The grafitti I glimpsed on a church in North Cambridge got some ink on Monday. In addition to the "woman" symbol that I saw spraypainted on a statue of the Virgin Mary, the Boston Herald reported that a crown of coathangers were placed atop the Blessed Mother's head.

The Catholic Church's stance on abortion seems to have motivated the desecration. Near the vandalized statue, the local Knights of Columbus had years earlier placed a plaque reading: "In loving memory of the unborn victims of abortion." The vandals responded in spraypaint: "Get yr religion off our lives!"

This, in a nutshell, exemplifies the upside-down logic of feminists: a benign plaque on private property represents religion intruding upon society--in Cambridge, Massachusetts no less!--but damaging a work of art on private property with grafitti represents no such intolerance. So far as I know, there have been no protests or expressions of outrage by those so prone to such behavior in the most liberal city in the most liberal state.

If the vandals had spraypainted over Serrano's Piss Christ or Chris Ofili's Virgin Mary in elephant dung rather than a statue honoring Jesus Christ's mother, do you think that Cambridge liberals would have taken notice by now?

The courts have by now eroded the principle of private property. Who's to say these people have not used the courts' actions to their advantage?

Scumbags...

The same way the right has extremists there are some on the left who have gone off the deep end.
No normal liberal condones or is happy about desecration of a church or any other private property. I am sure most conservatives do not condone murdering doctors who have performed abortions. These nuts just hurt their cause. In a nutshell this exemplifies nothing about feminism. It just illustrates how misguided extremist criminals act. I am outraged by their act.

The pro-abortion position is irrational and barbarous. It is only proper that its advocates be the same.

I take comfort in the fact that justice awaits them on the other side.

Man, the crown of thorns of coat hangers over the Virgin's head is one diabolically ingenious form of sacrilege. It mocks Mary on so many levels. Clever people with no moral sense are really dangerous.

Brian:

I'm reminded of certain amateur movie critics I know who, because of their own depth of thought, read entirely too much into shallow films.

Your attribution of many levels of cleverness to these vandals is the same. Consider the thoughtful slogan "Get yr religion off our lives." Is this the work of ingenious blasphemers? Hardly. I would wager that it's strong evidence of the need for writing classes in Harvard's women's studies program.

I think you're on to something Brad.

You may be right that the diabolical (stress that word) cleverness I see in the crown of thorns image isn't due to any particular depth of thought on the part of the perpetrators but considering that Mary was the paradigm for an "unexpected" pregnancy, "single" motherhood (of a sort), and given that God gave the womb a dignity beyond compare by deigning to become a baby within the Virgin then linking Christ's humiliation at Calvary with Mary by the mocki8ng use of the coat hangers strikes me as extremely clever in a sinister wholly evil blasphemous way.

There were probably more than one vandal so maybe one of them was the brains and the other was the, ahem, butch (as beauty is unlikely).