No, these things tend NOT to happen in blue state big cities

Whenever something awful happens in the so-called "heartland", someone always says, "These things just don't happen here. After all, this isn't New York."



Ah, but they DO happen there, as Tbogg points out. Forgetting for a moment about Columbine, or the kid who stabbed a bunch of classmates because God told him to, there seems to be MORE dysfunction per capita in the Bible belt. From divorce to teen sex and pregnancy to infidelity to baby-stealing, the Bible belt is not immune:

Kimmi Hardy- Keokuk, Iowa:



A woman who faked being pregnant, to the point of wearing maternity clothes and holding a shower after the "birth" of her child, has been charged with murder in the death of the baby's actual mother.



Kimmi Hardy has been charged with murdering Theresa Lund and taking Lund's baby on August 28, the day Hardy told friends that she had given birth in her trailer home. Guests at a subsequent baby shower alerted police that Hardy's baby, actually 6 weeks old, seemed too old for a newborn.



Dena Schlosser- McKinney, Texas:



According to her lawyer, a Texas woman who admits killing her baby daughter by severing the girl's arms was guided by a Biblical passage that refers to cutting off body parts to cast away sin.

Attorney David Haynes says 35-year-old Dena Schlosser, who has a history of mental illness, has been quoting Scripture where Jesus says, "If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away."



Schlosser was charged with capital murder last month after telling a 9-1-1 operator that she had cut off her baby's arms. Police found Schlosser in the living room, covered in blood, still holding a knife and listening to a hymn.



Andrea Yates- Houston, Texas:



Around 10:00am on June 20, 2001, Rusty Yates received a startling phone call from his wife, Andrea, whom he had left only an hour before.



"You need to come home," she said.



Puzzled, he asked, "What's going on?"



She just repeated her statement and then added, "It's time. I did it."



Not entirely sure what she meant but in light of her recent illness, he asked her to explain and she said, "It's the children."



Now a chill shot through him. "Which one?" he asked.



"All of them."

But wait, there's more...



So why is this? Is it because these areas tend to be economically more depressed than the blue states? Is it because the school systems are often not as good because there's no tax revenue to pay for them? Is it that the particularly punitive brand of Christianity sold in those states fills people with such self-loathing that they become sociopaths? Or is it, as one fundie once said to me, that Satan specifically singles out Christians for temptation to test them and leaves the rest of us alone?