Born and raised. There is another diary talking about the despicable character named Randall Terry. Randall Terry and his gang of psychos pretty much shut Wichita down for the summer of 1991, "the summer of mercy" as the nuts called it. Though I was a little kid at the time, I still remember arguing about the protests and abortion with friends at the time. Many of their parents took part in the protests and it really tore our community apart.
Randall Terry FINALLY moved on from my hometown a few years ago but unfortunately his radicalism maintains too much prevalence in Wichita and Kansas as well. There were protests in front of Tiller's clinic nearly every week by the whackos (at least that's what I was raised to call them). Anti-abortion zealots drive around Wichita with gruesome pictures of aborted fetuses plastered on driving billboards. What's really sad is that this kind of shit has been happening so long down there that it's pretty much normal to see it nowadays.
As for the churches in Wichita: there's a fundy church down on Harry Street that has consistently put menacing anti-abortion signage in front of their run down chapel; imo these kooks deserve a measure of the blame. And in the NYT article they quote a parishioner from St. George's Orthodox Church which is literally right across from Reformation Lutheran Church (where the shooting took place) on 13th St. The person quoted didn't express any sorrow or offer any condolences, only a quote saying "we were worried about them being so close to us." That kind of shit is par for the course from that church. The pastor at St. George's has denounced Tiller and his Lutheran neighbors several times. He's a real piece of work and his kids are assholes who are most un-Christian. That's the thing about this reflexive conservatism that is so prevalent in Wichita and Kansas: they love to remind you CONSTANTLY how Christian they are but it seems to me that their favorite pastimes are doing un-Christian things while harping on how much better they are than you because they're Christian. And the never-ending judgmental behavior. the kind that Christ himself spoke against. Ah, mind numbing hypocrisy. "I'm pro-life; to show how much I value life I'll kill somebody." Rich, rich hypocrisy; it's in the water in Wichita.
And don't kid yourself; the unabashed glee that Randall Terry and his ilk are exhibiting is happening in far too many "normal" conservative homes across Wichita today, I can assure you of that. And here in Kansas we've already seen the anti-choice nuts trying to save face and turn the tables (with a great assist from local media, as you might expect). Here in KC the local news anchor followed up their coverage with a "recap" of the relationship between Tiller and former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius under a heading of POLITICAL CONTROVERSY. On the day that Tiller was killed. Unreal. And they more or less carried the right's talking points unabridged by stating that "right to life activists fear that pro-choice activists will use this occasion to preempt abortion questions at the upcoming Supreme Court confirmation hearings." Such good Christians, and such responsible media. Simply sickening.