Jerry Summers
A recent article on the always controversial subject of gun control and the reported accusation that the Democrat supporters in favor of more stringent firearms statutes engaged the “use of propped up coffins of the victims in the March 2023 school shootings in Nashville in support of their legislative campaign.”
The use of such demonstrative evidence in Tennessee is not original but also arose in the equally controversial topic of abortion in Chattanooga after the now overruled 1973 U.S. Supreme Cort ruling in Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs case in 2022 which has basically returned the issue to the fifty states to decide and enforce as long as it did not violate the federal constitution.
Chattanooga had its own coffin carrier during the 1980s in Daniel “Dan” F. Martino (1948-2003) a street preacher who was a local fixture protesting abortion clinics, adult bookstores, and homosexuality.
As a prolife advocate he was both disowned and secretly financed by the Christian community.
He carried a miniature wooden coffin with a baby doll in it and used it as a prop in his picketing at the above venues and in his frequent appearances before the Chattanooga City Council meetings. He suffered with his gay lifestyle and in the less tolerant atmosphere of that time was arrested by Chattanooga Police allegedly engaged in an illegal sexual act with a male under a local viaduct. He would subsequently move back to Pennsylvania where he died at age 55.
A former resident of Chattanooga (D.W.A.) on Martino’s death wrote a detailed article “The Late Dan Martino Was a Legend and a Basket Case” which contains a detailed autobiographical history of the controversial character of that era and a loose connection to the present political events of 2023. By clicking onto the above article under its title and his name it becomes evident that history repeats itself.
In 1988 he appeared at both the GOP convention in Atlanta and the Democrat convention in New Orleans. At both locations he picketed the politicians with the message in the former of “God is a Republican” and in the latter that “AIDS is a Cure, Not a Disease.”
(He was a unique individual in the history of our town. The street at corner at 7th and Market provided a forum for Tennessee Temple University student preachers to practice their oratory talents before the downtown lunch crowd.)
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You can reach Jerry Summers at jsummers@summersfirm.com