Hitler, America’s inspiration for abortion

The chalkings are all pretty striking. I’m sure you’ve seen them. Most of them read something along the lines of “Abortion: choice or MURDER?” with the “murder” part in all capital letters and red chalk as opposed to the white chalk used for the rest of the message.

This is all part of a publicity campaign by Clearnote Campus Fellowship, or better known by some as their website name JesusAtIU.com, for their upcoming event titled “Abortion: America’s Holocaust” Friday.

What might even be better than all the chalking is the poster for the event that can be seen around campus and on the group’s website. It features a quote from Hitler underneath some scary-looking barbed wire, truly something grand.

This column isn’t going to be about abortion. I’m not dumb — people know my address here, and I don’t want a brick through my window. What I do want to focus on is the backward fear mongering that so many religious organizations seem to have to exhibit in order to sensationally gain an audience.

All the fear-based propaganda is publicity that works. Clearly I’m talking about it right now and giving the group more publicity. But how fair, and how earned is said
attention?

Clearnote is a campus Christian organization, a bunch of college-educated Bible-followers gathered around, and the group decided to consciously put undeniably one of the most evil people in history in comparison with our nation’s still developing abortion debate.

The website states: “Today, we feel superior to the Nazis because of our racial tolerance, but we are no better. Instead of calling Jews inhuman, we sentence our own children to death by declaring them to be disposable.”

The comparison is loose, messy and unnecessary. There’s something fundamentally wrong here.

More liberal-minded organizations on campus don’t portray Jesus as Stalin, although the facial hair can be confusing, so why do the conservative-minded ones see the need to so outlandishly slander liberal-driven ideals?

Highly religious media and more conservative-geared messages on this campus tend to jump toward the extreme and slanderous end of the spectrum. I’m nervous to bring it up, but this is highlighted with the recent #WhiteGenocide messages we’ve been seeing around campus. Again, a conservative organization has jumped to a highly loaded and quite frankly unfair word like “genocide” in order to cause fear and panic on campus.

Clearnote is no virgin to the obscene chalkings, either. Last year’s Doug Wilson lecture was publicized by anti-LGBT messages littering the campus.

While all the shock value ends up getting the message across, is it really better than playing fair?

It’s disappointing that the only way Clearnote can accomplish their Christian goal is by sin-shaming our campus.

­— sjostrow@indiana.edu