Enabling murder

We reported awhile back on a very obvious hoax that was perpetrated by the same little group that tried for five+ years to stop Montgomery County’s updated sexuality curriculum from being implemented. What the group did was to put one of their men in a dress and send him into a women’s locker room at a health club, in order to create a media event. One of the leaders of the group, Theresa Rickman, was conveniently present in the lobby of the club at the time, and was lying to Channel 7 within the hour about how Montgomery County’s new law would allow men to legally enter ladies’ rooms to leer at and assault “women and children.” (The law actually changes nothing with regard to public restrooms – there is not now, nor has there ever been, a law regulating bathroom use. There is nothing stopping men from entering women’s rooms right now, but the group blithely ignores this inconvenient fact.)

Theresa’s group howled that they had nothing to do with this stunt, and Channel 7 was insulted, just insulted at the suggestion that they had fallen for something so laugh-out-loud stupid.

Well, now Theresa Rickman has admitted through a verbal slip that her group was behind the hoax. In an interview with “Concerned Woman for America” Matt Barber, she says this when asked to explain the “incident”:


Yes, we do know. And we also know that her group had to fabricate this hoax because of another inconvenient fact: There has never been an actual incident like this, anywhere, ever. Thirty-eight percent of the U.S. population lives in a jurisdiction with legislation that protects people from discrimination on the basis of gender identity, and there has never been a single case involving a man in a dress entering a women’s locker room under the pretext of being trangender.

The raw hate expressed by the people in this interview is really remarkable. I’m not going to encourage people to listen to it, but you can find the link to the audio here at Teach the Facts. Jim had the fortitude to transcribe some of it, although as he says, it makes him sick.

They are especially angry that there is a very smart, accomplished transgender woman who is employed as a senior aide to one of the Council members, and can’t resist venting their rage toward her with language such as “still a man,” and “she-male.” These speakers honestly come across as a gaggle of spiteful, venomous little schools girls, competing to dehumanize an outcast peer. I wonder if it makes them feel any better. For her part, their target has tolerated this verbal abuse for years with humor, intelligence and grace.

Every morning I have to delete the garbage that gets caught in this blog’s spam filter, much of which is porn. The language being used by these “Concerned Women” (Patricia Phillips’ group) is the same language used in porn spam. Grown-ups who expect their ideas to be taken seriously by other grown-ups do not use language like this.

CWA, like the even more potty-mouthed Traditional Values Coalition, is one of those organizations that uses the silly meme “love the sinner, hate the sin” while simultaneously using rhetoric that strips the humanity from the people they wish to eliminate. Sometimes it is more clever and subtle, but increasingly it is mocking and violent (Traditional Values Coalition is monitored as a hate group by the FBI). For example, Mike Adams, a writer for Townhall.com, frequently engages in “humor” about violence toward gay and transgender people:

I agree with you that young boys experiencing gender identity confusion have special needs. I have given the matter considerable thought. I think a young boy who thinks he’s a girl needs a serious a@@ whipping. Parents who hear a child whining that he feels like a girl trapped in a boy’s body should attend to his needs by whipping his a@@ immediately.

More recently, he posted an article about the Montgomery County fracas in which he refers to members of our community as “transgendered ‘persons.'” That’s right: “Persons” is literally in scare quotes.

Why are we talking about this? I haven’t said much about Lawrence King, although I did refer to his murder here, and specifically the eerie silence about it in the mainstream media compared to other incidents of school violence. There is another deafening silence that must be addressed, and that is the silence of the so-called “Christians” who supposedly “love” people like Lawrence and, one would think, would be the first to condemn the ignorance and confusion that led a fourteen year old boy to shoot him in the back of the head. Timothy Kincaid asks where they are:

I have searched and as best I can find, in the days since King’s murder, the sole discussion about this tragedy from Christian media has been limited to a single CNS article by Susan Jones titled “Hate Crime Charges Against Teen Who Shot ‘Feminine’ Boy.” This, incidentally is from a media source that actively opposes hate crimes legislation.

At no point did the article indicate that it was heinous, immoral, or even slightly inappropriate that Lawrence King was murdered for his orientation. But it did declare that “homosexual activists have seized on Lawrence King case” and that “some conservative groups say California has gone overboard when it comes to ‘sexual indoctrination’ in the schools.”

I think that our young killer is probably well aware that it’s not acceptable to go get a gun and shoot another person. He just thought he could make an exception in the case of a person who didn’t conform to norms of gender expression. And here are some examples of why he might have thought that. From the lovable, loving Ken Hutcherson:


And then there’s language like this, posted to the aforementioned Mike Adams column:

“Deviants, perverts and weirdos of unimagined stripes get pampered.”

“My only hope would be that if one of these perverts tries anything to one of those gals, I hope she is armed and knows how to use the weapon.”

“Used to be a time when homosexuality and the transgenders where deemed mental and could be treated.”

“I predict we will see more violence due to a law such as this when we see the freaks on display.”

“I agree with Adams. They need the crap beaten out of them. Better to be beaten out off it than to go so far as to chop off your hoo hoo dilly.”

“Our founding fathers were talking about POLITICAL minorities, not faggots, in-betweens, don’t knows, etc.”

The oh-so pious Prison Fellowship Ministries (currently receiving a full tax exemption from our County Government) is deeply complicit in this murderous climate. Anne Morse, a ghost-writer for Chuck Colson, links to Mike Adams’ column in a frankly ridiculous post to her PFM blog, and both Morse and the dishonest blog administrator insist that they “don’t see anything wrong with it.” Today, Loudoun’s favorite felon posted a commentary and radio ad that repeats the same two lies: The locker room hoax and the fabricated claim that the law gives “men…full access to a woman’s restroom and locker room.”

From someone who claims to have written a book explaining “what Christianity is really about and why it is a religion of hope, redemption, and beauty,” I would expect better. Instead of engaging in some badly needed self-criticism and making the condemnation of real violence their highest priority, these supposedly Christian leaders are bleating about a non-existent “problem” of men invading ladies’ locker rooms, demanding the right to remove books from public school libraries, and, most incredibly, unconscionably of all, claiming that concerns about the safety of GLBT youth are nothing but complaints about “routine verbal insults.” This last author goes on to quote another anti-gay activist urging parents to demand “repeal all of these laws that violate our rights and beliefs.”

Sorry, but I see no evidence that your “beliefs” have any room for the right of our families to enjoy physical safety. Please demonstrate to me otherwise. Then, maybe we can talk.


7 Responses to Enabling murder

  1. Pingback: mental health » Blog Archive » Enabling murder

  2. David says:

    Thank you, Doug. I must say, it was not an easy thing to write about.

  3. Pingback: Equality Loudoun » A remarkably good question

  4. Jack says:

    “At no point did the article indicate that it was heinous, immoral, or even slightly inappropriate that Lawrence King was murdered for his orientation. At no point did the article indicate that it was heinous, immoral, or even slightly inappropriate that Lawrence King was murdered for his orientation.”

    Murder is inappropriate for ANY reason.

    “Hutcherson went on to say, ‘If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I’d rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end.'”

    I open doors for men all the time, and I’d love for Hutcherson to try to take my arm off — I’m 230 pounds, strong as an ox, and just about as smart. 😉

    (And you can tell Hutcherson it should be, “if I were in a drugstore….” The subjunctive mood is required here.

  5. Pingback: Equality Loudoun » Ignorance kills

  6. David says:

    This is really a distinction without a difference, as the SPLC provides training to federal law enforcement on recognizing and monitoring internet based hate groups. If there were any groups being monitored by the SPLC that were not on an FBI watch list, that would be very surprising. Anti-gay advocacy groups are a dime a dozen, and they are obviously not all classified as hate groups. The term “hate group” may be used casually in many cases, but it means something more specific when the SPLC uses it. My understanding of the term is that a group has exhibited a pathology that goes above and beyond simple bigotry, and that indicates movement toward becoming a threat to public safety (if it isn’t already a violent group, that is).

    The FBI talks about the psychopathology involved, and this would, I imagine, be what they are monitoring groups for. A little research into TVC should make it clear why there would be concern, given these criteria.

    Anyway, I doubt that the FBI publishes a list of the “groups” that are being monitored. Their list would be considerably more comprehensive than SPLC’s since we know that they have monitored people who have anti-war gatherings in their homes, people who stage protests of Honey-Baked Ham, etc.

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