"He That Lives By The Sword........."

By Number Six

Sunday, February 05, 2006 at 02:14 PM

Certain news stories tend to go far beyond explanation, some tend to slide past The Twilight Zone....

Some just sicken me no end.

It's on the news: The kid who shot up that bar is dead, but not until he also murdered a police officer during a traffic stop. During a shootout, he was shot during an attempt to arrest him.

""When he wrecked he started firing at our officer and a state police officer and the officers returned fire," said Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery.

Police shot Robida twice in the head, said Bristol, Mass., District Attorney Paul Walsh Jr."

And died at the hospital, too.

The kid had a website, according to Page One Q, a site apparently about the boy's fixation with Nazis and Nazism.

And I'm already reminded of Timothy McVeigh, his bloody attack in OKC, and how McVeigh was allegedly inspired by the hate-generated The Turner Diaries.

It's almost too easy to sit back and say, "Yeah, this is what happens when we let homophobia become acceptable." I'm not defending homophobics, but, not all of them decide...to take the McVeigh method to heart.

With Robida dead, all we have now is an investigation that's still underway, theories, and a lot of probabilities. The entire truth will now become cannon fodder for yet another made-for-cable piece....if there's any truth to be garnered.

And yet, I worry about things like this no end. Is this part of the agenda of The Religious Right? If, like me, you've actually listened to some of these hate-chewing preachers on shortwave, it seems all too true. They really believe it. That's so sickening.

Too, there's a loose math formula around somewhere, that states when X number of folks think Y stuff, then Z of them will act upon it, hence, what we get at times, like someone being drug to death behind a pickup, like gays being surrounded by youths and beaten to death, on and on and on and on. Most, luckily, do not act on their ideas, but, all it takes it one to do it, and we're left with a horror that didn't need to happen.

Thus, yes, I do believe we can say it: This is a side-effect of religious fanaticism. Homophobia is not the product of scientific process; it's purely religious garbage leftover from a time best left in man's past.

Oh, I can already hear the Freeping apologists as soon as this prints: "You can't say that! He was a nutcase! A sicko!....."

Yes, to that, I do agree, but what motivated his behavior? We know for fact that the Nazi regime in Germany preached "racial purity", as did the author of The Turner Diaries, and well, can we or can we not say, as well...that the right-wing religious fruitcakes are as responsible? Well, are they?

I wish I'd taped a few of those radio shows I heard, honestly, but, a look around the web is just as bad: Many fundie web pages go pretty damned deep on their outright venom towards gays, lesbians, minorities, liberals, and anyone who's not "one of them". Are they responsible?

By deed, no. By word? As sin itself.

And that, we know, is often worse.