SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- On Tuesday, authorities in South Carolina announced that a 33-year-old police officer will face murder charges for the shooting death of an unarmed black man during a routine traffic stop. North Charleston Officer Michael Slager gunned down Walter Scott, 50, as he ran from the policeman’s drawn pistol. Video of the confrontation, captured by a bystander near the scene, clearly shows that the officer pumped at least eight rounds into Scott’s back. He then cuffed the hands of the corpse. Seizing the opportunity to divert attention away from recent controversies, relieved Republican lawmakers said the South Carolina tragedy settles a longstanding debate on the contentious topic of civil rights: uptight, conservative white people are still more afraid of unarmed black men than gays.

Although Slager displayed no outward signs of fear as Walter Scott fled, the act of placing restraints on the dead body demonstrates the terror consuming police officers today -- even dead unarmed black men are perceived as threatening. Officials in South Carolina responded swiftly and decisively in punishing Slager, actions that legislators in other states have downplayed or ignored.

Racially charged showdowns between law enforcement and unarmed citizens of color have dominated the national conversation. Similar slaughters rocked Ferguson, Mo., New York City, Sanford, Fla., and other communities in recent years. These encounters are overshadowed only by the debates raging over equal rights for Christians who want to condemn LGBT individuals.

Some white conservatives attempted to defend the police officer’s role in the shooting as the exercise of religious beliefs. “It’s not racism or discrimination, the Bible warns us against the inhabitants of Africa countless times, and tells us how they should be dealt with under the only law that matters in this country,” explained Ezekiel Buelford, an advocate for embattled religious freedom acts in several states.

“In Chronicles 14,” he said, “the Lord smites the Ethiopians. ‘Do not forgive them!’ the good book instructs us in Isaiah, referencing the idol-worshiping heathens of northern Africa. The actions of this peace officer are no more bigoted than a law that allows decent people to ban perverted, AIDS-riddled sodomites from infecting their stores.”

Buelford also supports a proposed California initiative, The Sodomite Suppression Act, which would sanction the execution of LGBT persons under provisions described in Leviticus.

Representatives for the National Rifle Association, the nation’s outspoken weapons lobby, suggested their own remedy for the alarming number of police shootings involving unarmed black males.

“We have tirelessly championed a law that makes carrying a gun mandatory for all U.S. citizens,” the NRA wrote in a press statement Tuesday evening. “If these people were armed, it would certainly justify the police slaying them. It would also make things tidier -- we’d only have the mess of yellow crime scene tape to clean up, not an endless coil of bureaucratic red tape.”

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