StoopidFly

Man Arrested For Christian Beliefs

WND ran a scary article today:

A husband and wife arrested while preaching on a corner in downtown Kansas City spent a night in jail Nov. 7 after being arrested at the Kansas City Area Transit Authority's Transit Plaza on the corner of 10th and Main streets.

Michael Wheeler said he was sharing his faith, with his wife quietly praying alongside, when a Metro bus supervisor approached and told the couple to leave.

The Wheelers began to pray, and police soon arrived to arrest them. Michael Wheeler was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct and Joy Wheeler was charged with disorderly conduct.

"Religious speech is not second-class speech, and Christians should not be arrested for exercising their First Amendment rights," said Alliance Defense Fund Litigation Counsel David LaPlante. "Unfortunately in this case, a Christian husband and wife were arrested for trespassing and disorderly conduct for sharing the gospel in a public place."

"It's hard to believe that we've come to a point in our country where Christians are arrested for sharing the gospel on a public street corner," he said.

Upon first reading this article it seems horrible. It makes you wonder if you will also be arrested for your faith. I felt outraged at the trampling of the couple’s first amendment rights to free speech and religion.

After doing 30 seconds worth of research (I simply typed in the couple’s name in the Yahoo search engine). I was feeling a little different. The article from World Net Daily paints the two as helpless victims being persecuted for their religious beliefs, unbelievably, here in America. But only a small bit of looking, and I had quite a different story. Michael Wheeler has been arrested no less than 46 times. According to the Kansas City Police Department, Wheeler has been found guilty or paid a monetary fine 10 times since April 1986. He has been charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct, obstructing and resisting an officer.

This is from The Kansas City Star: Scroll to the bottom of this page to read the whole article from April 20, 1998.

"He'll stand in one spot and run in place and yell about Jesus," Officer Russ Dykstra said. In 1986, according to an article that ran in The Kansas City Star, he was sentenced to six months in the city jail for refusing to leave a restaurant. He was sentenced to another year for contempt of court in another case.

He was stabbed, he said, in Seattle while preaching in the streets. One woman in Los Angeles asked if she could borrow his Bible, then promptly smacked him across the face with it.

This seems to indicate that he may not be just an innocent preacher on the side of the road. It would seem reasonable that it would take quite a bit of anger to smack a total stranger across the face with his own Bible. What provokes such an action from a lady?? Maybe he isn't quite as innocent as the ADF would have you believe.

Wheeler goes on to explain why he may not be all there: Past drug use including marijuana and acid.

"At first, I was kind of ashamed for experiencing (drugs)," he said. "Now, it's like a blessing. I can relate to people who are hooked on drugs."

Does the ADF know about all these other problems? I’m sure they must, yet they paint him as just an innocent preacher being persecuted for his Christian beliefs. It seems scary until you know the whole story.

posted by Rebecca @ 6/21/2006 03:49:00 PM