I crossed a social line on January 13, 1989. I violated the law. More than that, I violated a social norm. That was the day that I sat down on the public sidewalk near the front door of the Margaret Sanger Planned Parenthood in New York City. I was arrested twice in about four hours time. The first arrest was the most exhilarating and most difficult. Taking the ground between the preborn and those who were about to terminate them was a strategic decision that I had thought through theologically and emotionally. I realized that certain ramifications would necessarily follow. I realized that I was throwing down a gauntlet before the Culture of Death, letting them know that I recognized what they were doing to my nation. I blocked access an American Patriot, willing to actively resist the eugenic inroads of the Culture of Death (COD) in my nation.
My first arrest for civil disobedience resulted in a bus ride of about ten blocks. We were then shooed of the bus and abandoned by the police. It was surrealistic. It seemed that “the system” lacked the resolve to lock us up. We trotted back to Sanger’s legacy child-killing flagship and again blocked access. Contrary to the media’s lies we did this peacefully, orderly and prayerfully.
My second arrest on January 13, 1989 resulted in a brief period of incarceration. (A few hours.) Most all of us so detained found that incarceration one of the most spiritually moving experiences of our lives. We were unified in our Christian faith, singing spiritual songs and quoting scriptures and ministering to one another as we stood up to the Planned Parenthood juggernaught and the government that deemed the abortionists worthy of its protection. (But only since the 60’s)
I was baptized into pro-life leadership through this weekend of theologically driven political dissent.
I was not an “officer of the Court” at that time. I was still four years away from law school, still seven years away from my Kansas licensure. Little did I realize the social and spiritual forces that my radical actions (some would say radical obedience) would unleash. The Indiana bar and others (Democrats, mostly) have voiced much concern over the number of civil disobedience arrests that I rang up in three years. Will all due respect that is the wrong question. The huge gulf that separates me from the bulk of my peers was that first arrest on January 13, 1989, not the eleven that followed.
The first time one stands opposed to the secular state for ideological reason is the hardest decision. All that follows after that initial revolt is actually quite easy – maybe too easy.
My boss in industry got it at the time. I was employed full time in January, 1989. I was told that I had a budding career in industry. Some had told me that I was corporate quality assurance material. Upon my return from New York I was called into my boss’ office for some well intended mentoring. It went something like this: “What are you thinking, Bryan? Don’t you realize that you are taking this pro-life thing far too seriously?” He warned me that certain consequences were sure to follow if I did not jump of the civil disobedience track and jump fast.
My initial decision to sit down in the doorway of an abortion clinic was much more consequential than almost any that came after. It has defined my life like few other choices. That choice led me to take an active role in NorthEast Indiana Rescue, led me to attend future Operation Rescue events, led me forgo Indiana University School of Law (I had been seated in the class of ’92) for the much more activist Regent University, distinguished me to the American Family Association’s Center for Law and Policy as well as Attorney General Phill Kline. Those were the positive benefits. The decision to cross the line has visited much personal pain upon me as well.
The Culture of Death must target those who cross the line with much unfriendly fire, else risk all of us rising up, as was done in Poland under Solidarity, as was done by our American forefathers, as was done by MLK during the civil rights movement. (Click here for his defense of quite similar actions for politically acceptable reasons.)
And such a collective arising is, I assure you, the last thing that the Culture of Death wants. Whether it be the COD in the form of atheistic communism, Planned Parenthood or the end times antichrist, it matters not. The COD fears, more than anything else, Christians resolved to civilly disobey rather than accommodate. As Edmund Burke, all that is necessary for the triumph of the COD is for Christians to accommodate.
You tell me, has our accommodating since the sexual revolution advanced or retarded the Gospel of Life?
My choice to stand opposed to Margaret Sanger’s legacy on January 13, 1989 soon led me into federal court, where I was relieved of the life I had built before I crossed the line. My career as a quality assurance professional was a casualty as well, just as my former boss had foreshadowed. Other significant losses were visited upon me, including a house, a community and a wife.
My baptism into pro-life leadership was one of fire.
The path I chose twenty years ago placed me in a crucial leadership position after the Summer of Mercy in Wichita. This mantle of authority caused me to stand on principle when an 83 year old grandmother was wrongly arrested. I was then arrested. That arrest led me to once again stand against the legal theory that animated Susan Hill’s lawsuit in Fort Wayne. Sixty-eight days of federal incarceration followed. This rare experience gave me the opportunity to make use of an Anglo Saxon writ more than 700 years old. I authored my own Writ of Habeas Corpus which led the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to set my case for a hearing. The lower court judge then backed down and set me free.
Eleven years later I was appointed by Attorney General Phill Kline to head up one of the most powerful government agencies in Kansas. What an irony – from the King’s dungeon to the right hand of the state’s top law enforcer in about a decade! I was a pro-life leader entrusted with unsupervised subpoena power, which I never abused. I led that government agency into a complete and total constitutional makeover, undoing thirty years of government overreaching. (Click here for my final report’s conclusion.)
Between those two missions I served the Movement as one of five constitutional law litigators at the American Family Association’s Center for Law and Policy. As such I was a leader in “the Movement.”
Before landing that great gig (which materialized almost out of thin air the week I graduated from law school as Anne and I walked forward in faith) I was one of the leaders of the Catholic Newman Club on the campus of Regent University School of Law. I was a founder of that organization at Pat Robertson’s post graduate education establishment.
My point is merely this … January 13, 1989 positioned me into leadership in the Movement, a leadership which I have exercised, in one form or another, since that time. My current and final post is as the founder and executive director of the ArchAngel Institute.
Twenty years of leadership on the front lines of America’s most controversial social issue.
I am not claiming to have been involved in civil disobedience that entire time. Indeed, I have not been arrested for civil disobedience since 1992, more than a year before I started law school.
But some crimes are simply unforgivable. Civil disobedience against the Culture of Death seems to be chief among them. All tyrants are marked by such intolerance toward their dissenters.
I turned from civil disobedience toward constitutional arguments as a method to achieve my goals a good two years before I started law school. My constitutional defenses to the Wichita arrests, my Habeas Corpus filing and my lengthy letter to the federal judge who unconstitutionally detained me prove out that claim. (Click for details).
Hey, were I a tree huggin’, baby seal savin’, same sex marryin’ leftist I would probably be a national icon! Since I am a conservative I am pretty much viewed – and treated — as an enemy of the state. (Bias as usual, click here and here for more on that.) Oh, do pay attention to how the liberals receive the new movie Defiance. They will laud those acts of civil disobedience (felony murders!) as courageous, while damning my mere ordinance violations as ominous signs that I lack basic civility! It would be funny if not so sickeningly leftist.
The Indiana Supreme Court, through its surrogates, has now poked and prodded me far more significantly and thoroughly than any other of the three state bars or United States Supreme Court poked or prodded me in the past. I have been forced, as a prerequisite to mere bar admission, to submit to an evaluation process that no federal Senator, Representative or Presidential candidate has ever been subjected to. Or ever could be.
I get the feeling that someone must consider me a very dangerous person because I crossed the line twenty years ago. To be completely honest the government’s theory is that I am mentally unstable. I must have been, so the thinking goes, to have engaged in a dozen acts of civil disobedience and to show such a low regard for modern man’s law. I have now been handed over to those who have demeaned my Christian faith and pro-life principles. I have been, in effect, handed over to the intelligentsia of the Culture of Death for an evaluation of my psyche. (You could not write a melodrama outdoing what I have documented over the past 18 months! It is too bad that Hollywood is not interested in the topic of Christian persecution.)
If anyone could find me too crazy to license to practice law it should be my ideological enemies in the Culture of Death, no?
Yes.
I now await their final decision as to whether I am fit to practice law given my controversial past, given that I had the questionable mental health that allowed me to cross the line and stand up to both the Culture of Death and the governments protecting it on January 13, 1989 and many times thereafter.
I await this fateful decision while my twentieth anniversary in the Movement comes due and the most pro-abortion president in American history takes office.
What a fateful time, for me personally and for “the Movement” in general.
Is there a future for this “Movement”? No, not as it is now structured. It is dying. The first generation is literally dying, and the second generation (i.e. those who the first generation have appointed) are dying for lack of vision. They are mostly emulating advertising execs, maintainers of a status quo merely trying to figure out which fundraising letter will best grease the skids to continue the forward process of the institutionalized “culture war.” That, or self proclaimed Culture Warriors like Bill O’Reilly, who confuse mere talk, yada, yada, yada with a baptism by fire. You shall know them by their fruits, not their slick words.
To put it bluntly, the current pro-life movement is mostly led by those who have never paid much of a price. Only received dividends. In some cases numerous large, unmarked dividends.
This is a recipe for disaster. This is why I say that “the Movement” currently has no future. Once President Obama’s goon strike the weak shepherds will run for the hills and the sheep will scatter for cover.
If there is a vision to lead “the Movement” forward it is found in the pain and agony of the consumers of abortion on demand. Such persons have paid the ultimate price. Such persons have been baptized in the fire.
Our emotionally charged and non-theologically cognizant culture has not responded to the message “thou shalt not” kill preborn children. The proof is in the pudding for pragmatic pagans. For that reason it is post-abortion men and women, and most of all women, who should now lead “the Movement” if there is to be a movement at all.
Those who have laid on the table, or paid to have another lay on the table have had a baptism by fire. They know, in full, the pain that is abortion.
The ArchAngel Institute has promoted such wounded healers (see Raphael category) and is seeking out other such wounded healers to lead us on. We believe it best to have those most intimately wounded by the COD to be the second generation of leadership if there is to be a “Movement” at all.
I am not such a wounded person — but I am not too shy to bequeath advice to those who should now step up to lead the charge against those who butcher the next generation for ideology and profit.
These adult victims of the Culture of Death should lead with four basic principles in mind.
Those principles are the subject of the next, and almost final, installment of my swansong.
Finally, here is tonight’s rock and roll, sent out to all who have also been baptized in fire and have not given into the spiritus mundi.
Click here for a more on that latter term.
Here are the lyrics to tonight’s cut.
The lengthy story in red that follows was in the Washington Times this morning … 
Parents the world over have objected to teachings found in the local public schools. Whether it be atheistic evolution, amoral sexuality or radical politics – most all objections fall upon deaf ears.
In the next series of posts the ArchAngel Institute presents a letter from an American prisoner of conscience. This letter was written from a county jail by a Christian held in contempt by the federal court seventeen years ago. The prisoner was held for refusing to pledge obedience to a judge-made law that he knew to be both unconstitutional (as was later held by the U.S. Supreme Court) and violative of his conscience. The prisoner was held without hope of release short of making a pledge that offended his Faith.
activist
The judicially-decreed death rattle of Baby Doe, and of countless babies like him (born and unborn) raises important questions:
I have protested abortion more than a few times and represented protestors in state and federal courts.
Shirer records the Nazi attitude to Christianity. This thinking led to the beheading of Blessed Maria Restituta and the imprisonment of countless Catholic Germans, Austrians and others:
(Ib. :238-40