I have to echo Robert Stacy McCain in expressing great gratitude and respect to The New Republic‘s James Kirchick. Kirchick, an assistant editor at TNR who is also a contributing writer for The Advocate, is a liberal Democrat and practicing homosexual who had the integrity to write an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal declaring, “The Religious Right Didn’t Kill George Tiller,” and calling out his fellow liberals for their mendacious and invidious comparison of pro-life evangelicals to Islamic jihadists:
But if the reactions to the death of Tiller mean anything, the “Christian Taliban,” as conservative religious figures are often called, isn’t living up to its namesake. If “Christianists” were anything like actual religious fascists they would applaud Tiller’s murder as a “heroic martyrdom operation” and suborn further mayhem.
Radical Islamists revel in death. Just witness the videos that suicide bombers record before they carry out their murderous task or listen to the homicidal exhortations of extremist imams. Murder—particularly of the unarmed and innocent—is a righteous deed for these people. The manifestos of Islamic militant groups are replete with paeans to killing infidels. When a suicide bomb goes off in Israel, Palestinian terrorist factions compete to claim responsibility for the carnage.
There is no appreciable number of people in this country, religious Christians or otherwise, who support the murder of abortion doctors. The same cannot be said of Muslims who support suicide bombings in the name of their religion.
I greatly appreciate his willingness to come out and make this point. For all that Kirchick doesn’t much care for us conservative evangelicals (understandably, I will admit), he clearly has a sense of perspective on the matter that most of his colleagues in the media willfully do not have:
I hold no brief for the religious right, and its views on homosexuality in particular offend (and affect) me personally. But it’s precisely because of my identity that I consider comparisons between so-called Christianists (who seek to limit my rights via the ballot box) and Islamic fundamentalists (who seek to limit my rights via decapitation) to be fatuous.
Read the whole thing—it’s an excellent piece. Yes, there are those who attach themselves to the pro-life cause as a way of justifying their destructive, nihilistic desires and providing a channel for their anger and hatred; but then, there are those who join the animal-rights movement or write for Playboy for the same reason. You can’t judge a movement by the most extreme folks who claim to be acting on its behalf, or else I’d be justified in arguing (on the basis of the now-pulled Playboy piece referenced in that link) that all liberal men want to rape conservative women, something which is clearly false.
The truth is, there is no room in the pro-life movement for people who believe in killing abortionists, and there never has been; but those of us who are pro-life cannot thereby stop would-be murderers from claiming hatred of abortion justifies their actions and choice of victims. All we can say is that anyone who does so hasn’t been listening to what we’re actually saying.
Nor is this an empty statement on my part; pro-life leaders have long recognized that there are those who would use the cause to justify violence, and have long been working to prevent that and explain the evil of it. (That might explain why, overall, there have been so few cases of violence against the abortion industry, relatively speaking.) For instance, almost fifteen years ago, Paul J. Hill, who had been defrocked and excommunicated by two different (conservative) Presbyterian denominations for his extremism, shot and killed a Florida abortionist and his security guard, wounding the guard’s wife; he was sentenced to death, a sentence which was carried out nine years later. In justifying himself, he argued that “Whatever force is legitimate in defending a born child is legitimate in defending an unborn child.”
First Things took his actions and his argument seriously enough to publish a symposium that December in which sixteen pro-life leaders and theologians laid out in detail the reasons why killing abortionists only compounds the evil of abortion. (Robert George, who made his position on this matter crystal clear this week, took that opportunity to write a satirical paragraph on the issue instead.) Anyone in any doubt as to whether Scott Roeder is in any way representative of the pro-life movement should take the time to read it and be disabused of their false perception.
(My thanks to Presbyterians Pro-Life for their statement on the Tiller murder which reminded me of the First Things piece.)