I'd been meaning to mosey over to Operation Save America's Website to see their spin on their leader, Flip Benham, being found guilty of stalking a Charlotte abortion provider. Well, I finally made it there today. Not surprisingly, they're claiming that the big, bad libruls are persecuting them.
Quick summary--on July 2, Benham was found guilty of stalking the doctor by plastering parts of Charlotte with "Wanted" posters calling the doctor out as an abortionist. They contained his name and address, along with pictures of his house and the inside of his clinic. Benham was sentenced to 18 months probation and is barred from coming within 500 feet of the doctor's clinics. He also can't even mention the doctor's name in any media ever again.
In his commentary on the case, assistant director Rusty Lee Thomas claims that Benham's "wanted" posters were merely obeying Biblical precepts.
He is an abortionist and the truth is, he is not afraid of brother Flip. He is mad at him. Detective Harris of Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD), Intelligence Unit and personal friend of Abortionist___ (who has stalked brother Flip since 2003) concocted trumped up charges after the fact. What was their purpose? They wanted to make brother Flip pay for the “crime” of exposing Abortionist ____’s ” unfruitful works of darkness” as the Bible commands Ephesians 5:11.
Sorry, Rusty, but I'm not buying it. If Benham simply wanted to make people aware that this doctor was doing abortions, you'd think he'd have found a way to do it that didn't involve plastering the doctor's name and address all over town. Or including pictures of his house. Or--most frightening of all--including pictures of the inside of his clinic.
Thomas then points out that Benham's defense attorney hammered on the fact it took the doctor two weeks to call the police. Hmmm--could it be that he didn't know until then that he was the target of a wanted poster, or what information was on it? He also claims that while several previous "wanted" posters either explicitly or implied that the target was to die, all they wanted was to get this doctor saved. Uh-huh. Great way to go about it, guys.
Typical of how tone-deaf Thomas is, he claims one of the jurors--originally an alternate--committed an act of treason when she voted to find Benham guilty even after she nodded "amen" when they were being sworn in. This doesn't entirely surprise me, though. A lot of fundies think that there's no real reason for anyone who professes to be a Christian to not side with them.