If Christians get killed at gunpoint because of their faith, does anyone care?
If Thursday’s victims had been singled out because they were black, every left-wing talking head on the planet would be using the Umpqua Community College shootings as evidence of America’s deep-seated racism.
If Thursday’s victims had been singled out because they were Muslims, they’d be blaming Bush, American xenophobia, and anti-Islamic paranoia.
If they’d been targeted because they were Women, Democrat pundits would be screaming about the war on women and the misogyny inherent to our Neanderthal culture.
Yesterday, though, victims were allegedly singled out because they were Christian. ...And we’ve heard nary a peep from the oh-so-compassionate left.
As theNYPost reports:
[He started] asking people one by one what their religion was. ‘Are you a Christian?’ he would ask them, and if you’re a Christian, stand up. And they would stand up and he said, ‘Good, because you’re a Christian, you are going to see God in just about one second.’ And then he shot and killed them,” Stacy Boylen, whose daughter was wounded at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., told CNN.
A Twitter user named@bodhilooney, who said her grandmother was at the scene of the carnage, tweeted that if victims said they were Christian, “then they were shot in the head. If they said no, or didn’t answer, they were shot in the legs.”
Obviously, they’re using this horror to advance their goal of disarming law-abiding U.S. citizens. It is, at least in that way, anexploitable tragedy and they have no intention of letting a good crisis go to waste. So before the bodies could be counted, the ghouls were talking gun control.We even watched as Obama said “this issue should be politicized.”
While it’s nice that he’s finally admitting his habit of politicizing tragedy, he and his gun control cronies continue to willfully miss the point. They’ve certainly politicized the tool used in the attack, but the actual issue -whythis keeps happening - is utterly ignored.
In the specific case of the Oregon shootings, the far left wants to exploit the crime in an effort to push an anti-gun agenda, but they won’t want to talk about the shooter’s beliefs and motives. Mostly, that’s because they agree with his anti-Christian attitude.
No, I’m not saying they want to kill Christians. I am, however, suggesting that the same kind of anti-Christian bigotry the killer allegedly espoused has become a rallying cry for the disaffected, anti-establishment, radical left. In short, the base of the Democrat party despises Christianity, its values, and its practice.
So they’ll downplay this killer’s agenda, and they’ll blame the weapon to advance their own.
They have no interest in a “national discussion” about this monster’s anti-Christian opinions because, by and large, they share them.
The reports are multiplying — the gunman who killed ten people in Roseburg, Ore., yesterday did, in fact, target Christians during his shooting spree. The brother of victim Autumn Vicari told NBC News that the shooter told his victims to stand and asked them whether they were Christians. If they said “yes,” he shot them in the head. “If they said ‘other’ or didn’t answer, they were shot elsewhere in the body, usually the leg.” A similar report came from student Kortney Moore, who was on the scene.
With Christians explicitly targeted for mass murder, are we now going to launch a round of anguished soul-searching about anti-Christian rhetoric? Will we cleanse political discourse of anti-Christian expression? Will militant, angry atheists be universally shamed into silence?
After all, we’re accustomed to National Conversations after mass murders. The horrific 2011 shooting that left six people dead and one congresswoman wounded in Tucson led to a National Conversation about civility — including the widespread and vicious vilification of Sarah Palin — in the absence of any evidence at all that political rhetoric had anything to do with the murders. The racist massacre of a black Bible-study group in Charleston earlier this year led to an extraordinary, sustained burst of commentary on racism, the South, and the Civil War — not to mention the public cleansing of Confederate symbols, a move that included a planned exhumation of Confederate bones and the toppling of Confederate statues.
If recent history is any guide, in the days following an explicitly anti-Christian hate crime, the National Conversation will be mainly about gun control. The unmistakable rise of a particularly contemptuous brand of discourse directed at Christians will be an afterthought in the face of the “real” issue: America’s failure to confiscate guns like Australia. But if the gunman had asked Muslims to stand before shooting them, what would the conversation look like today?
After all, we’re still talking about the brief detention of a young Muslim student who made a clock look like a bomb. Will we talk about anti-Christian bigotry after Roseburg as much as we discussed “Islamophobia” after Ahmed? I doubt it.
In reality, these National Conversations are often disingenuous from the start. No rational person believes that the Tea Party caused the Tucson shooting, yet that didn’t stop the Left from spending weeks browbeating the Right over its political rhetoric. No rational person thinks that a flag flying on the South Carolina capitol grounds caused the Charleston murders, but CNN transformed itself into the Confederate News Network in a weeks-long crusade against symbols of the Old South. White supremacists have long since been rightly banished to the fringes of American life, and making them an even fringier fringe will not have any real-world effect.
While the quest for answers after this shooting likely won’t lead to a National Conversation about Christianity, that doesn’t mean that we all have to brush past yesterday’s realities. I woke up this morning awed by the courage of men and women who stood and affirmed their faith in the face of death itself. Compared to the love and approval of the Creator of the universe, the respect or acknowledgment of the New York Times or the president is meaningless indeed.
Well, here’s another test for those of you who believe that Kim Davis was wrong for refusing to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples.
A while ago we brought you the story of Melissa and Aaron Klein who used to own a bakery in Oregon. The Christian couple ran afoul of the homosexual lobby after they politely declined to bake a cake for a same-sex marriage celebration. Within months of the episode, the Kleins had to shutter their doors because of the pressure homosexual activists had placed on their vendors, and then to make matters worse, they found themselves being judged by the state’s unjust labor commission. When the sham trial concluded, the labor commissioner ordered the Kleins to pay the lesbian couple who had sued them $135K in damages!
$135K for not baking a cake!
After considerable thought and deliberation, the Kleins have decided not to pay the state-ordered damages to the lesbian couple.
The couple has filed an appeal of the state’s ruling, and their lawyers have asked the Bureau of Labor and Industries for a stay in paying the fine until after their appeal is heard, but the liberal activist labor commissioner who ruled against them, Brad Avakian, has denied their stay. Because of the government’s decision to deal unjustly with them, the Kleins have decided not to comply with the order.
In response to questions about the judgment, one of the family’s lawyers said "Our clients do not have a bond or irrevocable letter of credit in place and have no further plans to obtain either one." Another of their lawyers, Anna Harmon added, "These questions delve into matters of (attorney-client) privilege that we aren't at liberty to discuss publicly. There's still ongoing litigation and we can't talk about strategy. "
This has enraged both the liberal oppressors and the homosexual lobby in Oregon and the Labor Commission seems intent on securing their pound of flesh before the appeal is heard. In response to the Klein’s refusal to pay, the state is now pursuing other avenues of forced payment, like property liens or collection of other assets.
To recap here – a couple of years ago the Kleins chose not to bake a cake and the couple was able to go down the street and get a cake from someone else but they were still mad at the Kleins. So the lesbian couple filed a complaint with the government while also reaching out to the homosexual activist community – the two forces combined to destroy the Klein’s business and turn the couple into pariahs. Then, after the Kleins had already been driven out of business, the unjust and immoral labor commissioner, Brad Avakian, decided that they needed to pay the lesbian couple for “damages” incurred in the cake fiasco.
I’d argue that the Kleins are not wrong for standing against a corrupt and unjust government. That the state of Oregon believes it could force some to work for others – even when it violates their religious conviction -- is absurd on its own. But this case gets even worse. Now the government is also saying that it can force Christians who disagree with gay marriage to pay thousands of dollars to homosexuals, simply for not endorsing or agreeing with their lifestyle. The entire case is beyond contemptible, and the government of Oregon’s position on the matter is disgusting.
1 comment:
Now might seem like a good time to some, to speak hate towards the anti Christian movement in this country and all over the world. Instead, I will say how unbelievably grateful I am that God knew me in my mother's womb and called me to be one of His! PRAISE God for those 9 beautiful people that saw worth in the only place it exists. Those 9 brave people were faithful even unto death. I pray we might show the same faithfulness in Life! Let us proclaim the name of Jesus to all we meet.
Post a Comment