An Open Letter to the White Boys Who Praised Alabama's Abortion Ban By Citing the Bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church

 

I don’t believe in hell.

My lack of belief is not because of my religion or the absence thereof. I simply tend not to believe in things. A thing either is or it is not. My unbelief does not negate hell’s existence or make it so.

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But if there is a place populated by the eternal suffering souls of man, I imagine that the terrorists who planted a bomb at 1530 6th Avenue North in Birmingham, Ala,. on September 15, 1963, are in the VIP section of hell. I imagine Thomas Edwin Blanton, Herman Cash, Robert Chambliss and Bobby Frank Cherry have a reserved spot on a pedestal somewhere next to Satan’s throne.

And as those child-murdering white supremacists slowly turn over the everlasting flames on the spit-roast rotisserie stick that pierces their anus, travels through their internal organs and exits their mouths, I imagine that they sometimes catch a glimpse of the entrance to hell. And whenever some damned soul comes to the front desk to check in, I am 100 percent sure that the Klansmen who killed 14-year-old Addie Mae Collins, 14-year-old Cynthia Wesley, 14-year-old Carole Robertson and 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair as they put on their choir robes that Sunday morning, say to themselves, to each other or maybe to Lucifer himself:

“Are the Birmingham College Republicans here yet?”

Now read this:

A response to the Passage of House Bill 314

In the heart of downtown Birmingham, a modest memorial lays in the shadow of 16th Street Baptist Church. A tribute to four little girls whose lives were taken unjustly because of external factors they could not control — primarily their race. A small 2-foot by 6-foot granite stone bears their names for onlookers to see and silently pay homage to the victims.

Alabama has an ugly and tragic history regarding human rights. Lynchings and other hate crimes will forever stain the Deep South with blood. Though the past is littered with horrific events of discrimination, anger murder and hatred, it cannot be changed. Alabama cannot atone for its transgression; all it can do is move forward ever while advocating on behalf of the oppressed. On Tuesday, May 14th, 2019, the state of Alabama took a courageous step forward in the name of human rights with the passage of the “Human Life Protection Act.”

As established in the US Constitution, all humans are entitled to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The most basic and fundamental of these rights is life; yet for 12% of the humans conceived in the state of Alabama, their fundamental right to life is stripped away before they have the opportunity to feel the freedom of liberty and happiness of the human experience. Abortion is a human right’s issue for all of humanity to lament. Regardless of gender, age or political affiliation, every man, woman, and child to walk the face of this earth began their human journey in their mother’s womb at the moment of conception. We are proud of the Alabama state legislature for championing the fundamental human rights of children in the womb. As a memorial currently sist outside of 16th Street Baptist Church for four little girls wrongfully killed, may one be erected at 1211 27th Pl S in remembrance of the 8,020 babies murdered annually in the state of Alabama

God Bless the State of Alabama

The College Republicans of Birmingham Southern

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This is a statement from the College Republicans at Birmingham Southern College, in Birmingham, Ala., the 131st best liberal arts college (out of 233) according to U.S. News. 

 College Republicans released this statement after 98 white people passed the nation’s most restrictive abortion law, which would sentence doctors to up to 99 years in prison for performing an abortion, even if the doctor terminates the pregnancy of a woman who was raped.

The egregious thing about this celebratory document of evil men screaming hurrah over women losing the right to choose is not the League of Junior Racists’ repeated use of the words “liberty” and “freedom.” It has nothing to do with the quality of education at Birmingham Southern being exposed by the fact that the right to “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are in the Declaration of Independence, not the U.S. Constitution. I’m not even bothered by the Diet Nazis of Birmingham Southern’s claim that they are applauding a “human right’s” [sic] victory because, after all, the best way to tell a racist is by their grammar.

But invoking one of the worst acts of racial terrorism in American history and using it to buttress the political points of a group that would watch the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing on an endless loop in high-definition slow-motion actually offends me. I honestly would rather the Birmingham Southern junior varsity racism team called my mama a “bitch” than to slander the memories of sainted martyrs whose throats were slit by men who believed in the same principles espoused by the Birmingham Southern College Republicans.

And make no mistake, they are one and the same. Forget party affiliation because that is a history lesson we cannot cover at this moment. The 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed by men who believed in states’ rights, legislating their bigoted Christian principles and—most importantly—that the will of the white majority has the right to oppress and erase the rights of the minority.

And they did it in Jesus’ name.

These men, these Republicans don’t care about life. According to the CDC, in 2017, Alabama ranked second in the rate of firearm deaths but these conservative pseudo-Christians would re-crucify Jesus before they passed a common-sense gun law. That same year, the CDC says Alabama had the sixth-worst infant mortality rate, yet the Republican legislature and governor will not allow Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, essentially sentencing the unborn children of poor mothers to death. This is a state where so many inmates died in its “unconstitutional” prison system, a federal judge had to intervene. The state’s education system is ranked dead last, according to U.S. News, even though the concerned Republican Party has a supermajority in the state’s House and Senate.

I am not usually offended by racists and understand that Republicans and white people in Alabama don’t give a damn about freedom, the sanctity of life or children. The members of the College Republicans of Birmingham Southern are the same kind of evil as the white supremacist fundamentalist terrorists from 55 years ago. But they will not be allowed to commit blatant blasphemy. Not now. Not ever. We will not stand for it.

Keep their names out of your mouth.

And as mean as this sounds, dear white boys, please don’t worry your fragile little souls. Nothing will ever happen to you. Not because you are right. It is not even because you are white. It definitely is not because we are weak.

It is because we are not like you. We do not possess that kind of heartlessness. We are not that kind of evil.

Like them.

Like you.

Perhaps this is why so many of us believe in a just and mighty God. Because, if he exists, then there must be a hell. And if hell exists, then so does justice. And you will meet them both. Goddamn, that would be nice.

But I do not believe in hell.

So I wrote you a letter.