Tag Archives: Big Government

News

UK doctors who refuse to perform sex changes can be banned from practicing

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Dina sent me this alarming article from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

The General Medical Council has issued guidance warning that it would be “discriminatory” for doctors not to prescribe either the pill or morning-after pill because they disagree with people having sex before marriage.

[…]The draft GMC guidelines, entitled Personal Beliefs and Medical Practice, stipulate that doctors “cannot be willing to provide married women with contraception but unwilling to prescribe it for unmarried women”.

“This would be a breach of our guidance as you would be refusing to treat a particular group of patients,” the document adds.

It also warns it would be illegal for doctors to refuse to carry out “gender reassignment”, because it would also amount to discrimination.

“Serious or persistent failure to follow this guidance will put your registration at risk,” the guidelines warn.

[…]Bishop Tom Williams of the Archdiocese of Liverpool claimed the advice discriminated against “certain groups of doctors” and risked creating an “atmosphere of fear” in which doctors would be “prohibited from ever expressing their own religion”.

Dr Peter Saunders, chief executive of the Christian Medical Fellowship and a former surgeon, said the rules would “marginalise Christian health professionals in Britain”.

He told the Daily Mail: “The problem is that 21st century British medicine now involves practices which many doctors regard as unethical.”

In other secular left regimes like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, conscience rights for medical professionals were similarly frowned upon. For a socialist, whatever the state wants is right, and who cares about the individual’s freedom?

Many Christians today in the United States, and especially in socialist countries, think that it is a good idea for the government to provide medical care to everyone, regardless of their lifestyle choices. It doesn’t matter if some people are freely choosing lifestyles that expose them to higher medical costs, like promiscuity or homosexuality. These socialist Christians think that individuals and their employers should be taxed in order to pay for abortions, sex changes, HIV treatments, and so on. The secular left things that birth control pills, which can cause abortions, are “health care”, and socialist Christians agree with them.

A dollar can only be spent one way. It can be spent on an apologetics book, or it can be spent on a sex change. It can be spent on private Christian school tuition or it can be spent on a partial birth abortion. What would God prefer? Would he rather that people who are sinning face higher costs for their sins, so that they think twice about committing them? Or would he rather that people who are sinning have the costs paid by someone else who isn’t, so that the sin becomes cheaper? Well, when I talk to socialist Christians, especially in Canada, they think that God is happier with a bigger secular government, so that sinful people have lower costs and government approval. That doesn’t make sense to me, though.

News

Fascism: Obama administration objects to conscience protections for military chaplains

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Fascism is the system of government in which the government pushes it’s notions of purpose, meaning and morality onto the citizens. In a fascist government, values derived from religion, family and community are overridden by the state. Fascism is exclusively an outworking of the left. When government is big, secular and religious fascism are possible. In contrast, right wing conservatives always want government to be small, so that individuals, families, businesses and charities are left with the most freedom to decide.

So is the Obama administration left wing (fascist) or right wing (liberty)? Do they respect the right of individuals to decide what to do?

Consider this article from CNS News.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration “strongly objects” to provisions in a House defense authorization bill that would prohibit the use of military property for same-sex “marriage or marriage-like” ceremonies, and protect military chaplains from negative repercussions for refusing to act against their consciences, as, for example, in being ordered to perform a same-sex marriage ceremony.

In a policy statement released Wednesday, the White House Office of Management and Budget outlined numerous objections to aspects of the fiscal year 2013 National Defense Authorization Bill (H.R. 4310). The bill was reported out of the House Armed Services Committee last week and is set to be debated in the House, beginning Wednesday. (See related story)

Overall, it recommends that President Obama veto H.R. 4310 if its cumulative effects “impede the ability of the Administration to execute the new defense strategy and to properly direct scarce resources.”

The veto warning is not specifically linked to the two provisions dealing with marriage, but they are listed among parts of the bill which the administration finds objectionable.

The memo said the two provisions “adopt unnecessary and ill-advised policies that would inhibit the ability of same-sex couples to marry or enter a recognized relationship under State law.”

Section 536 of H.R. 4310 states in part that no member of the armed forces may “direct, order, or require a chaplain to perform any duty, rite, ritual, ceremony, service, or function that is contrary to the conscience, moral principles, or religious beliefs of the chaplain, or contrary to the moral principles and religious beliefs of the endorsing faith group of the chaplain.”

Further, no member of the armed forces may “discriminate or take any adverse personnel action against a chaplain, including denial of promotion, schooling, training, or assignment, on the basis of the refusal by the chaplain to comply with a direction, order, or requirement” that is prohibited by the previous clause.

The OMB complained that, “in its overbroad terms,” section 536 “is potentially harmful to good order and discipline.”

Section 537 of H.R. 4310 states that “[a] military installation or other property owned or rented by, or otherwise under the jurisdiction or control of, the Department of Defense may not be used to officiate, solemnize, or perform a marriage or marriage-like ceremony involving anything other than the union of one man with one woman.”

That provision, the OMB said in the memo, would make it obligatory for the department “to deny Service members, retirees, and their family members access to facilities for religious ceremonies on the basis of sexual orientation, a troublesome and potentially unconstitutional limitation on religious liberty.”

Obama in December 2010 signed into law legislation repealing a ban on homosexuals and lesbians serving openly in the military. Last week he publicly endorsed same-sex marriage for the first time.

The House Armed Services Committee passed H.R. 4310 on May 9 by a 56-5 bipartisan vote, the only nays coming from Democratic Reps. Chellie Pingree (Me.), John Garamendi (Calif.), Tim Ryan (Ohio), Hank Johnson (Ga.) and Jackie Speier (Calif.).

This is not the first time that Obama has shows disrespect for the religious liberty and freedom of conscious of individuals and private organizations. He thinks he knows better than you what to believe, and he thinks it’s a good idea to force his views and priorities onto you, your family, your employer, your church, and any charitable organizations you might be affiliated with. He’s a fascist, and his regime is fascist. That’s just the way it is.

I really recommend that all of my Christian readers check out the book “The Road to Serfdom” by F.A. Hayek. Hayek is a Nobel prize winning economist who argues that all our liberties – including our freedom of religion – are rooted in free market capitalism and small government. He argues that only when individuals are free to choose where they work, to keep what they earn, and to spend it on goods and services they really want, will their be real freedom. It’s important for Christians to choose an economic philosophy that guarantees the social conditions that allows them to thrive as Christians. Not just with respect to evangelism, but with respect to freedom of conscience, and freedom to promote their beliefs in public in the most effective, persuasive ways possible. We cannot allow ourselves to be silenced on our Kingdom plans just because we are lazy and want our neighbor to buy us health care and mail us Medicare checks. You do not give up your freedom to serve God in exchange for your neighbor’s money.

Polemics

A secular case against legalized abortion

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Unborn baby scheming about being only two months old
Unborn baby scheming about being only two months old

Note: this post has a twin! Its companion post on a secular case against gay marriage is here.

Now, you may think that the view that the unborn deserve protection during pregnancy is something that you either take on faith or not. But I want to explain how you can make a case for the right to life of the unborn, just by using reason and evidence.

To defend the pro-life position, I think you need to sustain 3 arguments:

  1. The unborn is a living being with human DNA, and is therefore human.
  2. There is no morally-relevant difference between an unborn baby, and one already born.
  3. None of the justifications given for terminating an unborn baby are morally adequate.

Now, the pro-abortion debater may object to point 1, perhaps by claiming that the unborn baby is either not living, or not human, or not distinct from the mother.

Defending point 1: Well, it is pretty obvious that the unborn child is not inanimate matter. It is definitely living and growing through all 9 months of pregnancy. (Click here for a video that shows what a baby looks like through all 9 months of pregnancy). Since it has human DNA, that makes it a human. And its DNA is different from either its mother or father, so it clearly not just a tissue growth of the father or the mother. More on this point at Christian Cadre, here. An unborn child cannot be the woman’s own body, because then the woman would have four arms, four legs, two heads, four eyes and two different DNA signatures. When you have two different human DNA signatures, you have two different humans.

Secondly, the pro-abortion debater may try to identify a characteristic of the unborn that is not yet present or developed while it is still in the womb, and then argue that because the unborn does not have that characteristic, it does not deserve the protection of the law.

Defending point 2: You need to show that the unborn are not different from the already-born in any meaningful way. The main differences between them are: size, level of development, environment and degree of dependence. Once these characteristics are identified, you can explain that none of these differences provide moral justification for terminating a life. For example, babies inside and outside the womb have the same value, because location does not change a human’s intrinsic value. More at Stand to Reason, here.

Additionally, the pro-abortion debater may try to identify a characteristic of the already-born that is not yet present or developed in the unborn, and then argue that because the unborn does not have that characteristic, that it does not deserve protection, (e.g. – sentience). Most of the these objections that you may encounter are refuted in this essay by Francis Beckwith. Usually these objections fall apart because they assume the thing they are trying to prove, namely, that the unborn deserves less protection than the already born.

Finally, the pro-abortion debater may conceded your points 1 and 2, and admit that the unborn is fully human. But they may then try to provide a moral justification for terminating the life of the unborn, regardless.

Defending point 3: I fully grant that it is sometimes justifiable to terminate an innocent human life, if there is a moral justification. Is there such a justification for abortion? One of the best known attempts to justify abortion is Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “violinist” argument. This argument is summarized by Paul Manata, one of the experts over at Triablogue:

Briefly, this argument goes like this: Say a world-famous violinist developed a fatal kidney ailment and the Society of Music Lovers found that only you had the right blood-type to help. So, they therefore have you kidnapped and then attach you to the violinist’s circulatory system so that your kidneys can be used to extract the poison from his. To unplug yourself from the violinist would be to kill him; therefore, pro-lifers would say a person has to stay attached against her will to the violinist for 9 months. Thompson says that it would be morally virtuous to stay plugged-in. But she asks, “Do you have to?” She appeals to our intuitions and answers, “No.”

Manata then goes on to defeat Thomson’s proposal here, with a short, memorable illustration, which I highly recommend that you check out. More info on how to respond to similar arguments is here.

The best book for beginners on the pro-life view is this book:

For those looking for advanced resources, Francis Beckwith, a professor at Baylor University, published the book Defending Life, with Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Learn about the pro-life case

And some posts motivating Christians and conservatives to take abortion seriously: