The religious right’s tactics seem to have become ever more extreme in the past year. Today an organization with the credible-sounding name of The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) used the Christian Newswire service to blast out a press release suggesting President Obama is a deranged murderer of “preborn children.”
The e-mail plays off the widely discredited and preposterous charge that proposed health insurance reform would allow government to withhold care for the elderly and infirm while paying for abortions. Says the group’s director, Gregg Cunningham:
“Americans don’t want to pay for mandatory insurance which defines baby-killing as ‘essential care.’ They are turning against ‘end-of-life’ counseling which is more coercive than consultative. It is becoming increasingly clear that this horrifying plan is designed to reduce the numbers of preborn children who could ruin their parents’ careers and the numbers of elderly parents who might spoil their children’s retirements.”
But it gets worse.
Cunningham urges supporters to send the White House e-mails that include an illustration (provided by the group) showing President Obama made up to look like the deranged Joker (from a Batman movie). The Obama/Joker character’s bloody hand is wielding a scalpel over the picture of a dismembered fetus. (We have no intention of posting such a vile illustration here.)
The press release continues:
“(T)he president needs to see this poster and he needs to hear from every American who opposes the publicly funded abortion and end-of-life health care rationing which will result from the plan which Mr. Obama and his socialist friends are trying to ram down our throats.”
We have a hard time believing that most religious conservatives would approve of these kinds of depraved tactics. But the religious right continues to redefine the meaning of “extremism.”
