Is Andrea Yates a victim of fundamentalism?

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She was just found to be not guilty by reason of insanity in the deaths of her four children.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060726/ap_on_re_us/yates_trial

I've been following her case and some of her testimony sounds cryptically like things I have heard from fundamentalists and even, more specifically, my own mother.

I have long felt that my mom is weaker emotionally than most people, due to a traumatic & abusive childhood, two divorces, etc. And I feel like her church was her "literal" salvation because she was able to find strength in something outside herself.

I also believe that fundamentalist doctrine prays on the weak, hurting, disadvantaged, etc.

All of this makes it easier to understand "why" she is so unconscionably hateful... It is usually easy to forgive her and I am realizing that the blame doesn't truly lie with my mom, but with the people and the doctrines that have profited and benefited from controlling her.

Could my mom have become an "Andrea Yates?" Isn't that what she's doing, "killing" me spiritually & emotionally because I'm "under Satan's control?"

I believe Fundamentalism is incredibly more dangerous than we realize. Look at what it can do in Islam... convince precious young men & women to kill themselves in suicide attacks.

I'm kinda creeped out right now...

-- Edited by nateblack at 13:26, 2006-07-26