Big Medicine fights conscience protections

The Idaho Affiliate of the American Family Association

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Bryan Fischer, Executive Director

BONUS BYTES

David Ripley of Idaho Chooses Life reports that Planned Parenthood has receded into the background in the battle against freedom of conscience, and the lead dogs now are the highly paid lobbyists for St. Luke’s, St. Al’s and various insurance carriers. He points out that they all argue that pha

rmacists already have the right to refuse, which makes their opposition to codifying that protection inexplicable. It’s more likely that they oppose the bill because they want to protect their own ability to intimidate and coerce employees to violate their own conscience to keep their jobs. The public wants protection: 87% of those surveyed believe it is important to make sure that healthcare professionals are not forced to participate in procedures that compromise their moral convictions. (Idaho Chooses Life: Notes From the Battlefield)

You want to read something spooky, read a new report published by the Obama version of the Department of Homeland Security. Without presenting any evidence at all, it contends that groups which reject “federal authority in favor of state or local authority,” and “groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue such as opposition to abortion or immigration” must be watched closely because of the danger they will engage in “rightwing extremist activity.” They are talking about you and me, folks. The Obama administration pledges to work “with its state and local partners” to gather information on these potentially dangerous citizens. Second Amendment supporters (those concerned about “restrictions on firearms ownership and use”) and “disgruntled military veterans” are considered particularly suspicious. Said a spokesman, “This is nothing unusual,” and that all DHS doing is trying “to prevent another Tim McVeigh from every happening again.” Michelle Malkin with her customary understatement says this “piece of crap report...is a sweeping indictment of conservatives.” (Federal agency warns of radicals on right - Washington Times; Michelle Malkin » Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real; The Liberty Papers »Blog Archive » Homeland Security document targets most conservatives and libertarians in the country)

More confirmation that the First Amendment was never intended to tie the hands of states on religious matters. James Madison proposed 12 Amendments to be part of the Bill of Rights. One was designed to empower federal officials to regulate the religious policies of the various states. It began “No state shall violate the equal rights of conscience...” But Madison was unable to get this proposed amendment out of the House and it went down to defeat. Thus Congress made it very clear that the First Amendment was never intended to control the actions of governors, mayors, school teachers, or students speaking and/or praying at graduation ceremonies. In fact, the whole point of the First Amendment was to keep the federal government – including the judiciary – out of these state matters altogether. (Taki’s Magazine: Faith of Our Fathers - Kevin Gutzman)

Expect to hear a lot from homosexual activists calling for “hate crimes” legislation in th

e wake of the death of a man in Colorado who claimed to be a woman trapped in man’s body. This man, who went by the name Angie Zapata, committed a sex crime himself by enticing one Allen Andrade into a sexual relationship “by...deception.” That is, Andrade thought his paramour was a woman. Such a sex crime is subject, under Colorado law, to enhanced sentencing as an “extraordinary risk crime.” When Andrade discovered he’d been duped, he flew into a rage and beat this transgendered man to death. Andrade should be punished to the full extent of the law for taking the law into his own hands, regardless of the sexual orientation of his victim. Every crime is a hate crime, and all victims are deserving of equal protection, since all should be equal under the law. Hate crimes laws, which give greater protection to some victims than others, are truly terrible laws and unjust on their face. (The Volokh Conspiracy - Expand the federal "hate crime" law?)

If you want to see where we are headed, look to England. There, a charity worker has been suspended for simply answering the questions of a co-worker about his own views of homosexuality, and indicating that he is opposed to same-sex marriage and to homosexual clergy. And he got suspended even though he works at a Christian hostel! He was suspended for violating the charity’s code of conduct through his “discriminatory comments regarding a person’s sexual orientation.” Just another reason why laws that give special workplace privileges based on non-normative sexual behavior are very, very bad ideas and represent a clear and present danger to religious liberty. (Christian charity worker suspended over opposition to gay rights -Times Online)

Rick Warren apologized all over himself for mentioning incestuous marriages in the same paragraph with homosexual marriages. He evidently is not only “oblivious” to what is going in Iowa, he’s also

oblivious to what is going on in France, Spain and Portugal, where consenting adults are not prosecuted for incest and Romania is ready to follow suit. Incest is defined as sexual intercourse between people too closely related to marry legally. In the U.S., all 50 states currently have laws against even consensual incest, for obvious health reasons, but that may not be true for long if we continue our fascination with all things European. Said one libertine, “If brothers and sisters want to have fun, why should they be imprisoned? It is nobody’s business what I do in my bedroom.” Well, as a matter of fact, it is society’s business, and is especially the business of the children born of these incestuous unions, whose health is placed at increased risk of genetic problems through recessive gene mutations. Full siblings, for instance, share 50 percent of their genetic material, which increases the risk dramatically of passing on a recessive condition to their children. (The Associated Press: Romania weighs decriminalizing consensual incest)

The honeymoon is coming to an end for President Obama among leftists in the legal arena. They are distressed that Obama has vigorously defended Bush administration polices in the war on terror. These policies include Obama’s defense of warrantless surveillance, which aroused endless hyperventilating from the left during the Bush era. Keith Olbermann, he of the vanishing viewing audience on MSNBC, said “Welcome to change you cannot believe in.” (Legal left cools toward Obama - Josh Gerstein - POLITICO.com)

Add Thomas Jefferson to the crowded field of those who believe in Intelligent Design:

On the contrary I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in it's parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive (sic) and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of it's composition...[I]t is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms...So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro' all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe.(Happy Birthday, Mr. Jefferson (FRC Blog))

India is flatly refusing to go along with the Obama administration’s push to get everybody to agree to

binding emissions cuts. They know that such decrees impose an unacceptable burden on the poor, saying, “It is morally wrong for us to agree to reduce when 40 percent of Indians do not have access to electricity.” As a Christian nation, our first concern should be for the poor, and simple compassion for the poor should lead us to oppose trendy environmental policies which hurt the poor and are based on junk science to boot. Note the graphs to the right, which make it clear that there is a powerful correlation between solar activity and global temperatures, and little if any correlation whatsoever between CO2 levels and global temperatures. (AGW Today: India Says No To Emissions Cuts - Right Wing News (Conservative News and Views))

Quote of the day: “In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed...No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.” ~ Noah Webster, in the preface of the original edition of his Dictionary, published on April 14, 1828

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