Columbia Christians for Life, our favorite ultra-right fringe group working to keep Harry Potter out of public libraries, says last week’s massacre in Newtown, Connecticut was God’s punishment for legalized abortion in America.
In other words, the 20 children and six adults who died at Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday weren’t killed by 20-year-old Adam Lanza, a troubled youth with a history of mental illness and access to military-grade firearms. No, Columbia Christians for Life says the were killed by God as a message telling America to repent for the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.
In an email, the group called the Sandy Hook massacre (original emphasis included) “yet another prophetic sign and Divine judgment upon America’s ongoing, unrepented, government-protected child-murder of 3,000+ children inside the wombs of their mothers EVERY DAY, DAY AFTER DAY, MONTH AFTER MONTH, YEAR AFTER YEAR, DECADE AFTER DECADE, now extending from January 1973 almost 40 years to December 2012!!!!!!!!!”
Yes, nine exclamation marks. Clearly they mean business.
So basically, Columbia Christians for Life is describing God as someone who kills women and children indiscriminately in order to scare a government into adopting fundamentalist policies. Say, doesn’t that sound a lot like… terrorism? Does Columbia Christians for Life think God is a terrorist???
Midway through the Bible verse-laden anti-abortion rant, the group takes a Zach Morris-style timeout to defend gun rights in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre. “We don’t need more gun laws and gun control, as the leaders of Rome’s New World Order, whom 32nd Degree Prince Hall Mason, Barack Obama serves [Editor's note: ???], are only too ready to tyrannize the American people with, trying to further their oppressive agenda with greater loss of liberty and unalienable rights,” the email continues. “How many lives would have been saved if even one teacher had been [armed] and could have had the opportunity to stop this disturbed 20-year-old even with deadly force?”
Of course, the group’s own logic means that if someone had stopped the Sandy Hook shooting, they would have been going against God’s will… So we’re not really sure how that works.
This isn’t the first time Columbia Christians for Life has claimed God’s responsibility for human acts of violence. In September, the group claimed that 9/11 was also caused by God instead of a group of radical Islamic hijackers. Ever notice how it’s always the anti-abortion groups who say these tragedies are God’s punishment for abortion, while the anti-gay groups say it’s His punishment for same-sex marriage?
What’s next — Grover Norquist blaming the shooting on high tax rates?
Since they argue that more laws banning guns would be ineffective, why are they insisting on more laws banning abortions?
When a doctor aborts a fetus, God shoots a child? Pro life?
While I understand your reasoning for publishing this story, I also know these groups thrive on this type of publicity: the more outrageous the stunt, the more attention they get.
It seems to me that once an individual or group – unless they are an established public figure or organization – says or does something that reaches the level of off-the-chain crazy, they lose the right to be taken seriously.
So God punishes people for “killing children” by allowing a madman to… kill children? Huh?