Friday, August 16, 2013

Damnation



This is what I found gracing the front of Pulaski Heights Baptist Church the other morning.  Hillcrest is like a lot of neighborhoods in Little Rock.  It has graffiti punks who place their "tags" on other folks' property throughout the neighborhood.  It is mostly an annoyance which the police, understandably, don't have much time to look out for.

But it's one thing to deface Kroger.  It rises to another level when it is done to a place of worship.  That is an act of desecration.

I am certain that the idiot who tagged the church is not well versed in history.  He (I say "he" because these "artists" are almost all young men as I am made to understand)probably doesn't know what the Nazis did to synagogues.  He doesn't know what the Klan did to black churches.  He doesn't know that desecrating a church is a hate crime.

Granted, it's not up there with burning a cross or throwing a Molotov cocktail into a church full of people.  But it is a hate crime nonetheless in that whoever did this showed little regard for the generations of folks who have worshipped in that building or for all the good PHBC does for the community.

And I madder than hell about it.  

I told the Mayor about it.  I called 311.  I told the Residents Association.  That crap is gonna get removed if I have to clean it myself.  This is intolerable.

Now I know that the odds are slim that the moron that did this will ever be caught.  But if he is, here's how I think he ought to be punished.  I think he ought to be sentenced to spend 90 days with Dr. Randy Hyde and Rev. Carolyn Staley.  He should be made to do public service, write essays on the history of church desecration and to attend church.  Over there.  If anybody could make a man out of whoever did this it would be those two.  

And he better hope that he is apprehended by the cops.  Because he doesn't want me to get my hands on him.  

Because he would wake up in the hospital.  Preferably at Baptist.  

1 comment:

Life Through Endurance said...

I tried to post a comment yesterday from my phone but wouldn't work. I'd love to be right there with you to try to ring this guy up. Anytime someone does something so stupid and senseless, sometimes I try to understand what would drive someone to do this. Not to excuse it or to change my feelings toward the person, but just to understand. Someone like this probably has low self esteem, a bad family, has been bullied all his life, is abused, or someone feels cheated by God. Who knows. But hopefully maybe he can be caught so that he can be given the punishment and the rehabilitation he needs to turn things around before he starts doing things that are less redeemable...