During a demonstration at the Capitol on Tuesday, anti-abortion activists tore up pages from the Quran, the Muslim holy book, along with a gay pride flag and copies of six U.S. Supreme Court rulings related to religion in public schools, sodomy and abortion.

The group intended to burn the items at the Capitol but couldn't because it didn't have a permit, said Operation Save America volunteer Pat McEwen, a retired college professor from Palm Bay, Fla.

But police confirm that on Tuesday evening, in a parking lot outside the Making Jesus Real Church in Pearl, Mississippi, the Koran indeed went up in flames.

Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe behind the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion who later became an anti-abortion activist, lit the match, McEwen said. McEwen said the Quran was burned because it condones violence.

Operation Save America director the Rev. Flip Benham said his group also burned a Quran during a 2004 demonstration in Columbus, Ohio.

And as documented by Mike Doughney of BARF.org, they certainly did.

For Muslims, desecrating the Quran or any holy book is the "highest degree of insult," [Imam Shaheed Muhammad of Masjid Muhammad of Jackson] said.

Still, he said Operation Save America's action makes him more sad than angry.

"I know it's caused by a lack of understanding," he said. "I actually feel that's something they will live to regret or live to feel some shame and embarrassment."

Time will tell, of course, but shame and embarrassment just don't seem to be a part of Flip Benham's emotional vocabulary.

Which brings us to Frank Pavone of Priests for Life and his traveling fetus.

Abortion protesters hold memorial for fetus at park

A memorial service for an aborted fetus concluded today without the planned burial in Smith Park.
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Father Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, said the fetus, which is being preserved in a formaldehyde-like solution, will be buried in Alabama in a few months.

Photo: Joe Ellis, Clarion-Ledger

Pavone said the fetus was aborted at about 18 weeks. It has been used in demonstrations in New York and Columbus, Ohio, he said, and will be in several more before being buried.

The Rev. Flip Benham, the leader of Operation Save America, bristled at those who might question showing a fetus to children.

"This does not traumatize our children," Benham said. "This traumatizes the adults who would hide the horrors of abortion."

Frank Pavone's pickled fetus wasn't called Rebecca when it was fished out of its jar two years ago in Ohio for a similar mock funeral. Then it was referred to as "Baby Mercy." Otherwise, the events were much the same. Then as now -- and as last year, during OSA's Colorado crusade targeting Dr. Warren Hern -- Pavone (below, third from right) was on hand in priestly black, lending a much-needed touch of gravitas to the carnival atmosphere that Flip Benham generates by his very presence.

Benham and Dave Daubenmire of Minutemen United lined up small children for the viewing in Columbus, too.

Photos: Minutemen United

Frank Pavone told a Clarion-Ledger reporter that he received the preserved fetus from an anonymous donor who asked him to give it a "proper burial." But only after a longer-than-proper interval, since this anointed priest continues touring the country with what he claims to believe is the corpse of a child, in a manner more redolent of P.T. Barnum than of the sacraments.

And that similarity to the greatest huckster of all time just might be the most significant character trait that Father Frank Pavone and the Reverend Flip Benham have in common.

[Title photo: OSA's Flickr album]