"Ex-Gay" Leader Of Christian Group Suspect in Wife's Murder

The parade of hypocrisy, delusion and evil on the part of "godly Christians" just seems to continue non-stop.  News reports out of Missouri bring perhaps the most bizarre story yet: an "ex-gay" ordering the murder of his wife after involving her in sex orgy rituals and having sex with male members of his "prayer group" which appears to be affiliated with the International House of Prayer, a "charismatic movement" headed by the virulently anti-gay Pastor Lou Engle.  Frankly, I'm not totally surprised inasmuch as anyone who has claimed to be "ex-gay' is suffering from delusions and has obvious psychological/emotional health issues.  Here are excerpts from the Kansas City Star concerning Tyler Deaton, supposed "ex-gay" and his "Christian" cult:

Tyler Deaton gathered his followers one more time to his wife’s Kansas City funeral. It was Nov. 6, and they wept for Bethany Deaton, dead at 27. They chose this spot, a Longview Lake funeral home, looking out its picture windows on the same serene water where, by all appearances, Bethany had gone to take her own life a week before.

While Deaton spoke in calm and assuring tones, at least one of his closest inner circle apparently was starting to come undone.  Three days later, investigators say, 23-year-old Micah Moore would go to police and uncork the terrible secrets that allegedly occurred over several months at a Grandview home where Deaton and other members of his religious group lived.

Witnesses told of a clan of young adults making sex part of their religious experience, of men in the group sexually assaulting Bethany over months, and of Deaton’s role as their “spiritual leader.”  But Moore’s darkest admission, according to court records, was that Deaton feared Bethany was about to reveal the group’s secrets.

Moore confessed that he had murdered Bethany and tried to make it look like suicide, and, according to court documents, he said Deaton told him to do it.

Deaton and several others graduated in May 2009 and migrated to Kansas City to continue their religious exploration at the International House of Prayer’s booming school and ministry for missionaries. Bethany went, too. The parent who saw them as innocent followers watched them go as young people of strong faith, imagining lives as missionaries.

One of his group’s stark positions on Scripture was that homosexuality was wrong. Deaton’s stance against it weighed heavily because members said he had “struggled with being gay.”
“He struggled with it, but he overcame it,” a member of his group at Southwestern said. “It was a victory.”

Bethany was sexually assaulted over a period of months while drugged with someone else’s prescription anti-psychotic, witnesses in the house told authorities. This was happening, the witnesses alleged, in a period of time that male members in the house were involved in sexual relationships with Deaton, one saying it was part of a “religious experience.”

The statements unfolded with Moore allegedly saying that people in the group feared Bethany was about to tell her therapist about the assaults, and that he killed her with the plastic bag over her head at Longview Lake.  He did it, his statement to detectives said, because Deaton told him he knew Moore “had it in him to do it.”

Things Christianists Hate: Gays, Bi-sexual Womenn and Men Who Play Video Games

I try not to be too snarky in my posts, but at times the Christianists and the parasitic opportunists who play them for money make it ever so hard. The untethered insanity that they pass of as religious devotion is just too, too crazy to let me hold my tongue. Lou Engle - who I personally think needs major psychiatric intervention NOW - is a case in point. As are his fellow loons and theocrats who demonstrated in Sacramento, California against gay marriage. In their prayers, they also prayed for bisexual women and middle aged men who play video games. WTF is with men playing video games? Seriously, at times I don't what planet these folks are from - perhaps a planet called Moron?

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Not surprisingly, joining Engle in the batshittery was KKK loving, not so closeted racist Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. What frightens me about such people is that far too many Americans fail to realize that these individuals and their mentally disturbed followers will not rest until there is a theocracy in this country. That's not to say they will ever be successful in the endeavor, but I fear that they will become more radical (and violent) as their agenda fails and as a result increasingly live up to the name "Christian Taliban." I also cannot help but wonder what's missing and/or broken in these people's lives that they obsess over denying rights to people they don't even know and who merely want to live their lives with basic security under the civil laws. Here are highlights from the Sacramento Bee on the religious based insanity:
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Summoned by conservative Christian leaders from around the country, thousands gathered on the west steps of the Capitol on Saturday for 12 hours of solemn prayer, gospel and Christian rock – and repeated calls to end abortion and gay marriage.
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Much of the day was devoted to speeches about God, love and morality, but there was considerable blurring of the line between religion and politics. Among the speakers was Tony Perkins, a leader of the religious right and head of the Washington lobbying group the Family Research Council. . . . "If (the ruling) stands, in one generation we will have gone from banning the Bible in public schools to banning religious beliefs in society," Perkins said.
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The event's organizer, conservative Kansas City evangelist Lou Engle, urged the crowd to "break the altar of homosexual marriage."
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Speakers decried what they called the rampant immorality sweeping America. The crowd was asked to pray for women who'd had abortions, clergy addicted to pornography, bisexual women – even middle-aged men who play video games.
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The Sacramento event began with a four-hour religious concert Friday night at Raley Field. On Saturday, organizers planned for a crowd of 50,000, lining up portable toilets alongside Capitol Mall and installing video screens several blocks from the stage. But while the area immediately adjacent to the stage was packed, the mall remained largely empty. The California Highway Patrol declined to make a crowd estimate.
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[T]he presence of such heavyweights as Perkins put a political cast on the day. Engle's website posted a video greeting from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a once and potentially future candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, urging people to come to Sacramento. Huckabee tore into Walker's Proposition 8 ruling on the video.

Congressman Randy Forbes Appears with Anti-Gay Christian Nutcase

As a former Republican, I continually shake my head in disbelief at the lunacy that is becoming more and more a hallmark of today's GOP. Moreover, elected Republican officials increasingly act as if they have undergone some sort of "Stepford Wife" treatment that has turned them into robots for the nuttiest of the Christianists. A case in point is Congressman Randy Forbes (at right) from nearby Chesapeake, Virginia. I have know Randy since the days the two of us were classmates in law school. Never in my wildest dreams back then would I have ever believed that Randy would have become a Christo-fascist who has no regard for the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of religion for all. Yet, he is increasing in bed with the worse elements of the lunatic far Christian Right. I can help but wonder what the Hell happened to him. Here are some highlights from Alternet on the gather of GOP members of Congress with nutcase, Lou Engle:

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Last night's segment of the Rachel Maddow show provided footage, which first appeared at Talk To Action, of a Christian evangelist who is quite influential but also little known to secular Americans: Lou Engle, founder of TheCall. The Maddow segment highlighted an event noted a few days ago by RightWingWatch, an anti-health care reform "Prayercast," held by the Family Research Council, led by emergent, highly militant leaders of the Christian right such as Lou Engle and also by Republican senators Brownback and DeMint, and GOP Representatives Bachmann and Forbes.
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The GOP fab-four has scored a trifecta - Lou Engle is opposed to health care reform and legal abortion, and his organization TheCall played a major, if little noticed, role in passing California's Proposition 8.
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Is the GOP becoming the party of violent Christian martyrdom ? Apparently, Jim DeMint, Sam Brownback, Michelle Bachmann and Randy Forbes weren't deterred by the fact that Lou Engle has publicly made statements which resemble rhetoric deployed during the 1990's, by leaders of the anti-abortion movement, that helped incite domestic terrorism. But they weren't alone:
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Engle, who has publicly called for acts of Christian martyrdom, could be found last summer blessing and anointing Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee at a Virginia Beach megachurch. Engle represents a religious right tendency that had become so dominant that known potentates such as James Dobson and Tony Perkins travel to Engle's TheCall events
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Engle's religious movement has also played a significant role in inspiring, and even organizing, legislators who pushed the pending, draconian anti-gay legislation in Uganda that some have described as a "kill the gays" bill.
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I sincerely hope that some of Randy Forbes' constituents start to wake up and demand an explanation why Forbes is hanging out with those in favor of domestic terrorism.

TheCall and Christian Extremists Declare War - Part 2

A reader left a comment that perhaps I am "too paranoid" in terms of the threat posed by Christian Right extremists and the prospect that some of their minions might resort to violence either at the unofficial bidding of the professional Christian set or as rogue independent operatives. Lest readers forget, in my by gone Republican days I met a few of these extremist types face to face: Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed and numerous Christian Coalition functionaries for example and some of them were pretty frightening.

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Whether they and those like them would intentionally incite actual violence is open to debate. That their rhetoric might be construed by the unbalanced and fanatics as a green light to act is less open to debate. One need only look at the relatively recent murder of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller and the incitement that preceded it to realize that words do have consequences and that there are Christianist with martyr ideologies. On the issue of abortion, Randall Terry continues to speak out in language that seems to encourage violence. Here are some highlights as reported by Think Progress:
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Randall Terry, founder of the right-wing extremist group Operation Rescue, warns that his supporters may engage in violent acts of terrorism unless Congress prohibits abortion services from being covered in the new health reform legislation:

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[T]e sheer horror and frustration of such an evil policy will lead some people to absolutely refuse to pay their taxes. And I believe — if my reading of history from America and around the world is correct — that there are others who will be tempted to acts of violence. “If the government of this country tramples the faith and values of its citizens, history will hold those in power responsible for the violent convulsions that follow.”

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Terry is probably the first public figure to raise terrorism as a potential response to a health bill which allows Americans to keep the same access to reproductive care that they currently enjoy.

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I'd rather be guilty of a little paranoia rather than be blind to the fact that violence is a possibility when dealing with those to whom the rights of others and freedom of religion are meaningless. I've been threatened by an aide to a GOP Congressman in the past and the players in that instance were far less crazy than Terry and extreme Christianists like him.

TheCall and Christian Extremists Declare War

Fellow Bilerico blogger, Patricia Nell Warren, has an interesting - one might say even frightening - and timely post on the growing possibility of far right Christian religious terrorists in this country. It is a long post but worth a full read because too often we discount just how fanatical some of the extreme Christianist organizations are becoming. While there is much attention given to Islamic extremists, little focus is given to equally threatening Christianist extremists. Worse yet, the main stream media continually resists exposing the insanity and level of hatred of these "Christian" groups - using the term Christian very loosely given how the Gospel message has been perverted - out of both laziness and some false fear of being accused of being anti-religion. These people DO constitute a clear and present danger that too many people ignore. Here are some post highlights"

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Just this morning, an announcement went out from TheCall, asking its list of followers to join a national prayer-and-fasting movement aimed at "the spiritual darkness of the homosexual agenda" and the "restraining" of our "ideology." TheCall is not just another fringy extremist church group -- we need to pay serious attention to this move it's making. Lou Engle, founder and leader of TheCall, is not the familiar old bible-thumping enemy like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson. A major figure in the New Apostolic Reformation that I've been writing about, Engle has close ties with the violent anti-abortion movement called The Army of God, who stirred up such a frenzied atmosphere of attacks on abortion clinics that they finally incited someone to assassinate the well-known doctor George Tiller.

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Now Engle's . . . . movement also calls for acts of "martyrdom" -- meaning followers who are willing to commit violent acts, including murder, who will willingly go to prison or be shot down by police, so they can rid the world of the movement's "enemies," namely prominent abortionists and LGBT leaders and the like.

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TheCall's message (which is below) has to be read in its entirety, to get the full fanatical sweep of what Engle is calling for. So I've copied it verbatim from the email I saw. In my opinion, we will now see the violent Army-of-God-type of inciting turned openly against the LGBT community. These extremists are nothing like the conventional enemies we've gotten used to fighting. . . . essentially a form of religion-motivated domestic terrorism that is apparently being winked at by conservative American government and law enforcement who don't have the brains to see how dangerous it is.

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Here is Lou Engle's email message to his faithful this morning: . . . 40 years ago the Stonewall Riots of New York City, marked the beginning of the homosexual revolution. 40 years later we are coming to the ripening and legal empowering of the movement. Apart from God there is no way of turning this back. . . . . I believe the Lord wants to raise up a "Stonewall" of intercession, a prayer stand if you will, expressed in Ezekiel 22:30 "I looked for a man to stand in the gap to build up a wall before me ..."

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The Christianists can deny the danger that extremists within their ranks pose all they want, but the report released by the Department of Homeland Security back in April said it all. The reality is that these people are dangerous and need to be taken seriously for the risk they pose to the religious freedom of other citizens as well as the rule of law. Among other things, the report found:

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Anti-government conspiracy theories and “end times” prophecies could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition, and weapons. These teachings also have been linked with the radicalization of domestic extremist individuals and groups in the past, such as violent Christian Identity organizations and extremist members of the militia movement.

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Unlike the earlier period, the advent of the Internet and other information age technologies since the 1990s has given domestic extremists greater access to information related to bomb-making, weapons training, and tactics, as well as targeting of individuals, organizations, and facilities, potentially making extremist individuals and groups more dangerous and the consequences of their violence more severe.

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.