FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - JUNE 7, 1998
CONTACT: Mike Doughney or Lauren Sabina Kneisly,
888-217-8770, barf@barf.org, http://www.barf.org

BARF HOLDS INFORMATIONAL PICKET AT OPERATION RESCUE NATIONAL'S HOST
CHURCH; ISSUES STATEMENT DESCRIBING CHILD EXPLOITATION AND THE
"MELTDOWN" OF OPERATION RESCUE 

KISSIMMEE, FLORIDA - The Biblical America Resistance Front, a small
research group that for the past year has documented and reported on
the activities of Operation Rescue National (ORN), held an
informational picket, along with other concerned individuals, at Good
Shepherd Free Methodist Church in Kissimmee, host of ORN's activities
in the Orlando area for the past week.

"We wanted everyone to know, including the members of that church,
what we saw along highways in the area over the past week," said
Lauren Sabina Kneisly of BARF.  "One of our signs read, '96 degrees,
no water, no parents equals child abuse,' and that sums up what we saw
and documented on Wednesday."

Operation Rescue participants were scattered in small groups along a
four mile stretch of the Route 192 strip in the 95-plus degree heat on
Wednesday afternoon for at least one hour, following a 4 hour event on
a nearly shadeless street in the city of Orlando.  Many, including
unaccompanied children, were left without a supply of water, nor did
they have any way of communicating with their leadership in case of
emergency.

"OR participants we spoke with today at Sunday services seemed to be
blissfully unaware of the dangers of their participation in
demonstrations like this under these conditions," said Mike Doughney,
Kneisly's partner.  "They said, 'our kids are just fine' or 'the same
thing happens in Disney World.'  We think instead that what we saw
Wednesday afternoon demonstrates a potentially dangerous willingness
to sacrifice the health and safety of their people, and their
children, to promote their cause."

As part of BARF's usual effort to document the activities of Operation
Rescue, the participants were videotaped while standing along Route
192.  Some of these images have been made available to the press on
the BARF website, at http://www.barf.org/press/orlando-98.html.

The statement to the press made available today by BARF lays out the
true significance of this past week's events.   BARF collected
evidence of a 'meltdown' of Operation Rescue, which included an
apparent shift towards visibly more coercive and dangerous methods of
manipulation of participants.  This event could be called the "Three
Mile Island" of the broader Biblical America movement, as the systems,
beliefs and customs common throughout thousands of churches and
religious organizations set up the conditions for disaster.

"Operation Rescue demonstrated one way through which the common
ideology of the Biblical America movement could lead to tragedy, when
a group isolates themselves, alienates their supporters, and pushes
itself toward more extreme methods of action in a calculated way,"
says Doughney.  "I urge everyone who's uncomfortable with what
Operation Rescue does - and their participants too - to read our
statement."  BARF produced copies of this statement for distribution
to Operation Rescue participants attending church today.

Biblical America Resistance Front (BARF) is the research of Mike
Doughney and Lauren Sabina Kneisly.  Since July 1997, BARF has
followed the activities of Operation Rescue and other organizations of
"Biblical America," their term for a social movement that aims to use
its particular reading of the Bible as the basis of governance and
American society. BARF may be found on the Internet at
http://www.barf.org.


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