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Never mind the quality, feel the bandwidth...
[Late update 1999-03-01 - see below]
In last October's web.scan I focussed on www.christiangallery.com and their "Nuremberg Files" pages. In case you didn't look--and frankly, I recommend that you don't--I'll describe the basic idea again.
Neal Horsley and his anti-abortion 'Christian' friends keep a list of doctors who assist in carrying out abortions. They publish the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the doctors, along with photographs if they can obtain them, on pages styled like "Wanted" posters and decorated with dripping blood. Each page has a lurid list of crimes the person has committed--at least, according to the vigilantes who edit the web site. Each time a doctor was shot and killed by an anti-abortionist, the doctor's name was displayed crossed out. If a doctor was shot but only wounded, the name was listed in gray.
Not everyone was amused by Horsley's work. Planned Parenthood, the Portland Feminist Women's Health Center and four doctors sued the Christian Gallery's authors, accusing them of violating a 1994 law which makes it illegal to incite violence against abortion providers. The defendents claimed that they were simply cataloging the doctors' personal details, ready for the day when they could be tried legally; and of course, they cited their First Amendment rights to free speech.
It seems to me that if they were really just cataloging the information for legal use, they wouldn't have any need to splash it across the web with lurid accusations. Apparently the jury thought similarly, and Horsley and his cronies found themselves on the wrong end of a $107 million legal judgement. Now the courts are trying to decide whether they should issue an injunction to shut down the web site. Horsley's original Internet Service Provider has already dumped him in the wake of the judgement, but he soon found a home thanks to yahoo.com, who host his e-mail address, and plebeian.com and one.net, who host his web site and domain.
Horsley has reportedly said that he'll ignore any injunctions to shut down the site. Remember, this guy is so crazy he wants Georgia to secede from the USA by threatening nuclear war. He now proudly bills the Christian Gallery as "the best known and most visited Christian web site on Earth". Sadly, he might just be right.
It would be nice to imagine that murderous anti-abortionists like Horsley aren't representative of the feelings of any mainstream Christians. Unfortunately, there's evidence to suggest otherwise.
One of my favorite Internet mailing lists is Randy Cassingham's THIS is TRUE, a compendium of bizarre news stories culled from the media. He obviously enjoys the bizarre stuff he digs out as much as I do, and his witticisms and asides make the stories even funnier.
However, some people weren't laughing when he featured an item about the official newspaper of the Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver. The editor of "B.C. Catholic", Paul Schratz, had seemingly made the fatal mistake of writing down his thoughts unedited, when in the November 2nd editorial he wrote:
Talk about mixed feelings. How can anyone help but be pleased that murders of abortionists just might have some positive side effects. Fewer doctors are willing to face the stigma, and now the threat of personal harm, associated with performing abortions.
It just goes to show that our all-powerful and all-loving God can bring good from any evil situation. If there's a positive outcome from immorality, that's the Lord's handiwork. It would be wrong not to notice it.
Schratz's admission that he'd been gloating over the terrorizing of abortion providers didn't exactly win him many friends--but it did win him a mention in "THIS is TRUE". He wrote a contrite apology the following week, explaining that he had simply expressed himself badly. However, he also complained to THIS is TRUE, claiming that he had been quoted out of context. Check out Randy Cassingham's response.
Personally, when I read the original article and the after-the-fact attempt to explain it away, I find the words "Freudian Slip" leaping inexorably to mind.
Also on the subject of irate feedback, I was surprised by the amount of hate mail I got for my recent feature poking fun at the Catholic Church for issuing indulgences to mark the millennium. Even more surprising to me was the number of pieces of mail attempting a serious scholarly critique of my article; I would have thought that it was fairly obvious that it was a joke. A spoof. A satire. An item which contains elements of the truth, but which bends and stretches the truth in humorous exaggeration, for the purpose of amusement and rhetoric. I'm a great believer in using humor to provoke thought and discussion, even if that means overstepping the bounds of good taste. And if you think my article was in poor taste, check out the work of Polish artist Zbigniew Libera.
Anyway, to save anyone else the trouble of writing point-by-point refutations, I'd like to take this opportunity to state the following for the record:
I am fully aware that the article I wrote was not a 100% accurate reflection of Catholic doctrine, and that the Vatican has not in fact set up an e-commerce web site for the sale of indulgences. I apologize for not clearly labelling the article with the word "joke".
Since it seems many people wanted a serious and completely accurate article, I'm working on one for future publication. In the mean time, try BC Catholic (again) for their take on indulgences.
Late update: if you want an explanation of heartwarming Christian humor, try amazon.com's reviews of the latest Family Circus book. If you like that, you'll probably also find The Dysfunctional Family Circus amusing.
The recent web.scan on Elvis worship and Jesus cloning, titled God Save The King, provoked a couple of irate responses. I also received a pointer to the Elton John worship page.
On a somewhat less tasteful note, I also managed to find a copy of Elvis's death certificate, and an FBI file revealing that Elvis criticized The Beatles for their "suggestive music".
Finally, I can't help mentioning Jerry Falwell's "Liberty Journal", and the "Parents Alert" informing concerned Christians that one of the Teletubbies, Tinky-Winky, appears to be gay. (Keep reading the page for comments on the evils of nudity in animated Disney movies.)
In a confusing response to the resulting derision, Falwell's personal web site contains a statement explaining that Jerry Falwell himself did not claim that Tinky Winky was gay--followed by a press release from Jerry Falwell, in which he refuses to accept statements that Tinky-Winky is not "role-modeling the gay lifestyle".
Religious people seem to have a problem with television. The Taleban movement in Afghanistan even went as far as to ban it outright last year. But my favorite response to the whole Teletubby thing? Boston store DAPY put up a sign saying simply "Don't Ask, Don't Teletubby".
That's it from me, I'm off to watch Disney videos frame by frame to find the dirty bits.
mathew
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