Reflections on Alfie’s Death

When we abandon the Judeo-Christian worldview, we lose the basis for treating others with dignity and respect. It’s the fact that we are created in the image and likeness of God, souls for whom Christ died, that gives dignity and value to every human being. This is what has been the foundation of medical care and social outreach since the Church first formed relief efforts and hospitals: people have been cared for with dignity and tenderness because they have represented the Creator, the Savior.

And Without that foundation, people become mere utilitarian objects, disposable when they lose their obvious “value.” This is what has happened with Charlie Gard, with Alfie Evans, with cancer patients in Holland and Belgium and France . . in Sweden . . . is happening now with an accident victim in France, and a 91-year old woman whose only ailment is a broken wrist, in Vermont, USA.

We must wake from our slumber! Our world is imploding in a morass of immorality! We are so much more than our utilitarian function in society. The objectification of others must be fought against, wherever it is found!

Washington State opens Can of Worms in Surrogacy Law

Sentimentalism wants all adults to be able to have children.  Katy Faust sees the dire issues, risks, and dangers of such an attitude, and of the new Washington State law allowing wholesale human trafficking under the very polite euphemism of “surrogacy”–

Disaster Surrogacy Cases Sanctioned by Washington State’s SB 6037

We WERE right all along!

YES advocate says: NO voters were right. It was about more than marriage

Well.. One of the gay marriage advocates has admitted we were right.  It always was about more than just “marriage.”

I believed that the YES vote was the right case and I believed it for a long time… But Cory Bernardi and others were right. It wasn’t just about a vote about marriage. In fact, it would be about rolling back the way the system currently works for religious organisations to decide whether or not they can hire people based on their sexuality, whether they can decide to marry people based on their sexuality. Because as we speak there is a review going on to religious freedom…

Yeah, religious liberties be damned, if it gets in the way of the agenda.

Parental rights denied due to sexual agenda

An Ohio judge has given a 17-year old into the custody of her grandparents.  Why? Because her parents did not support her desire to transition from female to male.

Never mind that gender dysphoria was long recognized as  treatable mental disorder. Ignore the fact that nearly half of transgenders will attempt suicide (and too many succeed — and this risk is why Johns Hopkins refused to assist gender transitions for many years).  Pretend there’s no evidence that the hormones will exponentially increase cancer risk, especially for males taking female hormones.  Claim there’s no truth to the data that many transgenders regret their transitions and want to revert to the sex they were born. All that matters, any more, is the progressive indulgence of the sexual revolution’s increasingly selfish and irrational demands.

We have seen this already in divorce cases.  Janna Darnelle has written of her divorce judge’s statement, after granting her gay ex-husband everything that he’d asked for, “If you’d asked for more, I’d have given it to you,” despite his very demonstrable (what used to be known as) moral turpitude.

Now, despite years of ridicule directed at conservative voices warning against this very eventuality, and the insistence that it would never come to this from the Left, now parental rights over their own children are being overridden in the interest of furthering a destructive sexual agenda.

In my state, District Court Judges hear domestic cases, and they are elected to their positions in local elections.  Hamilton Co., Ohio, voters need to register their disapproval of this judge’s agenda-driven ruling by demanding a recall and assuring she never hold responsible public office again.

NARAL ProChoice NC is name calling

The NC legislature is proposing revising the NC public school curriculum to state that a prior induced abortion correlates with a higher incidence of premature birth for subsequent pregnancies.

NARAL NC takes offense at that so I commented – if they don’t “moderate” the comment away:

http://prochoicenc.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/ncga-proposes-to-teach-anti-choice-lies-as-part-of-state-health-care-curriculum/#comment-235

Please substantiate:

“despite the reality that trusted physicians and medical experts from the Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, and the American Medical Association have found no correlation between abortion care and pre-term deliveries.” State who studied what and published when. Perhaps you’ve done this elsewhere in your website?

Please then comment on this study that makes such a correlation:
http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/08/27/humrep.des294.abstract
if this is insufficient see:
http://blog.secularprolife.org/2013/03/the-truth-about-north-carolinas-new-sex.html#disqus_thread
for many others.

Next please give us the credentials that permit Suzanne Buckley to authoritively state that this bill “spread[s] misinformation.” I agree that it does – rightfully – “stigmatiz[e] abortion” though I propose the more accurate “tells the truth about abortion”

Finally please follow your own advice:
“The classroom is no place for political indoctrination. Trust our children with the truth, not unsubstantiated lies.”

Well see if they listen to that last. I do not have much confidence but reasonable people can be and must be informed.

I saw this first at http://www.lifenews.com/2013/03/08/naral-denies-abortion-increases-pre-term-birth-risk-for-women/ who found it at http://blog.secularprolife.org/2013/03/the-truth-about-north-carolinas-new-sex.html

“Same Sex ‘Marriage’ isn’t” – Southern Baptists

The Southern Baptists tell it like it is. Not always and not perfectly but they understand the role of religion in a free society.

Fox News quotes from the Baptists’ findings on same sex “marriage.”

marriage is “the exclusive union of one man and one woman” and that “all sexual behavior outside of marriage is sinful.”

It acknowledges that gays and lesbians sometimes experience “unique struggles” but declares that they lack the “distinguishing features of classes entitled to special protections.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/06/18/southern-baptists-meet-during-challenging-times/

I’m reminded of the Catholic Church’s official teaching on homosexuality.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

see http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P85.HTM

Also I’ve posted about this previously April 2009.

I’ll say this just so it gets said.  God made all people.  Some are attracted to people of the same-sex.  (and some  have disordered attractions to all manner of things).  That is not bad or good; only acting on these disordered attractions is wrong.  This doesn’t in anyway affect the Church’s – or any decent thinking person’s – love for them as God’s created handiwork.  The Church uniformly tells us also to absolutely love these people.

https://deliberateengagement.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/not-prolife-specifically-but-an-attack-on-the-church/

Same Sex Marriage is NOT “Just as Good” for Children

A rigorous scientific study reveals that if you choose a valid study group not the small non-random populations that homosexual activists use then the outcomes for children are far worse than when the children have their mom and their dad as parents. Not always possible of course but that does not justify lying about the facts.

The study appears in the July issue of Social Science Research. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000610

Thanks to Austin Nimocks for pointing this out in his article at Town Hall.

Here is a wonderful article about a troubling problem

We need to know what is legal that is popularly thought to be illegal.  (False “Separation” of Church and State.)  Here is a wonderful – if troubling – article by the Alliance Defense Fund.

El Paso City Leaders Declare War on Civil Liberties of Christians

• BY ALAN SEARS POSTED APR 3, 2012

It leads with:

The penalty for opposing the policies of El Paso mayor John Cook are getting stiffer – maybe as stiff as “sign a petition, go to jail.”

and later states:

“El Paso citizens should not live in fear of being arrested and jailed for exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech,”

I made a reply to a comment by a person stating the (false) opinion that “Church’s (sic) can’t be political”

http://blog.telladf.org/2012/04/03/el-paso-city-leaders-declare-war-on-civil-liberties-of-christians/#comment-485198460

NC Amendment 1

The Baptists are leading the way on the defense of traditional marriage.  They held a conference last week on the importance of marriage to our society.  It included necessarily a religious viewpoint but also secular and practical reasons to defend marriage.  http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=37523

Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of North Carolina Values Coalition, said that “when marriage is redefined as genderless, there are legal consequences for anyone who disagree with it.”

“Everything from inheritance laws to property rights must then change,” she said. “If you disagree with this, you’re treated as a racist and as a bigot.”

Also the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh has weighed in – clearly and I think effectively – in favor of the amendment.

Bishop Burbidge Discusses Religious Liberty and Marriage Amendment

On May 8, 2012, voters in North Carolina will have the opportunity to make the traditional definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman part of the North Carolina Constitution.  On this week’s Catholic Perspective and Catholic Weekly, Bishop Michael F. Burbidge explains Catholic teaching on marriage and encourages the faithful to vote for the marriage amendment.  Bishop Burbidge also discusses the ongoing efforts to overturn the recent Department of Health and Human Services mandate requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.

Watch Catholic Perspective online (Windows Media)

from: http://www.dioceseofraleigh.org/news/view.aspx?id=1436

NC Amendment 1 to protect traditional marriage

The Baptist Press posts an interesting analysis of the polls of North Carolina voters concerning Amendment 1.  The amendment states:

Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.

Several polls last week showed that the amendment is likely to fail.  The Baptists however state:

Two new polls that use the exact language citizens will see on the ballot show a proposed North Carolina marriage amendment with a substantial lead.

A survey of 1,191 likely voters by Public Policy Polling has the amendment ahead, 58-38 percent, while a poll of 1,001 by SurveyUSA has the amendment up, 58-36 percent.

I live in perhaps one of the most liberal places in the United States.  Jesse Helms once said – when he balked at spending money on a state zoo – to instead “put a fence around Chapel Hill.”

That said, the received wisdom that I hear from everyone on this issue is that Same-Sex Marriage is a “right.” If we oppose it – with this amendment or otherwise – we will be seen as the hateful south – a real boogie-man to many down here.

However it seems that most of North Carolina agrees with me.

Whether this amendment is good business or good politics or good jurisprudence remains to be seen.  Arguably it may be a necessary step to prevent the courts from overturning validly enacted laws defining marriage.  Where supporters have succeeded in making this a “rights” issue in the press (sometimes by using deliberately distorting the phrasing of poll questions), supporters of traditional marriage are painted as backwards at best and hateful knuckle-draggers and likely KKK members at worst.  I’m not; at least I don’t think I am.  It appears that most of voting-age North Carolina agrees with me – except in this little island of self-righteous liberalism.

Baptist Press article is at:
http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=37524&ref=BPNews-RSSFeed0403