See the photos

All that aside, my hat is off to the Genocide Awareness Project. I don't agree with its platform, and I think its demonstration was lurid and tacky. But sometimes lurid and tacky wakes people up, even if its substance is debatable (kind of like my column, heh-heh). They got folks all fired up on both sides of the issue, and got them to think instead of mouthing the same old, tired dogma. In fact, a few of the people working there that I talked to had arguments with pretty solid reasoning. But before all this praise goes to their heads, I'd like to say one last thing.

The G.A.P. is a group of sick, misguided bastards.

GAP had an equally profound effect on an equally extreme pro-abort, named Jessica Weeks. She spews the usual feminist dogma in her October 26th, Lantern column:

After restraining myself from assaulting the G.A.P. representative who was blithering on about sin, I made it to my home unscathed except for that queasy feeling you tend to get when you see pictures of decapitated eighth-month fetuses. I concluded that although the admittedly interesting G.A.P. had every right to be there, it had done little but crystallize my pro-choice position and alienate me from the pro-lifers who had presented the material.

Here again is the all-too-common inclination toward violence, displayed by pro-aborts who are confronted with evidence they can't lie their way around. Her reference to "blithering about sin" could refer to a remark by Rev. Clenard Childress, who responded to a student who was defending abortion rights as "moral diversity." Pastor Childress quipped, "Oh, so that's what you call sin!" At least Ms. Weeks' "queasy feeling" suggests the remnants of a functioning conscience, though the rest of her column revealed predictable indifference to distinctions between traditional (quaint?) concepts of right and wrong.

Lissa Huddleston, a senior horticulture major, though, got it right. Writing in the Lantern Readers' Forum, on the same day, she noted in part:

Yes, it's true, the pictures are shocking, they are grotesque, and yes, they do offend us. I really didn't want to see them, and when I did, I thought I would throw up or scream; and believe me I cried. The point is, we all acknowledge that the Holocaust was wrong. And yet we close our eyes in denial when we are confronted with mass killings happening in our day and time, and involving us. Here, on this campus, we are now challenged to see the destruction and acknowledge that this, too, is wrong; and of course that's hard.

Space constraints prevent a more complete inclusion of the articles and letters which appeared in the campus and city papers but each can be reviewed in full on the Internet at http://www.thelantern.com and http//www.dispatch.com. From our personal journals, however, we share the following anecdotes.

PERSONAL NOTES
A black student asked for help persuading her absent but abortion-minded, pregnant classmate to cancel an appointment to kill her baby. My wife Lois showed her a pro-life video and gave her counseling tips and a referral to a local CPC which she could help her friend.

Pro-abort protesters carried blasphemous signs reading, among other things, "Satanists For Life: Save Your Babies For Satan," "Kill A Fetus For Jesus," "Eat A Fetus For Jesus," "Don't Abort! Your Fetus May Be The Anti-Christ."

Two male journalism students who had spent a long time staring at the GAP signs, came out of the crowd and peppered me with questions which they read from a notepad. One eventually said "I hate to admit this, but you guys are changing our minds about this [abortion]."

A male student dressed as the "Joker" began the week displaying vulgar signs and shouting senseless profanity. In one of the more amazing transformations we have ever seen, by mid-week he had abandoned his costume and involved himself in sensible discussions with our staff. Both he and his roommate admitted the project had forced them to accept the relationship between abortion and other forms of genocide.

A group of very obviously drugged lesbians mocked and desecrated a copy of the Bible and simulated lewd acts in an attempt to scandalize our staff. Sadly, we're used to this. We've seen it all before.

Todd Beauchamp was approached by an angry Christian student who gestured toward the GAP display and declared that "Jesus wouldn't do this." Todd pointed out that Jesus already had. Our Lord confronted the culture with horrifying visual images as he intentionally made his way through the large crowds (including families of women and children) between Pilate's palace and Golgotha, beaten so "appallingly" that the 52nd Chapter of Isaiah (verse 14) says he was no longer recognizable as a man. His purpose was to expose the terrible consequences of evil. The student went away apparently speechless.

In several discussions with students involved with the OSU Campus Crusade for Christ ministry (Campus Crusade at Penn State was a major sponsor of GAP), it became clear that our request for their sponsorship had created divisions between the leadership, which was too risk-averse to sign on and students, who after observing the impact of the project were puzzled by the reluctance of their leaders. We are saddened to see this crippling spirit of fear in both Catholic and Protestant campus ministry leaders almost everywhere we go.

A pro-life professor (we won't mention the person's name, discipline or even gender, because they might not be tenured) came by the exhibit every day and took materials to integrate into their curriculum. In fact, because the doctrine of academic freedom is selectively applied, even this brief reference could touch off a witch-hunt to ferret-out our faculty member and punish their heresy (remember the fate of the student newspaper columnist?). Many students also took materials for use in the classroom and to give their professors.

On the day we set up the display between the schools of nursing and medicine, a male nursing student told Rev. Clenard Childress that the GAP signs helped him realize that he could no longer be "pro-choice."

I asked a very, very angry female medical student why, if she were really "pro-life," she would not want passers-by to see what they might be choosing?. She huffed that "now you are offending me" and stormed away. Her Jewish classmate had already informed us that she (the classmate) was going to medical school specifically to become an abortionist. Attempts to get her beyond a recitation of pro-abortion slogans and into a discussion of the medical facts proved predictably futile.

At about that same time an assumedly pro-life professor of medicine came by and said he had seen abortions and the real thing was even worse than any picture could convey. A Christian medical student expressed concern that the Christian Medical and Dental Society had not sponsored GAP. His classmate agreed. So did we.

When David Lee spotted a nurse examining the signs he asked her what she thought. She said "it's very effective, it changed my mind."

Cheree Bartlette was accosted by a female nursing student who accused us of using propaganda and scare tactics reminiscent of Hitler. She refused to elaborate. Cheree said she would be glad to use propaganda or anything else that saved lives. (Not all propaganda is, of course, false).