After posting my recent blog entries on same-sex marriage and religious right wing groups here in New York, I clicked on the tags “gay rights” and “same-sex marriage” to see what, if anything, other people on WordPress.com were writing about these topics. Among other things, I came across a few different blogs in which there was some agonizing over whether it was okay to feel good about the death of Jerry Falwell.

I agree with those who say it’s fine to feel good about the death of someone who has caused so much misery for so many people, especially if you yourself happen to be one of those people.

But I do think we should refrain from expressing any such happy feelings in a truly tasteless manner, such as by picketing Falwell’s funeral a la Fred Phelps and his clan.

Guess what? The Phelps clan will be picketing Falwell’s funeral, or so says this news story on 365Gay.com. Apparently Falwell wasn’t homophobic enough for Fred Phelps, who, according to the 354Gay.com article, complains that Falwell “spent his entire life prophesying lies and false doctrines like ‘God loves everyone.’” (P.S.: I’ve subsequently confirned this story. The front page of the Phelps clan’s website God Hates America now proclaims their intent to “preach” at Falwell’s funeral.)

Anyhow, I also suspect that some folks may be rejoicing out of a mistaken belief that the death of Falwell was a crippling blow to the religious right wing. That it most definitiely wasn’t. Although he was a kingmaker in the early 1980’s, Falwell has not played nearly as significant role in the religious right wing since then. His “Moral Majority” was soon eclipsed by Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition as the leading religious right wing organization. More recently, the most powerful leader of the religious right wing now seems to be James Dobson.

I recently ran into the following two stories, both on the website of Baptist Press in Tennessee:

• A ticket from Satanism to holiness by Gwan Garrison, April 2, 2007
• Many Satanists prefer the shadows , by Joe Westbury, Posted on Apr 2, 2007

Gwan Garrison claims to be an ex-Satanist. Googling “Satanism Gwan Garrison,” I found the following earlier versions of the above two articles, on Christian Index, a Georgia Baptist site:

• The devil had my heart, but Christ wanted my soul by Gwan Garrison, Pastor, Franklin Baptist Church, March 29, 2007
• Satanism: a real force in the world March 29, 2007

His bio seemed awfully fishy to me.

I also found some witty and thought-provoking commentary on About.com, on Witchvox, and on J-Walk Blog.

On About.com, in an article titled “Satanic Panic, or ‘I was a Satanic Witch (No, Really, I Could Fly and Everything!)’,” Jennifer Emick sums up Gwan Garrison’s story as follows:

Baptist Pastor Gwan Garrison talks about how much he enjoyed “persecuting Christians,” and he’s sure to mention (with the amount of accuracy typical in these stories) his “Satanic altar” and his “crystals.” It’s light fare compared to some of these stories- no bloody sacrifices, no marriages to Satan- but there is a glowering cat and a high-voltage Satanic bible- and there is, of course, that ever-present character, the tirelessly persistent evangelical whose refusal to stop pestering the ungodly results in his miraculous transformation.

On Witchvox, Richard Brownbear remarks in a comment:

The same old “I had the world in the palm of my hand with everything that I wanted, but then gave it all up FER JAYZUS” manufactured story.

Of course, on Witchvox, there are also a few of the usual attempts by Pagan Witches to claim exclusive possession of the word “witch” (claiming that all witches, not just Pagan Witches, are “not Satanists”). These folks repeat some of the usual Pagan misconceptions about Satanism (e.g. “only renegade christians worship the christian devil because only christians believe in him at all”). But, surprisingly, there were not too many of those in the comments on Witchvox.

On J-Walk Blog, in a post titled “Protecting Yourself From Satanic Spells,” Gwan Garrison is quoted as saying, “The power over Christians was less effective, while those without a strong commitment to Christ were more vulnerable.” In response to this, someone named Sheldon says in a comment:

My experience has been the opposite. The more a person believes in Jesus, the more they accept that Satan exists. The more they believe Satan exists, the greater the fear of black magic, and the less amount of time I have to wait in line at the grocery store.

Well, I guess it was only a matter of time before someone would start talking about “Satanism” in connection with school shootings, in the wake of the Virginia Tech murders — even though the killer at VT, Cho Seung-Hui, had no connection with any kind of Satanism, as far as I can tell.

The first such story I ran into isn’t too bad, but still made me cringe.

• “Facts About School Shootings,” Know Gangs (Jared Lewis), April 16, 2007

One paragraph says:

Some shooters had a fascination with gangs, white supremacy groups and Satanism, yet none of them made any active commitment to any of these groups.

Well, at least the writer acknowledges there was no “active commitment.”

Many shooters lacked a strong role model in their own home. They looked elsewhere for their role models and heroes with many of them choosing negative role models. Some idolized Hitler, some adopted Satanism, while other chose various music artists, who often produced music with lyrics that focused on death, suicide and hatred.

For the second time in a row, Satanism and racist extremism are mentioned in the same breath. Alas it does happen to be true that some of the same troubled kids who dabble in Satanism also dabble in neo-Nazism. Still….. (See my collection of articles Against Neo-Nazism Among Satanists.)

Later I ran into the following article:

• “Va. Tech brings back Pearl shootings,” Demopolis Times, Alabama, Tuesday, April 17, 2007

This one is a retrospective story about Luke Woodham, who shot some students at Pearl High School in Mississippi. According to this story:

Police arrested Woodham and six other members of a so-called Satanic cult known as the Kroth. Two of the six members had ties to our college campus, so we made the decision to cover the story. In the end, only three of the six arrested would ever be convicted of crimes associated with the killings. The other four boys would be set free with all charges dropped.

Well, at least this reporter is hip enough to say “so-called.”

In their minds, it seems, they studied Marxism and practiced Satanism.

Well, at least these kids dabbled in Marxism rather than neo-Nazism.

Fortunately, I have not yet seen any claim that Cho himself had any connection with any kind of “Satanism.” If there were any such connection, I’m sure we’d never hear the end of it.

On Tuesday it was revealed that the shooter was a Korean immigrant. At least some Koreans and other Asians are understandably worried about a possible racist backlash. Today I came across the following blog entry by a Korean-American Christian pastor who happens to have the last name of Cho:

• “making sense of the senseless” on Beauty and Depravity

Pastor Eugene Cho reports:

Monday night was an incredibly eerie day for me. After watching the news with incredulity and horror, I posted a blog entry about the tragedy in Virginia Tech. About 9pm [PST], I began to literally have over hundred people instantaneously get to my blog in a span of two hours.

…

As I examined my dashboard through wordpress, it was fairly obvious to me that while the news wouldn’t be shared to the larger world until the next morning, there was strong suspicion – perhaps through authorities or through some of the student body – that the gunman may have been someone named Seung [Hui] Cho. I was speechless, ashamed, angry, and afraid.

I can relate to his fear.

Earlier I read the following blog entry, reporting on some of the ways American youth culture can drive an immigrant kid nuts.

• “Cho Was Like Me,” April 18, 2007, Women’s Space

A 17-year-old Korean immigrant girl named Autumn Lee is quoted as saying:

A boy at my church who is 13 came to the United States about a year or two ago.

…

He gets hated on and punked by the older guys in church because he isn’t used to the way teens joke and ridicule each other in America. He makes smart remarks that piss people off, trying to fit in, but he just seems annoying.

…

I have huge empathy for him because I also get made fun of for being slow and stupid.

However, by no means have all or most school shooters been immigrants, Korean or otherwise.

The MSNBC site has an interesting two-page article, “10 myths about school shootings” by Bill Dedman, Feb 5, 2007:

The profile of the gun-toting student in a trench coat is just one of the myths about the rare but murderous attacks in the nation’s schools.

Here are 10 myths about school shootings, compiled by MSNBC.com from a 2002 study by the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education. The researchers studied case files and other primary sources for 37 attacks by current or former students, and also interviewed 10 of the perpetrators.

…

The stereotypes of teens in Goth makeup or other types of dress are not useful in preventing attacks.

…

“The demographic, personality, school history, and social characteristics of the attackers varied substantially,” the report said. Attackers were of all races and family situations, with academic achievement ranging from failing to excellent.

…

Myth No. 5. “He was a loner.”

In many cases, students were considered in the mainstream of the student population and were active in sports, school clubs or other activities.

Only one-quarter of the students hung out with a group of students considered to be part of a “fringe group.”

Although there is no useful profile of a school shooter in terms of personal characteristics, is there at least a recognizable pattern of behavior that typically precedes school shootings? Yes, according to another article on the MSNBC site, “Cho’s words, actions fit school shooting pattern: Behavior typically raises concerns long before the shooting starts” by Bill Dedman, April 18, 2007. But even that idea is disputed in yet another article on the MSNBC site, “What Made Him Do It?” by Mary Carmichael, April 17, 2007.

“There’s no one profile of a mass murderer,” says Jana Martin, a licensed psychologist in Long Beach, California. Some kill for revenge, others kill for fame; some give off obvious warning signs while others strike unexpectedly; some go after people they know, and others simply look for the nearest target. Until details about Cho’s life and death begin to filter out, there will be only one trait that ties him to all the others, says Louis Schlesinger, a professor of forensic psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “He is someone who is filled with such hatred that he doesn’t want to kill one specific person. He just wants to kill.”

…

Still, psychologists can say a few things with certainly about who is more likely to commit the most serious of crimes. Over 90 percent of killers are male, and the same holds for mass murderers—“I can’t think of a single case where a woman has done this,” says Schlesinger—partly because men tend to have more access to guns, which are usually the weapons of choice. The killers are usually somewhere between the ages of 25 and 35. They generally do not have previous histories of breaking the law in any serious way, says Levin. And they are not, on the whole, psychopaths, although they are often identified in the media as such. “A psychopath is someone with little conscience, little interpersonal bonding, someone who’s smooth and manipulative,” says Schlesinger. “That personality has nothing, zero, to do with mass murder.”

Indeed, the personality type most often associated with mass murder is in some ways the opposite of a psychopath. He is far from cool-headed; instead, he is aggrieved, hurt, and above all paranoid.

…

Potential killers, especially the young, are highly suggestible.

…

Some mass murderers spend a year or more hatching their plans. In that time, they may leave clues as to their intentions. But these clues are not always easy to see. Many of the warning signs—a near-daily loss of temper, vandalism, increased alcohol and drug use, overreacting to slight setbacks—are characteristic of depression in general. “These are warning signs that a person is in trouble, not that he’s going to kill 30 people,” says Levin. “There are hundreds of thousands of people who have led lives of frustration, who blame others for their problems, and who are socially isolated, but guess what? They never kill anyone.”

And now for a pattern that I’ve noticed, which no one else has talked about, as far as I am aware.

MSNBC’s first major story on the Virginia Tech shootings was “Worst U.S. shooting ever kills 33 on Va. campus.” An earlier version of this story included the following:

Until Monday, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard drove his pickup into a Luby’s Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then himself.

The deadliest previous campus shooting in U.S. history took place in 1966 at the University of Texas, where Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire. He killed 16 people before he was gunned down by police.

In the Columbine High School bloodbath near Littleton, Colo., in 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.

Texas, Colorado, and now Virginia. All these states are home to major religious right wing leaders, I noticed.

The MSNBC site has a page, “Massacre at Virginia Tech,” listing all its stories covering the VT shootings. Among the pages listed are these:

• Fact file: Deadliest shootings in U.S. (Note that the shootings took place in Virginia, Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and California.)
• Fact file: Deadly college shootings in U.S. (The vast majority are in the Bible Belt, I noticed.)

The blog raincoaster says that the worst school massacre in U.S. history was NOT Virginia Tech, but rather Andrew Kehoe’s dynamiting (not shooting) of a school in Bath, Michigan, in 1928. (An account can be found on the Crime Library site.) Rural Michigan too is noted for being very conservative, religiously.

Nearly all the worst mass killings have occurred in the Bible Belt. I can’t help but wonder if that fact is at all significant. The Bible Belt just happens to coincide, to a large degree, with the gun belt; and the availability of guns is probably a more important factor than the Bible Belt’s stifling ultra-religiosity. But might the latter play a role too, in driving people crazy enough to commit mass murder?

When I first heard about the Virginia Tech shootings yesterday, one of my first thoughts was to wonder what minority groups or nonmainstream subcultures the shooter might have belonged to, if any. If he was anything other than a religiously and culturally mainstream heterosexual white male, would this lead to any scapegoating of whatever groups he did belong to, the way the Columbine killings led to scapegoating of the Goth scene and anyone wearing a trenchcoat?

Among other things, I worried about the possibility that the Virginia Tech shooter might have been gay. Virginia seems to be one of the most homophobic states in the country, with one of the most stringent prohibitions on anything resembling same-sex marriage. Might life in Virginia be bad enough to drive at least one gay man crazy enough to go on a shooting spree? And, if so, might that lead to an even worse situation for gays?

Most of all, I worried about the possibility that the killer might have had an interest in Satanism. Might he even have been a member of one of my own Theistic Satanism forums? I sure hoped not. Yikes!

Some early newsreports mentioned that he “wore black.” Might this result in heightened prejudice against kids who wear black? I’ve heard that, in some parts of the South, any kid who wears black is assumed to be a Satanist, and Satanists are assumed to kill cats and eat babies.

So far, I’ve seen no evidence that the Virginia Tech killer was either gay or interested in Satanism. Today we found out that he was from South Korea. Understandably, Koreans are worried, according to various articles I’ve seen today including the following:

• “Asians fear backlash after campus shooting,” Independent Online, South Africa

Hopefully there will NOT be an anti-Korean or anti-Asian racist backlash. Hopefully there won’t be a backlash against “loners” either. But both, alas, are certainly possible. Time will tell.

What were the killer’s motives? Not known yet. The following article has the latest findings regarding his personality:

• “Gunman’s writings were disturbing,” by Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press, Houston Chronicle, April 17, 2007, 7:17PM