The Case for Life

On our Legislative Updates radio program this week, we have been reviewing pro-life arguments that testify to the inherent sanctity of life. In that vein, a helpful book was released earlier this year entitled The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture. Written by Scott Klusendorf, the book helps to equip Christians with facts and arguments that show unborn babies are worthy of life and ought to be protected from being killed by abortions.

A website associated with the book serves as a great resource for contending for the unborn in the public square. For example, using the acronym SLED (Size, Level of development, Environment, and Dependence), we note that there are no morally distinctive differences between a child inside the womb and one outside the womb.

The worth of a child is not determined by his or her size; we don’t esteem a future basketball player as more valuable than a future gymnast on account of size. But yet many pro-abortion activists say that because an unborn child is small that it’s somehow justifiable to take his or her life.

The difference in level of development between a toddler and a national honor student is massive, but yet we don’t say that a toddler is somehow less worthy of life because of limited mental faculties.

Environment or location also do not determine the value or worth of a child, despite many abortion proponents arguing that the trip down the birth canal bestows a right to life not enjoyed in the womb. We ought never to fall into the fallacy that your environment determines your value.

Lastly, one’s dependence does not determine his or her worth. We never would tell someone on insulin that because he happens to be totally dependent on something outside himself for his livelihood that we can kill him. Why is it that we do that exact thing with a human dependent on an umbilical cord?

Check out the website for more.

Cheating Politicians Should Seek Forgiveness From God First

Over the weekend, I stumbled across what is perhaps the best article I have seen in the wake of Governor Mark’s Sanford’s admission that he had an affair. The author of the article is Cal Thomas. It ran on Townhall.com on Friday, and I saw it in a newspaper on Sunday. It is absolutely worth the read – I have included a link at the bottom of this post.
Here is an excerpt from the article:

“One can make excuses about power and loneliness and starting out as a friendship that develops into something else, as Gov. Sanford rambled on about, but one can't explain adultery. It is what it is and the person who commits it should be calling on God for mercy, not the voters for understanding.”

The recent revelations from Governor Sanford, and Nevada Senator John Ensign ought to be a warning to everyone – a successful marriage depends on a daily commitment to you spouse, and as Thomas points out, a constant reliance on God.

Please Read the article: http://townhall.com/columnists/CalThomas/2009/06/26/the_voice_claims_another_victim

Sotomayor and Religious Liberty

A friend made me aware of a disconcerting court order by none other than U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. In a Second Circuit order handed down in 2003, Judge Sotomayor excused a New York City Borough president for his censorship of religious speech. The case, Okwedy v. Molinari, is a text book example of how individuals are having their religious liberties and free speech rights violated by governing authorities in positions of power and influence.

An African immigrant pastor named Kristopher Okwedy paid to have a billboard display quotations of a Bible verse condemning homosexuality in two locations in Staten Island, NYC. Staten Island President Guy Molinari used his political clout to intimidate the billboard company, which promptly covered up the Biblical passages. His rights of free speech having been violated, Pastor Okwedy sought legal remedy after the billboard company refused to repost the signs. Sotomayor joined her legal colleagues in covering for Molinari and the billboard company in their obstruction of religious speech, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

By way of destructive legislation, court orders, and judicial fiat, the voices of those holding to a Christian worldview are being increasingly silenced in the public square. We should rightly feel trepidation when a candidate for the highest court in the land takes part in the systematic silencing of the Judeo-Christian ethic in the public arena.

Surveyors are Tricky!

I was settling down after a scrumptious meal when the phone rang. I casually answered and on the other end a a polite young lady that said she was calling from the local library and was wondering if I had a few moments to take a survey. Thinking I needed to play nice with library in penance for a few overdue books, I decided to take her survey.
She started out pleasant enough by asking me how often I used the library and how important I felt the library was to the community. Then she asked me "the question." I've learned that most of these surveys have a purpose. Her final question tipped her hand, "If the library was struggling financially, would you support a bond referendum to keep the library open?" The way she set me up by emphasizing how much we use the library, I felt like a schmuck for telling her "no" I wouldn't support a bond referendum of any kind. I think we pay too much taxes now.
I can just hear the next supervisors meeting when they give their report; "We surveyed over 1,000 people in town and all but one hard head said they supported the idea of a bond referendum." Then the supervisors will schedule a vote and they will be resoundly defeated and they will wonder why.

Where are All the Public Servants?

Senator Barbara Boxer was conducting a hearing with an brigadier general when she got tired of his referencing her as "ma'am" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBnbv4rmOmg). She politely asked him to refer to her as "Senator," saying she has "worked hard for the title." The general honored her request.

Here's how I would have responded if I had been the general; "Yes ma'am, I'd be happy to refer to you as Sanator. But with all due respect, Senator, I believe that "ma'am" is a term of honor just like "sir" is for gentleman. I also believed that as a Senator you 'earned' the term because of your desire to be a public servant. You worked hard, not for a title, but serve the people of this great country. By your insistance on claiming the title 'Senator' I was obviously wrong. You have worked hard not to serve the people but to acquire a self-serving title. Therefore, you are not deserving of the term of respect, 'ma'am'.

In keeping with your request, I humbly ask you to refer to me as Brigadier General, a term I have earned by serving and protecting this country from self-serving leaders like yourself, Senator."

Titles of respect are earned, not dictated. What our country needs are leaders who understand that if they want to be great, they must learn to be the servant of all."

Massachusetts Homosexual Recruiters Receive Taxpayer Funding

Since the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and then Governor Mitt Romney, forced homosexual “marriage” on the state, many have said that society is on the slippery slope toward absolute immorality. A June 12^th WorldNetDaily article entitled Kids attend prom from 'sexual hell' written by, Chelsea Schilling, detailed the experience of a student named Max who attended a recent Youth “Pride” event that ended with a “Prom” inside Boston City Hall. The article reveals that the state of Massachusetts has literally jumped off the moral cliff and is tumbling into the abyss of perversion and debauchery.

Not only are the adults in Massachusetts racing to create for themselves a society defined by homosexual promiscuity leading to a Godless eternity, they are determined to recruit as many young children into a life of depravity as possible.

The homosexual community screams profanity and levels all sorts of loaded charges against anyone who would dare point out that they recruit, but evidently when they don’t think anyone is watching it is ok to be “out” about their recruitment efforts. According to Max, this party for teens included, “several adult homosexuals wearing T-shirts with ‘recruiter’ written in rainbow colors.”

The WorldNetDaily article is not for the faint of heart. It describes a cesspool of perverted activity where children as young as middle school are being exposed to, and encouraged to participate in, homosexual activity. The article also reminds the reader that Massachusetts taxpayers paid the bill for the event!

Wake up Iowa! Unless we pass the Iowa Marriage Amendment, and elect representatives at all levels who are not on the payroll of the homosexual lobby, our state will soon look like the “sexual hell” that teens in Massachusetts now live in.

Ms. Schilling concluded her article with a quote from Max, who said, “this movement has an obsession with kids, and there are no boundaries. It's worse than anybody thought.”

The Auto-Genocide of the West

Last week, I came across a timely quote from Malcolm Muggeridge, one of the most lucid and prophetic cultural commentators of the Twentieth Century:

…[I]t has become abundantly clear in the second half of the twentieth century that Western Man has decided to abolish himself. Having wearied of the struggle to be himself, he has created
his own boredom out of his own affluence,

his own impotence out of his own erotomania,

his own vulnerability out of his own strength;

himself blowing the trumpet that brings the walls of his own city tumbling down, and, in a process of auto-genocide, convincing himself that he is too numerous, and labouring accordingly with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer in order to be an easier prey for his enemies; until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keels over a weary, battered old brontosaurus and becomes extinct.
Malcolm Muggeridge, from his essay “Jesus: The Man Who Lives,” in Seeing Through the Eye: Malcolm Muggeridge on Faith, ed. Cecil Kuhne (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 16.

Given the loss of respect for life (Western Man says: "we're not sure when life begins for a human being, but instead of defaulting towards protecting life, let's kill and call it choice"), morality (Western Man says: "although my rights may come from God, who cares what He has to say about how I ought to live them out"), and the truth (Western Man says:"the only absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth"), it is worth pondering how much longer we can continue down this path.

ht