Chances are that anyone you talk to in the Wichita, Kansas area will know what the acronym "BTK" means. Between 1974 and 1986 he terrorized the Wichita area, binding, torturing, and then killing his victims. After around 16 years of silence, BTK started sending letters to local area media outlets, and a few days ago, police finally made an arrest. Dennis L Rader has reportedly confessed to six killings so far. He may be connected to other unsolved murders as well.

Rader is a married father of two, a cub scout leader, and president of his 400-member church congregation at Christ Lutheran Church. Rader sadistically killed people and at least one dog.

The first lesson I want to communicate here is that one person of a group is not necessarily representative of the whole. All Lutheran Church congregation presidents are not serial killers. Christians in general are not necessarily violent sadists. Rader is an aberration. There's no generalization or conclusion to draw here about married people, cub scout leaders, fathers, men, Christians, Lutherans, or church presidents.

Yes, I know that the anti-gay religious right would sieze upon a story like this if the guy were gay and try to generalize or at least imply a generalization that all gay people are sadistic killers. We've seen them do this before. Without additional information, however, it is wrong to accuse an entire group over an aberration or two. Unless the person's actions were a direct result of the belief system of the group (or the group condoned the person's actions in some way), there's no reason to believe that there's any relationship between the membership in the whole and the person's activities.

The second lesson here is that being a Christian, a cub scout leader, a father, and a husband does not provide any indication of virtue. There are bad Christians. There are rotten cub scout leaders. There are lousy fathers and scumbag husbands. Just as it's wrong to blame an entire group for the actions of a deviant member, it's similarly wrong to assume that membership in some group automatically makes someone virtuous and pure.

In short, we shouldn't assume the group represents the member, nor does the member is represent the group.

I think we've been a bit more loose and careless about these principles here on morons.org in the past, though I like to think that in most cases we've done so in order to sarcastically illustrate one of the two principles I outlined above. In any case, let's all rise above the bigots who would sieze upon any opportunity to condemn an entire group for the actions of one or two individuals and avoid this practice in our postings and comments.

BTK is a crazy madman, but he's a crazy madman unto himself.

---Nick

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