Portraits of Zealots

As more information on Scott Roeder (pictured at left) - the shooter who shot Dr. George Tiller to death Sunday morning - comes comes out, the picture is increasingly one of a religious fanatic of the worse kind. Unfortunately, Roeder is more representative of the Christianist far right than most Americans want to admit. These people are obsessed with unborn fetuses but frankly do not give a damn about living humans as typically evidence by tax cuts that would de-fund children's health care and other programs they deem socialist/communist. I am not a supporter of abortion - but believe it should be legal and combined with nationwide comprehensive sex education and other measures that would significantly reduce abortion as a contraceptive measure - but I oppose the terrorist tactics of the extreme "pro-life" crowd. Belief Net has some information on Roeder that is most telling:

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Anti-abortion and anti-government, Scott Roeder appears to be a bomb with a short fuse. The Wichita Eagle has the best profile up so far:

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The suspect in custody in connection with the slaying of abortion doctor George Tiller was a member of an anti-government group in the 1990s and a staunch opponent of abortion. Johnson County sheriff's officials said Scott P. Roeder, 51, of Merriam, was arrested on I-35 near Gardner about three hours after the shooting. In the rear window of the 1993 blue Ford Taurus that he was driving was a red rose, a symbol often used by abortion opponents.

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Those who know Roeder said he believed that killing abortion doctors was an act of justifiable homicide. "I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City abortion opponent who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. "I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn."

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Among the publications Roeder subscribed to is Prayer and Action News, which seems to be linked to the radical anti-abortion Army of God. The magazine once printed the AOG Manual, which makes the case for killing abortion providers. Here are highlights from Spiritual Politics which look at the publication's reaction to Tiller's murder:

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At the top of its website is this reaction to the killing of George Tiller: A great day for unborn children scheduled to be murdered by Babykilling Abortionist George Tiller. Now those children lives are spared from the Kansas BabyButcher, George Tiller.George Tiller reaped what he sowed and is now in eternal hell. Psalm 55:15 Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them. Further down, the website lionizes Paul Hill as "American Hero." Hill was executed in Florida in 2003 for the murder of two abortion providers in Pensacola in 1994.

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Then there's Lou Engle who organized "The Call," the anti-gay, anti-gay marriage rally in San Diego last year who has been ecouraging "Christian martyrs" in opposition of abortion:

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Rick Warren and Randall Terry are not the only high-profile leaders on the religious right who employ inflammatory antiabortion rhetoric. Footage from TheCall San Diego, taken November 1, 2008 by video documentarist Michael W. Wilson [author of Silhouette City] shows Engle and his disciples exhorting a Qualcomm stadium crowd to acts of Christian martyrdom against legalized abortion: rhetoric that serve as thinly veiled exhortation towards violent acts of terrorism against abortion clinics and abortion providers.

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The simple truth is that these Christian extremists are a clear and presnt danger to medical providers and abortion counseling services and, on a larger front, to the religious freedom of other Americans.