsh fact of an assassin's decision to kill someone, no, but it

does in the larger landscape where the argument that prompted the impulse to kill will be played out.

In that landscape, on that scale, it makes every difference.

[KamaAina]

76. By a "pro-life Christian".

:cry:

[shadowknows69]

77. Yep, and that horrible point will hopefully finally be their undoing

By they I mean the ChristoTaliban fanatics that this murderer communed with, but of course are now trying to forget they knew this "martyr"; and I suspect (hope I'm wrong) that they'll get plenty of help from the media.

Where this murder was committed is what completely invalidates any further bile about doing God's work that they may spew. All are supposed to have a chance at redemption right? Personally I think this was more a planned "hit" than the actions of one extremist.

[saltpoint]

79. The fundies desperately want to claim the moral high ground on the

question of reproductive freedom. I use 'reproductive freedom' as a first-choice phrase. The CNN radio headlines today turned Dr. Tiller's professional description to "abortion provider," which seemed to me to plainly attempt to cast him as an invader, a trespasser, and it left the whiff of blaming him for the kind of care he offered thus seeming to forgive an assassin for trying to stop him.

It was disgusting, in other words.

A man who believes the law of the land can be ignored and that he and a few brave others can murder to assert God's will steps into a Lutheran church and assassinates George Tiller.

That generates the steepest of inclines for their "pro-life" argument. They can crow about killing one doctor but increasingly (and now exponentially) they are regarded as a pack of loonies and murderers. The moral high ground has eroded beneath them and their time is over.