For many years, my family and I lived in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
For those of you who don't know, Oshkosh is the site of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA)'s annual fly-in. Over a million people come from around the globe for the week long event, which features flight demonstrations, notable aviators, and celebrity enthusiasts of all kind (John Denver was a regular when he was alive; Chuck Yeager and Dick Rutan make the trip every year as well). It is the largest civilian airshow in the world.
So it was some surprise to me when a friend of ours mentioned one day that she was a member of "Missionaries to the Preborn", a VERY reactive group (to the right of Operation Rescue) that uses graphic pictures and shock techniques to further their message. She told us, and others, that they would be demonstrating across from the airfield on the Friday of the Fly-in.
This amazed and appalled me. The EAA flyin is not a political event; the views of the pilots are most likely pretty much the same as the general population. Yet Missionaries to the Preborn had chosen this event solely for its visibility, and not for any strategic political purpose.
In my opinion, what they did worked against itself. As a person who has always felt that abortion is wrong, I would be appalled that my family would be exposed to the horrendous sights these people use to further their message, and I in no way would contribute any funds to this organization, as they showed their crass disregard for all of the people, many of them prolife, by exposing them to this garbage.
Sadly, this is the way of things. The protestors at the RNC in my opinion are working against themselves; they're not going to convert any of the attendees, nor, frankly, is that their intent. The intent seems to be solely to get on TV, a bizarre end if ever there was one.
Many of these protestors spend money travelling to these events to protest. The money would be better spent, it seems, on voter education and registration drives within their local community.
Just my two cents,
Gideon MacLeish