Tag Archives: Same-Sex Marriage

News

New study finds that 86% of doctors unwilling to perform abortions

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Wes from Reason to Stand sent me this article from the Freakonomics blog.

Excerpt:

A new study released by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, from main author Debra Stulberg, surveys 1,144 ob-gyns (1,800 were initially approached) to see how many provide abortion services. Though legal, abortion is much harder to come by than one might expect: while 97% of ob-gyns reported having encountered women seeking an abortion, only 14% said they were willing to perform the service.

And here is the breakdown by religious affiliation:

  • 40.2 percent of Jewish doctors say yes, compared with
  • 1.2 percent of Evangelical Protestants
  • 9 percent of Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox
  • 10.1 percent of Non-Evangelical Protestants
  • 20 percent of Hindus
  • 26.5 percent of doctors who said they had no religious affiliation

Naturally evangelical Protestants (like me!) are the best.

I do not recommend the Freakonomics book for learning about economics, and I would recommend John Lott’s book “Freedomnomics” as an antidote to anyone who has read Freakonomics, particularly on the issue of whether abortion reduces or increases crime rates. The authors of Freakonomics are liberal, while John Lott is conservative. You can read a popular article about his refutation of Freakonomics here, or read the research paper here.

But the main thing is that Democrats do not like the idea that you would be allowed to stop them from being happy by having a will of your own. For Democrats, you exist to serve the will of the state – both by paying taxes, and if necessary by killing babies. You are not there to have your own plan and your own family and your own life, as Republicans believe. And they really don’t like you making them feel bad by resisting what they think of as good. They don’t want anyone to say that what they are doing is wrong. They would just like everyone to pay for what they are doing and to help them do it and to help them feel good about doing it after they’ve done it – and they don’t care what you think.

Now consider this 2009 article from the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

During the last months of the Bush administration, the feds adopted a new rule that could allow health-care workers to refuse to provide birth control on moral grounds. Now the Obama administration is moving to reverse that rule, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Existing federal law allows health-care workers to refuse on moral grounds to provide abortions. The new rule strengthened and extended those protections. While some groups, such as the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, supported the move, many others, including several state attorneys general and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, opposed the rule.

There have been recent reports of women being denied emergency contraception, which is federally approved for use within 72 hours of intercourse, the Trib says.

The Obama administration will start the process of reversing the rule today. Final action won’t be taken until after the public is allowed a 30-day comment period.

The Democrats went on record in 2009 as being opposed to conscience protections.

Excerpt:

The Senate on Thursday night rejected an amendment from a pro-life senator that would have provided conscience protection on abortion for doctors and medical centers. The amendment comes at a time when President Barack Obama is considering overturning further protections.

Sen Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, sponsored an amendment to the Senate budget bill that would protect the right of conscience for health care workers.

His budget amendment was to “protect the freedom of conscience for patients and the right of health care providers to serve patients without violating their moral and religious convictions.”

However, the Senate rejected the conscience amendment on a 56-41 vote with most of the chamber’s Democrats voting against it along with a handful of pro-abortion Republicans.

Three Democrats joined most of the Senate Republicans in voting for the Coburn amendment.

[…]The amendment comes at a time when Obama is considering rescinding the Provider Conscience Clause that further protects the rights of health workers.

President Bush put the provision into place to provide more enforcement for the three federal laws that make it so medical professionals and facilities are not required to do abortions.

However, President Obama has proposed overturning those conscience protections and will likely do so after a 30-day public comment window expires on April 9.

Earlier this year, Obama succeeding in overturning many of Bush’s protections for individuals whose morality differs with the morality of the government.

Excerpt:

After two years of struggling to balance the rights of patients against the beliefs of health-care workers, the Obama administration on Friday finally rescinded most of a federal regulation designed to protect those who refuse to provide care they find objectionable on moral or religious grounds.

Be careful who you vote for. If free enterprise and capitalism strike you as unfair, then pick up a book by Thomas Sowell or Arthur Brooks and read about it until it makes sense to you. Don’t vote to violate your own conscience because you have a mistaken view of which economic system helps the poor most. Similarly with foreign policy. If opposition to war causes you to vote Democrat, then pick up a book by Frank Gaffney or Douglas Feith and learn about how a strong military is needed to prevent war. Don’t vote to violate your own conscience because you have a mistaken view of which foreign policy helps peace most.

News

Gay activist explains how same-sex marriage will change marriage

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From THE ADVOCATE, the leading gay newspaper. (Note: This article contains vulgar language)

The URL is here: [http://www.advocate.com/printArticle.aspx?id=211497]

Excerpt:

We often protest when homophobes insist that same sex marriage will change marriage for straight people too. But in some ways, they’re right. Here’s how gay relationships will change the institution—but for the better.

[…]Anti-equality right-wingers have long insisted that allowing gays to marry will destroy the sanctity of “traditional marriage,” and, of course, the logical, liberal party-line response has long been “No, it won’t.” But what if—for once—the sanctimonious crazies are right? Could the gay male tradition of open relationships actually alter marriage as we know it? And would that be such a bad thing? With divorce rates at an all-time high and news reports full of famous marriages crumbling at the hand of flagrant infidelities (see: Schwarzenegger, Arnold), perhaps now is the perfect time for the gays to conduct a little marriage makeover.

[…]Even many gay male couples, who [Dan] Savage describes as having “perfected nonmonogamy,” fear disclosing that their relationship is anything but one-on-one. Gary (not his real name) is out in every area of his life, and his family is completely supportive. “But I don’t tell my family, even my brother—who I’m incredibly close with—that I have sex outside of the relationship with Ben,” his partner of 14 years, he says. “I have never said that to him.”

Gary and Ben, who live in Los Angeles, won’t reveal their real names because Ben has a high-profile career in television. “We have too much to lose,” Gary says. “But we also don’t want people passing judgment on us.” Which is why they don’t even tell most of their friends.

Sex therapist Timaree Schmit says she can understand gay couples’ desire to conform—at least outwardly—to the kind of conventional relationship that society deems “deserving” of marriage rights. “It’s been a big part of campaigning for marriage equality to repeatedly prove the ‘normalcy’ and stability of same-sex couples. People may feel pressure to make their relationship fit into a more acceptable box.”

Blake Spears and Lanz Lowen recently completed The Couples Study (TheCouplesStudy.com), an examination of nonmonogamy among 86 gay couples. A long-term gay couple themselves (36 years), they had found that little research had been conducted on how gay men navigate this terrain, so they embarked on an admittedly limited and self-selective study (they found many long-term couples who fit the bill, but relatively few who were willing to participate), but one that gives a view of the diversity of experiences. In fact, the thing they found most striking is that while nonmonogamy seems to be fairly pervasive among gay couples (though they did not hear from the many monogamous pairs), there is surprisingly little support within the gay population for such relationships.

Spears and Lowen were also surprised to discover such a wide range of kinds of nonmonogamy. “We thought we might find some models that we could slot some couples into,” says Spears, “but people had such a wide variety of approaches to nonmonogamy. And I think it spoke to the amount of creativity in the gay community.” They did identify some key characteristics and outlined the various ways in which couples live out their agreements, including having sex beyond the couple (12% do so together; 56% do it both together and separately; 32% play only independently — stats that seem to shift as relationships evolve), degrees of talking about their experiences together (40% had full disclosure; 40% had varying degrees of it; 20% took a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach…), and kinds of outside sexual contact (34% will only have no-strings, anonymous encounters; 40% have friends with benefits; and some couples in both the aforementioned categories have differing preferences, meaning one likes it anonymous and the partner likes to have sex with friends). Seventy-five percent of the study’s participants put some rules on what constitutes their commitment and what will violate it.

Forty-two percent of the study’s participants agreed to open up within the first three months of their relationship, while 20% agreed on nonmonogamy only after a period of turmoil in which one partner was caught having cheated.

This article dovetails nicely with the research I had written about showing that gay unions are nothing like traditional married couples. And the differences matter when children are brought into the mix. It seems to me that this is nothing like traditional male-female marriage, where two opposite sex people join tightly in an exclusive, life-long, love relationship in order to provide a stable environment for the children they create – whom they are both bonded to by blood. Children growing up with two opposite-sex parents bonded to each other for life will learn a very different view of love, marriage and self-sacrifice than will children being raised by gay couples.

The article seems to argue that the distinctive characteristics of same-sex unions would come to influence society’s perception of what marriage is, if same-sex marriage were to be viewed as being equal to marriage in the eyes of the law. A very good article to read about this is Dennis Prager’s article, entitled “California Decision Will Radically Change Society“.

Public schools are part of the plan

In a related article, New Jersey public schools are pulling gay erotic literature out of the hands of children in response to parent complaints.

Excerpt:

A New Jersey school district has apologized to parents after requiring high school students to read books that include graphic depictions of lesbian sex and a homosexual orgy.

The books were on a required summer reading list for middle school and high school students. The district decided to pull the book off the list, with the start of school just days away.

[…]One book, “Norwegian Wood,” was on a list for incoming sophomores in an honors English class. The book includes a graphic depiction of a lesbian sex scene between a 31-year-old woman and a 13-year old girl, according to a report first published in the Gloucester County Times.

“I don’t think that’s relevant for any teenager,” parent Robin Myers told the newspaper. Her daughter was assigned to read the book. “I was just kind of in shock,” she said.

The other book in question was “Tweak (Growing up on Methamphetamines).” That book included depictions of drug usage and a homosexual orgy.

[…]Peter Sprigg, with the Family Research Council, said he’s not surprised by the controversy surrounding the books.

“Here we see the intersection of parental values being offended, the hyper-sexualization of our youth and the homosexual agenda being pushed,” Sprigg told Fox News Radio. “This just illustrates why a lot of American parents are not willing to entrust their children to the public schools anymore.”

So whose idea was it to put books featuring explicit sex scenes on a summer reading list for teenagers?

[Public school superintendent] Earling said the school district’s summer reading list was prepared by a committee made up of teachers, librarians and school administrators. The board of education ultimately approved the list.

Recall that Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings promoted child pornography to children.

This New Jersey story also shows what public schools want to do with your children. It’s not an unusual story. Here is my recent story about how teacher unions deliberately try to evade parental oversight. Public schools are paid by taxpayers through compulsory taxes, regardless of the quality of education they provide to children. They aren’t responsive to the needs of parents and children – because they aren’t private companies in competition. Public schools are a monopoly, and they have enormous influence in politics. They don’t have to care about parents and kids, because you have to pay for them regardless of how they perform. And a lot of their initiatives have no parental opt-out. Because they not only want to force you to pay, but to force you to agree with their views.

Comments to this post will be strictly filtered in order to comply with Obama’s prohibitions on free speech for controversial topics.

News

Teacher’s job in jeopardy due to opposition to same-sex marriage

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From Fox News.

Excerpt:

A former “Teacher of the Year” in Mount Dora, Fla. has been suspended and could lose his job after he voiced his objection to gay marriage on his personal Facebook page.

Jerry Buell, a veteran American history teacher at Mount Dora High School, was removed from his teaching duties this week as school officials in Lake County investigate allegations that what he posted was biased towards homosexuals.

“We took the allegations seriously,” said Chris Patton, a communication officer with Lake County Schools. “All teachers are bound by a code of special ethics (and) this is a code ethics violation investigation.”

Patton said the school system received a complaint on Tuesday about something Buell had written last July when New York legalized same sex unions. On Wednesday, he was temporarily suspended from the classroom and reassigned.

Patton said Buell has taught in the school system for 22 years and has a spotless record. Last year, he was selected as the high school’s “Teacher of the Year.”

[…]According to the school system, what Buell wrote on his private account was disturbing. They were especially concerned that gay students at the school might be frightened or intimidated walking into his classroom. Patton also disputed the notion that Buell’s Facebook account is private.

“He has (more than) 700 friends,” he said. “How private is that – really? Social media can be troubling if you don’t respect it and know that just because you think you are in a private realm – it’s not private.”

Buell’s attorney strongly disagreed and accused the school system of violating his First Amendment rights.

“The school district is being anti-straight, anti-First Amendment and anti-personal liberty,” said Horatio Mihet, an attorney with the Liberty Counsel. “The idea that public servants have to whole-heartedly endorse homosexual marriage is repugnant to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” Mihet told Fox News Radio.

“All he did was speak out on an issue of national importance and because his comments did not fit a particular mold, he is now being investigated and could possibly lose his job. What have we come to?”

Buell said he does not know the individual who filed the complaint, but the past week has caused his family “heartache.”

“To try and say you could lose your job over speaking about something in the venue that I did in the manner that I did is not just a knee-jerk reaction,” he said. “It’s a violent reaction to one person making a complaint.”

But Patton said the school system has an obligation to take the comments seriously. He said Buell will not be allowed back in the classroom “until we do all the interviews and do a thorough job of looking at everything – past or previous writings.”

To accomplish that, he said people have been sending the school system screenshots of Buell’s Facebook page.

“Just because you think it’s private, other people are viewing it,” Patton said, noting that the teacher’s Facebook page also contained numerous Bible passages.

Mihet said he was livid.

“These are not fringe ideas that Mr. Buell espoused on his personal Facebook page,” he told Fox News Radio. “They are mainstream textbook opposition to homosexual unions – and now he’s been deemed unfit to teach children because he opposes gay marriage? My goodness.” Buell believes the school system is trying to send a message to Christian teachers.

“There is an intimidation factor if you are a Christian or if you make a statement against it (gay marriage) you are a bigot, a homophobe, you’re a creep, you’re intolerant,” he said. “We should have the right to express our opinions and talk about things.”

I have a friend who is going through an encounter with the tolerant secular left right now. They tend to go after your job and your finances, and they do it publicly, in order to intimidate anyone else from speaking out against them.

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