Hate crimes against UU's

The shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church this past Sunday by an enraged gunman strikes me as nothing short of a hate crime. His motive, according to the news reports, was that he was angry at liberals in general and specifically targeted a Unitarian Universalist Church for its progressive views on gay marriage and other issues. This leaves me wondering how vulnerable other UU churches are against other enraged conservatives who feel that they ought to target our congregations because of our progressive views on some obvious "hot-button" issues. It also makes me wonder whether this gunman was an avid listener to such conservative screeds as Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. There are still people who listen to that crap and it angers me that they take it seriously when it's just nothing more than spewing hate and intolerance. There is no place in this country for that kind of thinking, and yes, I will be the first to defend the First Amendment right to free speech in this country, but if it leads to harming others, I have to wonder about the validity of letting people spew hate talk and putting others at risk by so doing. We are living in what by all appearances is a deeply divided society, split by extremes in conservative and liberal views, but then again, those are the people who typically talk the loudest and get their voices heard, whereas the moderates on both sides are typically drowned out by it all. I think that it's safe to say that this kind of talk is the fault of the Bush administration, whose follies have so deeply divided us as to make it tough to bridge the divide and allow us to speak calmly to people of opposing views without shouting them down. I really wonder for the future of this country that has been so ravaged and damaged by this 8 years of hell under Bush. Religion is now becoming a dividing point, too, as has been pointed out by this recent hate crime against UU's. It demonstrates intolerance for a faith of progressive social views that has made tolerance one of its pillars of our faith. I fear for the safety of our UU brethren in the conservative South who are nestled in the heart of the Bible Belt among practitioners of more conservative faiths that fail to demonstrate peace and tolerance even though that is supposedly the Biblical message of Christianity. I even fear for UU's everywhere now that one madman has opened fire in a UU church and killed and wounded people. Typically, these kinds of things lead to copycat crimes and now I wonder if the Unitarian Universalist faith has a target on its back and must be more wary of who walks through its doors on Sunday mornings. As a Unitarian Universalist, I feel like I'm a walking target if I say what my religion is. I can always say that I am a Roman Catholic, which is the faith in which I was raised, but then, there are still a fair number of anti-papists out there who hate Catholics, too. So what are we UU's to do, when asked what church we go to? Do we put ourselves at risk and mention which congregation we belong to, or do we remain silent and just say, "None of your business"? It's a sad day when you feel as if you're putting yourself at risk by practicing Unitarian Universalism, a faith of peace, tolerance and social justice. Too bad others can't act more like real Christians instead of some intolerant strain of fundamentalism.