The arrest of Dennis Rader, the alleged BTK serial killer, shows just how flawed our assumptions of morality are.
Rader was by all appearances just another standup American living in mid-America. He was a life-long Lutheran who was President of the Church Council at Christ Lutheran Church where he attended for 25 to 30 years with his mother. I checked and found out Christ is an evangelical Lutheran church association, ELCA, so we both belong to same faith. Wonderful.
Rader apparently helped the eldery with household chores, was an ordinance enforcement officer for Park City, Kan., and led a Boy Scouts of America troop. Several sources report on Wednesday that he dropped off spaghetti sauce and salad for potluck before going to visit his mother in the hospital.
Beyond the fact that he might be a serial killer, the guy puts most people to shame with his community work. He does more for his community than I do for mine.
Of course this might be the same guy who coined the term BTK, "Blind Torture Kill," after some grisly murders.
What Dennis Rader teaches us, if in fact he is BTK, is that you can't judge anyone, ever.
If you would have asked the parents of Rader's Boy Scout troop last week if they would rather have him as a Scout leader or an openly gay man, they all would have answered Rader. In reality, those parents and the BSA board choose to entrust children to an alleged serial killer.
The Scouts bar homosexuals in part because they want to protect children, and also because being gay violates the oath to be "Morally Straight." Problem is, an oath has only as much meaning as the person saying it gives it.
We all know what "moral" means, but how do you apply that to a person? Dennis Rader appears to be a moral man, but he is charged with heinous crimes. Was he more fit than a gay man to be a Scout leader if he is convicted? No, but how can you tell?
How can you look a man in the eye and know if he's a moral man? Can you ask him?
You can't say you're a moral person. You have to show it, and up until the moment he was arrested, by all indications Dennis Rader was a moral man. Maybe he still is — maybe we will never know. Maybe we'll never know about anyone ever again.
Article comments
1 - alienboy
One of the lessons of this is that EVERYBODY needs to be WAY LESS JUDGEMENTAL
and a whole lot more tolerant of difference...
2 - Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate
Be LESS judgmental? How do you figure?
It was this gushy, sentimental, "I'm OK, you're OK" stupidity that caused people to not recognize the depravity lurking in a serial killer neighbor.
I say we all need to be a lot MORE critical, suspicious of the so-called "moral" people around us.
"He's such a NICE guy, and he goes to church!" ought to be a warning sign...especially when certain personality traits don't quite fit into this "nice guy" image.
Churches, like other institutions, are full of hypocrites, and perverts love to hide in religious service organizations. They know people are stupid and think church attendance means "good spiritual qualities".
I've been harmed by church goers more than by tavern attenders.
Bah! Wake up. Pay more attention. If something bugs you about a person, your intuition may be trying to tell you something vital.
Watch out for charmers and nice guys and church goers.
3 - Animesh
Wow! That's a scary thought! There could be such people living amidst us, a part of our daily lives, maybe even people we look up to and aspire to emulate one day....
4 - Joel Caris
Well, I don't think you can use a person's religious beliefs, or lack thereof, to make any sort of judgements on their morality. Religious beliefs certainly can effect morality, but you can't make judgements about someone's morality just from their religious beliefs.
Morality is complicated business, plainly put, and it's not something that can easily be judged. Plus, people always have their secrets.
Probaby the best thing to keep in mind is that a situation like this is going to be incredibly rare. Most of the time, you look at someone who leads his life the way Rader did and you're going to have yourself a pretty moral man. But every once in awhile, there's going to be crazy shit going on under the surface. That's just life--it's just humanity.
5 - me2
What better way to meet weak defenseless victims than community service? This guy was just another person from the government claiming to be here to help us.
6 - Silas Kain
Thanks, Matt, you bring up some very good points. "The Scouts bar homosexuals in part because they want to protect children, and also because being gay violates the oath to be "Morally Straight." Problem is, an oath has only as much meaning as the person saying it gives it." You go on to point out, "If you would have asked the parents of Rader's Boy Scout troop last week if they would rather have him as a Scout leader or an openly gay man, they all would have answered Rader. In reality, those parents and the BSA board choose to entrust children to an alleged serial killer."
It's a bit harsh but hard to refute. We've become so preoccupied with the 'evils' of homosexuality that it's overshadowed far more important issues confronting our society. I commented on another article concerning Katie Couric's special last night. The story I told bears repeating here:
Over the holidays I was shopping in an electronics store looking for a couple of games. An attractive woman was at the sales counter with her son who was about 12 or 13. There was a video game he wanted in the worst way.
The clerk feeling a sense of responsibility, asked the woman if she realized that this game was particularly gruesome and violent. The woman asked if there was any sex in the game. The clerk replied, "well, no, there's no sex in it. But the violence and guts is pretty brutal. There's a parent's advisory right here." Mommy cut him off as he pointed out the advisory saying, "As long as there's no gratuitous sex in it he can have it."
The footnote to the story is that this concerned mother also serves on a local school board. Are we so sexually insecure in this country that we are projecting our sexual frustration in other ways? Being in a loving, productive relationship with a person of the same sex is not immoral (except maybe for lesbian couples if they let a heterosexual moral man of character join them). Holding the Bible in the left hand while carrying a sign saying "God Hates Faggots!" is immoral (except maybe for heterosexual men of character who are so sexually inadequate that they know no better).
7 - Steve
One minor correction; it's BIND, not blind, torture, kill. That mistake is all over the internet. He BOUND, tortured, and killed his vics.
8 - TOM
I was so moved by your recerences to the Boy Scouts of America and the refusal of BSA to prevent Gays from serving as scout leaders . I have placed your web reference on my International GLBT news digest web site.(www.fripro.com/GLBT.html) I have been preaching that the BSofA are morality wrong to keep gays out (after all I was a closet Gay boy scout!)Whom do you trust?Why not Gays?
9 - bc
People! Snap out of the morality haze for just a couple of seconds, the man was a SERIAL KILLER the only reason he did all that "moral" stuff was to keep the rest of you in the dark. What do you need a damn road map to the obvious? Read up on criminal pathologies before you come to such asinine mewling about how "moral" he was.
10 - SFC SKI
Well put, bc.
11 - Dave Nalle
A lot of serial killers think that they do their killings for moral reasons. That they are purifying the world or destroying their own impure thoughts by killing their victims. This perspective fits in perfectly with leading an ultra-clean, ultra-moral life in other ways as well.
As for the BSofA. I've always wondered what they did for scout masters once they got rid of the gay ones, because most of the scout masters I've known were gay.
Dave