The fundamentalist Christian organizations that use these lowbrow tactics are trying to shock and repulse people in order gain support for their cause — those who don’t heed the call are Godless murderers.

In Milwaukee, or any large city for that matter, occasionally you’ll run into a religious zealot or two. Sometimes they’re in groups, waving large banners with their message spread across them. Sometimes it’s just one individual shouting the “word of God” through a megaphone at passersby.

For the most part, their acts are innocent enough. Usually if they are broadcasting their opinions, they do it in a general way, not targeting any one person, which I can deal with.

However, when these groups and individuals begin to use shock tactics to get their point across, their message becomes blurred and seems more like a publicity stunt than an expression of free speech.

We’ve all seen the anti-abortion protestors outside of different women’s clinics, huddled in crowds and waving giant photos of aborted fetuses in the faces of all who pass. These groups justify such sadistic behavior by claiming that these measures need to be taken in order for people to realize the reality of abortion.

Funny, these groups didn’t come off so righteous when they staged protests at the schools in the Racine Unified School District a few years ago. The high school that I attended was both a middle and a high school, so the students were between the ages of 11 and 18.

The morning the protestors showed up, students could barely make it past them and their life-sized photos. They really stuck it to those abortion-loving sixth-graders that day.

The fundamentalist Christian organizations that use these lowbrow tactics are trying to shock and repulse people in order gain support for their cause — those who don’t heed the call are Godless murderers.

Now, correct me here, but isn’t God supposed to be all-loving and all-forgiving? Isn’t it a bit blasphemous to presume that you, as an individual or a group, speak for God? I think there’s also a passage somewhere in that big book they read that talks about not judging others, too.

My favorite part of these groups is what I call the Heckler. This is the person who decides to pick out different people in a crowd and address them with his or her viewpoint. There was a Heckler on campus not too long ago. I was sitting outside of the Union when an older anti-abortionist started setting up his signs.

As students began filing past him, making furtive glances at the signs he was holding, he started picking them off, one by one. For the most part, the only people who really gave him any attention were those who were arguing with him. Perhaps this is the point — to get attention — even if it’s bad and to rile people up.

I think it’s great if people want to share their opinion, as long as they present it as an opinion, not a fact, as long as said opinion is not forced upon another person. And no, the Bible is not a scientific reference tool.

We all have the right to free speech, and that is a wonderful thing. Perhaps these fundamentalist groups don’t realize that by employing such abhorrent attention, they are pushing people farther away from their cause and tainting their message. Instead of looking like concerned, passionate citizens, they look and act like ridiculous religious fanatics.

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