Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. RMD's avatar
  2. Textbook Author's avatar
  3. New Author's avatar
  4. J. McKenzie Alexander's avatar
  5. Terence Rajivan Edward's avatar
  6. JR Williams's avatar
  7. Not a libertarian's avatar

Mississippi Taliban (Leiter)

Little to add to the facts recorded here:

Flip Benham was
going to burn a Koran at Mississippi’s state Capitol on July 18 but he
couldn’t get a fire permit. The blaze was to be the culmination of an
antiabortion rally that Benham, director of Operation Save America,
billed as an "ecclesiastical court." His attack on Islam might seem
like a non sequitur, but to Benham, it made perfect sense. "Islam is
the same thing as abortion and homosexuality," he said. "It’s the
black-colored glove covering the same fist, which is the fist of the
devil." Benham had T-shirts made up, black with white lettering,
proclaiming, "Homosexuality Is Sin! Islam Is a Lie! Abortion Is Murder!
Some Issues Are Just Black and White!"

About 100 people gathered for the rally in the vicious heat, many of
them, from huge-bellied men to toddlers, wearing Benham’s T-shirts. It
was three days into Operation Save America’s weeklong siege of the
Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the last abortion clinic in
Mississippi….

Benham’s "ecclesiastical court," a ritualized indictment of the
Supreme Court for breaching God’s law, dramatized his contempt for the
current legal regime. Before him sat a small grill like the kind
football fans use at tailgate parties; he asked the two dozen or so
children in attendance to gather around it.

One by one, as Elysian hymns poured from the speakers, Benham
produced the texts of objectionable Supreme Court decisions. He started
with 1947’s Everson v. Board of Education, the case where Justice Hugo
Black wrote, "In the words of Jefferson, the clause against
establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of
separation between Church and State." He went on to decisions outlawing
school-sponsored prayer and Bible reading. As each decision was
introduced, a man sounded a shofar. Benham shouted denunciations and
asked the kids to rip up the pages and throw them onto the grill.
Someone pounded a bass drum….

Benham then produced a rainbow gay flag. As he lamented the way
homosexuals "stole the colors of the rainbow," several men in
attendance grabbed pieces of it and ripped it to shreds. Then he held
up a paperback copy of the Koran and said, "We have one more issue that
we must deal with. With this issue we have three choices. We can either
kill them, be killed by them, or we can convert them to Christ."
Several cheers went up in the crowd, and then, after several more
minutes of preaching, Benham began to tear the Koran apart. He offered
pieces of the book to the men in the crowd — hands seemed to reach out
from all directions to take them — and they destroyed the pages
further, throwing the scraps onto the grill.

Hard to know what phrase other than "fascist theocracy" describes the aspirations of these disgusting people.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Designed with WordPress