St Pete Times: "Zealotry and Its Victims"

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/27/Columns/Zealotry_and_its_vict.shtml
Great column. There's a perfect mirror here..I've read the words of disappointing tools like Thomas Friedman criticize moderate Muslims after 9-11 for not doing enough to rid its religion of extremists..Kudos to Ms. Blumner and to her paper for being brave enough to print this.

Zealotry and its victims
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist
Published March 27, 2005

Many of the men and women who have been holding vigils outside Terri Schiavo's hospice are exhibiting the worst of America's home-grown strain of religiously grounded ignorance and hypocrisy.

They clutch their Bibles and rosary beads and hold signs that proclaim it a moral duty to care about life for the vulnerable and disabled, but exhibit no such passion when Republican leaders declare the need to cut food subsidies and medical care for the needy while reducing taxes for the wealthy.

Voting patterns indicate that the more overtly religious someone is, the more likely he is to vote Republican; and Republicans are more likely than Democrats to shrink potentially lifesaving programs for the nation's poor and infirm. According to that logic, patients such as Terri Schiavo should be kept alive indefinitely regardless of their prognosis, but it is okay to cut the state Medicaid program that paid part of their medical expenses. The logic is about on a par with the acolytes of Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, who weep and moan for "dead babies" but vote for leaders who are perfectly happy to ignore the 8.4-million children who don't have health insurance. (Terry, by the way, was in charge of organizing political pressure to reinsert Schiavo's feeding tube.)

<snip>
By following the lead of fundamentalists, our nation has turned off course. It is time for religious moderates to start challenging the dangerous views of some of their brethren.

Thanks.

...Liberal paper in this entire area. I never fail to renew my subscription every year. They sometimes get lambasted by the Repugs (Via Letters) but they continue to "Tell it like it is".

I used to live in St.Pete..on Drew Street. The St. Pete Times is a great newspaper. The Trib? Not fit for toilet paper.
I'm glad I moved back to New York though. Too many people, too much traffic and too many fundie whack jobs down there.

about all the Northerners moving down there. They NEVER mention those who went down there and LEFT. Been there, done that in my early 20s. On the bus coming back, I actually cheered when we got on the New Jersey Turnpike. lol

Sorry, but this is giving that state an even WORSE reputation (previous poster 100% correct) than it already has.

I had just driven over the Courtney/Campbell Causeway, heading for I-75 North. There was a pick up truck in front of me with a bumper sticker that said, "Happiness is a Yankee Heading North".
That guy didn't know how much truth there was in that, from MY point of view though. ;)

Schiavo protester is a registered sex offender

An Associated Press article is beginning to circulate at http://www.wfmynews2.com/news/local_state/local_article.aspx?storyid=38304
and elsewhere regarding 10 year old Joshua Heldreth and his father, Scott Heldreth. Heldreth is a longtime Operation Rescue/Operation Save America participant as is clear from a simple Google search and any claim that his son induced him to come to Pinellas where many other OR/OSA people and their leadership were present is clearly bogus.

Further, Scott Heldreth is a registered sex offender in the state of Florida, marked as "absconded from registration," according to this FDLE flyer:

http://www3.fdle.state.fl.us/sexual_predators/OffenderFlyer.asp?keys=38964

I've found the St Pete Times to be one of the more reasonable major news organizations throughout this ordeal. Good article.

From the article:

"Douglas Scott, president of Life Decisions International - an organization devoted to destroying Planned Parenthood - who has declared that end-of-life directives are irrelevant. "Regardless of who thinks Terri would be better off dead, even if this included Terri herself, no one is permitted to take an action or inaction that will kill someone," Scott said in a statement." (emphasis mine)

You and your group will be welcome at the next antiwar demonstration...