Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Wanna' Protect Your Conscience? Then You Need LB 461.
It is therefore critical that physicians and other health care workers be protected from having their integrity compromised by being compelled into acting against their consciences by patients, hospitals or government agencies.
The Health Care Freedom of Conscience Act, LB 461, would protect as a basic civil right the right of all health care providers and institutions to decline to participate in any health care functions that violate their respective consciences. The bill also would prohibit all forms of discrimination against them for such refusal…
Good stuff from Dr. Clyde Meckel and Susan Meckel.
I suggest you forward this Omaha World-Herald op/ed to your friends, church colleagues…and, most definitely, to your state senator. Given the war on religious freedoms being waged by Barack Obama, passing LB 461 is of extreme importance.
Will the Supreme Court Rid Us of ObamaCare?
Last week, while testifying before Congress, the president’s acting budget director Jeffrey Zients undercut one of the central legal defenses of the law, admitting that the penalty imposed on those who do not purchase health insurance does not constitute a tax.
This acknowledgement contradicts one of the most important arguments the administration is making before the court. The administration will argue that the mandate is constitutional because it is a tax, and the government has been granted the power to tax.
The president of course went on television during the health care debate and insisted the mechanism punishing people for violating the individual mandate was not a tax. He had to do this to try to defend his campaign promise that he wouldn’t raise taxes on middle-class families, even though he’s done so numerous times already.
We’ve also come to learn just how grossly underestimated the cost of the new law really was.
The Department of Health and Human Services has already received and spent the entirety of its $1 billion budget to implement state-based health care exchanges — and now it’s asking for an additional $860 million to finish the project. No one should be shocked to learn that government needs “just another billion” before implementation has really gotten underway...
Read the rest of "President Obama’s Health Care Law Is Unraveling" by Americans for Prosperity president Tim Phillips here at the Daily Caller.
Sorry, Lady Gaga. There's No Gay Gene.
Lady Gaga' song, "Born This Way," accepts (and, of course, accelerates further) the popular myth that a person's sexual orientation is DNA-determined. This myth is responsible, as much as anything, for promoting sympathy for such things as homosexual marriage and special legal protection.But as Dale O'Leary notes in his Mercator-based blog, Conjugality, the proposition that certain people are prenatally wired to homosexuality has no real scientific basis. And this despite the best efforts of gay friendly researchers.
For instance, O'Leary cites the 4 issues in 1995 of The Journal of Homosexuality published in 1995 on this specific matter. The conclusion: “Current research into possible biological bases of sexual preference has failed to produce any conclusive evidence.”
And there's been absolutely no scientific evidence since that time to change that conclusion. A lot of talk; a lot of myth-sharing; and a lot of pop culture pontificating -- but no science.
Pass it along.
Friday, March 02, 2012
Views on Abortion in Church History
John Calvin, for instance, wrote, "The fetus carried in the mother's womb is already a man; and it is quite unnatural that a life be destroyed of one who has not yet seen its enjoyment.
For it seems more unworthy that a man be killed in his home rather than in his field because for each man his home is his safest refuge. How much more abominable ought it to be considered to kill a fetus in the womb who has not yet been brought into the light."
Going back much, much earlier (c 125 AD) is this exhortation from the Epistle of Barnabas, "Thou shall not destroy thy conceptions before they are brought forth; nor kill them after they are born. Thou shall love thy neighbor more than thy own life. Thou shall not murder a child by abortion."
Want more? Here's a 10 minute presentation created by Vital Signs Ministries that, I think, will open your eyes.
A Tipping Point on Abortion?
Events last week suggest that we may have reached a similar tipping point with the ideology of abortion. Nearly 40 years ago Roe v. Wade pressed a button which opened the floodgates in the US and around the world. Now legalised abortion is being exposed as a republic of lies governed by another band of toads...
Michael Cook, writing in a Mercator article entitled, "Have We Reached a Tipping Point on Abortion?", describes two very recent happenings which encourage him to think we have.
It's a very provocative, very good piece. Check it out right here.
"Ethics Experts" Defend Infanticide: "It's Just Like Abortion."
And, in a sane and moral world, that means both acts of violence are unjust, inhumane and totally unacceptable.
But we live in the brave new world where words mean next to nothing, where hedonism makes its inevitable turn into nihilism, and where God is brazenly defied at every turn.
Here's the latest example as told by Stephen Adams in the Telegraph...
Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued.
The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.
The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said the article's authors had received death threats since publishing the article. He said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society.”...
(The Orwellian irony in the professor's desire to take the high ground in this controversy is as sharp and sinister as...well, as an abortionist's knife.)
Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.
“We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.”
As such they argued it was “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”.
The authors therefore concluded that “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled”.
They also argued that parents should be able to have the baby killed if it turned out to be disabled without their knowing before birth, for example citing that “only the 64 per cent of Down’s syndrome cases” in Europe are diagnosed by prenatal testing…
They preferred to use the phrase “after-birth abortion” rather than “infanticide” to “emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus”...
Oh, my. Once again we see glaring evidence that the egotistic, evil and mad as a hatter scientists who make such effective villains in pulp fiction are very much with us in real life.
And if they are not stopped -- and stopped soon -- it is the twilight of civilization indeed.
The Star Trek Doctor Was Right...About Life
John wrote, "As a fan of science-fiction, my son and I were watching a re-run of an old Star Trek episode from one of the many series that aired about 8 years ago. When the ship's doctor was abducted and was asked to "euthanize" a Klingon suffering from a disease, he refused, telling his captors that as a doctor, it was "unethical to end a life at any stage." My son chimed in right away, "Daddy, he's Pro-Life!" The Lord indeed works in mysterious ways. Even through Star Trek. :)"
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Of Obama, Waterloo and Cheap Nags
And just what in Keegan's book made me think of our President's misplaced spending? It was the tragic mistake of Major-General Sir William Ponsonby whose death at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 need not have happened at all. But happen it did because the General, who had no trouble spending his fortune on more superfluous pleasures, became a cheapskate when it came to military matters.
The tragedy of what befell the commander of the Union Brigade which had been ordered by the Duke of Wellington to counter-attack the dispirited columns of D'Erlon's 1 Corps is well known. But this is how Keegan describes it:
"Ponsonby, the Brigade Commander, was among those killed, and lost his life because of a false economy. He had left his best charger, worth far more than the government compensation fund would pay if it were killed, behind the lines and chosen to ride instead an inferior hack. The French Lancers caught him struggling to safety over heavy ground [mud], easily rode him down, and speared him to death."
I know that Barack Obama doesn't read much. But I sure wish that someone would tell him the story of Sir William Ponsonby and remind him of the critical need to prioritize military preparedness in his budget.
We simply can't afford all the other foolishness he is spending our money on (not to mention, our children's and grandchildren's money).
Neither can we afford to go cheapskating with our defense capabilities. Not in a world in which the likes of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and assorted terror cells severely and increasingly threaten America's interests.
It's a very frightening reality to contemplate. While Barack Obama is spending our treasury on failed programs, on skyrocketing Nanny State handouts, on Planned Parenthood, on counter-productive government employee unions and so on, he is forcing America's very survival to ride on a Ponsonby nag.
While right there before us are the lances of our enemies.
The Eddie Haskell Presidency
...For a while, President Blameless could shirk responsibility by pointing fingers at his predecessor. That got old, though I can’t say in a hurry. As late as last July, the White House sought to prove that Dallas resident George W. Bush was still responsible for all the nation’s budget troubles. Atlantic magazine blogger Megan McArdle deliciously characterized this lame attempt at evading responsibility as “The duck starts here.”
Mr. Obama’s roster of the blameworthy is quite eclectic: The Japanese tsunami, the Arab Spring uprisings, the European debt crisis and “bad luck” were fingered as causes of the bad economy in a speech last summer. Of course, Mr. Obama was responsible solely for fanciful successes. “We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again,” the president remarked before ceding the stage to the tooth fairy.
When the president, in a sop to his environmental base, killed the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have created thousands of jobs for U.S. citizens and brought us fuel from a friendly nation, that, too, was cast as the fault of the Republicans: They had had the audacity to try to force the president to make a timely decision.
In announcing that he was scrapping the pipeline, the president said the decision was “not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline” but on the “arbitrary nature of a deadline” Republicans had given him. He can’t possibly decide, at least until after this November.
When China gets the pipeline, you can bet your bottom dollar (assuming you still have a bottom dollar by then) that Mr. Obama will blame somebody else...
Read on right here.
Sex, Lies and Blackmail: Education In Cuba
Here's excerpts from an article written by Osmel Almaguer for the Havana Times.
“Students here have no interest in learning,” said the principal of the polytechnic institute where I recently started working as a teacher.
“Just take it easy; treat it like a way to survive, because if you try to force yourself it’s useless when you consider the immaturity and apathy of our students,” he concluded…
The corruption in these schools — as everyone knows — includes teachers selling tests to students. For a minimum of 5 CUCs (about $5.50 USD) a student will pass, and for 10 CUCs they’ll get the highest grade in the class. It’s also common for there to be sex between male teachers and female students, whether or not it’s grade related.
In my short experience in teaching the subject of Spanish literature, what has caught my attention is the marked contrast between the sexual lust of these students and their immaturity as people…
What’s saddest is that the government requires the students to be promoted, without taking into account that the responsibility for these learners passing depends on their own work as much as on the teachers.
If almost everyone fails a test, the blame isn’t placed on the lack of generalized interest, but on the inability of the teacher, who will see their pay docked and will probably close their contract.
Collective experience has taught this to the students, who have also learned to keep their teachers vulnerable to blackmail in this respect.
In other words, the individual student doesn’t make an effort because the responsibility lies entirely with the teacher, regardless of the fact that none of them study anything at home, at least nothing other than reggaeton, dancing, fashion and cellphones.
A teacher has almost no tools to discipline or educate their students, not to mention their problems with parents, who only care about complaining to the school’s administration when their child is suspended or punished...
Can Religious Freedom in America Survive?
As we all know, President Obama’s health care law will mandate that religious hospitals, charities, and schools abandon the tenets of their faiths and provide their employees insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilization. This anti-conscience mandate is but the latest assault on liberty Obamacare has ushered in. Its shock waves are reverberating across the country, waking Americans to the fact that our first freedom — religious liberty — will be the first to fall now that the federal government has unfettered control over the country’s health care system...
(Mike Brownfield, "Two Centuries of Religious Freedom Rolled Back," The Foundry, Heritage Foundation, March 1)
Brownfield's article is a good one and deserves to be read in full. You'll find that it makes a superb prelude to the Vital Signs Blog post about conscience protection which immediately follows.
Protecting the Rights of Conscience
In particular, the rights of devout Christians have been trampled. In the name of tolerance, Christian views on sexuality, decency, religious freedom, the right of assembly, marriage, parental rights, and expressions of faith in the public square are no longer...well, tolerated.
And, of course, with Barack Obama's dramatic escalation of this war on Christian conscience, things are going to get much worse -- real quick.
That is why pastors, professionals and citizens in general need to strongly support such common-sense defensive measures as Nebraska's LB 461.
Dave Bydalek of Family First has put together an excellent primer on just why the passage of Nebraska's LB 461 (Protecting Conscience Rights in Health Care) is so crucial. I urge you to carefully consider Dave's argument and then use it to stimulate and inform your letters, e-mails and phone calls to your state senators.
Why protect conscience rights in health care?
1. Protect patient access to health care.
Protecting the freedom of conscience of healthcare providers and institutions is necessary to avoid added stress on an already overtaxed healthcare system. Without conscience protections, healthcare access for hundreds of thousands of patients nationwide will be threatened and healthcare costs will rise because of the lack of facilities to provide needed services.
Conscience protection is the only way to en sure access to health care, which is increasingly threatened by the aggressive politicization of health professions to drive away persons of conscience. Each year, one in six patients is cared for in a Catholic hospital. Without conscience protections, many faith-based hospitals and providers who provide services to millions of patients may shut down, limiting access to needed services.
Over nine in ten physicians in a national poll agreed, "I would rather stop practicing medicine altogether than be forced to violate my conscience." Driving faith-based professionals out of medicine would strand hundreds of thousands of patients, especially those in rural vicinities who rely on only a few doctors in their areas.
2. Preserve the patient-physician relationship.
Conscience protections are essential to preserve the exclusive patient-physician relationship. Without it, the government will be able to effectively limit where patients can go for care.
If the government does not protect life-honoring healthcare professionals and institutions from being forced to perform procedures they are morally opposed to, patients will no longer be able to choose such professionals and institutions. This takes choices way from patients, who often want to choose a provider who shares their core values.
3. Protect healthcare professionals with moral, ethical and religious convictions from discrimination.
Faith-based healthcare professionals report widespread discrimination because of conscience. A national survey released by The Polling Company, Inc. reveals that: 32% have “been pressured to refer a patient for a procedure to which [they] had moral, ethical, or religious objections.
26% have “been pressured to write a prescription for a medication to which [they] had moral, ethical, or religious objections. 33% have “considered not pursuing a career in a particular medical specialty because of attitudes prevalent in that specialty that is not considered tolerant of [their] moral, ethical or religious beliefs.”
4. LB 461 provides a mechanism for legally protecting conscience rights.
LB 461 provides that health care providers have the right not to participate in any health care function that violates his or her conscience. Likewise, health care facilities have the right not to participate in any health care function that violates its conscience. LB 461 provides a civil action for damages or injunctive relief for any violation of the Health Care Freedom Act.
All of the pro-life groups in Nebraska have expressed concern for seeing the rights of conscience protected under Nebraska law.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
"When Swing Was King" Lives in the Present Too
But things worked out okay as she and a few others stayed around to talk while we packed up all of our gear. In fact, we sat down for awhile just to visit -- another aspect of our ministry in the nursing homes and assisted living centers that we know is very important. Ida Mae (who is proudly 94 years old) talked about the days when she and her husband danced to all the bands that came through town. Both the local ones and the famous ones. It didn't matter; they loved music and they loved dancing. "When some of them came, I used to make an entrance with a high leg kick and the boys in the band would say, 'Okay, Ida Mae's here. Let's get started!'"
The activity directors (two very caring young women) got in on a bit of our conversation and they were enjoying the ladies' reminiscences quite a bit too. To hear these seniors tell stories of their lives is a wonderful learning experience and we never tire of it. However, many these folks are not only interested in the past -- they're very much into what's happening now as well. Yesterday's conversation, for instance, touched on a variety of topics: how we started "When Swing Was King," modern hair styles, the food at the nursing home, my being a preacher, and a computer class one lady was taking.
Great music. Interesting photos. Fun trivia. Cherished memories. New stories. And people of different generations and backgrounds blessing each other with love and respect. These are the things that make "When Swing Was King" such a delightful and important ministry. And any time you want to join us, you're most welcome.
Sex Toys Sold by Your Drug Store?
Marital (and extra-marital) sex aids? Huh?
A friend who works in the medical field recently sent over an alert about Walgreens being in the sex toy business. It seems he was at the online page for Walgreens and had typed in "otoscopes for sale." Now I'm a humanities guy and had no idea what an otoscope was but he explained it's one of those devices a doctor or nurse uses to look in your ear. Anyhow, in response to his search, the Walgreens site did pop up with a page showing a couple different otoscopes -- but which first showed, at the top of the page,14 types of sexual lubricants, including at least one specifically described for use in an unnatural, dangerous sexual activity.
That's right. Walgreens.
Indeed, it turns out that Walgreens has gone into the sex trade pretty strong, peddling hundreds of sex items from its web site -- items ranging from lubricants, sex toys (some quite bizarre), whips, "positional furniture," flavored condoms, masturbation aids, edible underwear, and the devil knows (pun fully intended) what else.
We have decided to forego shopping at Walgreens from now on. And, for that matter, we won't be shopping at CVS either. I checked their website too and, though it was not nearly as unnatural and offensive as Walgreen's, we really don't want our pharmacy to be a competitor of Lecherous Lenny's Lust Planet.
From now on, it's Baker's supermarket only for our prescriptions and sundry items.
I sent along a letter to both companies informing them of our decision. I urge you to do the same.
(Blog post reprinted from September 21, 2011.)
Santorum Alone Targets ObamaCare
This is a surprising question, coming from a man of Krauthammer's credentials and erudition. He obviously hasn't been listening as closely as one might have expected. Three of the four remaining Republican presidential candidates have indeed failed to give the issue the attention it merits. Rick Santorum, however, has been all over it…
Read the rest of David Catron's important article here at American Spectator.
Communist China Loves Lin (While Persecuting Lin's Fellow Christians)
None of the Chinese coverage of Lin's exploits mentioned his faith. As a result, relatively few Chinese citizens know about Lin's faith. After all, for the Communist Chinese to acknowledge Lin's Christianity would be, to put it mildly, awkward.
The press here in the United States, however, is less reticent. In its reporting of Lin's impact in China, the Times described China's Christian minority as "often-persecuted"-as well as the various efforts the Communist government has used to contain the spread of Chrsitianity. While there is a lot more that can be said about the subject, the Times deserves credit for at least pointing out the irony in Beijing's embrace of Lin.
What is even more ironic is that the Lin story broke around the same time that China's next leader, Vice President Xi Jingping, was touring the United States. Among the people who protested Xi's visit was the writer Yu Jie, who recently moved the United States after being tortured and held under house arrest by Chinese authorities.
Yu, like many prominent dissidents, is a Christian. Similarly, most of the Chinese lawyers brave enough to take on the government are Christians. To talk about human rights in China without mentioning the role played by Chinese Christians makes as much sense as talking about Jeremy Lin without mentioning his faith.
Despite the efforts of the government, it appears that Chinese Christians are learning about Lin's faith and drawing inspiration from it. That's great.
What I hope happens here in the United States is that even more Americans learn about the faith of Chinese Christians and the price they pay for that faith. With all due respect to Lin and the Knicks, those are the underdogs I'm rooting for.
(Chuck Colson, BreakPoint commentary, February 28)
Obama Administration Praises Whistleblowers -- Unless They're Exposing the Obama Administration
Well, Barack Obama lied.
Indeed, we've lost count of the number of things that the White House has kept secret, refused to report, arrogantly shrugged off and hushed up. But, the outrage is not only the Team Obama's constant cover ups, it is how zealous they are to keep anyone from coming clean.
Below is an excerpt from a disturbing story (published, remarkably, in the New York Times) that describes this sorry state of affairs.
Jake Tapper, the White House correspondent for ABC News, pointed out that the administration had lauded brave reporting in distant lands more than once and then asked, “How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistle-blowers to court?”
He then suggested that the administration seemed to believe that “the truth should come out abroad; it shouldn’t come out here.”
Fair point. The Obama administration, which promised during its transition to power that it would enhance “whistle-blower laws to protect federal workers,” has been more prone than any administration in history in trying to silence and prosecute federal workers…
In one of the more remarkable examples of the administration’s aggressive approach, Thomas A. Drake, a former employee of the National Security Agency, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act last year and faced a possible 35 years in prison.
His crime? When his agency was about to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a software program bought from the private sector intended to monitor digital data, he spoke with a reporter at The Baltimore Sun. He suggested an internally developed program that cost significantly less would be more effective and not violate privacy in the way the product from the vendor would. (He turned out to be right, by the way.)
He was charged with 10 felony counts that accused him of lying to investigators and obstructing justice. Last summer, the case against him collapsed, and he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor, of misuse of a government computer.
Jesselyn Radack, the director for national security and human rights at the Government Accountability Project, was one of the lawyers who represented him.
“The Obama administration has been quite hypocritical about its promises of openness, transparency and accountability,” she said. “All presidents hate leaks, but pursuing whistle-blowers as spies is heavy-handed and beyond the scope of the law.”…
And it’s worth pointing out that the administration’s emphasis on secrecy comes and goes depending on the news. Reporters were immediately and endlessly briefed on the “secret” operation that successfully found and killed Osama bin Laden. And the drone program in Pakistan and Afghanistan comes to light in a very organized and systematic way every time there is a successful mission.
There is plenty of authorized leaking going on, but this particular boat leaks from the top. Leaks from the decks below, especially ones that might embarrass the administration, have been dealt with very differently.
Friday, February 24, 2012
The Christian Warrior's Ascendant Future
(Carl F. Henry in Twilight of a Great Civilization, 1988)
For the Christian, a forgiven sinner who knows that his inheritance includes everlasting life, spiritual warfare is a critical, yet temporary, part of his existence. This struggle will not last much longer.
Also, it is so important to remember that, using the power of the Holy Spirit, believers can endure even the toughest of trials and defeat even the most sinister of enemies: the princes and powers of the air, the temptations of our flesh and, eventually, even death itself.
But though the image of a valiant warrior who "goes down" fighting is certainly inspiring, it is incomplete. For the Christian who faithfully "goes down" fighting doesn't stay down. He is, in a twinkling of the eye, ascendant -- "going up" to enjoy forever his reunion, his reward and his Redeemer.
Let's allow Dr. Henry's exhortation to inspire us today to do our duty, to live joyfully, triumphantly in the light of our ascendant future.
America's Mistake-Prone Prez
No kidding. But don't worry, even this latest in Biden's long series of bonehead mistakes will not elicit endless giggling from the media as it would have done were it Gerald Ford or a Dan Quayle. After all, Joe Biden is a Democrat. And the faux pas, foibles and flim-flams of members of the progressive party are to be carefully overlooked by the press.
But that general rule is sometimes overlooked, especially in days like these where an administration has been so utterly feckless, hypocritical and bumbling as the one represented by Messrs Obama and Biden.
Want examples? Read through this compelling report from Matthew Continetti, "The Sloppy Incumbent."
Good stuff.
Caught on Tape: U.K. Doctors Performing Secret Sex-Selection Abortions
Not to mention, in violation of all that's holy.
The video camera captures the whole damning scene. The abortionist is told by the couple acting undercover that they want an abortion because they know the fetus is female and "they can't handle that right now."
To which the woman abortionist replies, "No, no, I don't ask questions. If you want a termination, you want a termination. That's my job. That's all. I don't ask questions."
She is then shown instructing the abortionist who will actually carry out the fatal operation that the abortion will be categorized under "social reasons" although she knows all too well she is breaking the law by doing so. She explains also that there are to be no further tests done or questions asked.
View the video clip and the rest of the Telegraph story here.
U.S. Govt Protests Iran's Death Sentence on Christian Pastor
Pastor Nadarkhani's crime? He trusted Jesus Christ as his Savior and he will not recant his belief.
Here's the White House statement:
The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms reports that Iranian authorities’ reaffirmed a death sentence for Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani for the sole reason of his refusal to recant his Christian faith. This action is yet another shocking breach of Iran’s international obligations, its own constitution, and stated religious values. The United States stands in solidarity with Pastor Nadarkhani, his family, and all those who seek to practice their religion without fear of persecution—a fundamental and universal human right. The trial and sentencing process for Pastor Nadarkhani demonstrates the Iranian government’s total disregard for religious freedom, and further demonstrates Iran's continuing violation of the universal rights of its citizens. The United States calls upon the Iranian authorities to immediately lift the sentence, release Pastor Nadarkhani, and demonstrate a commitment to basic, universal human rights, including freedom of religion. The United States renews its calls for people of conscience and governments around the world to reach out to Iranian authorities and demand Pastor Nadarkhani's immediate release.
Prayers for our persecuted brothers and sisters in the Faith must continue to be fervent, frequent and, whenever possible, connected with public advocacy.
It's the Nanny State vs the Citizens
Excuse me, but just which side in the culture wars is forcing it's ideology down the other's throat?Barb Malek takes a look at 5 examples -- from just the last couple of days, no less -- in which the bully bureaucrats serving "progressive" government are robbing citizens of heretofore protected rights.
Planned Parenthood and the Girl Scouts: The Latest Flap
You would think that the world was close to coming to an end when Indiana state representative Bob Morris became the only legislator in the Indiana House to withhold his support for a resolution honoring the Girl Scouts of America. I saw the now-famous Morris letter days before Rachel Maddow, the Huffington Post, and CNN and it struck me as nothing more than a legislator who performed his due diligence in Googling the term Girl Scouts Planned Parenthood. (If you haven’t tried it, I suggest that you do.) What I didn’t expect was the giant sound of hyperventilation resonating from coast-to-coast. First it blew up on Twitter, then it blew up on cable, then it just blew up.
Overnight, Morris became the target of ridicule, misinformation and worse. Most assume it was because he impugned the reputation of the organization known for those famous cookies we’ve all enjoyed at one time or the other. But from a different view, I’m not so sure all of this noise is so much about the Girl Scouts as it is about – once again — Planned Parenthood.
It certainly isn’t about giving Morris a fair shake. In fact, in my limited Twitter stream I kept seeing news reporters making comments like “is this guy kidding”? Maybe the better question is: “why is this guy so concerned”? This lack of asking the right question has led every single report that I’ve read to overtly ignore the fact that former Girl Scouts of America CEO Kathy Cloninger stated on NBC’s Today Show that yes, the Girls Scouts partner with Planned Parenthood. That’s not urban legend, that’s YouTube.
Call me silly, but when a CEO says her organization partners with Planned Parenthood, I take it that her organization partners with Planned Parenthood.
So what does this all mean?
First, there are a boatload of reporters not doing the work required of serious journalists. Welcome to the real world.
Second, defenders of Planned Parenthood resent the implication that involvement with Planned Parenthood somehow makes the Girl Scouts or any other organization controversial.
Third, and perhaps most importantly to the life community, the outcome of all if this uproar is that Girls Scout councils will be much less inclined to partner, cooperate, or in any other way cozy up to Planned Parenthood after expending so much energy to deny any association. Parents will be watching, pro-life groups will be reporting, and future denials will be baseless if, indeed, we see more evidence surface such as a Girls Scout CEO acknowledging a partnership.
For Planned Parenthood – well, it just seems that the Girl Scouts is one more dance partner that doesn’t want to be seen holding hands in public.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
A Rosy Day
And, because the organizers keep asking us to help out, we do.
And then we will be staying over in the Bluffs for awhile as we present this month's edition of "When Swing Was King" to an audience at North Crest nursing home.
Then it's back to Omaha for a few other tasks before taking Allen and Cindy Nelson to dinner for her birthday.
A full day but I think it promises to be a rather rosy one too. And, yes, I did manage to get a couple of posts on the blog this morning which I think you will find of interest:
Abortion Shame? Not Very Often.
Remembering the CPC's Beginnings
Check them out.
Abortion Shame? Not Very Often.
But all such reactions are very rare nowadays. For abortion has become, to so many Americans of child-bearing age, a completely conventional experience. Sure, the facts about abortion's risks to women are more widespread than ever. So too is the knowledge of the wondrous development of the human person inside the womb. And yes, the polls suggest that American youth are more pro-life than their parents' generation.
Nevertheless, those who head to the abortion clinic to get their "problem fixed" are largely untroubled by scientific facts, medical risks, moral corruption or even the fear of God. Not all of them, no. But we must honestly face the fact that most of these women (and men) know all too well that ending their pregnancy means killing their child -- but they don't care. Their lives are dominated by the self-interest of the immediate moment.
I'm well aware that pro-abortion spokespersons (and some pro-life leaders too) insist that every woman dealing with an unexpected pregnancy does so with careful deliberation amid anxiety, fear, and a moral debate with her conscience. But this just doesn't fit the facts. Not the facts that show that a high percentage of abortions in America are repeat abortions; that is, women having their second, third or more abortion.
And it doesn't fit the facts that a sidewalk counselor sees outside the abortion mills. For there we rarely see tears from an abortion client or any other indication that this is a traumatic, difficult, crisis situation for them. Instead of the crying, the shame, the excuses or even the guilty anger, the women going into the abortion centers where their preborn babies will be killed are doing their makeup, adjusting their clothes, laughing on their cell phones, or kissing their other child in the car seat before Daddy drives off.
Moral sensitivity is dying. Or dead altogether. Religious understanding is absent. And a commitment to career, leisure activities, body shape and material "stuff" leaves no room for the precious, innocent and miraculous baby she has conceived and is carrying.
It's not just the continuation of abortion in America that breaks my heart. It's that so much of America isn't even ashamed of it anymore.
Remembering the CPC's Beginnings
After finishing lunch, the four of us had a brief conversation with Gina. She hadn't seen the Krampers for an awful long time and it was neat to see them catching up a bit. Indeed, the sight of them talking together made my mind race back over the years to another time we had all been together; namely, the very first counselor training classes for the AAA Center for Pregnancy Counseling.
That would have been in June of 1986. Yipes -- time goes quickly.
Gina, a registered nurse, was part of our first group of CPC counselors along with Claire, Barb Malek, Chris Schlesiger, Winnie Kaipust, Mary Roberts, Bev Weis, Theresa Hall, Pam Nissen and many others who I can't recall right now. And teaching those first training sessions (which were held at a small auditorium at Creighton Prep High School) were Dr. Kramper, Bob Hayes, Grace Sondermeier, Tom Sanderson and the insiders: Chris and Winnie, and me.
Our time at Dolce's prompted a lot of memories of those early times and, throughout the day, we were reminiscing about God's grace to us all in getting the CPC started. But then that night, at a letter-writing party over at the Coppi's, we had a reunion with another couple who were also very involved in the CPC's beginnings, Jim and Marsha Kunz. And that stimulated a whole batch of new memories, especially about the amateur renovations required of the space we rented at 78th and Dodge.
We were so green, so inexperienced and yet so hopeful and dedicated. Vital Signs Ministries (then called the Omaha Christian Action Council) had desperately tried to get others involved in starting a Christ-centered crisis pregnancy center because our hands were full with so many other responsibilities. But after our calls for action, our pastor's luncheons, and our public meetings had failed to bring new leaders into action, we knew we would have to take on the immense task ourselves.
And here it is, more than 25 years later, with the AAA CPC standing as one of the most brilliant Christian ministries in the Heartland.
It was great to go down memory lane a bit. In one day, Claire and I had touched base with 5 other volunteers from the AAA CPC's very first days and, in doing so, we were transported back in time to remember the amazing miracles that our Lord performed among us to lift that ministry into existence.
And we were, of course, also moved to thank God for the miracles that have continued to be the daily fruit of that fabulous life-saving ministry. How it has grown! How it has been protected and blessed! And how it has proven to be such a powerful, enriching and glorious ministry for the Lord Jesus over the years.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
"How Can Our Church Partner with Vital Signs Ministries?"
Below I print a letter I wrote yesterday responding to a friend who asked me, "How can our church partner with Vital Signs Ministries?"
Dear __________,
Dear __________,
Thanks so much for your interest. Among the various ways local church congregations can interact with Vital Signs Ministries, these top the list.
1) Local church participation in the key “calendar”pro-life events: Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, the Walk for Life in Lincoln, the Life Chain, and the AAA Center for Pregnancy Counseling fund-raising banquet. Yes, I know that these events are not specifically Vital Signs activities but we think they are indispensable to a local congregation’s identification as a pro-life church. They are crucial too as a public witness against the ongoing wickedness of abortion, as a way to demonstrate clearly to a watching world that serious pro-life convictions are not confined to Roman Catholicism. Vital Signs, of course, can help with information about these events and even with the provision of SOHLS bulletin inserts and posters.
2) The prayer presence at the abortion centers. Currently, the Vital Signs team goes to the Planned Parenthood abortion business on north 93rd on the first and third Wednesday mornings of the month and the second and fourth Saturday mornings of the month. The Wednesday time is from 8-9:30 and the Saturday time is from 10-11.
3) We heartily encourage local churches to create their own letter-writing outreach as one of the ways in which they lift up the standard of righteousness in the public square. Vital Signs is more than happy to bring its 30 years of experience in such ministry to help get such a thing going. An effective letter-writing outreach helps disciple believers, increases the power of a winsome witness and helps the local church define itself as a place where holiness, justice and truth-telling are seriously honored. From providing action alerts, contact information, letter-writing tips and even hosting a kickoff letter-writing event, Vital Signs is ready to lend a hand to local congregations developing their own ongoing program.
4) Every month Vital Signs Ministries presents its unique program of “When Swing Was King” to audiences in at least 10 nursing homes and assisted living centers. Combining big band music, interesting commentary, and a Power Point slide presentation which utilizes 160-180 photographs per volume, “When Swing Was King” provides a wonderful tour down memory lane which has proven exceptionally popular with the residents of these facilities. However, this outreach is even more effective with the involvement of outside visitors who can help escort the senior citizens to and from the program as well as visiting with them before and after. The “When Swing Was King” schedule is posted every month on the Vital Signs Ministries website.
5) Finally, here is a “catch-all” category in which I’ll mention a few extra ways in which local churches, families and individuals can partner with Vital Signs. Prayers are always in order for our various ministries including such things that I hadn’t yet mentioned like our Russian-language website and Vital Signs Blog. Extremely helpful too are financial donations, the promotion of Vital Signs Blog which gives crucial updates on the culture wars every weekday, participation in discipleship activities like our Book It! reading discussions, and support of other key ministries we work closely with: the AAA Center for Pregnancy Counseling, Nebraskans Against Planned Parenthood and the Nebraska Coalition for Ethical Research.
Again, thanks so much for your ongoing encouragement of our work. We deeply appreciate it. And we hope outlining the above ideas will help create stronger bonds between Vital Signs and ____________ Church.
Blessings,
Denny
A Perspective on Homicide Rates
What I found was most disconcerting for not only did I see the murder rates were much higher than those Perry Mason bemoaned, they were much higher than what I had dared to imagine.
Yes, there has been a dramatic decline in the homicide rate of Los Angeles since its peak during the gang wars of the late 1980s.
And yes, the city's current homicide rate is far below that of many other "major" American cities. The 2010 figures, for instance, stood at 7.6 murders per 100,000 residents. That's awfully ugly but it will surprise many to learn that's virtually the same murder rate as suffered by Phoenix, Tampa, Charlotte, Toeldo and Omaha.
But here are the homicide rates per 100,000 citizens of a few other cities: which may well affect your travel plans in future months: Chicago (15.2), Milwaukee (15.5), Atlanta (17.3), Pittsburgh (17.6), Cleveland (19), Philadelphia (19.6), Cincinnati (20.5), Buffalo (20.7), Kansas City (21.1), Washington D.C. (21.9), Oakland (22), Newark (32.1), Detroit (34.5), Baltimore (34.8), St. Louis (40.5), and New Orleans (49.1).
Still keen on Mardi Gras?
The causes of this tragic state are many, of course. They include the removal of God from education and the public square; the breakdown of the family; the wild escalation of drug use; the inevitable erosion of a sanctity of life ethic brought on by legalized abortion; the assault on traditional moral values from the media; and the utter failure of the justice system which coddles criminals and actually encourages greater lawlessness.
Perry Mason would be stunned...and saddened. And so should you and I.
Responding with Letters...and Prayer
Our letters to the 7 Council members urged them to vote against this resolution. We emphasized that, given existing law which ably protects persons from unjust discrimination, the new resolution's goals were clearly unnecessary and, to say the least, morally problematic.
The new resolution isn't about justice; it's political theater.
The Coppi's are experienced at the letter-writing game and had everything laid out for a precise, prayerful evening. But, honestly, it's not that hard a thing to get going and they would be the first to urge you to do the same. They invited friends from their church (and us), provided stamps and stationery, and served coffee and cookies as a treat after we were done.
And we deserved those cookies too. For within 90 minutes, the ten of us had produced over 70 courteous, handwritten letters.
Your letters to the Omaha City Council are in order too, of course. See this Vital Signs post for more info as well as a contact page --- and this post for some tips on letter-writing itself.
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