Killer Whales and Living Biblically

Flickr/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/99437479@N00/506294155">kalevkevad</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Last week, Americans confronted a range of emotions on learning that Tillikum, a killer whale at Sea World in Orlando, seized its trainer in the middle of a live show and killed her in a violent underwater frenzy. Dawn Brancheau, 40, died doing what she loved: communing with animals who are awe-inspiring and, by nature, dangerously unpredictable. While postmortems and new precautions are understandable, decorum and a sense of compassion for the deceased would dictate that we refrain from misplaced rage and abject stupidity.

But not if you’re the American Family Association, which in its faux-Christian zeal seems to have swapped out the Gospel’s teachings of love, patience, and charity for old-school righteous fury. Bryan Fischer, the AFA’s recently appointed “director of issue analysis for government and public policy,” wrote a post on the organization’s blog today titled “Bible ignored, trainer dies.” In it, he called for the stoning death of Tillikum in alleged accordance with scriptural law, since he had killed before:

If the counsel of the Judeo-Christian tradition had been followed, Tillikum would have been put out of everyone’s misery back in 1991 and would not have had the opportunity to claim two more human lives.

Says the ancient civil code of Israel, “When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable.” (Exodus 21:28)

But then Fischer went a step farther: If this were the old days, he wrote, Sea World curator Chuck Thompson would be stoned to death, too:

…the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn’t kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time, “the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:29)

Fischer—who moved to the AFA last year from the Idaho Values Alliance, and who is ironically dubbed a “friend of life” on his AFA bio—has never been the smartest parishioner in the pew, whether it’s arguing that gay judges can’t be fair or that the US military should ban Muslims.

But this is a new low, one that the AFA should probably distance itself from pretty quickly. The organization states one of its goals as “promoting the Christian ethic of decency.” As a Christian—a subscriber to a rather rigorous and considered scriptural tradition—I find nothing decent in Bryan Fischer’s tirade. Except that his position on killing animals fits pretty decently with this faux-faith organization’s position on killing convicts, too.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate