"Religious" Bombings Multiply

"Be-lieve or be be-headed," a virtual motto among early Christian and Islamic warlords, once again threatens citizens worldwide. In the United States, marking the 24th birthdate of the U.S. Supreme Court's free-choice decision, (Rowe-vs.Wade) certain fundamentalist terrorists have returned to violence as a ploy, intimidating Planned Parenthood facilities and medical clinics.

From Algeria to Oklahoma, Anti-Secular and "Pro-Life" bombers are on the march to prove, as one critic says, that those who love their enemies are also willing to kill them. "Pro-lifers are also Pro-death, if a zealot's mal-interpretation of theology seems to call for it," announces Marc Tietig, a social justice activist.

In Algeria fundamentalists opposing the nation's secular government invaded a neighborhood near the capital city, decapitating villagers, placing their severed heads on sticks as their way of calling attention to the "need" for more pious "religious" commitment. Moslems seeking a fundamentalist religious government have thus far made good on threats to stealth-bomb their way through the holy fasting month of Ramadan. Young men are now policing the streets of Algiers to prevent a rash of car bombings wherein countless innocents have been slaughtered. During the first half of the Ramadan month alone over 200 people have been murdered, reportedly on behalf of Allah.

Investigators now believe that the two-part bombing of an Atlanta free-choice clinic--in which authorities who arrived at the scene were wounded-- may have been timed to put federal investigators in harm's way. Within the same timeframe a similar clinic was bombed in Tulsa, Oklahoma and while Pro-Birthers rallied recently in the nation's capital, a small explosive detonated near a downtown clinic. No one in either Tulsa or Washington, D.C. was killed, though an exploding device inflicted minor wounds on a passerby in Washington. Such bombings, though threats have been regular, have been fewer during the past year, following a barrage of negative publicity for "Pro-Life" religionists after the murders of free-choice clinic workers and doctors in Florida and Massachusetts.

The anger of high-ranking American officials seems to echo words spoken by similar officials in Algeria. "The American people will not tolerate your cowardly crusade," said Vice-president Al Gore at a luncheon held at the venerable Mayflower Hotel. Gore accused organizations that invoke religion to justify violence as guilty of an "appalling act of hypocrisy."

Badpuppy's executive editor, a guest on the Stan Solomon Show, an Indianapolis talk-radio program reaching seven mid-west states, accused fundamentalists of inciting similar acts of violence against gay men and lesbians. He charged that well-known televangelists repeatedly invoke the death penalty, quoting the Book of Leviticus (20:30). "These so-called religious men," he also told Florida's Today's Billy Cox, "are guilty of inciting hate-crimes." On a similar program in Louisiana, fundamentalist call-ins wondered if the editor was questioning God's sacred law. "These Old Testament laws were canceled by Jesus," weren't they?" he replied. "and I seem to recall something about casting the first stone."