FBI’s Unresponsiveness to Gravois Mills is Chilling

Commentary by Don Hinkle

 


Don Hinkle		 Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, warned attendees at this year’s Missouri Baptist Pastors’ Conference on November 3rd that if pastors preach the entire Bible, they can expect trouble. Just ask Ted Haynes, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Gravois Mills, MO.
   On November 2nd, Haynes preached a sermon, declaring that “homosexuality is an abomination, but that there is forgiveness.” “When I started talking about there being forgiveness for homosexuals, I started getting obscene calls on the answering machine at church,” Haynes said.

One of the messages said, “You ----in’, thumpin’ Bible hypocrite.” “The Wednesday morning after I preached the message, a man pulled up next to one of our ladies who works in our library as she was going into the church. The man told her, ‘I’ll tell you right now. If you don’t take that off there (the sign), we’re going to tear it down.’ Our church member told him that what we placed on the sign came straight out of the King James Bible. He replied that we should get another Bible because his Bible didn’t say that. He then admitted that he was a homosexual.”

During the morning worship service on November 9th, the head usher at the church noticed three men trying to lift the sign out of the ground. The sign is located about 200 feet from the church. The men fled when several men from the church approached. “I don’t know what they thought they were doing,” Haynes said. “They were humped over, trying to lift the sign out of the ground with their backs. But that sign is set in seven yards of concrete.”

Haynes attended the Missouri Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in St. Louis November 3-5.  “When I arrived at the convention something told me I should go home,” he said. “When I got home, I learned that someone had spray painted our sign.”

Haynes, acting on advice from the Morgan County Sheriff’s office, which felt a federal hate crime may have been committed, contacted the FBI. The response by the FBI should send cold chills down the spines of every freedom-loving Missourian.

When Haynes initially contacted the FBI, he was ridiculed for his faith and was told nothing could be done to prevent the homosexual activists from continuing their illegal behavior.

“From what I understand, it looked that possibly a crime had occurred, but not one that would fall under federal jurisdiction,” Jeff Lanza, an FBI spokesman in Kansas City told The Pathway’s Bob Baysinger.  Lanza said it was the decision of a subordinate FBI agent, who had been rude to Haynes, to classify the crime as nothing more than “vandalism.”

But this does not seem to square with the federal hate crime law as described under the FBI’s Civil Rights Program. The FBI’s jurisdiction pertaining to hate crimes is primarily predicated on four federal statutes. Number three is Title 18, U.S.C., Section 247 (Damage to Religious Property, Obstruction in Free Exercise of Religious Beliefs.)

A federal hate crime, as defined on the FBI web site, http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/civilrights/hate.htm, is a crime “against a person or property motivated by bias toward race, religion, ethnicity/national origin” and in some cases, disability.

I cannot understand the FBI’s crass reaction and unresponsiveness to the Gravois Mills incident. Does Christianity not fall under Title 18, U.S.C. Section 247?  Do intimidating visits and phone calls not fall under Title 18, U.S.C., Section 247?  Am I missing something here?  Is there a double-standard at work?

While it does not appear that attacks by homosexual activists against church properties are a nationwide trend, they are part of a broader effort to silence Bible-believing Christians.  For example:

• In April 1996 more than 400 homosexual activists besieged a Madison, WI church because it had a guest speaker who affirmed that homosexuality is a sin.

• Four homosexual men attacked a lay volunteer outside the Church On The Rise in Westlake, OH in September of this year, mistaking him for the pastor who had been preaching against homosexuality. The four attackers apparently came looking for the pastor, but instead met the volunteer as he was taking out the garbage in the back of the church. He received 17 body blows, including one to the face with the frame of a tennis racket.

• Ron Greer, a pastor and professional fire fighter in Madison, WI came under attack by homosexual activists after he passed out Bible tracts at work condemning homosexuality as sinful. Greer’s church, Trinity Evangelical Fellowship, became the target of a protest attended by 300 angry homosexual activists in March 1997, screaming chants like, “hey, hey, ho, ho, Christian hate has got to go!” The Greers also awoke one Sunday morning to find the front yard to their home littered with pink triangles and signs with slogans like, “Wisconsin Lesbians Against Greer,” and “We want you, Ronnie.”

Meanwhile, other attacks by homosexual activists, of the verbal nature, have increased against Christians in general in recent years.

When former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore in 2002 called homosexuality “evil” and said that the government should use the “power of the sword” to incarcerate or even execute pedophiles, homosexual activists went berserk, calling for Moore’s ouster.

U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and House Speaker Dick Army, R-Texas, were publicly ridiculed by the homosexual media machine after they declared homosexuality a sin and compared homosexuals to alcoholics, sex addicts and kleptomaniacs.

When 14 Christian organizations launched an ad campaign in 1998 highlighting groups that minister to homosexuals who want to change, homosexuals and critics immediately charged the groups with “hate speech.” Under pressure from homosexual activists, some newspapers refused to run the ads that featured a photo of hundreds of homosexuals who now say they are straight. The ad stressed, “We believe every human being is precious to God, and is entitled to respect.”

When the Boy Scouts of America decided to enforce its policy prohibiting homosexuals from being Scout leaders, they were taken to court by homosexual activists (the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed their right to do so by a 5-4 decision). Homosexuals were able to pressure organizations and businesses like The United Way and Textron from withholding millions of dollars from the Boy Scouts.

Homosexual activists will only get more aggressive if they remained unpunished.

Expect incidents like those I have described to increase as the homosexual movement presses for sexual orientation to be included in the federal hate crime statutes (they narrowly failed in 1999).  Missouri has no such law protecting sexual orientation, but Missouri Baptists can expect a legislative fight on that issue in coming months.

Meanwhile, in Canada, that nation continues to move toward a more pro-homosexual position and is considering a hate-crime law that could prevent pastors from preaching against homosexuality. Such sermons would be deemed “hate speech” under the new law. Can such diabolical changes be in America’s future?

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, said the attack against the Boy Scouts is just the beginning of what Christians can expect to see in the future. “The 5-4 decision in the Boy Scouts case, could easily be overturned within the next three years if only one more liberal justice is appoint to the high court. That means not only would the Scouts be in serious trouble but also private organizations, including churches and other Christian groups. They would not be free to define their own agenda or to determine the standard for leadership which is a vital exercise of the First Amendment freedom, association and speech,” Sekulow said.

If the FBI is going to do nothing in the Gravois Mills case, I wonder how long it will be before homosexuals barge into our churches and drag the pastor – or any one else who dares to speak against them – out into the street?

It has been more than a month since the homosexual activists first started their attacks against Pastor Haynes’ church – and nothing has been done about it by the FBI.  I want to encourage all Missouri Southern Baptists to contact members of the Missouri congressional delegation and urge them to persuade the FBI to act on the Gravois Mills case.

Mohler was absolutely right.  If we preach the Bible, expect trouble.  And, sadly, in the case of Gravois Mills — no help from the FBI.


 

Don Hinkle is editor of The Pathway news journal of the Missouri Baptist Convention.