Source: Infoshop News, Windy City Times, Associated Press via Chicago Tribune
An anarchist group in Olympia, Wash. claims in a web posting to have vandalized a Mormon church there. The post and a demonstration in Lansing, Mich. earlier this month reportedly have some churches on edge.
According to a report today from Associated Press, "Religious organizations are on the watch for possible protests by radical gay activists who targeted churches in Michigan and Washington this month."
The post on the social-network alternative news site Infoshop about the Olympia vandalism ends with a blustery notice, "Let this be a warning to the Mormon church, dissolve completely or be destroyed. The choice is yours."
According to the Infoshop post, a group of anarchists vandalized a Mormon facility last weekend in Olympia.
The item was posted Sunday, November 16:
Last night, under the veil of fog, we visited the Church of Latter Day Saints. We left their locks glued with anarchist messages scrawled in spray paint over their boring veneer.
We did this to show our solidarity with all who are resisting heterosexism everywhere, hopefully to spur them into action; and also because we are angry at the amount of money and propaganda that the Mormon church pumped into the homophobic Proposition 8 campaign. From their disgusting commercials to their despicable sermons to those gross lawn signs, we are sick of this parade of bigotry. The Church has to pay.
We as anarchists are opposed to marriage but we see that this blatantly anti-gay act as a threat to all us gay, lesbian, transgendered and queer folk. The Proposition 8 campaign was used as a medium to instill homophobic fear into the population of California so as to squash queer culture, it is dangerous to let these actions go unchecked and not confronted.
The post is signed by Bash Back! Olympia. It claims the vandalism was carried out by "an affinity group of the Olympia, Washington Chapter of Bash Back!"
Queer anarchists put churches on edge after Olympia vandalism and Lansing demonstration [contd.]
Bash Back, according to a profile in Chicago gay newspaper Windy City Times, "is a radical trans/queer/anarcha-feminist group that started in Chicago. The group's main goal is to fight for liberation while rejecting all forms of state power. It rejects all oppression and believes in a diversity of tactics to achieve equality."
Today's AP story identifies Bash Back as "an extremist group."
An affinity group in Lansing generated a good deal of publicity earlier this month when dozens of allies (since, really, they can't have "members") staged a carefully orchestrated visitation on a conservative megachurch near that college town, November 9.
O'Reilly mentioned press accounts of the Lansing demonstration last week when Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich responded in an appearance on Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, "I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment."
Lansing State Journal condemns the action in an editorial today:
Its invasion of services at Delta Township's Mount Hope Church earlier this month wasn't just boorish and foolish. It was self-defeating. Confronting people in their own church is no way to demonstrate that the cause of gay rights is really the cause of equal rights in this state.
Michigan's major LGBT advocacy group, Triangle Foundation, also warned that similar demonstrations could go too far, according to AP. "We oppose violence in any form," said Triangle spokeswoman Colette Beighley. "We hope civil disobedience to further the cause of civil rights does not cross that line."
Even though nobody from Bash Back was arrested at the Lansing area church by sheriff's deputies were called to the scene, a Michigan legislator has said he will introduce a law that would make disrupting a religious service a misdemeanor with a $5,000 fine and up to a year in jail, according to AP.
But, predictably, such expressions of disapproval are celebrated by Bash Back.
In a post today in InfoShop, an Bash Back ally responds to emails sent to the group since its Lancing event, saying, "We know that you call us terrorists because our very existence terrorizes you. This makes us proud, but you ain't seen nothing yet. Nevertheless, we must remind ourselves that your bizarre delusions are not enough to liberate us from patriarchy. One day, soon enough, the secret Tranny sleeper operatives posing as your spouses will wake, and oh what a day that will be!"
In March, just as the original Bash Back group was getting started in Chicago, one of its founders, called "Beau Vyne" told Windy City Times that the group hoped to expose more "mainstream folks" to radical tactics and methods.
A major concern among many members of Bash Back! is the lack of direct action organizing within the LGBT community. "A lot of horrible things are happening to our community right now, both on a systematic level through government policy but also in the streets and in the neighborhood -- violence against queer and trans people is at an all-time high, and it's really disturbing," Vyne told Windy City Times in March. "We feel a lot of it has to do with us being not visible in an organized-community sense."
Source: Infoshop News - Bash Back! Trashes Mormon Church in Olympia | InfoShop News
Bash Back!: A Radical Departure | Windy City Times
Radical gay activist group plans more disruptions | Chicago Tribune (AP)