Transwoman Gives Eyewitness Account Of Knoxville Church Shooting

Michelangelo Signorile has interviewed Carla Lewis, a transgender woman who was inside the Knoxville Unitarian Church when last week's shooting happened. Signorile:

This is a clip from my interview with Carla Lewis, who was inside the Tennessee Valley Universalist Unitarian Church when a gunman opened fire little over a week ago. She came on the program last week to take us through the tragic event, talk about the gunman's motives of hatred against gays and liberals and tell us a bit about hero Greg McKendry. The 60-year-old church volunteer was killed in the shooting, jumping in front of the gunman to protect others. He and his wife had recently taken in a transgender foster child.

Carla, a transgender woman and a lesbian, runs the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition web site, and is a regular listener to the show. She began by telling us about the service, which was a production of "Annie," in which children were participating. Carla and her partner Jamie had arrived a bit late to church that day. They were still standing, when the gunman, 58-year old James Adkisson, a man brought up in a Christian fundamentalist home and who had recently had some hard times, walked in behind them.

Gay Church Demands To Know Contents Of Church Shooter's Letter

Police won't release the contents of the letter left by the Knoxville church shooter and the local gay church wants to know what it says.

The man who ministers to East Tennessee's largest gay and lesbian congregation says his church won't rest easy until members know what Jim David Adkisson wrote. "The more clarity, the better," said the Rev. Bob Galloway, pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church in West Knoxville. "We need to know what we're dealing with. Is it just liberals he was targeting? Is it just gays? Was it all these things mixed together? We need to know." Galloway said his church serves about 180 people from around East Tennessee, about 85 percent of them gay or lesbian. Some of his parishioners turned around on the way to church and went home Sunday morning when they heard a man had shot up a liberal, gay-friendly church on the west side of town. "They thought it was us," Galloway said.

The Knoxville police chief says, "If you needed to know, you would have been notified." I have a feeling that the local DA may not want to taint the jury pool with the contents of the letter. That, or they don't want to provide the "liberal media" with some major talking points.

Unshocking: Church Shooter A Fan of Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly

Police searching the home of Tennessee church shooter Jim David Adkisson found the following books:

"Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

I'm sure those three's chests are swelling with pride today. Seriously. I bet they each raced to check their Amazon rank.

Police say that according to Adkisson, his hatred was not directed towards Christianity or any other religion, but rather towards the social advocacy of the specific church he attacked. The Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church has a sign on its lawn welcoming gays to service and hosts meetings for PFLAG. Two people were killed by Adkisson's shotgun and five others remain hospitalized in grave condition.

And of course, the God-loving Freepers are blaming the Unitarian Church and saying that since the murdered congregants weren't "true Christians", they are now in hell.

- "What do you expect? God is NOT in the center of this church. Human beings are."
- "It’s a “progressive” church. They probably had The Vagina Monologues scheduled for the evening service."
- "It was probably a mini-rally for The Obamassiah and they were singing 'The sun will come out tomorrow ....'. Now maybe, if there were a lesbian relationship between Annie and Mommy Warbucks or Annie got pregnant and had to get raise money for an abortion, that would be truly a part of the UU world view."
- "An early report I saw indicated that the man who died may have been shielding the children. Just shielding someone from attack doesn't gain you entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven. I hope the people in this "church" will use this wake-up-call as a way to get closer to the Lord Jesus Christ and reject their secular humanism."