Dear Partners and Friends,

This issue contains the last installment of our report on the Fall 2002 GAP tour, covering our visit to Rutgers University. It started out slow because of the rain. But on the second day, we could tell that the pictures were confronting people with a truth they found quite discomforting. Hearts and minds were being changed. God is using you, through your gifts, to make a real difference in the lives of others. We thank you for your faithfulness to Him and to his children.

Fletcher and Jane

GAP Brings Light of Day to the Scarlet Knights

Fletcher explains to one student how abortion may be compared to other forms of historical genocide. Although this student was skeptical at first, he actually defended our position in a class later that day. 
On October 16-17, 2002, CBR displayed GAP at the New Brunswick Campus of Rutgers University. This was the first time that GAP had been displayed on a campus in New Jersey.
 
What is a rutgers? That question reverberates through my brain every time I hear the word. Ben Byrd was the first to ask that question. It was November 3, 1979. Tennessee was playing a team called "Rutgers," and the Volunteers were favored to win by 23 points in Neyland Stadium.
 
Mr. Byrd was the sports editor for the Knoxville Journal. To pick the winners of each week’s football games, he eschewed any talk about quarterbacks, team defense, passing yardage, and other such factors that most "experts" drone on and on about just before they make their completely bogus predictions. Mr. Byrd employed his own "Free Thought Association" method of picking the winners, a method he developed and perfected over many years. His analysis:

TENNESSEE vs. RUTGERS. People around here just don’t know a lot about New Jersey and the East, and I guess I have been asked a hundred times this week, "What are rutgers?"
 
Some people seem to think they are something like mathematics or physics. Others say that they always come in groups and that it is impossible to find just one rutger by itself.
 
One housewife told me that she bought a pound of them at the supermarket last week for 59 cents but they must have been on sale because another said she usually pays 89 cents a pound.
 
This one man who has been up East told me that he doesn’t know exactly what rutgers are, but he’s pretty sure that they are quite a lot like yonkers. Now if I just knew what yonkers were. TENNESSEE.

Rugters ate this column for a pre-game meal. Final score: Tennessee 7, Rutgers 13. That was 24 years ago, and I still can’t get that question out of my brain. What is a rutgers?
 
The crowds picked up on the second day.
Rain. Cold. Wet. Rain. The first day it rained. All day. And it was cold. And wet. Due to the threat of high winds, we configured the signs for maximum stability—3 pods of 3 signs each, for a total of 9 signs. We had quite a bit of foot traffic, but not many people wanted to stand out in the rain to talk to us. But the signs were not being ignored. People would stand in the adjacent building and just stare out the windows at the signs. Fortunately, we were set up on a concrete patio, so we only got soaking cold wet, not a muddy mess.
 
Sunshine. Thankfully, we awoke the next morning to sunshine, and it continued all day. By afternoon, we had crowds that rivaled some of our best ever. The curiosity factor—"Who are these people?"— finally overcame the incredulity, and they came in droves.
 
"I want the whole world to see what they did to my little boy!" Every time we do GAP, CBR staffer Michael Spielman always comes back with the best GAP stories. Funny how the students always seem to figure out who is smart and who is just a hillbilly. Michael was talking with an African-American student who was offended by our graphic imagery and didn’t think we could affect social change by such means. Michael asked him if he had ever heard of Emmitt Till. He hadn’t.
 
Emmitt Till was a 14-year-old African-American boy from Chicago who was sent to visit his uncle in the summer of 1955. His uncle lived in Mississippi. While visiting a local store Emmitt made the fatal mistake of "flirting" with a white woman. That night he was dragged from his uncle’s and murdered. He was shot in the head, had one eye gouged out, and his face was beaten in before he was tied to a cotton gin fan (with barbed wire) and dumped in a river. The two murderers went to trial where Emmitt’s uncle, an eye witness to the kidnapping, testified against them. They were quickly acquitted on all counts by an all white jury. As Michael retold Emmitt’s tragic story, lights of recognition flashed on the student’s face and he began to remember this monumental event in civil rights history. Emmitt’s mother had Emmitt’s battered body flown back to Chicago for the funeral and she insisted on an open-casket memorial. For two days Chicago saw the ugly face of Southern racism, and Jet magazine ran the now-famous photo of Emmitt’s crushed face. Emmitt’s mother wanted the whole world to see what they did to her little boy. The world saw, and the world changed, slowly and imperfectly, but drastically.
 
After this student’s civil rights memory had been refreshed, his demeanor changed. He began to understand what we were all about. He stayed for a good while and had his thinking about abortion drastically altered.
 
Fletcher gives a lesson in pre-natal development and abortion.
Violating "The Pact." Despite great success at Rutgers, the school paper could manage nothing better than two scathing and dishonest editorials written by people who obviously didn’t spend any time at our display or bother to learn what our position really is. It’s easy to attack us from the isolated protection of an editorial page, but the pictures clearly hit their mark. The most encouraging portion of the second editorial reads as follows:

Now for most of my life, I’ve always considered myself tolerant of the opinions of others. Though I myself am vehemently in favor of a woman’s right to choose, I’ve always respected the arguments and stance of those against abortion ...until today.

In fact, anyone who is "vehemently" committed to protecting the massive injustice of abortion should be offended by what we do. If they’re comfortable with our opinion and approach, then we’re doing something wrong.
 
You see, the writer of that editorial was angry because we had dared to violate "The Pact." In too many communities across the country, there is an unspoken agreement between the pro-lifers and the pro-aborts. It says, "You don’t bother us and we won’t bother you." Under this agreement, pro-lifers are allowed to attend meetings, talk to each other, do an occasional march, hold up signs (words only), etc. As long as we aren’t a threat to them, the pro-aborts will leave us alone.
 
Students crowd around the display all afternoon. Fletcher and Jane continually use the pictures to drive home the point that abortion is an act of violence that kills a baby. At the same time, we are teaching other pro-lifers how to answer difficult questions.
But when we hold up pictures that expose the evil of abortion, it bothers the pro-aborts. Very much. As we continue to expose the evil of abortion, as we continue to change hearts and minds, look for the pro-aborts to be more and more vocal in their condemnation of our work.