THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 6, 1995 TAG: 9501060475
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: JOHN C. SALVI III'S RAMBLINGS LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
about the Catholic church, ``the family unit,'' welfare, tithing and his desire to become a priest - all point to a common theme among anti-abortion extremists: a desire to return to an earlier time.
``Salvi wants to establish a theocracy,'' said Dallas Blanchard, a sociology professor at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, who has made a career of studying anti-abortion violence and those who engage in it.
``He wants the church to be a political force again. He wants to return to the medieval world. To feudalism.''
Blanchard, who examined the text of Salvi's six-page statement on Thursday, has written three books about abortion and violence, including ``Religious Violence and Abortion'' and ``The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Religious Right.''
He has interviewed about a dozen anti-abortion extremists, including Joseph Grace, a Norfolk house painter who set fire to Hillcrest Clinic in 1983, and Michael Bray, a Bowie, Md., minister who served time in prison for attaching a cluster of pipe bombs to Hillcrest's back door in 1984.
Most of them, Blanchard said, expressed a desire for an earlier time, when men were more powerful and gender and power lines were clearly drawn.
``I characterize the anti-abortion movement as a skirmish in the battle of the family and the war over the future of American society and culture,'' Blanchard said.
``Sexuality is heavily woven into it. A lot of these men see women who get abortions as loose. They are angry at them because, in a sense, abortion frees women from men, and many of these men have been losers in the sexual competition for women.''
Blanchard said he has noticed two types of violent extremists. The first is outspoken and involved in anti-abortion activities. It is epitomized by Paul Hill, the Pensacola minister who recently received the death penalty for killing Dr. John Britton and his escort outside a Pensacola, Fla., clinic.
The second type ``tend to be off the edge psychologically,'' and may be using the abortion issue to gain attention for themselves or for other issues they consider important. That category is personified by Michael Griffin, serving a life sentence for the 1993 shooting death of Dr. David Gunn outside another Pensacola clinic.
``People like Hill are quite rational, although extra-focused in their use of reason,'' Blanchard said. ``Some of the others, their mental processes aren't working normally. They're seeking their 15 minutes in the public limelight. For them, abortion itself may not be all that big an issue.''
Salvi, whose statement Thursday did not mention abortion, appears to be in thiscategory, Blanchard said.
KEYWORDS: ABORTION CLINICS ANTI-ABORTION SHOOTING ARREST by CNB