Neal Horsley
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Otis O'Neal Horsley (born 1944) is an American political figure of the far right. He is the author of christiangallery.com, a website devoted to his advocacy of militant anti-abortion, secessionist, and homophobic views. Horsley is highly critical of the non-violent wing of the anti-abortion movement and openly advocates terrorism as the only way to end abortion in the United States. Though he himself has never been charged with taking part in a violent act, he is widely thought to maintain extensive contacts with fugitive domestic terrorists and occasionally acts as a spokesman for the Army of God terrorist organization (serial killer Eric Robert Rudolph was also a member). Horsley established a political party called the "Creator's Rights Party" and has run for governor of Georgia as its candidate on several occasions.
Horsley was born in Bowdon, Georgia. After serving in the U.S. Army in the mid-1960s, Horsley traveled to San Francisco, California, and became an anti-war advocate and hippie. Horsley spent frequent stints in jail on charges of drug possession, and it was there in 1974 that he converted to the Christian right.
After graduating from Westminster Theological Seminary in 1979, Horsley relocated to the Philadelphia area, but returned to Georgia in 1993, settling in the Atlanta suburb of Carrollton, where he lives today.
Horsley came into contact with and befriended Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry. Through his new contacts within the anti-abortion movement, Horsley met up with Paul Jennings Hill, a former Presbyterian Church in America and Orthodox Presbyterian Church minister and Ku Klux Klansman who, like him, was beginning to question the efficacy of peaceful civil disobedience.
At this time, Horsley had been studying Christian Reconstructionism and Dominion Theology. This led to his belief in the possibility of selected states seceding from the Union as a means of forcing the U.S. federal government to abolish abortion nationwide. Horsley claims that in a 1994 meeting with Hill, he suspected Hill of planning a terrorist act, and urged Hill to join him instead in forming a secessionist movement in the state of Georgia. Days later, Hill was arrested and charged with the murder of Florida pyscian John Britton and Britton's bodyguard. Hill was convicted and sentenced to death, and was later executed. He is heralded today as a martyr on Horsley's website.
Horsley's website, christiangallery.com, began in 1995. His postings there brought him to the attention of other radicals within the anti-abortion movement, including Paul de Parrie, who had compiled a large database of personal information on various doctors throughout the country. DeParrie shared his information with Horsley, who posted it at his website in a section called the "Nuremberg Files," allegedly to assist in prosecution of doctors after the abolition of abortion.
Information from de Parrie's files was used by James Charles Kopp to track down and kill Buffalo doctor Barnett Slepian in 1998. Kopp fled the country (becoming a fugitive in Canada) but allegedly maintained contact with Horsely while on the run. After Kopp was profiled on America's Most Wanted, Horsley posted on his website a "citizen's arrest warrant" for the show's host, John Walsh. Kopp was later arrested in France and extradited to New York. where he is serving a 25-year prison sentence.
After Slepian's murder, Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt denounced christiangallery.com at a press conference. The publicity generated hundreds of thousands of hits at Horsley's website (Horsley claims 400,000). Horsley was named as a co-conspirator in a successful civil suit filed by Planned Parenthood over the information compiled by him and "Unwanted Posters" of doctors, which was judged by the court to constitute a threat of violence, even without an explicit call to violence. As part of the judgement, Horsley was to take down the "Nuremberg Files" section of his website. The verdict was later overturned on appeal, and the files returned. Horsley has been forced to change his Internet service provider numerous times due to the site's content, and his website has been hacked on several occasions as well.
In 2001, Horsley announced that he would post cameras outside the entrances of health care providers that perform abortions and post the images.
That same year, self-described terrorist Clayton Lee Waagner, an armed bank robber who had escaped from an Illinois prison, showed up at Horsley's home brandishing a gun. Horsley alleges that Waagner told him that he was stalking and planned to kill 42 abortion clinic workers who were profiled on the website, and presented evidence that he was the author of hundreds of phony anthrax letters that had been sent to abortion clinics and elected officials. Going to the media after his meeting with Waagner brought more attention to Horsley and his website. Waagner was arrested in December 2001, and is now serving a lengthy prison sentence.
With the "Nuremberg Files" gone from the website, Horsley has seen diminished attention from the news media. In an interview in Esquire, Horsley acknowledged taking part in homosexual sex and bestiality with a mule in the 1970s (which he detailed wistfully rather than penitently) and that he pressured two ex-girlfriends to get abortions. His sordid past, displays of pornography on his website (ostensibly to illustrate "moral perversion" in the United States), and penchant for vulgar language in interviews has isolated him somewhat from other radical fundamentalists, including Fred Phelps and Bob Enyart who have criticized him.
On the May 9, 2005, edition of the Alan Colmes Show on talk radio, Alan Colmes sked Horsley about allegations he had had sex with animals:
NH (laughing): "Just because it's printed in the media, people jump to believe it."
AC: "Is it true?"
NH: "Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I..."
AC: "You had sex with animals?"
NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."
AC: "I'm not so sure that that is so."
NH: "You didn't grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?"
AC: "Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?"
NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality... Welcome to domestic life on the farm...You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. You're naive. You know better than that... If it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it."
Horsely website's also includes a graphic of himself standing behind a mule with a caption above him reading "If God would make homosexuals to have anal intercourse, Why not Me and This Cutie?" The website also has a rambling essay written by Horsely on the topic of "Terri Shiavo" (sic)—presumably a misspelling of Terri Schiavo, as well as a copy of the statement of Eric Rudolph upon his plea agreement.
External links
Christiangallery.com official website (http://www.christiangallery.com/)
Creator's Rights Party official website (http://www.tcrp.us/)
The Propagandist (http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=259) - Southern Poverty Law Center report on Horsley
Terrorism Knowledge Base profile of Horsley (http://www.tkb.org/KeyLeader.jsp?memID=29)
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