The Death of Mine “Enemy”-Sharing Grief, Outrage, and Humanity
James Poulillon was murdered for doing this.
The murder of anti-abortion crusader James Pouillon the other day in Owosso, Michigan has occasioned much discussion-and some back and forth accusations of hypocrisy.
Yet another of the lone, crazed gunmen who have become a staple of our culture shot Pouillon as he held up his graphic anti-abortion signs outside the local high school. He was a regular feature there and at other locations around the community.
The murder, one Harlan James Drake, reportedly lived mostly in the cab of his over-the-road semi touching base in his home town a day or two a month. But he had enough time to draw up a list of men to be eliminated. Pouillon was on the list. But so was a local gravel pit owner, who was also killed, and a real estate agent who escaped harm because Drake was arrested before he could get to him. Motive for any of the violence was at best murky. Police report that Drake told them it was not Pouillon’s views that marked him, but the graphic images on his signs, which Drake did not think was suitable to showing to high school “children.” But apparently blasting the life out of a crippled (on oxygen and in a wheel chair) eccentric in front of those same “children” was just fine.
Poulillon’s blood was hardly dry on the grass by the school before he was elevated to martyred saint by the anti-abortion movement. Fair enough. And outraged charges of hypocrisy were leveled against pro-choice organizations for not being as vocal in their outrage as for the death of “baby killing” Dr. George Tiller. Of course, they hardly gave those organizations time to answer their phones, let alone formulate a response. When the response came, it uniformly condemned the killing and disavowed any violence against pro-life activists. Most staunchly defended the free speech rights of Pouillon as well.
The UU Blog-o-sphere has taken up the subject. Self described conservative UU bloger Bill Barr at Pfarrer Streccius predictably took up the taunt tying it to the UUA’s new Standing on the Side of Love campaign. Paul Oakley at Inner Light, Radiant Life echoed a challenge to UUs, including President Peter Morales to publicly speak up. Chalice Chick doubted that the murder could be considered a hate crime, a term she has little use for any way.
At the risk of sounding like I am chiming in only because the smugly moralistic Bill Barr has called me out, I want to make it clear that murdering folks for their opinions, for the exercise of their rights to free speech, or just because they belong to some class of people we have come to hate is an abomination. No matter which “side” does it. Period.
While it is true that neither side can be wholly responsible for their most delusional supporters, both sides need to tone down the rhetoric which empowers the loonies among us. We are drifting to civil war in this country. That drift is made easier by the fact we don’t even see each other as human beings any more, just monsters promoting some hideous evil. And who doesn’t want to “wipe out evil.”
But neither am I going to lay down a line of perfect moral equivalency here. In the abortion confrontations no organized pro-choice group that I know of has advocated violence against their opponents. Some of the most well know, if extreme, leaders of the anti-abortion movement have been talking for years about “rivers of blood needed to cleanse the country from its sins.” And thus far Poulillon is the only known casualty on their side. Several murders, bombing, arsons, assaults and relentless threats and acts of intimidation have been committed by anti-abortion crusaders.
Randall Terry and his ilk cried crocodile tears over Dr. Tiller. Rest assured that I, at least, consider James Poulillon’s life, worth and dignity just as precious at the doctor’s. A hate crime is a hate crime no matter the hater, no mater the victim.
“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
--John Donne