Saturday, October 03, 2009

The Problem in New Jersey

Catholic bishops in New Jersey have launched a campaign to stop expected legislation this coming November legalizing same-sex marriage.

Their efforts, though admirable, are too late and will most likely fail.

Why?

The bishops' Achilles heel is in their statement. In their efforts to defend marriage they make the mistake of distinguishing between same-sex "unions" and same-sex marriage.

In their statement they acknowledge that all the rights of marriage are already available to same-sex couples under the state's current law allowing same-sex civil unions.

They state this without any opposition or challenge to the law which recognizes same-sex couples as "married" in all but the word itself.

Thus, "marriage" is reduced to nothing more than a term. There is no legal distinction and thus it is an easy step to simply co-opt and apply the term since the actual legal effects of marriage have already been co-opted and applied.

Apparently the bishops had no problem with civil unions...."just so long as they don't call it marriage".

This is just one of the traps that same-sex proponents set for the opposition, and sadly in this case, the NJ bishops were easy prey.

By not challenging the legal status of same-sex unions in their statement in defense of marriage, and even granting it official sanction by referencing it in a positive light, the bishops have no grounds for their defense, at least in the public square, and perhaps in the religious realm also.

The document released by the Congregation of the Faith in 2003 addressing the legalization of same-sex unions, is adamant that all Catholics "must oppose" the legalization of same-sex unions regardless of what they are called.

By distinguishing between marriage and "unions", the NJ bishops have officially ignored the CDF directive and opened the door wide to the final destruction of that which they wish to defend.

We on Guam have already made the same mistake as evidenced by a recent poll. While the majority of people on Guam would oppose same-sex marriage, the majority would also support legal recognition of same-sex unions.

As per the law, THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. We Catholics MUST OPPOSE the legalization of same-sex unions, not just because we are obliged by our Church to do so, but because if we don't, we will be defending nothing more than a definition and not the institution itself.

There is still time...but not much.

Friday, October 02, 2009

As you may know by now, House Representative Alan Grayson...,

...a freshman Democrat senator from Florida, has called the Republicans "foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who know nothing but ‘no'" for their opposition to current health care bills. He remarked on the House floor that the Republican health plan (there is no Republican health plan) is: “If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly.

(Watch the CNN interview with Grayson here. (As you know CNN is no friend of conservatives but they do an admirable job of holding Grayson accountable.)

While a small debate wages over whether Grayson should apologize in the wake of the forced Joe Wilson apology, the issue once again highlights the desperation of the Democrats.

As we all know, Democrats completely control the House and do not need one single Republican vote to pass whatever bill they want. So why the rhetoric from Grayson and other Democrats?

They must keep the public focus on the Republicans and off the fact that the Democratic leadership, despite their unprecedented power (they control both houses and the White House), simply can't lead.

And why can't they?

Because conscientious Democrats within their ranks (and there are a few) have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the lies their leadership is perpetrating on the American people.

And what sort of lies?

One big lie is that current health care legislation will not directly fund abortions.

Conscientious Democrats know this is a lie which is why they (183 in all, or 42% of the House), led by Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, along with some Republicans issued a letter to Speaker Pelosi on September 28 demanding that the direct funding of abortions be strictly and expressedly forbidden.

President Obama publicly promised that this would be the case. It would seem an easy task for the Democratic leadership to simply include the language in the bill that would effect the President's stated claim: there will be no funding of abortions in "my" health care plan.

(Of course Obama doesn't have a health care plan. That's the problem. He can make all the claims he wants about HIS health care plan because he has committed nothing to paper. Incidentally, Obama's claim set off a fire storm of protests amongst his pro-choice base, a base he made a promise to in front of Planned Parenthood in July of 2007.)

The Democratic leadership is caught in a lie. Obama has made the claim. Conscientious representatives are now asking their leadership to back up the claim in writing and the leadership is looking for a way out and there is none...other than to resort to bashing Republicans.

But it's like beating a horse with a broken leg. No matter how hard you beat it, the horse is not going to get up and go. Republicans simply do not have the votes. This is the very BIG dirty not so little secret that folks like Grayson know is their undoing if the public ever catches on.

Of course the only person who has publicly implied that anyone should be denied health care and just die is Obama himself when he recommended that some people who are terminally ill or very old should just "take the pain pill" and go home. You can watch Obama actually say that here.

Too bad CNN didn't hold Obama as accountable as they seem to be holding Grayson.

The real interesting fact here is that while the Obama and the Democratic leadership claim that the health care bill will not fund abortions, a full 42%, almost half of the House of Representatives, do not believe Obama or their leadership, or they would not have had issued the letter.

We, out here in the public, do not have to debate whether the current health care legislation will directly fund abortions or not; 42% of the people who are directly related to the legislation have expressedly said that it does. Obama could change all that in an instant by simply telling the Democratic leadership to include the language that would back up his claims.

This is not about pro-life or pro-choice. This is simply about pro-truth. If Obama intends to fund abortions as promised to his base before the elections, and as evidenced by the fact that he has already released millions to international groups that promote and perform abortions, then let him stand up and say so. But he has said otherwise. Now let's see what he does.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Health Care and Your Right to The Pill

The National Women's Law Center, in commenting on a ruling in North Carolina that would force Belmont Abbey College which is run by Benedictine monks, to provide contraceptive drug coverage to female employees, said that pregnancy prevention "is central to good health care for women".

The statement provides an opportunity for an easy but rarely mentioned observation.

Health care, preventative or otherwise, is aimed at warding off disease or some other malady foreign to the body.

A woman's body is designed for child bearing. In that sense it can be said that pregnancy is a natural condition. It's what a woman's body is "supposed" to do. And when it doesn't do that, when a woman doesn't conceive naturally, then something is usually considered medically wrong.

Health care is about stopping or preventing something that is wrong or could go wrong with the body. Contraception is about stopping or preventing something that is right with the body.

Only the intellectual dishonest can deny this. We don't even have to get into the moral discussion.

There is always the exception where pregnancy can be life threatening, but it's the exception. And in today's medically advanced society, it is a very rare exception.

The problem here is that the exception has been elevated to the status of the norm. Whenever that happens, there are consequences.

I'm not going to quote studies that show the link between female cancers and contraceptives. Supporters of contraceptives could quote just as many studies back to me to support their perspective.

I would ask you though to consider the possibility of an ill effect on a woman's body after prolonged, sometimes decades long, ingestion of a chemical, designed to force her body to do the very opposite of what it is naturally designed to do.

This isn't like taking an aspirin for a headache. All drugs, except for contraceptive drugs, are designed to counteract something that is wrong with the body. Contraceptive drugs are designed to counteract something that is right with the body.

All drugs have side effects, negative consequences of one kind or another. One may take an aspirin for pain, but to ingest them regularly could be dangerous. What of the woman who ingests a synthetic hormone (The Pill) in doses high enough to trick her body into making it "think" that it's pregnant, year after year?

Think about it. How many women do you know who have died in their 40's from female related cancers (breast, uterine)? It's a disturbingly high number.

This little entry makes no attempt to judge those individuals since I would have no way of knowing whether they used contraceptive drugs or not. But given general contraceptive use, the odds are that they did.

There's a saying that says: "God forgives, others can forgive, I can forgive...but nature never forgives."

While there is a moral component to the argument, the only point I want to make here is the biological one, an appeal to examine nature's design...and hopefully, to intellectual honesty.
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