52 Comments

• Chip | May 13, 2012, 06:51 AM EDT

  I do take exception to one line in this article: "Four years old. Jadon died with the Lord's Prayer ringing in his ears and hearing himself condemned in the Bible." He did NOT hear himself condemned in the Bible. He heard this loon quoting ancient scripture that, to him, condemned homosexuality. He was 4 years old. If you believe we're born gay then maybe this kid was. Or would be eventually. Odds are he wasn't and a child swatting another on the ass (after seeing all their sports heroes doing it) is NO indication. At 4 years old those words had NOTHING to do with him.

• Springfield9 | May 06, 2012, 01:12 PM EDT

  There are 300,000,000 people in America. If one percent were stark raving mad the number would be 3,000,000 crazy people. Tragedy or no, were beating the numbers.

• ciaradexy | May 05, 2012, 06:00 PM EDT

  Ros, when there is an article on this site in regards to someone being murdered in ireland, some Americans seem to think its because we have no morals due to religion not being important here any more and yet here is an article where a child is murdered due to someones religious beliefs. You cannot have it both ways. Im guessing youre catholic? Your god was represented by paedophiles in my country and people sat back and let childrens lives be destroyed. Your god absolves these crimes in the confessional! How can you still fall for this lie?

• mamaginnty | May 05, 2012, 11:51 AM EDT

  Cahir is right in saying this killing will not get too much media coverage in America because this poor child's skin was dark.

• mamaginnty | May 05, 2012, 11:44 AM EDT

  How many rotten cults are there in America, plus so many guns, where grown men think it's macho to teach young children how to use them.

• RosCrea | May 05, 2012, 12:08 AM EDT

  My religion and religious beliefs do not condone what that man did in the name of his "religion". A young boys life was snuffed out because of hatred and bigotry! I know that lad is in heaven with the God who loves all peoples. @ciaradexy, your comment is most confusing to me. Could you try to clarify it?

• ciaradexy | May 04, 2012, 02:30 PM EDT

  This article is about a 4 year old being shot and you lot waffle on about your vile religious beliefs?! If this happened in Ireland youd be saying its because religion in on the decrease here yet in your country its because of your God! Mortified for you! RIP little kiddo.

• BrianO | May 04, 2012, 11:10 AM EDT

  We must all be careful, from Jim Jones to Waco texas to this lunatic, they prey on the weak. I wouldn't put most religions in the same boat, nor excuse any man in any religion who uses his power for evil purposes.

• merefalow | Nov 07, 2011, 02:06 PM EST

  what can you say about religious people,they have always been well known for their kind forgiving understanding ways,ie burning each other,warring with each other,burning old women for being witches,molesting choir boys,political lying cheating hypocritical deviationist crazy twisted narrow bigoted ways,he,s just following in a tradition..

• davalee | Jul 15, 2011, 01:40 PM EDT

  This is so heartbreaking that a 4 year old child lost his life over such a stupid reasoning. He was 4 years old! Not even old enough to make rational decisions. I'm so angry at the mother who stood by and let it happen. She needs to be held accountable.

• hollabackgurl | Jul 14, 2011, 03:13 PM EDT

  Some people have remedial reading skills. This article laments how the toxic stew of religious and anti-gay bigotry were employed to rationalize the murder of a child. If some people refuse to understand that it says more about them than the article.

• seanomelbourne | Jul 14, 2011, 09:45 AM EDT

  The central theme is about the child and extremist right wing christians

• seanomelbourne | Jul 13, 2011, 01:18 PM EDT

  I am horrified, and sickened and cannot believe that the child's mother stood by while it was done. She should be on trial as well.............

• seanomelbourne | Jul 12, 2011, 08:33 PM EDT

  And I was under the impression this article was abOut the death if an innocent child. It's not about gay people quit the navel gazing and pick a proper forum or post for your debate.IT'S ABOUT THE MURDER OF A CHILD YOU SELFISH LOT.

• Gearoid4 | Jul 12, 2011, 08:22 PM EDT

  Well, it is absurd to say that it is not a reconfiguration when the original intention of marriage which is the mutual love of one man and one woman open to procreation is so blatantly overthrown. Anyone who fails to see this is either being deliberately obtuse or so lacking in logic that pointing out the bloody obvious becomes an impossibility.

• olovely | Jul 12, 2011, 04:55 PM EDT

  I'm not interested in God, or any other invisible deity in the sky, but it's absurd to say that anyone's reconfiguring marriage. A consenting adult marrying another consenting adult is not a reconfiguration. There only are two sexes, it's not a radical departure really. That's why conservatives fail on this - their rhetorical/religious freak outs worry no one but themselves.

• Gearoid4 | Jul 12, 2011, 03:32 PM EDT

  Marriage is made for the mating of man and woman in line with the natural design of our Creator- "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them"(Genesis 1:27). To reconfigure this in secular legislation will have consequences for society and will downgrade the natural understanding of marriage as society has always understood it. It opens the way for relationships once thought taboo to be included in a future so-called marital arrangement. Society, even if one factors out the religious aspect, has a selfish interest in the general benefits accruing to it from the complementary parenting skills of a husband and wife as well as an insurance for the future demographic health of the nation. These are clearly absent in a 'same-sex' marriage.

• olovely | Jul 12, 2011, 03:30 PM EDT

  you conservatives need to learn to stop whining, maloney.

• hancock | Jul 12, 2011, 03:10 PM EDT

  That everything leads back to Fox news. You don't believe that do you?

• eiriamach | Jul 12, 2011, 02:21 PM EDT

  John Stuart Mill's essay "On Liberty" gives a workable interpretation of the US Constitution's Bill of Rights. Mill's principle of individualism is often expressed as "Your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins." In philosophic terms, it means that each person has that extent of liberty to live as he or she wishes that is compatible with everyone else having the same extent of liberty. That's a fine conservative principle ("live and let live")! It supports marriage equality, and it opposes attempts to pass laws that impose any one group's religious scruples on all of us. It also leaves everyone free to live according to their own religious religious scruples unless their religious scruples require that they murder four-year-old children or abuse other people's liberties in other ways. Religious people might see this as the political version of the Golden Rule--"do unto others as...." So again I ask, what is the complaint from conservatives? What is the "lefty moron" problem that you're complaining about here?

• eiriamach | Jul 12, 2011, 01:48 PM EDT

  I don't understand why conservatives are complaining about liberals/'lefties' speaking out on these issues. What is there for conservatives to complain about? Enacting marriage equality in NYS law is a win-win for conservatives: it extends a basic liberty throughout the entire population, it restores equality under the law, it strengthens the right to privacy, and it respects separation of church and state-- these are fundamental American constitutional values. Conserving and extending basic constitutional guarantees is traditionally what conservatism is all about. BTW: any liberal or progressive with a libertarian impulse also likes this outcome. But when people who think of themselves as "conservatives" oppose extending the protection of law to the homosexual population, well guys, that's not a conservative position; that's a position of the religious right, the far right, where we find zealot extremists like the one who preached that homosexuality undermines morality and then murdered the four-year-old child.

• hancock | Jul 12, 2011, 01:13 PM EDT

  I was reponding to you lefty morons who see Fox under every bed.

• olovely | Jul 12, 2011, 11:59 AM EDT

  That's an idiotic canard, maloney. Try thinking a bit harder. You can't admit that that gay people are discriminated against in law (they are) and then blame them for complaining about it. Are you habitually dim or just pretending?

• hollabackgurl | Jul 11, 2011, 11:45 PM EDT

  I would say that you disgrace yourself by seeing the murder of a child in terms of partisan politics, hancock, but you apparently have nowhere else to defecate - or you're beyond human help.

• hancock | Jul 11, 2011, 11:21 PM EDT

  Fox didn't promote this story, this screwball site did. What a bunch of lefty morons.

• eiriamach | Jul 11, 2011, 08:15 PM EDT

  It's human vanity, a delusion of moral superiority, and an inclination to reject difference in others that motivate our attempts to use human law to restrict others' freedom: "For the creation was subjected to frustration, not of its own choice, but by the will of the One who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Romans 8:18-21). And Paul writes in Galatians 5:1, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." Legislators try to model human law on transcendent and objective principles of natural law because when we have the natural law within us, we can be morally autonomous; we do not need coercion by any human power. As Christ and the apostle Paul understood, natural law begins and ends with freedom. But when we use human law as a weapon to stigmatize and exclude, we free only the demons within us.

• eiriamach | Jul 11, 2011, 07:54 PM EDT

  Gearoid4 writes of "specious,false compassion which people use to emotionally blackmail those who believe in traditional marriage." He fails to see that anyone can "believe in traditional marriage" without interfering in the freedom of those who practice non-traditional marriage. The verses he quotes are a lesson to the traditionalists to keep their laws-- including the law of Moses, i.e., laws of religion-- off their backs. It's true that I feel compassion for the victims of bigotry and hate crimes, but it is not true that I would try to blackmail anyone else into feeling the same. You've already made the mistake of basing law on "feeling" -- the *wrong* feeling-- homophobia, revulsion for difference, a delusion of your own moral superiority. In the gospel verse you quoted, Jesus showed that love of neighbor has little to do with "feeling" and everything to do with not using LAW to deprive each other of freedom, because, again, without freedom there is neither sin nor virtue, only coercion and control. In the next verse, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Clearly, understanding of human nature, not feeling, should guide us to highly restrained uses of law. Feelings can easily mislead us; unjust laws that deprive people of equal dignity and freedom can just as easily mislead us into persecuting our neighbors.

• seanomelbourne | Jul 11, 2011, 07:29 PM EDT

  You may be correct Gearoid but diminishing the 4yr.olds existence as some bloggers did is reprehensible.If only he was white and named caylee.

• Gearoid4 | Jul 11, 2011, 05:37 PM EDT

  Well, Olovely, there is no contradiction about loving the sinner and hating the sin. Even you in your clumsy, desperate attempts to smear everyone who has Faith with the same brush should hopefully see that. Jesus' refusal to join in the chorus of condemnation of the woman accused of Adultery(John 8: 3-11)was tempered by His instruction to her to walk away from the path of wrong-doing-..." When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, "Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said to her, "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more." This is the template for Christians to follow regarding their attitude to those who lifestyle is in conflict with the gospels. We are all in need of God's mercy and grace as no-one can throw the first stone in that regard. Again, Eiriamac, because some-one disagrees on principle with concepts such as 'gay-marriage' does not make them unreconstructed bigots. This specious,false compassion which people use to emotionally blackmail those who believe in traditional marriage does not really advance the cause of people of homosexual orientation. I abhor violence against anybody whatever their colour, creed or sexual orientation. But certain christian precepts cannot be bargained down to the lowest common denominator and must be held on to with conviction.

• eiriamach | Jul 11, 2011, 03:40 PM EDT

  If you can't blame the victims of hate crimes for being "unnatural," then you'll blame the victims for being "idiotic." It seems you are determined to blame the victims! No one has lumped all people of religion into the same category. Once again: anti-gay preaching and lobbying of state legislatures (as in NYS leading up to passing the marriage equality act) *causes* some people to act out their hatred in criminal ways. At basis, it is the same phenomenon as the murders of gynecologists who provide abortion services. Hearing a "man of God" speak or write against equality for diverse sexual orientations triggers the bigotry neurons in the brains of the bigots. Hate speech or violence or both follow! That's how it works. What is difficult to understand about that? The solution: stop preaching and lobbying against equal rights under the law. Stop insisting on having targets for bigotry.

• Aleesh71 | Jul 11, 2011, 03:13 PM EDT

  An awful story!!!! It's this kind of ignorance that keeps so many countries strapped by war. Ignorance and the unaccpetance of embracing life. Too sad.

• hollabackgurl | Jul 11, 2011, 11:56 AM EDT

  Ah the Tim Pawlenty world view. No one is born gay. Because heterosexuality is normal and homosexuality is not. Also: being white is normal, being anything else is not. Also: being male is normal, being anything else is not. Also: being Christian is normal, being anything else is not.

• McNamara31 | Jul 10, 2011, 11:57 PM EDT

  Irishphotograph ..I agree with you.

• eiriamach | Jul 10, 2011, 10:25 PM EDT

  If Christianity has not taught you to take responsibility for your words and actions, then it has done you no good at all and probably done you a great deal of harm. Advocating legal discrimination against gays and lesbians, which many commentators have done at IC in the run-up to the NYS marriage equality vote, keeps hatred alive. Preaching by fundamentalist pastors and public statements by "authority figures" like AB Dolan against gay rights give "religious" people a license for discrimination and bigotry. The connection is undeniable. And from hatred, it's a short step to hate crimes. To refuse to take responsibility for keeping homophobia and heterosexism active amounts to helping the hater commit the hate crime. Why is there so much defensiveness in comments below? One is talking about hating the sin without hating the sinner-- what self-delusion! When will "religious" people begin to see the harm done by their descriptions of gay sex as "unnatural," especially the harm such words do to vulnerable children and adolescents, who are often victims of hate crimes? "The silence of Church leaders is deafening" because they know that they share responsibility for hate crimes as long as they preach "hatred for the sin," as long as they preach against allowing homosexuals equal dignity, respect, freedom, and acceptance.

• seanomelbourne | Jul 10, 2011, 06:39 PM EDT

  It beggars belief that some of the commentary below mimnimising the child because he,s black and insignificant.He was allegedly murdered by a Christian anti-gay minister. I wonder if Fox will give us a day by day description of the trial,I think not,afterall he's just a 4yr. old black child. And of couse Fox is aligned with the now defunct NOTW no honour and racist.Thank God I'm an Atheist.

• olovely | Jul 10, 2011, 06:38 PM EDT

  You have clearly never read the Bible, mamaginnty - it certainly does instruct you to kill gay people. It also instructs you to kill anyone who works on Sunday ('Anyone who desecrates it must die')Exodus 31:12-15. Or kill non-virgins on their wedding nights. Or followers of other religions. Or fornicators or adulterers, or witches or fortune tellers etc etc. I wish people who defend the Bible actually knew what was in it.

• olovely | Jul 10, 2011, 06:32 PM EDT

  With regard to religious homophobes I think we should hate the stupidity but not the stupid. By the way, Gearoid4, I said his religion instructed him to 'condemn' homos, not 'hate' them. It's interesting that you read it as 'hate' and proves my contention: that idiotic piece of sophistry that says 'hate the sinner, not the sin' is just a hypocritical way to smuggle in the intolerance. It's hilarious that you hold other people to account for a distinction that you just failed to make yourself.

• mamaginnty | Jul 10, 2011, 05:51 PM EDT

  Religion may be against gays but does not tell you to kill them, that would mean killing your own brother or sister, who most families except and lover no matter what. To hate is every bit as bad.

• hancock | Jul 10, 2011, 02:12 PM EDT

  Right up there with dog sex story.

• Gearoid4 | Jul 10, 2011, 02:07 PM EDT

  Well, olovely, My religion is one that has taught to see the innate value of each human being whatever their ethnic background, religion or sexual orientation. Your description of what I believe as 'hating homos' is a crass and ignorant statement that is beneath contempt. The Church prescribes certain behavior patterns which go against the expressed teaching of the gospels. This goes for heterosexuals as well as homosexuals. A true christian never hates the person but rather the sin. We are all in need of God's grace in relation to resisting the tendency to sin throughout life.

• olovely | Jul 10, 2011, 08:55 AM EDT

  Yes, people who are demented come from all walks of life. But what motivated Moses (he says himself) to kill Jadon is commonly held religious disapproval of a child's supposed 'gay behavior.' He had his flunkies say the Lord's Prayer. He was religious and his religion instructed him to condemn homos. What part of this don't you understand since essentially your religion has taught you the same, Gearoid4?

• Gearoid4 | Jul 10, 2011, 12:27 AM EDT

  I wonder if Cahir is trying to make a guilt by association link between the behavior of this warped individual who shot dead a child and people with religious convictions in general. The vast majority of people who quite reasonably oppose standpoints that he may support, do not subscribe to insulting behavior or violence. As Katiemac pointed out twisted, demented minds are found amongst the irreligious as much as the religious and this is true across all sectors and ethnic groups in society. The young child who was murdered and his grieving family members should be front and center in our thoughts and polemics should be left aside.

• jamthecat | Jul 09, 2011, 09:38 PM EDT

  Yes, the man was crazy; so many of these self-made preachers usually are. They pick and choose what they like from the Bible and ignore the rest, and when their hypocrisy is pointed out to them, whine about being treated unjustly. Small wonder katiemac and angelprecious so easily dismiss this story; they have all the true Christian spirit of an artichoke. As for Nancy Grace, she proved her prejudices years ago, and CNN (with a couple of exceptions), MSNBC and FOX have long shown they do not give a damn about what happens to people who are not rich, white, Anglo-Saxon and/or Protestant.

• Irishphotograph | Jul 09, 2011, 08:59 PM EDT

  Moral of the story..Guns should be taken out of American society.

• olovely | Jul 09, 2011, 05:53 PM EDT

  Katiemac it's your sacred duty to deny gay people their dignity both in life and death, apparently. AngelPrecious apparently you will follow your Lord right over the murder conducted in His name? Your comment here was revolting.

• cillowen | Jul 09, 2011, 05:16 PM EDT

  nobody reviews what is written in irishcentral scribbles.

• AngelPrecious | Jul 09, 2011, 03:39 PM EDT

  Yep, Katiemac, I agree totally with your assessment. Cahir, your agenda is revolting and thankfully, not embraced by many Americans. We still love the Lord and do our best to follow Him.

• tundish45 | Jul 09, 2011, 02:48 PM EDT

  Horrible as the story is, just how does this fit the publication objectives of Irish Central? At a secondary level, the article seems chopped down by a distracted editor. The surviving bits project what might be the real agenda for the author and/or editor: i.e. scornful mention of Nancy Grace and the closing line about the Lord's Prayer and biblical condemnation. In all, a confused article.

• colkelley | Jul 09, 2011, 01:42 PM EDT

  So, Cahir, you only read stories about blonde females? I thought so.

• missingpieces | Jul 09, 2011, 11:34 AM EDT

  May he rest in peace. Why do adults take their anger out on innocent children?

• glencolme | Jul 09, 2011, 10:58 AM EDT

  .........Who is Smith???

• KMcSinger | Jul 09, 2011, 10:34 AM EDT

  How horrible! May that poor innocent child rest in peace. I hope his father is tormented in prison for the rest of his miserable life.