The US appears to be sliding further and further into the realms of religious insanity; not only have we gotten to the stage where a third of Virginian voters genuinely believe that Obama is the antichrist, but now a judge has permitted 51 year old Scott Roeder, who shot an abortion doctor in the head last May, to plead to a jury that he believed that he was justified in his actions and should only be convicted of manslaughter instead of murder.
Let's just clarify this for you, because we need to be clear on this issue. The judge is allowing him to try explain that this was not a cold-blooded killing on the basis that an unprovable religion with an unprovable god and a core text that even Catholic scholars admit is piecemeal says that abortion is a sin. Now, I'm no expert, but isn't that like letting Jeffrey Dahmer appeal that he was really just a cannibal and a necrophiliac, so it was excusable to want to kill people as his personal beliefs justified it? Yes, he was insane, but so is anyone who believes in things that aren't real. Sorry, religious folk, but just because millions of other idiots believe in your fantasy bullshit doesn't mean that it's true; it just shows how many ignorant, uneducated and gullible people there are out there.
Insanity should never be allowed to influence a court verdict; the laws are written, they are carved in stone. Even in their own Bible, Christians, no matter how fundamentalist, are commanded not to kill (although, in typically religious fashion, the priority of this is shunted way down below "Don't worship any other gods but me", "Don't take my name in vain" and "Always honour the Sabbath", so it's no wonder they don't see murder as being quite that important). If they break the law and shoot anyone in the head because of something they think their imaginary friend said, they should never be allowed to try and use this psychosis as an excuse. I hark back to the blog I wrote the other day about Ireland introducing a blasphemy law and repeat what I said there; namely, if people want to have their religion taken seriously and to allow courts to take it into account, they must present the case for the validity of it in a court of law; they must provide evidence for the existence of their god, and prove beyond a doubt that they are, in fact right, calling deities as witnesses and subjecting their claims to historical and scientific scrutiny. Then, and ONLY then, should courts allow them to use religious reasoning to justify their crimes.
The implications of this are worrying; the US is already becoming seen as a nation in which fundamentalist Christians are gaining more and more influence over the media, local government, and even one of the main political parties, the Republicans. An increasing number of stories are published where atheist kids are victimised for not saying prayers at school despite there being a very well-defined part of the constitution that says that the state and the church should remain seperate; where abortion doctors and nurses live in fear of their lives in some areas from Christian violence (and in the above case, sadly, their fears are well justified - poor George Tiller had previously been shot in each arm in 1993 by some other religious cunt, and his clinic was bombed a few years earlier); and where the braindead lunacy that is creationism is actually being taken seriously by teaching staff and politicians. What this judge is doing by allowing Roeder to testify is giving his insane religious views validity in a legal arena, and that really is a slippery slope. It opens the doors for all kinds of savagery that can be explained away and justified in religious terms; killed a gay in a hate crime? No problem, 5 years for manslaughter instead of life for murder because you did it in a justifiable religious rage. Killed a shop worker who was working on a sunday? No worries, it's in the Bible so you can justify it.
The awful thing is that the US knows it has a problem. Frank Shaeffer, one of the prime movers in the Christian Right in the early '80's, was interviewed last year in the wake of the mindless mudslinging of the Republicans claiming that Obama wasn't even an American, and had some very interesting things to say on the subject. Read the interview, as it shows an interesting point of view from someone who was at one point enmeshed in that environment. Tellingly, he feels that the Republicans need to stop pandering to fundamentalist Christians (who he collectively refers to as America's village idiot) and ignore them, stop giving them validity and influence in the political sphere. His views tally with those of many democrats and, I suspect, not a few Republicans too. However, whereas Democrats are more likely to be seen trying to break free of these ideaologies, Republicans do have a distinct tendency, like most right wing parties, to play on any sentiments that they think will bring on more power. As Schaeffer wisely says, "the evangelical subculture has rotted the brain of the United States...It's fed red meat by buffoons like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and other people who are just not terribly bright themselves and they are talking to even stupider people."
So, stop this insane, murderous little prick from trying to be able to excuse himself from murder by trying to convince everyone that his shared psychosis says it's OK; slam the cunt in chains and throw him in a shitty penitentiary for life for murder, which is what he did according to the law of the USA. We live in the 21st century, and it's about time civilised countries stopped listening to medieval cretins who still think the Earth is only 6000 years old despite all the evidence to the contrary out of a sense of not wanting to offend them. Fuck them. If they don't want to be offended, they can choose to stop believing in fairy stories and start learning about reality. Face facts - if these fuckwits were left in charge, we'd still be in caves and making a fire would be a sin punishable by stoning.
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