When headlines hit my stream this morning about First Works Baptist Church in El Monte, California, I didn’t pay a ton of attention. I assumed based on the headlines that it was a minor incident, perhaps some kids throwing firecrackers at the front door or something. I should have dug deeper then because as it turns out, this was a full-blown hate crime.
It wasn’t a firecracker. It was an improvised explosive device of some kind that was strong enough to blow out all the windows and send smoke spewing from the building in the aftermath. The walls were plastered with hateful graffiti. Now, the FBI is on the case. They could have been on the case before when the pastor first reached out to them two weeks ago to report threats of violence and arson. According to The Daily Mail:
Sirens are heard in the distance and multiple police cars are seen racing to the scene. A bomb squad was called in to check for any secondary devices. FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the agency is investigating the ‘IED attack’ as a possible hate crime.
“Anytime a house of worship is attacked, we will respond,” Eimiller said. “If it was motivated in any way by hate, that’s always a working theory when a house of worship is attacked, although that has not been confirmed.”
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has set up a command post close to the church following the attack, reported the Tribune. The bombing comes just two weeks after Pastor Bruce Meija said he had contacted the police after receiving a threat on social media of an arson attack.
“It appeared that the walls to the church had been vandalized as well as all the windows at first appeared to be smashed,” El Monte Police Department Lt. Christopher Cano said. “Then, we realized that the windows were not smashed and that they had actually blown out from some type of explosion.”
The FBI responded overnight with @elmontepolice & @LASDHQ to an #IED attack at the First Works Baptist Church in El Monte, CA. Bomb Techs & the FBI's Evidence Team continue to process the scene. If you have a tip about the responsible party, please call 3104776565. #SeekingInfo pic.twitter.com/LobrjbrZtx
— FBI Los Angeles (@FBILosAngeles) January 23, 2021
We generally do not pull information from foreign sources to report on domestic affairs, but all of the reports by American mainstream media focused on the church’s stance on gay marriage rather than the hate crime they suffered.
The church rightly opposes same-sex marriage, promoting the Biblical definition one man and one woman. Doing so has earned them community protests, a Change.org petition with over 15,000 signatures calling for them to close down, and a report by the radical progressive grifters at Southern Poverty Law Center calling them a hate group.
If had been a mosque hit with a firecracker, it would have been front-page news. But it was a Christian church preaching traditional marriage that was hit by an IED, so it’s a story for mainstream media to suppress.
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