Fred, you have a gift for taking the arguments that have been suppressed by ordinary discourse and making them seem as obvious as they always should have been. I truly (if figuratively) can’t wait to see what kinds of drive-bys this post gets.

Excellent article, and one I’ll be forwarding to a number of friends who disagree with me on this and other issues. At the very least, it’ll redirect their anger to something other than me.

“The Bible is not a Rulebook for Other People”
Brilliant… once again – thanks for another BRILLIANT post

My first exposure to the extent to which the Bible shows that Jesus, today, would be a card-carrying socialist was from the movie (starring John Goodman) about Huey Long, actually.
His Huey Long character repeated a line from the Bible which, since then I’ve looked up and amused myself re-reading once every six months or so.
James 5:
[1] Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

Well, yes. That’s exactly it. If there really were as many people who take the Bible literally as claim to, we either wouldn’t have any poor people anymore, or we’d have a whole lot more poor people. (hmm. Probably the latter.)

I think this post and the one about how upset certain people get when the poor have necessities like cellphones go together. Americans (and I am one, although now one that looks upon my country from far away) I’ve found are much more interested in making sure that everyone else follows the rules and never ever gets anything that they don’t truly deserve, and making sure that they themselves are granted exemptions to those very rules. I’m not really a Christian, but I’ve always had a healthy respect for those that do follow their faith to the best of their ability.
I think Fred, that you are very respectable.

I don’t know why anger is so peculiarly effective at this, but it works.
Not sure anger is the emotion here. A determination to prove someone else wrong (a far stronger motivation, IMO, than the parallel determination to prove oneself right), maybe a sort of cognitive dissonance, that they know in a logical sense you are correct but cannot accept that knowledge into their worldview. And it takes someone having a lot of pride to get worked up enough to make the effort to defend themselves in such a manner.
I think, myself, the Bible rails, in spirit, against conspicuous consumption. It takes a strong ascetic aesthetic to own only one tunic, and most people cannot easily live in such a fashion. But, no one needs 200 tunics, and if you do own a tunic for each day of the year, you damn well better be doing some charity.

Speaking of “opening the Bible at random,” once when I was younger and distraught over the whole issue of how to interpret passages on homosexuality, I opened the Bible at random… to Ezekiel 16.49:
“This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”
So I guess that means we need to redefine “sodomy,” doesn’t it?

There are quite a few ways to interpret the verses on wealth, but overall I’ve always been of the impression that they’re directed towards avoiding conspicuous consumption but, more than that, about living within your means, and giving away that which would enable you to leave above them.

Not sure anger is the emotion here. A determination to prove someone else wrong (a far stronger motivation, IMO, than the parallel determination to prove oneself right)
I’d agree. The best way to motivate me to do anything is to tell me I can’t do it/haven’t been doing it/someone else could do it better and faster. I’ve learned to channel that when I really need to and pick a random external agency and decide that agency has told me I can’t do something.
The mind is a strange, strange thing.

John’s locusts weren’t bugs, were they? I thought they were plants.

The Bible is not a Rulebook for Other People
I’ve said before that this particular way of dealing with the Bible is fairly blasphemous. When the Bible says “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not”, these people don’t think this actually implies to them. Instead of being part of the “thou”, with God speaking to them, they instead imagine themselves taking the place of God, making “thou” other people who must bend to their will and authority.
Also, this way of thinking does in fact deal with the subject of money – it’s called “The Gospel of Wealth.” These people think the bad guy in the “parable of the talents” is the servant who only gets one talent rather than the master…

a frequent reader: “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”
So I guess that means we need to redefine “sodomy,” doesn’t it?
The redefinition you’re working toward is the standard Jewish interpretation of the sins of Sodom. I don’t remember when it happened, but sodomy wasn’t a sin based only on homosexuality until much later. I know it pops up in Dante’s Inferno, so it has to have been around as an idea for at least seven or eight hundred years.
You can read the story as Yahweh being pissed at the whole homosexuality thing specifically. You can also read it as Yahweh being mad about rape. But the general overall story is one of people who aren’t being hospitable and attempting to take something that doesn’t belong to them for their own pleasure.
Which takes us right back to Fred’s post…

HULK READ RANDOM BIBLE VERSE. 2 SAMUEL 12:31. HULK NAMESAKE* NOT NICE MAN.
IN CASE YOU WONDERING, HULK NEED SPECIAL DURABLE EDITION OF BIBLE.
*DAVID BRUCE BANNER, SQUISHY PINK WEAKLING.

Instead of being part of the “thou”, with God speaking to them, they instead imagine themselves taking the place of God, making “thou” other people who must bend to their will and authority.

Shouldn’t that technically be considered blasphemy then? ‘Cause, y’know, assuming God’s place and all.

@Falconer: *wipes tears from eyes* I LOLed very hard at that XD Have an Internets.

Blogging the Bible tackles the same question from a Jewish perspective, which would obviously exclude the NT. (He used the Hebrew Bible in his analysis.)

I once listened to my rabbi hold forth about the word “abhorrence” (sometimes translated as “abomination”)—he argued that it actually had a much milder meaning than, well, “abhorrence.” Despite his impassioned argument, I don’t think gay-rights supporters are going to get very far in trying to minimize or deny the Bible’s opposition to homosexuality…So, how should Bible-loving gay-rights supporters rebut Leviticus 18:22? A stronger argument, perhaps, is to point out all the other things the Bible is equally clear about: The death penalty for gay sex, yes—but also the death penalty for cursing your parents, the death penalty for violating Sabbath, exile for sex with a menstruating woman, etc. … Turn the Bible-quoting back on the social conservatives: Why do they fixate on the abhorrent gay sex and not the abhorrent menstrual sex, or parent cursing, or Sabbath-violating?
At the end of Chapter 18, God explains why He’s so worried about sexual misbehavior. But it’s not at all the answer I expected. He says that the Israelites must follow these sexual laws to keep the land pure…According to the Lord, the land is alive—the land itself can be purified or defiled, the land can rise against the people. A religious friend of mine often talks to me about his mystical connection with Israel, and I have always (inwardly) pooh-poohed it as mere romanticism. But I take back my pooh-poohing. Until this passage, I never fully understood that when God makes His covenant with Israel, He is actually making a three-legged deal: He makes a covenant with His people, for His land. Maybe that’s why so much of Genesis is about real estate.

I would be curious to know what Fred thinks of this paragraph:

Where do I get off deciding certain Levitical laws are glorious and universal, true 4,000 years ago and true today (You shall not render an unfair decision; do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich), while others are archaic and should be tossed away (Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence.)? Fundamentalists solve this problem by accepting all the laws as true. But the rest of us—both those who believe the Bible was inspired by God and those who believe it’s just a book—don’t get off so easy. Unless you’re willing to live in a Taliban-esque world of moral absolutism, in which adulterers and homosexuals are dragged from their beds and murdered, you have to pick and choose. We talk about the Bible, as if there is only one. But if there’s anything I’ve learned from the e-mails you’re sending me, it’s that we all have our own Bible. We linger on the passages we love and blot out, or argue with, or skim the verses that repel us. My Bible, I suppose, has a very long Chapter 19, and a very short Chapter 18. What about yours?

Americans…I’ve found are much more interested in making sure that everyone else follows the rules and never ever gets anything that they don’t truly deserve, and making sure that they themselves are granted exemptions to those very rules.

That’s very much a conservative/authoritarian view, although not limited to it. What you describe is the mentality of a child squabbling with siblings.

Excellent post, though now I want to hear your reasons for having more than one coat.
I’ve been meaning to recommend a book to y’all because I think it’s amazing and relevant to this blog. “Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time” by Sarah Ruden. She does a very good job at looking at Paul in context to his own time and compares him to his contemporaries. And yes, she has a whole chapter on that whole homosexuality thing.

Oh, heavens, I’m going to hate myself for nitpicking such an evocative and inspiring post. But this:
my failure to heed and revere it’s clear instruction
may well drive me mad.
I have no problem with thoughtful and creative interpretation of Biblical teaching on money and sex. But please, don’t mess with the rules for apostrophes!

I <3 you, and I'm going to put
"The Bible is not a Rulebook for Other People"
on an embroidery sampler and hang it somewhere.

Once again I give you the word of Mr Dickens
“Strict people as the phrase is, professors of a stern religion, their very religion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that were never their own, offered up as a part of a bargain for the security of their possessions.”
which is, I have long suspected why there is such an emphasis of sexual morality, and so little on the need for sacrificial giving.

@hapax: The Bible is not a rulebook for other people, but the grammar book surely is.

Overall a good post, but one quibble:
Nor is the Bible a book about sex.
Er, yes it is. The Bible has thousands of verses about sex; sexual purity is one of the very few things commanded of the first believers in the New Testament, right up there with idolatry; Jesus brings up the subject frequently. To the extent that the Bible can be said to be “about” anything besides God, it’s about sex just as much as it is about charity, or wisdom, or real estate.

@Tonio: There are many frameworks for choosing which laws still apply today besides “All are true” and “Personal preference”. How about “Laws not later repealed are true”?

But please, don’t mess with the rules for apostrophes!
Yea, it is an abomination. I say we stone ‘im.

Mrs Harris, if I read the Dickens quote correctly, was he saying that such people see controlling the passions of others as necessary for protecting their own financial security? Like if people have too much sex, then they’ll run riot and loot people’s homes? Which work does that quote come from?

How about “Laws not later repealed are true”?

If you’re talking about the “new commandment” from Jesus, remember that Plotz is Jewish and was blogging about the Hebrew Bible. When the series ended, I e-mailed Slate a note of praise, asking if the series could be continued into the NT. Plotz, a non-observant Jew, said he wanted to find out what happens when an ignorant person actually reads the book on which his religion is based, and I hoped that a “non-observant Christian” could do the same from Matthew onward. (I just found out that Plotz is married to Hanna Rosin, who has written excellent analyses of the religious right.)

I never fail to be astonished at the way that Fred is able to compose literate, compelling and even entertaining arguments in a few cogent paragraphs that most people need pages and pages of long meandering commentary to even approach.
For the love of God*, will someone please give this man a book contract?!?
*and I mean that literally

I don’t know if it’s an American thing or just a people thing, but Americans are really good at cafeteria morality – emphasizing the parts they like (ie, the parts that don’t really affect them but do affect others) and ignoring the parts that apply to them but are really a drag and/or inconvenient. Plus, Americans are also really good at not comprehending what stuff really means. Like when America (urged on by the Republicans) made Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” some sort of patriotic anthem when in fact, if you actually listen to and comprehend the words to the song, it’s no such thing.
People see/hear what they want to see/hear. Regardless of what the truth actually is.

please please please write part 3 soon. please. i’m desperate to read more actual rational and reasonable thought about the bible and homosexuality.

Er, yes it is. The Bible has thousands of verses about sex; sexual purity is one of the very few things commanded of the first believers in the New Testament, right up there with idolatry; Jesus brings up the subject frequently.
Care to list a dozen examples of Jesus bringing the subject up? The only time I can think of where Jesus brought up the subject of sex (as opposed his detractors bringing it up as a way to discredit or trap him) was in his conversation with the woman at the well. He certainly didn’t mention it during the sermon on the mount, for example.

(That was the sound of those verses on homosexuality finally hitting the ground after getting launched off the seesaw.)
I adore you.

Sorry Tonio, what the quote is saying I think is “I won’t do these things (which I don’t really want to do anyway) and God will make sure that keep my money and my stuff”. It’s Arthur Clenham talking about his parents in Little Dorrit. The things he’s talking about are music, theatre and “fun” of all sorts, but it always struck me as a decent summation of some people’s attitudes to sexuality amongst other things.

They pay vehement attention to the smaller subtopic while they seem to completely ignore the tsunami of teaching on the larger theme.
Which would seem to suggest that they think Matthew 23:24 is just something that other people fall prey to.

Mrs Harris, thanks for the clarification.

The things he’s talking about are music, theatre and “fun” of all sorts, but it always struck me as a decent summation of some people’s attitudes to sexuality amongst other things.

If they do believe in that bargain, I wonder where the belief would come from. These are often the same people who believe that natural disasters are divine punishments, so maybe they feel guilty about their sexual impulses and are transferring to the things that they are fearful about.

Robyrt: Er, yes it is. The Bible has thousands of verses about sex; sexual purity is one of the very few things commanded of the first believers in the New Testament, right up there with idolatry; Jesus brings up the subject frequently.
Jarred: Care to list a dozen examples of Jesus bringing the subject up? The only time I can think of where Jesus brought up the subject of sex (as opposed his detractors bringing it up as a way to discredit or trap him) was in his conversation with the woman at the well.

What Jarred said. If homosexuality is such a big deal why didn’t Jesus ever have a chat with the Gay Young Ruler? He found time to talk to people about their relationship with money. He also found time to talk about other sexual issues, although I think it’s worth noting that on at least one of those occasions he condemned being judgey as much as or more than he condemned adultery.

If they do believe in that bargain, I wonder where the belief would come from. These are often the same people who believe that natural disasters are divine punishments, so maybe they feel guilty about their sexual impulses and are transferring to the things that they are fearful about.

Not to be overly reductive but I think it boils down to them loving money & thinking sex is bad and simply creating a God that agrees with them.

$OBLIGATORY_REFERENCE_TO_SONGS_OF_SOLOMON
(or is that the song of Solomon? Emissions of asses, indeed. You could read that just about any prurient way you want.)

I think it boils down to them loving money & thinking sex is bad and simply creating a God that agrees with them.

Imagine a society that treated the former like such people treat the latter. Adult DVDs show nothing but stacks of bills in various denominations. The FCC fines stations for playing Monty Python’s Money Song. Parents are shocked to discover their newly pubescent boys hiding issues of Fortune. CNBC is a pay channel. Church groups protest speeches by Suze Orman…

That costume was awesome, but of course Jafar isn’t about the costume — he’s all about the scowl, the voice and the eyebrow thing.
And you are so good at the scowl, the voice and the eyebrow thing. Was going to post a picture from Forum to prove it, but thought that might be overstepping…miss ya, bud.

What Jarred said. If homosexuality is such a big deal why didn’t Jesus ever have a chat with the Gay Young Ruler? He found time to talk to people about their relationship with money. He also found time to talk about other sexual issues, although I think it’s worth noting that on at least one of those occasions he condemned being judgey as much as or more than he condemned adultery.
To be fair, Robyrt wasn’t saying it was about homosexuality, just sex. I still disagree with him, but there is more about sex than homosexuality specifically.

What Jarred said. If homosexuality is such a big deal why didn’t Jesus ever have a chat with the Gay Young Ruler? He found time to talk to people about their relationship with money. He also found time to talk about other sexual issues, although I think it’s worth noting that on at least one of those occasions he condemned being judgey as much as or more than he condemned adultery.
Ah, but Lori, I’m not even restricting the conversation to homosexuality. Jesus simply didn’t bring up sex all that often.
Oh sure, he talked about sex on numerous occasions. Like the time that leaders brought the woman caught in adultery before him to test him. Or when the religious leaders started clucking disapprovingly when Jesus dined with known prostitutes. Or when his host for one dinner started getting incensed because a known prostitute was anointing and and washing Jesus’s feet. Or when the religious leaders tried to trap him with a question about divorce. Or when the religious leaders tried to trap him with a question about the practice of marrying your brother’s childless widow. But all of those things have one thing in common. Someone other than Jesus actually brought the conversation around to sex.

Jarred: He certainly didn’t mention it during the sermon on the mount, for example.
Matthew 5:27-30.

Instead, they’re mainly just upset about the Gay Thing.
Poor Ben Grimm. He shows up at one pride parade, and everyone’s on his case.

@Mark Z. I stand corrected. I apparently didn’t read that part of the sermon on the mount closely enough.
I’m still not convinced that translates to “brought up frequently,” however.

Applause! An excellent post!

Tonio: In Judaism, Eretz Israel, is one of the goodies that Jews get for joining into a covenant with God as a nation. The deal was basically that if we worship God and follow his teachings, we get to be the Choosen People and we get Eretz Israel in pertuity. Durring the period of Temple Judaism the link to the land was very explicit. A lot of the rituals described in Leviticus can only be performed in Eretz Israel and the sacrifices only in the Temple in Jerusalem. Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuoth were pilgrimage festivals where Jews were expected to go to Jerusalem. When Rabbinic Judaism developed, the Rabbis made the link to the land less important but the never got rid of it.

There appears to be a neurological basis for thinking God agrees with you.
http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/11/creating_god_in_ones_own_image.php

“I’m sorry, we cannot accept this data”?!?

trying again:
Unless you exhibit a personal poverty commensurate with the chastity you insist from others, then I don’t believe that you believe what you’re saying.
There actually is a large group of Christians that fits this requirement, but I don’t know if Fred really wants to put them at the top of the Christian tree.
Someone in my family is a Catholic priest, specifically a Capuchin. One reason he picked the Capuchins when he was looking at various orders was because they really do take that personal poverty thing *seriously*. When he was placed in the New York slums, the slum-dwellers were ashamed of his shoes and kept telling him to get something decent-looking.
He’s said that, of the vows of “poverty, chastity, and obedience”, the one that causes most stress on people in the order is poverty. Everyone talks about the chastity thing, but poverty is *really, really* hard.
He also says that “I like hearing confession, but I’m really really sick of people who come to confess about *other people’s* sins. ‘I was angry because she said [endless details]; I stole because they wouldn’t give me [on and on and on]; I hit him because he [blah blah blah].”
I shall definitely pass along “The Bible is not a Rulebook for Other People” — that’s the kind of thing that makes a great sermon.

Ah, but Lori, I’m not even restricting the conversation to homosexuality. Jesus simply didn’t bring up sex all that often.

I understood that, my comment just wasn’t clear. I was commenting on homosexuality because, as Fred notes, it gets the lion’s share of the attention these days even though it’s a subset of a subset. One that Jesus never even mentioned. You’d think that if the Son of God didn’t see a need to address it that other people could leave it alone as well. Especially in light of the fact that Jesus did talk about adultery, but plenty of Christians don’t consider that unforgivable. Plenty of Christians have also gotten slack on divorce, but the ghay is definitely, absolutely Wrong.

When he was placed in the New York slums, the slum-dwellers were ashamed of his shoes and kept telling him to get something decent-looking.

I just flashed on the scene in The Sounf of Music where Maria explains that at the Abby they give their clothes to the poor. The Captain then asks Maria about the rather awful outfit she’s wearing and her response is “Oh, the poor didn’t want these.”

Care to list a dozen examples of Jesus bringing the subject up? The only time I can think of where Jesus brought up the subject of sex (as opposed his detractors bringing it up as a way to discredit or trap him) was in his conversation with the woman at the well. He certainly didn’t mention it during the sermon on the mount, for example.
Nuh uh. See Matt 5:27-32, straight from the man himself with zero prompting from sleazy pharisees. Granted, it’s about adultery and chock full of standard Jesus hyperbole, but taken at face value (’cause tnat’s what we’re doing, right?) it doesn’t appear to be a terribly progressive outlook on gender and sexual politics.

Ugh, how do you do that quote indent thing in this system?

@Doctor Science: I was in the Capuchin Volunteer Corps a few years back, and I got to know some of the friars well. They’re an amazing group of people.

Awww, and looks like I’m too slow at typing out comments anyway.

Nuh uh. See Matt 5:27-32, straight from the man himself with zero prompting from sleazy pharisees.
That’s one. Eleven more? Because “once” does not equate to “frequently.” At least not in my book.
And this site allows you to use standard HTML, so you’re looking for the blockquote tags.

Ugh, how do you do that quote indent thing in this system?

The standard html works: [blockquote] blah, blah, blah [/blockquote], substituting for [].

He also says that “I like hearing confession, but I’m really really sick of people who come to confess about *other people’s* sins. ‘I was angry because she said [endless details]; I stole because they wouldn’t give me [on and on and on]; I hit him because he [blah blah blah].”
Sounds like they were using him as a counsellor/confidant rather than as a confessor. Does he draw the line, or does he just let them talk?

Kate, I found the article both revealing and strange, because I don’t know what “peering into the mind of God” would mean or involve. I’ve never sensed such a mind.

He also says that “I like hearing confession, but I’m really really sick of people who come to confess about *other people’s* sins. ‘I was angry because she said [endless details]; I stole because they wouldn’t give me [on and on and on]; I hit him because he [blah blah blah].”

Sounds like the confessors are treating him like a therapist or counselor. While parishioners could come to him with those issues, I’m not sure if the confessional booth is the right place for that.

He also says that “I like hearing confession, but I’m really really sick of people who come to confess about *other people’s* sins. ‘I was angry because she said [endless details]; I stole because they wouldn’t give me [on and on and on]; I hit him because he [blah blah blah].”
Each of those “confessions” strike me as non-confessions in the end. You can almost hear the “I shouldn’t have done that, but it’s not really my fault because….” buried in each of those statements.

Hey, you can’t say Jesus was a commie! That’s wrong. That is, to put it as Sarah Palin might put it, violating Jesus’s First Amendment rights by saying things right wingers don’t like. Everybody knows Jesus was a supply side conservative free market kind of guy in a business suit. You’d better say you’re sorry or Jesus will damn you. Even worse, he might have Sarah Palin come after you, and trust me, you don’t want that.

Only peripherally related, but awesome nonetheless: Get Over It!

Oh so smug.

Yeah but just because the Bible doesn’t have many passages referring to homosexuality doesn’t mean it doesn’t have ANY. That seems like a diversionary tactic on your part to say “well these verses don’t matter because they’re so rare” rather than a scholarly attempt to reconcile your view that homosexuality is okay with the verses in the Bible that say it’s not.
For the record, I’m not a Christian and don’t have any problem with homosexuality. I am interested in learning how Christians can approve of homosexuality, and Fred’s post doesn’t address that at all.

Thrifty, did you miss this paragraph in the original post?
Even this does not prove that my accusers are wrong to treat the gay verses the way they treat them. It could be that they are correct in their interpretation and application of these few verses while they are incorrect in their interpretation and non-application of the multitude of scriptures on WP&tP. If that were the case, then my more consistent approach would be no great virtue. I would be consistently wrong while they were at least partly, if inconsistently, right. (I don’t think that is the case, mind you, and I’ll discuss why in part 3. But I want to acknowledge that such a situation is logically possible, at least in theory.)

Jarred: I’m still not convinced that translates to “brought up frequently,” however.
Agreed. And it supports the larger point that Jesus didn’t go around picking on people whose sexual behavior was somehow other-than-normal. When he did talk about sex, he picked on everyone equally. “Under the strict terms of the Mosaic Law, you may not be cheating on your wife. However, you look at other women, right? You’re cheating on your wife. You might consider gouging your eyes out.”
I’m still not sure whether this is supposed to be ironic, hyperbolic, or dead serious. In my experience every attempt to exegete this passage tries to narrow the scope of the statement, which makes me skeptical (see related discussion). On the other hand, Jesus had kind of a Lewis Black shock-jock thing going at times. “And SODOM AND GOMORRAH will come and tell you how much you SUCK! And then you’ll be thrown into unending fire and unending darkness AT THE SAME TIME! That’s right, fire and darkness! You say ‘How can it be dark if I’m on fire?’ Because you’re in HELL, you son of a bitch!”

@Thrifty – I think if you go back and read Part I that it does. Or possibly Part III will tie the two together. But I don’t see anything wrong with “The Bible has nine billion very specific verses about money, and Christians are just fine with saying that they’re not very important and you’re really supposed to look at the spirit of those verses and not take them literally” being compared to “and yet somehow the four verses about homosexuality are extremely important and must be taken literally, because, um, we say so.”

Most excellent and thought provoking article. I’m one of those queer Christians who is often on the thumping end of the Bible (quite literally, once, apparently there is a obsessively small subset of a subset who believe the only way to exorcize the demon of non-binary sexuality and refusal of patriarchial gender roles is to beat someone with a Bible) and I’m always amazed at how quickly people are ready, willing, and able to tell me how to apply the Bible to my life, but aren’t willing to allow me to make suggestions on how to apply it to theirs. It’s not like I’m asking them to observe the Sabbath or stop participating in gossip or anything hard– It’s a confounded clothing drive for homeless youths looking for jobs!

Oh so smug.

Did that work? That last sentence was deliberately confrontational and accusatory — did it make you angry? Because I want you to get angry. I want you to become so angry that you won’t rest until you prove me wrong.

Come on, muster up more anger than what it takes to leave a pointless comment and then take off. Take Fred up on his challenge.

I am interested in learning how Christians can approve of homosexuality, and Fred’s post doesn’t address that at all.

He clearly says he’ll get to that in part 3. My guess? In the same way that he looked at charging interest in the light of the historical context, trying to work out the message behind the specific rule, one must look at “homosexuality” (or rather, penetrating another man, since lesbians are nowhere to be found) in its ancient context and find the message from that. The more you know about ancient “homosexuality,” the more you realize how much it was tied into the exploitation and degradation of the penetrated partner. There’s nothing really said about equal relationships between two adult men (or women).

…or stop participating in gossip…
That’s good to know. Because once you start talking to Christians — especially Christians in your church — about the dangers of gossip, Sister Bertha (name stolen from Ray Stephen’s “Mississippi Squirrel Revival”) and her friends are sure to get involved. And that’s a world of trouble you just don’t want, believe me.

I don’t really see much difference, as far as hermeneutics are concerned, between what Fred’s doing here, and what your typical fundie gay-basher does. They take the parts of the Bible that speak to them — the parts that agree with their morality — and handwave the parts that don’t. Fred is using that technique for good and the fundie gay-basher for evil, but that’s the only difference I can see.
Neither is actually basing their morality on the Bible; they’re cherry-picking the Bible to support and illustrate the moral sense they already have. Which is as it should be; morality is something you create, out of life experience and empathy, not a bunch of rules out of a textbook.

While reading your post, I got the idea that the homophobic adherents of the Bible might be trying to quell guilt. Because they feel guilty about living in excess, or some other way expressively forbidden in their holy book, they latch onto some obscure commandment that can’t possibly apply to them and righteously rage against the violators of that commandment, so they can tell themselves, “See, I really am following the Bible…I am!”
Then that leads me to theorize that the reason why so many gay men are popping up in the anti-gay factions of Christianity is God is telling them that have not escaped responsibility.

I don’t really see much difference, as far as hermeneutics are concerned, between what Fred’s doing here, and what your typical fundie gay-basher does. They take the parts of the Bible that speak to them — the parts that agree with their morality — and handwave the parts that don’t. Fred is using that technique for good and the fundie gay-basher for evil, but that’s the only difference I can see.
The difference I see is the weight. On the seesaw.

Because they feel guilty about living in excess, or some other way expressively forbidden in their holy book, they latch onto some obscure commandment that can’t possibly apply to them and righteously rage against the violators of that commandment, so they can tell themselves, “See, I really am following the Bible…I am!”.

My theory about people like George Rekers is similar but distinct. They may really believe that railing against homosexuality will cure them of their unwanted desires. Or they may simply be trying to ingratiate themselves with their god.

I don’t really see much difference, as far as hermeneutics are concerned, between what Fred’s doing here, and what your typical fundie gay-basher does. They take the parts of the Bible that speak to them — the parts that agree with their morality — and handwave the parts that don’t. Fred is using that technique for good and the fundie gay-basher for evil, but that’s the only difference I can see.
Neither is actually basing their morality on the Bible; they’re cherry-picking the Bible to support and illustrate the moral sense they already have. Which is as it should be; morality is something you create, out of life experience and empathy, not a bunch of rules out of a textbook.

I don’t think that Fred is handwaving, he’s grappling with difficult issues in his religion. He has come up with a way of looking at things (relative weight given to topics + historical context) to decide where he should be focusing his energies and how he should be relating to others. As far as I can tell he applies that method pretty evenly. (For example, he doesn’t dismiss the verses on homosexuality while demanding adherence to some other equally small group of verses.) It seems to me that the only what that’s a handwave is if you take an all or nothing view of the text and I think there are good reasons from within the text to think that’s not the right way to read it.

Froborr: They take the parts of the Bible that speak to them — the parts that agree with their morality — and handwave the parts that don’t.
Disagree. Fred is very consistent about:
1.) Spirit and intent matters more than the letter.
2.) Historical context is also relevant, thought you gotta be careful there.
3.) At the core, your reading of the bible should guide YOU w/r/t yourself, not provide you with a stick to measure others against.
All of those points are debatable, but he seems to apply them consistently to all scripture. He also acknowledges, quite explicitly, the inherently subjective nature of such interpretation, and how it invites (even demands) analysis and dialogue.
In contrast, Holier-Than-Thou-People (HTTPs?) claim absolute and inflexible literalism and uncompromising acceptance of every verse as the essential foundation of their interpretation. Which is why they’re not willing to brook questioning, analysis, or dialogue on their pet topics. Fred seems willing to let them have that foundation, as long as they really own it and apply it consistently– which, as he demonstrates here, they do not.

[threadjack]
@hapax, way back there: The only thing I don’t love about Fred’s posts is the superfluous apostrophes. They make my internal editor scream in big red letters. (No, I can’t turn it off; believe me, I’ve tried.) In this connection I hereby promulgate a Simple Rule for Everyone, Including Me:
No English possessive pronoun ever contains an apostrophe.
Never. It’s, you’re, they’re, and who’s are contractions of it is, you are, they are, and who is respectively. The homophonic possessive pronouns are its, your, their, and whose, again respectively.
Thank you. I feel better now.
[/threadjack]
I have five coats that I use regularly, and heaven knows how many that I haven’t gotten around to giving to Goodwill yet. I am in deep sneakers. (I have several pairs of those too.)
Actual Christmas-morning scene in my stepgrandparents’ living room:
My step-great-grandmother: Oh, look, a new bathrobe!
My stepmother: It looks great on you, Nana.
Nana: Now we can give my old one to the Salvation Army.
My stepgrandmother: No, we can’t. The Salvation Army don’t take rags.

Neither is actually basing their morality on the Bible; they’re cherry-picking the Bible to support and illustrate the moral sense they already have. Which is as it should be; morality is something you create, out of life experience and empathy, not a bunch of rules out of a textbook.

Exactly. That relates to my point about morality being how one treats other people. Treating morality as simply rules has the effect of treating other people as unimportant.

OK -
Matthew 5 (Sermon on the Mount) has been brought up already. This is the famed “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” passage, but he also spends a few verses talking about divorce.
Matthew 19 (again on divorce being adultery). This passage is mirrored in Mark 10.
Luke 16 (same deal).
John 4 (the woman at the well) although you can argue that Jesus is only bringing up the subject incidentally.
John 8 (the woman caught in adultery) – “Let he who is without sin throw the first stone” and “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” The authenticity of this bit is disputed, though.
Matthew 15 – Two different words for sexual sin are listed in a litany of sins; this bit is also in Mark 7.
And of course there’s always Matthew 5′s “Not one iota will pass from the Law until all is accomplished”, and the multitude of non-Jesus references in the New Testament.
I’m not counting the passages about Sodom and Gomorrah, as Jesus correctly notes that the “sin of Sodom” is not actually sodomy.
Jesus has nothing to say about homosexuality, and he only has a couple things to say about sexuality in general, but he does bring them up when it’s appropriate. Not as frequently as he mentions our duty to help the poor, though.
And the whole idea that Jesus’ words in the Gospels are more important than the other letters, which are equally inspired (or not inspired depending on your view) and equally distant from the primary source if not more, is spurious anyway.

And the whole idea that Jesus’ words in the Gospels are more important than the other letters, which are equally inspired (or not inspired depending on your view) and equally distant from the primary source if not more, is spurious anyway.
Or not equally inspired, also depending on my view? Or am I not allowed to believe that?

I may be skipping down to the end of the page here, but forget the differences between the gay sex passages and the money passages, and so on. That isn’t the Real Problem.
The real problem is in following the passages – no, following the commands, the moral imperatives, on money, and charity, and possessions.
And I can’t do it. Some of my reasons are good (I’m facing massive amounts of debt, and I need just a little more security to sleep through the night) and some of my reasons are bad (I *really* want to buy this thing, more than I want to pass that 50 bucks to charity). With some rare occasions, I think most people are more or less like me.
That, I think, is the real issue, for those of us who purport to take the Bible seriously.

Matthew 19 and Mark 10 are in response to a direct question brought by the Pharisees, not a topic of discussion initiated by Jesus.
Luke 16 I grant you.
John 4 I grant you..
John 8 is again a case where the topic was thrust upon Jesus, not something he brought up himself.
Matthew 15 and Mark 7 seem like a bit of a stretch, considering they’re brief mentions in a litany of sins.
I would recommend against using the “not one iota” argument unless you’re going to start railing against shrimp and cotton/poly blends. And it would certainly be a stretch to call that verse a case of “bringing up the topic of sex.”

Jesus has nothing to say about homosexuality, and he only has a couple things to say about sexuality in general, but he does bring them up when it’s appropriate.

Huh? What do you mean by “when it’s appropriate”? It’s not like the stories in the New Testament are just reportage of the encounters between Jesus and random people. If the Bible is the inspired word of God then there’s a point to which stories were told and which were not. If Jesus was God then he could presumably arrange encounters with people who needed to hear his message. Barring that he could have told a parable. There are several parables about handling money and taking care of the poor, but I don’t recall a parable of the slut or the bad gay.

I have but one coat, and that I wear only in the rain or in winter. I’ve had it for over a decade.

Or not equally inspired, also depending on my view? Or am I not allowed to believe that?

Ah, welcome to the Great Debate About Paul. Paul’s letters, entirely the inspired word of the Lord or at least partially rants from Mr. Crabbypants?

I have only one…wait two, definitely two…no, three, only three pairs of shoes (though I only wear one pair regularly). Is this so odd? I thought it odd that anyone would want *more* than two pairs of shoes (one pair of dress and one pair of regular–that is, sneakers or similar) unless they happen to be in a special occupation or such where they might need more (eg., a fireman who also needs boots). Yet it seems that everyone has lots and lots of shoes. I really don’t get it.

Oh, and also possessor of only one coat (well, jacket). OTOH, I live in *Houston*, so it’s not like I *need* a coat, really.

All right, Fred. You asked.
Why don’t we “follow” the passages on buying things, charity, and so forth that you cite? Yes, they’re there. We have never pretended they aren’t.
Here’s why: as numerous as they are, they are a tiny subset of an even bigger set of passages regarding property and the laws relating to it. And that bigger set depends, completely and totally depends, on the absolute nature of private property rights. In a society where I was obligated by law to give my possessions to the poor, “thou shalt not steal” (to take a passage representative of that larger whole) would have no meaning. Neither would warnings about covetousness. Or greed. Or envy. No matter what anyone took from me, it couldn’t be theft, because I would be obligated to give it to them anyway. (If I were poor enough, I could take it right back. And then we could spend the rest of the day fighting over it. What a waste of time.)
For that reason, the only possible conclusion regarding these rules on charity is that they are like the rules forbidding lying: they are morally binding, but there is no possible way to legally enforce them. At most, an uncharitable person can be the subject of social disapproval. Therefore there is no point going on some crusade to ban riches by government fiat; it can’t be done.
The real problem is a mistaken attitude about what constitutes justice: the idea Fred mentioned in passing earlier about “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable”. No, justice is about comforting the innocent (whether or not they’re comfortable already) and afflicting the guilty (even if they’re already afflicted). Because of this basic misunderstanding, Fred and other Christian liberals read passages that warned an aristocratic society that “the rich do not have more rights than the poor”, and they bring them forward into a largely (albeit not perfectly) non-aristocratic society as “the poor have more rights than the rich”. The poor, in the “progressive” universe, have the right to be greedy. They have the right to envy. They have the right to steal. In some cases, they may even have the right to kill their “oppressors”. Well…woe to them once they have what they want, because the result will just be another set of poor people, and in “progressive” terms, turnabout is evidently fair play.
Passages telling those with property to be generous are one piece of the whole. Another piece speaks to the poor: “Be content. Keep your hands off what doesn’t belong to you. If you want or need more, work for it. Give a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage.” Because justice is not, as some people think, a weapon to wield against the rich. Justice, as a sword, cuts both ways.

Imagine a society that treated [greed] like such people treat [sex].
That’s been tried and hasn’t gone so well, mostly because people are greedier than they are horny. You can restrict sexual activity, but restricting money just prompts people to develop an privilege system so they can get the luxuries they want.
Not to say that a change in societal values can’t help the poor enormously, because it has. But no one seems to have managed a communist utopia yet. (Or a society without adultery for that matter, as 50% of the GOP can testify.)
@Thrifty and others- Fred actually has written pretty extensively about how he reconciles Christianity and tolerance of homosexuality.
Here, for starters.

And by “here” I meant here.

On coats: In my experience as a Northeasterner, winters necessitate the “I’m-going-to-work” coat (which for me is a pea coat) and the “oh-hell-there’s-a-blizzard-out” coat. Plus, you’ve got spring, where you could still be wearing the “work” coat and the “blizzard” coat, but you may need a “it’s-not-cold-enough-for-either-of-these-but-not-warm-enough-to-not-wear-a-coat” coat. The “blizzard” coat may also double as a “we’re-going-sledding-or-skiing” coat, but you may need an extra layer or two under it.
On Paul: Could he be inspired and Mr. Crabbypants at the same time?
In general: good post.

On Paul: Could he be inspired and Mr. Crabbypants at the same time?
Well, since he’s allegedly inspired by Yahweh, and Yahweh is a chronically tetchy god, I’d say the odds are pretty good.

Mabus: Seriously?
The hiatus has not been good to you, man: you seem to have turned into Bill O’Reilly. Might want to get that checked out.

I thought it odd that anyone would want *more* than two pairs of shoes (one pair of dress and one pair of regular–that is, sneakers or similar) unless they happen to be in a special occupation or such where they might need more (eg., a fireman who also needs boots). Yet it seems that everyone has lots and lots of shoes. I really don’t get it.
In my experience, men have only a few pairs of shoes. Women have lots of shoes. This is not because of some stupid stereotype like “Those ladies sure love their shoes” so much as women’s fashion is designed where there are a much wider variety of styles and types of dress, which requires a wider variety of shoes to match one’s clothing.
I am always either in T-shirt and jeans, polo and khakis, or suit and tie. There is a much wider spectrum than those 3 things if you are a woman.

@Mabus: Um, when exactly was Fred calling for the abolition of personal property rights? He was asking why Christians own more than one coat, not why they weren’t card-carrying communists.
Jesus didn’t say “Ceasar should redistribute your coats.” He said “YOU should redistribute your coats.” Your opinions about appropriate government policy may well conflict with Fred’s, but they have absolutely no bearing on the issue at hand. (Which, as you seem to have missed it, is: ‘Why do people who call themselves Christians fail to get incensed about issues Jesus actually cared about, like coat redistribution, while getting irate about homosexuality, which he never bothered to mention?’)

I thought it odd that anyone would want *more* than two pairs of shoes (one pair of dress and one pair of regular–that is, sneakers or similar)
@truth is life: If I may ask, are you male or female? I have a lot of shoes, although I don’t wear most of them very often, because when I used to dress up for work I needed the following:
- black pumps to go with predominantly black or gray suits/outfits
- navy pumps for navy ditto
- cream/beige pumps for summer cream/beige ditto
- black loafers for business casual (2 pair, one dressy, one very plain)
- black sneakers for casual/weekend wear*
- sandals, one pair each brown and black, for casual/weekend summer wear
- snow boots, one pair each dressy for commuting to work and serviceable for outdoor winter work/recreation (this doesn’t count ski boots or other specialized boots)
- house slippers
I’m not saying that this is right or good, just that it’s necessary or at least reasonable for a woman with a dress-up job to have eight to ten pairs of shoes.
*I had, actually still have in the back of my closet, several pairs because after I had kids I had a lot of trouble finding any shoes whatsoever that didn’t hurt my feet. (It’s quite common for pregnancy to change one’s foot shape/size. The answer turns out to be Keen sandals, of which I own one pair that I wear at all times unless it’s snowing hard or I am dressing for a funeral, wedding, or job interview.)

liBeralism and liTeralism always come hand by hand: we liBerally decide what is to be liTerally interpreted, and it happens with liberals, conservatives, truth-warriors, nut-warriors, capitalists, capitalpenaltiers, socialists, socialites, pink-commies, neoorthodox,calvinists, hobbesians, lockeans, arminians, etc etc etc (all of us deeming ourselves as “christians”)

Mabus gets the “spin city” award for managing to twist a host of biblical passages about caring for the poor into an argument for actively NOT caring for the poor. I’ll admit, I’m in geniune awe.
For your next post, could you explain how Leviticus is actually an extended commandment to eat bacon cheeseburgers and shrimp? That would be a real kick.

thought it odd that anyone would want *more* than two pairs of shoes
Sandals? Rain boots? Hiking boots?
And many people have two gradations of dress shoes of increasing formality- that’s not unreasonable even for a man, and women are practically required to.
I mean, I think once you’ve got more than about ten pairs it’s a getting a little ridiculous unless you’re an actress or a congresswoman or something and people are going to mock you for not matching perfectly. But two seems like a very low estimate in a temperate climate.

Shorter Lucia: see Jason.

For that reason, the only possible conclusion regarding these rules on charity is that they are like the rules forbidding lying: they are morally binding, but there is no possible way to legally enforce them. At most, an uncharitable person can be the subject of social disapproval. Therefore there is no point going on some crusade to ban riches by government fiat; it can’t be done.

Dude, what? Who is talking about banning riches by government fiat? Are you trying in some odd, roundabout way to justify passing laws restricting the rights of GLBTQ people because you can while leaving charitable issues to individual conscience because doing otherwise is too messy? If so, as Izzy says, you need to get that checked out.

The real problem is a mistaken attitude about what constitutes justice: the idea Fred mentioned in passing earlier about “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable”. No, justice is about comforting the innocent (whether or not they’re comfortable already) and afflicting the guilty (even if they’re already afflicted).

This is certainly the typical Church of Christ approach to the concept of justice. That doesn’t prove that it’s the correct, most Biblically supported view, no matter what you heard from the pulpit last Sunday.

Because of this basic misunderstanding, Fred and other Christian liberals read passages that warned an aristocratic society that “the rich do not have more rights than the poor”, and they bring them forward into a largely (albeit not perfectly) non-aristocratic society as “the poor have more rights than the rich”.

Again, what? No one thinks the poor have more rights than the rich. What people think, because it’s true, is that the poor have a great deal more difficulty exercising their rights and not having them infringed than the rich. Therefore the poor need more protection than the rich.

@Lori: Er, does the story of the adulterous woman not count? Or the bits in the Sermon on the Mount? It doesn’t have to be in parable form to be “real” – a good bit of the synoptic Gospels are random encounters with people on the street, although of course purposefully selected. Jesus isn’t constantly reminding his followers about his views on divorce, adultery, etc. but he doesn’t qualify his statements later either. His followers have certainly gotten the message by Acts 15.
On equally inspired / Paul – The idea that the words of Jesus are more inspired than the rest of the Bible is inviting, but given the Gospel authors’ distance from their subject, not really supportable. (I’m not a Jesus Seminar fan; can you tell?) Paul is a whole different question.
@Jarred: The “not one iota” verse doesn’t count as Jesus bringing up the subject, definitely, but it does mean the Tanakh is relevant for whatever behavior you’re trying to figure out. And no, you don’t have to be anti-shellfish to make that leap.

I’ve always said, in church, with a roomful of Christians, I can’t understand why, if anyone doesn’t have a seat, everyone isn’t standing.
You would think that in an effort to be Christlike in church, everyone sitting would offer everyone standing their seat. Instead, seats and space are coveted, guarded, planned for and schemed over, like any scarce resource. I’ve seen people literally refuse to move down to allow one or two more people to sit in their pew. How could anyone claiming to follow Christ be so flagrantly un-Christian, especially IN CHURCH?
I get by hanging onto my seat, as I’m not Christian. I’m a godless heathen. But the rest of y’all really need to explain yourselves.
Peter

Christendom is a boring version of Sodom and Gomorrah… just it
For the record, I call myself a christian

Hmmm. Shoes. I’m counting my shoes now. I have a pair of brown shoes to go with brown pants, and a pair of black shoes to go with black pants. If I were to get rid of all my brown pants (I have fewer pairs of brown pants) then I could get rid of the brown shoes (although I prefer the brown shoes, actually.). I have a pair of sneakers for informal, yet cold or wet, occasions, and a pair of sandals for informal, yet warm and dry, occasions. I have a pair of boots for when it snows, and another pairs of boots for when it really really snows. I suppose I could get rid of the first pair of boots (which isn’t very good anyway – luckily, I’m rich enough to avoid Vimes’ Law of Boots).
Now I’m starting to think that I own too many shoes…

Oh, and as far as a Rulebook for Others, I always counter my kids’ claims of “it’s not fair” by citing a time when they got the extra piece of candy and reminding them I didn’t hear them claim “it’s not fair” and insist I take that piece of candy and give it to someone who didn’t get any.
As humans we’re all about everybody else’s business.
Peter

Christian liberals read passages that warned an aristocratic society that “the rich do not have more rights than the poor”, and they bring them forward into a largely (albeit not perfectly) non-aristocratic society as “the poor have more rights than the rich”. The poor, in the “progressive” universe, have the right to be greedy. They have the right to envy. They have the right to steal. In some cases, they may even have the right to kill their “oppressors”.

I cannot support the notion that there’s no difference between ‘You should give as much as possible to the poor’ and ‘The poor can take whatever they want from you’. And the difference is indeed one of personal responsibility and ownership, in that the first scenario says you should actively help the less fortunate, and the second suggests a situation where it’s the responsibility of the poor to take things from you.
No one is suggesting that giving away everything you get above subsistence survival should be legally enforced, so I’m not sure why you’d even bring that up.
Next, characterising the starving poor as greedy is just absurd. Either you advocate a Just World concept where everyone only ever gets what they deserve, or you accept that some people have an easier time, by nature of circumstances beyond their control. And in that latter situation, you can view their charity in two ways: as gratitude for their good fortune, or as punishment. You seem to insist that it can only be the latter, while it’s Fred’s longstanding position that his religion demands the former. Grace, therefore works. If you have an advantage, you should accept the moral responsibility to share that advantage with others as far as possible.
To frame the argument of ‘What right do the poor have to my stuff?’ is to misdirect from the question of ‘What right do I have to my good luck?’ There’s no command to treat the poor as an undifferentiated mass, either. Feel free to only give to those who have been screwed by circumstance despite making every single right decision. But we should be considering the right and wrong decisions we have made as well, and asked how far they have affected us. If we got off light from a bad move, maybe we should give some extra to someone else who didn’t. If we profited hugely from a good choice, maybe it should be shared with someone who worked as hard and was denied.

@Robyrt: You seem to have utterly missed the main point of my question so I still have no clue what you mean by “appropriate”. Yes Jesus talked some about adultery. He talked a lot more about money issues and none at all about homosexuality. My point is that it seems reasonable to me to assume that those discussion reflected the something of Jesus’ views on the relative importance of those issues. What’s your point?

@Lucia: I believe I have more or less implied here that I was male. I was not *condemning* anyone, I was just curious about why people found it necessary to have so many shoes (and I wasn’t thinking just about women here, either; I was particularly spurred on by my roommate for the summer who, before I met him, I knew had a lot of shoes)
And this:

- black pumps to go with predominantly black or gray suits/outfits
- navy pumps for navy ditto
- cream/beige pumps for summer cream/beige ditto
- black loafers for business casual (2 pair, one dressy, one very plain)
- black sneakers for casual/weekend wear*
- sandals, one pair each brown and black, for casual/weekend summer wear
- snow boots, one pair each dressy for commuting to work and serviceable for outdoor winter work/recreation (this doesn’t count ski boots or other specialized boots)
- house slippers

helps explain things quite a bit beyond dress requirements (which I view as generally silly, for men and women alike, though rather more so for women).
I go barefoot or besocked around my house, and of course I don’t live in a climate where snow boots are needed (or any other kind of specialized weather wear), and I don’t go to the beach enough for me to bother getting sandals (I just wear sneakers if necessary and barefoot elsewise). Then of course there’s the fact that I’m a college student, hence can get away with very little in the way of formal wear, and only really need one or two “business casual” sets of clothes. So.

To frame the argument of ‘What right do the poor have to my stuff?’ is to misdirect from the question of ‘What right do I have to my good luck?’ There’s no command to treat the poor as an undifferentiated mass, either. Feel free to only give to those who have been screwed by circumstance despite making every single right decision. But we should be considering the right and wrong decisions we have made as well, and asked how far they have affected us. If we got off light from a bad move, maybe we should give some extra to someone else who didn’t. If we profited hugely from a good choice, maybe it should be shared with someone who worked as hard and was denied.

What I said on the other page about charity. Giving to the poor isn’t about their morality — it’s about yours. It’s not about “What right do the poor have to my stuff?”; it’s about “What right do I have to hold back when I could do more to help?” It’s not about what the poor deserve — it’s about what kind of a monster you’d have to be to allow that suffering to continue

Mabus, from my non-religious perspective, I think framing justice and charity in terms of rules misses the point of both.

If you keep writing essays like this, I may just have to become a Christian.
I should know better than to trust that when biblical “literalists” stress the sexual laws over any other consideration, they are accurately representing the main themes of the Bible.
I look forward to Part 3.

[[Will Wildman: There's no command to treat the poor as an undifferentiated mass, either.]]
This, this, this. We often talk about “the poor” as if they are fundamentally different from “the rich” or “the middle class” or what have you, and we talk about them as if they all have one single story. I worked with people who are homeless, and I can tell you that there are as many stories as there are people on the streets.
But also on the poor-having-more-rights thing–Catholics have the “preferential option for the poor.” And that’s in the social teachings of the Church.

[blockquote]Ah, welcome to the Great Debate About Paul. Paul’s letters, entirely the inspired word of the Lord or at least partially rants from Mr. Crabbypants?[/blockquote]
Or, since they’re letters, works inspired for a very specific audience to whom the letters are addressed? If you read through the letters, rather than just plucking out verses, it is so clear that Paul is writing to a specific congregation in a specific place with specific problems. Generalizing out of them can be tricky.

Oh, I also have negative fashion sense, so the need to wear black shoes with black pants would never have occurred to me–I’d just wear whichever pair of nice shoes I happened to have (probably brown–actually, assuming this is the real world, certainly brown) with my black pants. And my brown pants. And my navy pants. And…I think you can figure out where this was going.

Sandals? Rain boots? Hiking boots?

Sandals…well, I don’t know. As I said, I usually use a mixture of good old sneakers and barefootedness. I’ve had sandals, but I never wore them much or for long. I guess if you mind burning your soles more than I did it would make sense, or went off to the beach or the pool more than I do.
Rain boots? What are those? Rubber boots you put your feet in to protect ‘em from the rain? Hm, never used something like that. I guess if you need to keep your feet (or shoes) dry they’re a good idea. Despite being in a rainy area, I’ve never wanted anything like that, but like I mentioned my shoes’ wetness was never really important.
Hiking boots are recreational. I actually considered bringing those up instead of the fireman example as a good reason why someone might have more than two shoes, but decided it would be overly easy to criticize on the grounds that very few people *need* to have hiking boots. On the other hand, I was talking about why people might want to have more than two pairs of shoes, so I wonder why I thought that was important. Regardless, a good point.

Either you advocate a Just World concept where everyone only ever gets what they deserve, or you accept that some people have an easier time, by nature of circumstances beyond their control.

I would add that “deserve” is a dangerous concept here because it can imply character as opposed to need.

It’s also worth noting that different people have different types of materialism.
I have a lot of clothes, and a lot of shoes to go with the clothes–LARPing helps here–because while I’m not crazy matchy trendy girl, I do like to dress up and look good. I also, despite my best efforts, own a lot of books.
On the other hand, I could cheerfully get by with a futon, a desk-and-chair-set, and a lot of beanbags where furniture is concerned, and they don’t have to be particularly high-class beanbags. And nine evenings out of ten, I’m happy with leftovers or Spaghetti-Os. And I don’t see the point of DVDs in a world where Netflix exists.
We’ve all got our things, is my point. Such as it is.

You would think that in an effort to be Christlike in church, everyone sitting would offer everyone standing their seat
My church is suffering badly from overcrowding — standing room only at three services a week, and full on the earliest. We can’t expand nave (even if there were money for such a project) because the building is on the National Historic Register.
I keep telling our priest that the solution is simple: start blessing same sex marriages. Hey, presto! Tons o’ room to sit!
He laughs every time I say this, but I think I’m wearing him down.
Re shoes: I have way more shoes than I need (I couldn’t even tell you how many pairs) because my choices are pretty much between Very Expensive and Mind-Shatteringly Ugly Orthopedics and Very Cheap and Barely Wearable-Without-Pain Canvas slingbacks. So I buy the latter by the bucketload (in all colors of the rainbow) and throw ‘em out after a couple of months.
I don’t *like* this solution, but…

Joke that Al Franken used – a lot – on his old radio show:

If you took out of the Bible everything about helping the poor, you’d have a perfect box for Rush Limbaugh to hide his drugs.

I would add that “deserve” is a dangerous concept here because it can imply character as opposed to need.

That is exactly the implication that I want to bring up, because of the assertion that the poor got poor by not working hard and various other sinful things, and that all prosperous people got there by being virtuous and dedicated. If that was the world we lived in, Mabus might have a leg to stand on, because he’d be arguing that we shouldn’t be required/expected/obligated to share the things we got through virtue with people who have nothing because they’re uniformly lazy shifty twerps. Lazy shifty twerps might be in great need, and if people want to not give to them, that’s a separate argument from stating that all people who have more don’t need to give to any people who have less.

That is exactly the implication that I want to bring up, because of the assertion that the poor got poor by not working hard and various other sinful things, and that all prosperous people got there by being virtuous and dedicated.
Every time this topic comes up, I’m tempted to rewrite the parable of the sheep and goats so that after Jesus scolds the goats and tells them to depart, one goat speaks up:
“But wait, Lord! I saw that hungry person on the street. But you know, I wasn’t sure how they got there. For all I know, they spent their last dime on booze instead. Why should I help them?”
Then spoke another, “And can we talk about that naked person, Lord? They probably lost their clothes from gambling. And you know how irresponsible that is. I mean, come on, you wouldn’t really want me to enable that sort of behavior, would you?”
And on it went until the Master sat in stunned silence and the goats sauntered into the great feast feeling quite satisfied with themselves.

Just to skew the discussion a little bit from How Many Shoes Do We Have… I’ve been trying to pay more attention to the origin of my clothes. I figure that if I spend a little more to get something that is made in a country that values treating workers decently, I’ll have used my money more charitably. I could have three or four Made In China helmets for the cost of my one Made In Japan Shoei. I found a supplier of bicycle clothes (Harlot, FWIW) who makes nice gear for women that is made in the US. It took me a lot of searching the last time I was at the store to get a paintbrush that wasn’t Made In China…
(OK, one pair of work shoes, one pair of running shoes, two pair of bicycle shoes, one pair roadrace boots, two pair dirt boots, three formal shoes I bought for specific events and never wore again, and two pair of comfy sandals for working around the house.)

I think Izzy has a point (but maybe that’s because we seem to think similarly). I have more books than anything else, but I also have a lot of art supplies. My wardrobe has been whittled down as far as I can w/o knowing for sure what kind of clothes will be required for my next job. That’s about all I ever spend money on. I could not care less about furniture, and we’ve gotten rid of most of ours. (Yay, Craigslist!)
I’d always rather give things I no longer need or want to someone who could make use of them. We have a local resale shop that will take almost anything, and I’ve been ecstatic to give them our stuff and keep it out of landfills. And they donate all their profits to various local charities, so I’m helping our community too. But I’m not a Christian, and I don’t think I’ve ever done something (or *not* done something) simply because the Bible talked about it.

two pair dirt boots

Hiking boots? Those things you wear in the garden? Something else?

“Including, for example, the rule that says there’s really no such thing as “their” stuff”
Is there a Bible verse that unequivocally condemns private property? Not trolling or defensive; I’m genuinely curious.

I do have a bunch of shoes, most of which are dressy or fun/funky pairs that I rarely wear. But I have a weird hard-to-find size (11AA), so if I get rid of shoes, and later need a specific kind, I can’t just pop into any store that sells shoes and find what I need. In fact, I buy most of my shoes thru catalogs. And they’re never cheap either.
All those cute patterned socks for women? Too tiny for my feet. I buy a lot of men’s socks.

Is there a Bible verse that unequivocally condemns private property? Not trolling or defensive; I’m genuinely curious.

Not exactly, but Acts 4.32 says pretty bluntly that among early Christians “no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.” A couple even get smote down for not turning in their things. I assume this is one of those passages that the Conservepedia people have decided is too “liberal” to be in the Bible…

But I have a weird hard-to-find size (11AA)

You’re only the 2nd person I’ve known who wears a AA. The other one refers to her feet as “the skis”.

For your next post, could you explain how Leviticus is actually an extended commandment to eat bacon cheeseburgers and shrimp? That would be a real kick.

I happen to eat both, though not on the same plate. I sense a challenge…

Pius Thicknesse: I happen to eat both, though not on the same plate. I sense a challenge…
Too easy. It may not be on their menu, but I’m fairly certain that if you asked them to, the New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood Company will cheerfully put popcorn shrimp on your bacon cheeseburger. And sell it to you in the drive-thru for a nominal mark-up.
Mark Z.: And then you’ll be thrown into unending fire and unending darkness AT THE SAME TIME! That’s right, fire and darkness! You say ‘How can it be dark if I’m on fire?’ Because you’re in HELL, you son of a bitch!”
So much win yay.

Not exactly, but Acts 4.32 says pretty bluntly that among early Christians “no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”
Yep. A similar statement pops up on Acts 2:44. One can argue whether those statements can really be taken as commands of how Christians can live today, though.
A couple even get smote down for not turning in their things.
That’s not entirely correct. Ananias and Sapphira were struck down because (1) they held back a portion of the money the were paid for the field they sold and (2) lied about doing so. When Peter rebuked them (just before they each fell dead in turn), he pointed out that they had been under no obligation to sell the land or promise to give the money received to the church. But because they had made and subsequently broke a promise to do exactly that, they found themselves one of the rare targets of God’s wrath in the New Testament. But again, it was clear the sin involved was breaking a promise they had previously chosen to make.

I’m in a similar situation to Izzy’s – I have a lot of costumes, because costuming at cons is my hobby. I certainly don’t need them to live, but they bring joy to my life and others’. But I also share them and give some of them away from time to time, because there’s additional joy in doing so, and keeping such an expensive resource to myself always seemed rather selfish.
On the other hand, I own one pair of non-costuming shoes and one winter coat, ’cause I really don’t need more than one of either.

Too easy. It may not be on their menu, but I’m fairly certain that if you asked them to, the New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood Company will cheerfully put popcorn shrimp on your bacon cheeseburger. And sell it to you in the drive-thru for a nominal mark-up.

Ah, but can I get a bacon cheeseburger and cooked (not deep-fried) shrimp together?

But again, it was clear the sin involved was breaking a promise they had previously chosen to make.

Yes, this. I was basically taught that the problem was that they were trying to make themselves appear more generous and “Christian” than they actually were.

@Lucia: “No English possessive pronoun ever contains an apostrophe.”
That should help me remember the difference between “its” and “it’s.” Thank you.

(That was the sound of those verses on homosexuality finally hitting the ground after getting launched off the seesaw.)
Please, everyone — leave them right there where they lie. Let’s pretend we forgot about them and just walk away quietly …

@Pius, I could make you some crab rangoon with bacon in it. Would that work?
Man, that actually sounds really good. *starts figuring out ingredient list, bbl*

@a frequent reader (yet again): “A couple even get smote down for not turning in their things.”
That couple was actually smitten because they lied about what they were donating, imitating what some others were doing by selling some land and donating the proceedings, but the couple had kept some of the money and said they had donated all.
The actions regarding the property of the Early Christians stemmed not really from a command, but rather because they all cared about each other’s well-being. There is some other passages about how what a man owns really belongs to God, but there is no mandate against private property as such.

@Lori: It seems that we agree here. Jesus generally has other things on his mind than sexuality, but he does have a clear opinion on the subject, not just “Figure this one out for yourself.”
I own, let’s see, one pair of shoes for each color of pants, one nice pair for the tux, and one pair of sandals. I try to keep the amount of total stuff I own constant: every time I go on a spending spree, I identify something else to give away. It would probably be healthier just to spend less, but I am not ready to give up shopping…

Wanted to go back to something Tonio said:
Sounds like the confessors are treating him like a therapist or counselor. While parishioners could come to him with those issues, I’m not sure if the confessional booth is the right place for that.
Actually, confession has always been a kind of spiritual psychotherapy. Ideally, it’s not just reciting a list of sins and getting absolved; it’s also getting spiritual direction and useful advice for growing as a Christian and avoiding sin in the future. And of course, just talking to somebody about your deepest secrets can be therapeutic.

I am interested in learning how Christians can approve of homosexuality, and Fred’s post doesn’t address that at all.

Don’t know about how Fred will answer it but “Love they neighbor as thyself” pretty handily covers it. But then, The Golden Rule usually does, even for us homo-loving, scripture-not-following atheists. As with most things, it’s all about empathy.

Mabus: Here’s why: as numerous as they are, they are a tiny subset of an even bigger set of passages regarding property and the laws relating to it. And that bigger set depends, completely and totally depends, on the absolute nature of private property rights. In a society where I was obligated by law to give my possessions to the poor, “thou shalt not steal” (to take a passage representative of that larger whole) would have no meaning. Neither would warnings about covetousness. Or greed. Or envy. No matter what anyone took from me, it couldn’t be theft, because I would be obligated to give it to them anyway. (If I were poor enough, I could take it right back. And then we could spend the rest of the day fighting over it. What a waste of time.)
Okay. From my time on the Internet, I’m thinking you’ve come down with a bad case of Libertarian’s Disease. Its main symptom is an inability to perceive any difference between paying sales tax and the Mongolian Horde slaughtering your village. Case in point:
In some cases, they may even have the right to kill their “oppressors”.
Other symptoms include uncritical admiration for the ultra-rich, and liking the works of Ayn Rand. The suggested treatment is to read historical accounts of what the Gilded Age was like for the non-rich.

@Will Wildman – I seem to be more cynical that usual today. When I read your post, I couldn’t help thinking that in a world where people actually got what they deserved, the single most common element wouldn’t be hydrogen, it’d be asskickings.

Mabus: You are confusing criminal justice with social justice. Not to mention that you are arrogating to yourself the power to judge who is deserving of charity and who is not.
People, actual, real, flesh and blood people, are suffering, and your response is “Sucks to be you.”
That says a hell of a lot more about you than it does about any poor people. Not to mention it illustrates my point. Mabus and Fred read the same Bible, but apply wildly different ways of reading it. Why? Because Mabus is an asshole, and so he is satisfied with the reading that encourages assholery. Fred by and large is not an asshole, so he rejects readings that encourage assholery as obviously wrong, and accepts the reading that leads to social justice. But for either of them, you could take the Bible out of the equation and they would still believe the exact same things — they’d just articulate them differently.

Lucia:
I too am female, though I work in a “business casual/software casual” office. So I have:
- black sneakers for most outfits
- brown hiking shoes for hiking and brown outfits
- white sneakers for brighter outfits / shorts
- green sneakers for outfits with green/blue/purple (they’re a cute, bright green, so they are an indulgence)
- black “mary jane”-style shoes for most dressy outfits
- black dressy Aravon sandals for most warmer-weather dressy outfits
- white dressy sandals that I got to go to a wedding in a light-colored outfit
- red and black Birkenstocks for really hot days

Mabus’ comments set off my Randroid Libertarian alarm. Probably the reduction of the Bible down to a manual on Property rights in the first paragraph. while the Bible has a bit to say on chattel and who gets what when Dad’s will is read, mostly it’s using a common subject to illustrate a larger point about perspective and boundaries and proper behavior.
On a related topic:
I’ve always been fascinated by the folk who harp on the “Homosexual Abomination” rule in Leviticus but gloss over the Big Ten and what the commandments have to say on the matter, which is not a blessed thing. I imagine that, were homosexuality that big a deal, Moses would have found room for it on the tablets, possibly swapping out one of the commandments on coveting stuff, people or other stuff for “Though shalt not diddle like an Egyptian, you fag.” Maybe edit all the coveting together into one commandment, add in something about the gay agenda and have one left over for something about the ungodliness of the income tax. But you lead your people through the desert with the commandments you have, not the commandments you want.

Forborr, I agree with you except for your final conclusion. Mabus is, as far as I know, quite economically disadvantaged. He, in fact, insists on a reading of the Bible that says he, himself, should have no recourse, no help out of his predicament, because that would be unfair to those who have more than him, presumably because they either worked harder or just deserved it more.
He stands on principle to participate in his own victimization. I don’t agree with the principles, but I don’t think he’s the same as those who will only stand on principle to victimize others.

In a society where I was obligated by law to give my possessions to the poor, “thou shalt not steal” (to take a passage representative of that larger whole) would have no meaning. Neither would warnings about covetousness. Or greed. Or envy.
What utter nonsense, greed is fundamental to the human condition. It is not contingent on the ability to own property, or even possessions. People will always want more, and for that I’m glad. Greed is good.
My socialism is motivated by greed, despite being quite well off i could be better off with a more equal distribution of wealth. But I’ve never claimed to be a christian, never claimed to be trying to live up too “If you have two coats, give one to the man who has none.”
I’m more than happy to follow mammon, but you sir promised to follow jesus. And you cannot follow both jesus and mammon.
The real problem is a mistaken attitude about what constitutes justice: the idea Fred mentioned in passing earlier about “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable”. No, justice is about comforting the innocent (whether or not they’re comfortable already) and afflicting the guilty (even if they’re already afflicted).
In other words comforting your tribe, and afflicting every other tribe. So you have learned Nothing from history, or compassion, or jesus.

I don’t really see much difference, as far as hermeneutics are concerned, between what Fred’s doing here, and what your typical fundie gay-basher does. They take the parts of the Bible that speak to them — the parts that agree with their morality — and handwave the parts that don’t. Fred is using that technique for good and the fundie gay-basher for evil, but that’s the only difference I can see.
Neither is actually basing their morality on the Bible; they’re cherry-picking the Bible to support and illustrate the moral sense they already have. Which is as it should be; morality is something you create, out of life experience and empathy, not a bunch of rules out of a textbook.
Posted by: Froborr
I don’t think you read the post at all then…He’s not advocating cherry-picking the bible, he’s calling out and challenging the people that do it, using the popular-at-the-moment example. Try reading it again.

All right, Fred. You asked.
(snip)
Posted by: Mabus
I’m sorry…Did Glenn Beck somehow get in here? You’re seriously trying to reduce the commandments in the bible to property rights?
Oh, wait…I see it. “Because of that, Fred and other christian *LIBERALS*…” Just another Conservative trying to blame everyone not like him for ruining his America. It’s sad that you dared resort to twisting something you purport to be god’s word, dude…

Oh, and distracting from this to go back to Fred’s original footnotes… I was part of a production of Joseph as well as a youth (somewhere between 25 and 30 years ago now), just as part of the chorus. We took the ‘youth’ version which only had about half the songs, then added in a few of the better songs from the full version.
To this day, if asked, I can still rattle off the entire string of colours at the end of Joseph’s Coat entirely from memory. It was one of those things that you had to memorize in its entirety (rather than just the important words) because there was no other way to get it right.

Mabus is, as far as I know, quite economically disadvantaged. He, in fact, insists on a reading of the Bible that says he, himself, should have no recourse, no help out of his predicament, because that would be unfair to those who have more than him, presumably because they either worked harder or just deserved it more.
He stands on principle to participate in his own victimization. I don’t agree with the principles, but I don’t think he’s the same as those who will only stand on principle to victimize others.

More than once it’s occurred to me wonder if the sense of not deserving anything better lead to the “principle” rather than the other way around.

Please. How can anybody think Fred doesn’t know where the apostrophe goes? How can anybody fail to realize the difference between actually not knowing how to spell its (or in some rants not knowing the difference between its and it is) and typing a homophone – nor indeed how terribly, terribly easy that is to do?
What makes you think this lecture is going to make someone never mistype again?
Seriously.
Get a grip.
Typing the wrong word is extremely easy. People do it all the time. They type sandwich when they meant to type starting because someone said the word “sandwich” behind them in in the office, but (fortunately) people don’t rant about that.
Trust me. Fred (and most people) actually know how to spell your. Neurology lures them into typing the wrong one, and the difficulty factor of (a) proofing your own work and (b) proofing on a computer screen make them miss it.
That’s all. It’s not a moral failing, and it doesn’t require a lecture. (Can you tell this is what drives me crazy? Did you enjoy reading this?)

@The Ridger: Right, I assume it’s a typo unless it’s done pretty consistently.

Re: participating in one’s own victimization. I’m not sure if this is true of Mabus, but I think that rarely happens. Doonesbury had a series of cartoons about a Tea Party Rally in which an older woman burned her Medicare card to show her commitment to the cause; would that other Tea Partiers were that consistent.
Instead, it’s happened all too often that someone like actor Craig Nelson makes statements such as, “I was on welfare and foodstamps at one time, and no one ever gave me any handouts or helped me!” And then there are the Tea Partiers yelling about keeping the government’s hands off their Medicare, or complaining that public trains didn’t run more often to take them to their anti-tax rallies.
In other words, government services are just fine when they’re for them, just not for other people. (Again, not saying this is true of Mabus; I don’t know).

[[participating in one's own victimization. I'm not sure if this is true of Mabus, but I think that rarely happens.]]
I think it happens if the person isn’t aware that they are participating in their own victimhood. “Tea Partiers yelling about keeping the government’s hands off their Medicare” are a good example; Clarence Thomas saying that his confirmation hearing was “like a lynching” isn’t as direct, but it’s simular.

About my relative-the-Capuchin’s experience with poverty: he does find radical poverty quite freeing, in many ways. But he’s also forcefully aware of how unlike *real* poverty his experience is, because he doesn’t have the constant stress of uncertainty about how his personal bills are going to be paid. Poverty without worry can be freeing; poverty with it is a wretched burden.
That’s one reason he gives for the celibacy rule: chosing radical poverty for one’s self is one thing, but it’s almost impossible to choose it for one’s children. I suspect this is why there are no (or very *very* few) Protestant ministers who follow a Franciscan model of poverty: it’s not compatible with family life. It’s especially not compatible when you’re embedded in a society organized around how much stuff you have.
Like the rest of you, I’m boggled at Mabus’ statement:

what constitutes justice: the idea Fred mentioned in passing earlier about “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable”. No, justice is about comforting the innocent (whether or not they’re comfortable already) and afflicting the guilty (even if they’re already afflicted).

If that’s justice, then Jesus was certainly not on the side of justice; he had a notorious preference for mercy. He sat down with thieves and prostitutes — the guilty — and comforted them; he turned his back on those who basked in their comfortable innocence. In doing this he was perfectly in tune with the Jewish prophetic tradition, which made a lifestyle of afflicting the comfortable, all the way up to kings and queens.
I honestly cannot imagine how anyone can say that Jesus — or Jeremiah — believed in the absolute nature of private property rights. I’m not completely sure what Mabus means by their “absolute nature” — meaning what? You have a moral right to whatever you get your hands on? This barely makes sense in 21st-century America, I can’t imagine how you think it would translate to (or from) 1st-century Judea.

@The Ridger — my very sincere apologies for apparently pushing one of your buttons.
Really, I meant my comment to be a light-hearted aside, not a lecture. If anything, I was poking fun at my own inability to not appreciate the overall message by zeroing in on the jot and tittle.
Alas, tone is very hard to convey in blog comments sometimes.

Ideally, it’s not just reciting a list of sins and getting absolved; it’s also getting spiritual direction and useful advice for growing as a Christian and avoiding sin in the future.

Valid point. In the example given, the people were coming in with boatloads of issues about others. It seems reasonable to suspect that the real issues are with the people themselves. One would only have to read Carolyn Hax a few times to pick up on that. I question whether there would be time in the confessional booth for the priest to offer the guidance to help such people realize their own issues. I thought that this might be better handled in a longer counseling session in the office.

I question whether there would be time in the confessional booth for the priest to offer the guidance to help such people realize their own issues.
I can’t say about “the Confession Booth” but the one time I availed myself of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the priest offered both absolution for the spiritual sin (and I was myself astonished at the sense of liberation that provided!) but also recommended a counselor to deal with the attendant psychological issues.
I was very impressed at the way that he understood that these were two separate but interrelated issues, took both seriously, and acknowledged which lay in his sphere of competence and which did not.

@hapax: I think The Ridger may have been addressing me (since I got into all the other possessive pronouns besides its that get misspelled/mistyped a lot, including your, which The Ridger mentions). The it’s/its mistake is pretty consistent, although I haven’t noticed any other pronominal mistakes on this blog. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if you hadn’t, but while you were lighthearted, my tone was probably unnecessarily didactic. I’ll try to watch that in the future.
I gave the possessive pronoun = no apostrophe rule in such detail because I’ve never seen it anywhere else, and I thought someone might find it useful. (Thanks, LoneWolf!) But I got carried away. I apologize.

Poor Ben Grimm. He shows up at one pride parade, and everyone’s on his case.
Hee!

I question whether there would be time in the confessional booth for the priest to offer the guidance to help such people realize their own issues. I thought that this might be better handled in a longer counseling session in the office.
It depends. The Catholic churches I’ve been to have the priest waiting to receive confessions at set times, and people will queue up; I don’t imagine anyone wants to take too long. Although I did read once about the confessionals at Medjugorje, where people do wait in line, yet can get pretty in-depth anyway. Thing is, confession isn’t always done anonymously through a screen; you can also do it face-to-face. That probably lends itself better to introspection and discussion.
Confessions can also be arranged by appointment, at least in Anglicanism. I actually have yet to encounter an Episcopal church that even has a confessional, so in my neck of the woods, it’s the only option I’m aware of. And in Orthodoxy, people usually have a specific spiritual guide to hear their confessions, and they don’t necessarily have to be priests (they can also be a staretz–a respected elder monk–or a specially ordained layperson). I would imagine that gives more flexibility for scheduling a confession, which in turn gives both participants more time to discuss things.
I keep thinking I should go to confession more; I’ve only been twice in my entire life, and both were when I was still Catholic. I’ve been slacking on my spirituality in general lately.

Jarred: He certainly didn’t mention it during the sermon on the mount, for example.
Matthew 5:27-30
Okay this is from a few pages ago but: In all fairness, even this passage is less about sex than it is about faithfulness. Lust has decayed from its meaning when it was originally decided that was the best translation of the Greek epithumia–it is supposed to mean an intense, motivating desire. The point Jesus was making (assume you take this passage at face value) is that claiming to be faithful to our spouses while privately coveting the pretty woman next door is, effectively, a breach of the marital trust.
The way many pastors try and interpret this is outright ludicrous.

Lucia: I gave the possessive pronoun = no apostrophe rule in such detail because I’ve never seen it anywhere else, and I thought someone might find it useful.
I really, really appreciated your expounding on that rule, actually. I’d never heard anyone put it that way, and had begun wondering if no one else but me had noticed that odd consistency in an otherwise much-inconsistent language.

When I was in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat I played Pharaoh. I got to wear a white Elvis jumpsuit studded with rhinestones and complete with cape. It was the most comfortable garment I have ever worn. Sadly, rented.
Fred, you have two tunics. I have none. I can provide a mailing address.

Fred, I tend to lurk, but had to comment on this one to compliment you on your concise and logical approach to the matter. I’m not a Christian myself, but this post reminds me of the best ones I know.

Mabus,

And that bigger set depends, completely and totally depends, on the absolute nature of private property rights. In a society where I was obligated by law to give my possessions to the poor, “thou shalt not steal” (to take a passage representative of that larger whole) would have no meaning. Neither would warnings about covetousness. Or greed. Or envy. No matter what anyone took from me, it couldn’t be theft, because I would be obligated to give it to them anyway.

This makes no sense. You live in a society where people are sometimes obligated by law to kill: soldiers, police officers, prison staff in states with a death penalty. Does that mean that commands against murder have no meaning? You live in a society where parents are obligated by law to treat their kids in certain ways. Does that mean “honor thy father and mother” has no meaning?
The only thing you need to make “thou shalt not steal” meaningful is for something to be considered the rightful property of somebody. That doesn’t mean that the rightful owner couldn’t be chosen by the government, or even be the government. Nor does it mean that everything must have an owner; just because it’s not stealing to take a bucket of water from the town creek doesn’t mean it’s not stealing to take my framed picture of my grandma.
And seriously, you think absolute private property rights are necessary for the concept of greed? Of envy, or covetousness? Frankly, for people who don’t recognize such rights–like some nomadic hunter-gatherer societies–insisting on them is a sign of greed and covetousness. And it seems to me that Jesus–whether the historical Jesus, insofar as we can know about him, or the version portrayed in the NT–would probably agree with them.

(If I were poor enough, I could take it right back. And then we could spend the rest of the day fighting over it. What a waste of time.)

Yeah, because it’s totally impossible to fairly distribute a resource so that everyone has a right to their share. In other news, bloodshed over ethically insoluble cake-ownership disputes kills 5,000 Americans every year at birthday parties.

The real problem is a mistaken attitude about what constitutes justice: the idea Fred mentioned in passing earlier about “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable”. No, justice is about comforting the innocent (whether or not they’re comfortable already) and afflicting the guilty (even if they’re already afflicted).

[40] But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?
[41] And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.
[42] And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.
[43] And Jesus said unto him, Ye expect me to comfort thee? Get bent, criminal scum!

Passages telling those with property to be generous are one piece of the whole. Another piece speaks to the poor: “Be content. Keep your hands off what doesn’t belong to you. If you want or need more, work for it. Give a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage.”

How many of the latter set of passages are attributed to Jesus? I’m finding it hard to think of any.

Thanks for posting, I really enjoyed your most recent post. I think you should post more often, you obviously have natural ability for blogging!

No, justice is about comforting the innocent (whether or not they’re comfortable already) and afflicting the guilty (even if they’re already afflicted).
Why do the already-comfortable innocent need more comforting? And what do you mean by innocent? Are we handing out cookies to everyone who’s never murdered anyone (in which case, I want chocolate chip)? Are we looking at the perfectly innocent, who’ve never done any wrong (in which case we’re pretty much limited to infants and people born with the most extreme cognitive impairments)? Is it middle-ground territory? If so, how do you make it actually about justice, and not just your own prejudices leading you to decide that people you dislike must be guilty enough to merit affliction, and people you like being innocent enough to deserve comfort? How does mercy come into it?

All very sensible, very obvious stuff… *blinks*
What the hell, Mabus?
The real problem is a mistaken attitude about what constitutes justice: the idea Fred mentioned in passing earlier about “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable”. No, justice is about comforting the innocent (whether or not they’re comfortable already) and afflicting the guilty (even if they’re already afflicted).
I had never understood before you posted what the underlying purpose of Original Sin was. According to Christian theology (in almost all its stripes), no one is innocent. If there was, there would have been no need for a Savior. Objection dismissed as un-Christian.
For that matter, what any God who would condemn any (yes, even Hitler) to eternal suffering knows about either Justice or Mercy (which is what my Christian upbringing praised in God) is purely theoretical and in practice he is not blessed with any of either.
For that reason, the only possible conclusion regarding these rules on charity is that they are like the rules forbidding lying: they are morally binding, but there is no possible way to legally enforce them. At most, an uncharitable person can be the subject of social disapproval. Therefore there is no point going on some crusade to ban riches by government fiat; it can’t be done.
And where the hell did the Government come into this? Jesus’ comment about taxes was “Render unto Caesar”. On the other hand, nothing is stopping so-called Christians from following the dicatates. And it is the specific Christians that Fred is talking to. Objection dismissed as being either un-Christian or missing (or deliberately perverting) the point.
In a society where I was obligated by law to give my possessions to the poor, “thou shalt not steal” (to take a passage representative of that larger whole) would have no meaning. Neither would warnings about covetousness. Or greed. Or envy. No matter what anyone took from me, it couldn’t be theft, because I would be obligated to give it to them anyway. (If I were poor enough, I could take it right back. And then we could spend the rest of the day fighting over it. What a waste of time.)
Oh, congratulations. You have just said that the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are a waste of time. At that point Jesus ceases to be your saviour, your co-pilot, or even a Jefferson-style moral teacher. He’s your crazy old uncle up in the attic. At that point, how can you claim to be a Christian – that is a follower of Jesus Christ?

@ako– I like your point, and can I have a cookie too?– I’m mildly comfortable, and I’m semi innocent (at least I haven’t killed anyone)Chocolate chip sounds very good about now.
@Tonito; way up there in the thread- yes, I am describing children. I think that anyone who can’t see or refuses to see that heaping punishment and scorn on “the poor” is not only counter-productive, but extremely childish.

No, justice is about comforting the innocent (whether or not they’re comfortable already) and afflicting the guilty (even if they’re already afflicted).
What?? Justice is about giving people what they don’t need because they’ve got it already? And about hurting people who’ve already suffered for theirs sins, which Christianity teaches that we’re all guilty of?
Who shall scape whipping?
–
On another note, has anyone heard from Raj lately?

it’s necessary or at least reasonable for a woman with a dress-up job to have eight to ten pairs of shoes.

The show thing was a couple of pages ago, but I gotta jump in and say – it is absolutely not necessary to have 8-10 pairs of shoes. I have a professional job where I have to make an impression on People of Influence at times, and I wear the same pair of shoes every single day. Sometimes they’re the wrong colour for my clothes according to the whims of fashion, but living up to other people’s superficial expectations is not a necessity.
If anyone wants to have lots of shoes, I’m not stopping you. But if it matters to you not to have so much more stuff than one person needs, don’t let other people make you a slave. Some of them might think you’re a bit odd for choosing not to have what they tell themselves is necessary, but they really will cope.

Gah. The *shoe* thing. The *shoe* thing.

Now there’s the hippie pinko-Commie Fred I love!
I recall Bellatrys mentioning, years ago: “the people who talk about the half-dozen places in the Bible that condemn homosexuality, and ignore the hundreds that condemn poverty and injustice”.

I don’t think you read the post at all then…He’s not advocating cherry-picking the bible, he’s calling out and challenging the people that do it, using the popular-at-the-moment example. Try reading it again.

That’s what Fred SAYS, but he also ignores or reinterprets the passages that call homosexuality an abomination and call for the violent slaughter of Israel’s enemies. Which is good, of course! Those passages definitely should not be taken as a guide to life. But how has Fred decided that his way of interpreting the Bible is correct? Because it produces results he considers good. What he considers to be good — his moral sense — predates his reading.
Ayn Rand books work the same way. If you are a sane human being with a capacity for empathy, you will find the system of morality presented in them repulsive, and therefore not adopt them as a guide to life. If you are a selfish, cruel, hateful asswipe, you’ll find in the books arguments justifying the attitudes you already have, and embrace them.

Hiking boots are recreational.
That depends on one’s career, I should think. (And also on my tendency to conflate ‘hiking boots’ with all work boots.)
Some of them might think you’re a bit odd for choosing not to have what they tell themselves is necessary, but they really will cope.
And potentially not hire you, or find against your client, or waste news cycles and news cycles talking about your fashion choices instead of your policy initiates.
Fashion choices have consequences. It’s great that you’re in a position to weather them, but it’s not fair to assume that everyone can. (And I say this as a person who could care less about fashion and wears exactly one pair of dress shoes.)

That’s what Fred SAYS, but he also ignores or reinterprets the passages that call homosexuality an abomination and call for the violent slaughter of Israel’s enemies.
No, he’s ignoring those passages based on the same argument by which he ignores the passages abominating shrimp and crop rotation.
You can view that argument as illegitimate (plenty of people do; we call them ‘Orthodox Jews’), but he’s not cherry-picking. The people who care about Leviticus when it condemns other people’s sexual acts but not when it condemns their Hawaiian pizza are cherry-picking; Fred’s using a consistent interpretive framework based on the actual text. He’s probably drawn to that framework because it gives results in line with modern Western secular values, but then, the Abrahamic religions also contributed to the development of Western secular values, so you could as easily argue he’s drawn to liberalism because he’s Christian.
It’s a hopeless chicken-egg problem that even Fred probably couldn’t untangle, so the only reasonable question we can ask is, “Does he consistently interpret the Bible according to a single paradigm based on something in the text?” And he generally does. You can nail him on usury, possibly, but not on homosexuality.

My attachment has neither the blindness of the beginning, nor the microscopic accuracy of the close of such liaisons.

@ Spearmint

And potentially not hire you, or find against your client, or waste news cycles and news cycles talking about your fashion choices instead of your policy initiates.
Fashion choices have consequences. It’s great that you’re in a position to weather them, but it’s not fair to assume that everyone can. (And I say this as a person who could care less about fashion and wears exactly one pair of dress shoes.)

I am not assuming, I’m just pointing out that options exist. Some people might decide that possible consequences of their fashion choices are not worth whatever might lead them to choose differently. That’s fine – it’s a personal decision. It’s just that I’ve talked to a bunch of people who feel agrieved that society forces them to have lots of stuff that they say they don’t want. Sure, I’ll concede that in some cases conformity might mean the difference between having a job or not. But a lot of the time it just means people think of you as being sufficiently fashionable to meet someone else’s rule.
I’m happy to amend my comment to be less universal, though. It is absolutely not necessary for many people to have 8-10 pairs of shoes. Based on all the people in jobs that I know (brown collar through to professional) I’d be surprised if more than a small minority need enough pairs to enshoe a large family. It could be that my culture is less conformist to fashion than yours, but I’d be surprised about that too.

No, justice is about comforting the innocent (whether or not they’re comfortable already) and afflicting the guilty (even if they’re already afflicted).
Weren’t there some few parables about how it’s not man’s job to separate the wheat and the weeds because man will get it wrong and throw the wheat away, and how only God (uh, through His Angels?) is to make judgement and apply punishment, and something else about how the obligation is to clothe the naked, heal the sick, feed the hungry and so on, cos whenever you did that for any of those you were doing it for Jesus (without caveats about why they were naked, sick and hungry)?
*is not a Christian anymore and doesn’t feel like googling verse numbers right now*

Hip, Hip, Hooray! Wonderful article!
I wish this could be published as an editorial in my local newspaper, The Salisbury Post. They regularly print letters to the editor from numskulls claiming this or that is contrary to the Word of God. As you say, they are never talking about wealth, possessions, and the poor.

@Will

To frame the argument of ‘What right do the poor have to my stuff?’ is to misdirect from the question of ‘What right do I have to my good luck?’

It’s not ‘good luck’. Certainly being in the right place at the right time is advantageous,but to ascribe all of someone’s good fortune to actual luck is misleading as well. Certainly there are people who work tirelessly at making wealth and who are good at it, and there are those who are lazy. Lottery winners are lucky. Successful businessmen are more likely just good at it.
However,
As a Christian, to say, “I made this, this is all mine, and I can do whatever I damn well please with it” is a sin. It is the sin of pride. As a Christian, you must understand that everything you have is given to you by the grace of God, including your innate ability to be a good business person. (Hello, someone named Job is on the phone…) And you are extolled to express your thanks to God for your well-being, not just by going to church and praying, but by actually sharing your good fortune (“self-made” or not) with others. The church makes it somewhat easy, in that you have a tithing system in place. But you are free to give more than that, if you feel so inclined.
Also, regarding Jesus being more authoritative than Paul or the other epistles or Acts, uh, Jesus was the Son of God, and also a FORM of God. He IS GOD. Therefore, I assume his words carry a little more power than a letter to the Ephesians. I think somewhere someone actually says something about his word being law, or that he can speak things into existence, or something like that. I could be wrong, since I’m not a Christian, but I think I can stand on solid ground arguing that in a head-to-head battle, the words of Jesus should carry a little more weight than the words of anyone else in the Bible.
Peter

The people who care about Leviticus when it condemns other people’s sexual acts but not when it condemns their Hawaiian pizza are cherry-picking; Fred’s using a consistent interpretive framework based on the actual text.
Well, not in the case of dietary laws, because (most Christians believe) those are set aside in the NT. There are, however, plenty of other laws in Leviticus/Deuteronomy that are never set aside, such as not mixing fibers in clothing. All those practical cotton/poly shirts must go! Likewise the wool/nylon socks that I’m knitting.
(Slight threadjack: if we’re talking biblical injunctions, one that practically no one ever mentions concerns polygamy: nowhere in the Bible afaik is it ever prohibited. The only NT passage that even comes close lists among the qualifications for a bishop that he be “the husband of one wife”; it’s not clear if this means that he shouldn’t be single or that he shouldn’t have more than one wife, or both.)
@Sgt. Pepper’s BHCB: That’s why I backed off and said necessary or at least reasonable. In theory a professional woman could get by with one pair of work shoes if she took care to buy only work clothes that were compatible with black or gray or navy shoes, and I might very well do that were I (heaven forfend) ever to have a dress-up job again. But then we could wrangle about how few tunics, er, suits and blouses I could get away with, and… feh. In any case, I wasn’t holding myself up as a paragon of frugality or charity — if I were ever held to the biblical standard, footwear would be the least of my worries — I was answering the question, “why do people, especially women, have so many shoes?”

I find the obsession with sexual sins among certain Christians to be puzzling. Even ulra-Orthodox Jews aren’t this worried about sex. Technically, sex before marriage is a sin Judaism, although Orthodox Rabbi Joseph Telushkin admits that this is not stated explicitly in the Torah, but even Orthodox Jews would probably have a reaction no more strong than “well its not a good thing but at least the didn’t kill eachother.” Ultra-Orthodox Jews do believe that homosexuality is a sin but don’t vent about to the extent that cosnervative Christians and Muslims seem to do but they might participate in anti-gay rallies if one comes up.
I also do not understand how many Christians seem to find poverty particularly ennobling. God wants us to help the poor but he does not want us to be poor at the same time and there is really nothing wrong with trying to become rich if you do it honestly.

It’s not ‘good luck’. Certainly being in the right place at the right time is advantageous,but to ascribe all of someone’s good fortune to actual luck is misleading as well. Certainly there are people who work tirelessly at making wealth and who are good at it, and there are those who are lazy. Lottery winners are lucky. Successful businessmen are more likely just good at it.
I grew up in a society with clean running water, the rule of law, immunisation, a (relatively) healthy diet with no worries where food is coming from. I grew up in a culture where I can take risks, fail, and recover and with the resources to do so. I grew up in a society with massive freedom of movement and the ability to interact with an incredibly vast range of people and learn from them. And so did almost every successful businessman I’ve ever met – and their success is based on this foundation.
Yes, successful businessmen are often determined, able, or both. But they would never have had the opportunities they’ve taken if they’d been born in e.g. Burma.

@ Peter Risser: I could be wrong, since I’m not a Christian, but I think I can stand on solid ground arguing that in a head-to-head battle, the words of Jesus should carry a little more weight than the words of anyone else in the Bible.
Paul himself said that. Argh, you made me google:
I Corinthians, 1:11-13:
My brothers, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas[a]“; still another, “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into[b] the name of Paul?
I Corinthians, 3:3-6:
You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men?
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.
I Corinthians, 3:21-23:
So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

I just arrived and scrolled down to discover Francis had said what I was beginning to write in my head. My thanks: you have them. (I would also have included my own race, gender, physical/mental capacity, and sexual orientation, all of which fall under regional social concepts of ‘normal’ and let me breeze by where others might be considered suspect.)

But then we could wrangle about how few tunics, er, suits and blouses I could get away with, and… feh. In any case, I wasn’t holding myself up as a paragon of frugality or charity — if I were ever held to the biblical standard, footwear would be the least of my worries — I was answering the question, “why do people, especially women, have so many shoes?”
And, of course, asking these questions shows how quickly people jump to the very interpretive framework that the RTC crowd gets so dismissive of when it comes to homosexuality. A strict literalist interpretation of the passage wouldn’t allow for “Well, I can probably weed it down to two coats and four pairs of shoes and still dress appropriately for the weather and maintain an adequate professional wardrobe to not endanger my career prospects.” As long as anyone has no coats, you can’t keep more than one for yourself.
Of course, it’s reasonable to decide to apply interpretation to the passage and ask whether Jesus was employing hyperbole, how his exceptionally strict standards for charity meshed with “There is none righteous, not even one”, and the emphasis on hyperbole, or consider the spirit of the law and conclude that Jesus would be fine with you keeping enough coats to be able to hold your job and stave off hypothermia. But if you do this, and you don’t want to be a selfish hypocrite, you should be equally open to considering non-literal interpretations of passages where you personally wouldn’t be the one hurt by strictly literal readings.
Because “Many passages in the Bible employ metaphor, some are specifically about that time and place and not useful for the modern world, and sometimes interpretation can present things misleadingly, so they should all potentially ambiguous ones should be examined critically, and non-literal interpretations should be considered” is a reasonable and consistent stance. “All the bits that would cause problems for me aren’t meant literally, but all the bits where I get to stand around and criticize others for their sins while not personally inconveniencing myself in any way should be taken at face value” isn’t.

I think I can stand on solid ground arguing that in a head-to-head battle, the words of Jesus should carry a little more weight than the words of anyone else in the Bible.
AND
[R]egarding Jesus being more authoritative than Paul or the other epistles or Acts, uh, Jesus was the Son of God, and also a FORM of God. He IS GOD. Therefore, I assume his words carry a little more power than a letter to the Ephesians.
Well, yes. BUT:
The Gospels have the word of God related through the writings of persons writing under the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, just as the espistles tell the Word (or teachings, whatever) of God as written down by Paul. Theoretically, all books of the Bible are equal in their authenticity, but if you want to tie it back directly to the people who heard the teachings of Jesus of Nathareth, you probably want to go back as early as possible. The earliest Gospel in the canon was written by “Mark” in about 70 CE and was itself based at least in part on an intermediary source. The earliest epistle (First Thessalonians) was written by Paul in about 51 CE
Just sayin’.
(Although, I will grant you Ephesians, which scholars put at roughly 80 CE.)

I was going to quote _Hamlet_ in response to Mabus, but Kit beat me to it (“Use every man after his desert, and who shall ‘scape whipping?”).
[[Peter Risser: As a Christian, to say, "I made this, this is all mine, and I can do whatever I damn well please with it" is a sin. It is the sin of pride.]]
Yes. I’d say it’s not just a sin of pride, though; it’s also a sin of failing to love one’s neighbor. The first time I heard a fellow Christian say something along these lines, I went all flaily-armed and WTF? Because I was raised to believe that helping those who have less and are vulnerable is not just a good thing–it’s an obligation, and not one that we should resent, either. So hearing something like that made me practically apoplectic. Plus I’d spent enough time with homeless people to realize that *no one* deserves to have to curl up and sleep over a steam grate to keep warm.
If someone’s handing out cookies, I’ll take one! Especially if they’re chocolate chip.

@Francis D:

Yes, successful businessmen are often determined, able, or both. But they would never have had the opportunities they’ve taken if they’d been born in e.g. Burma.

Well, I think I said that being in the right place at the right time is advantageous. But you seem to be saying there are no successful businessmen in Burma. You could argue that all the successful businessmen in America would be less successful had they been born in Burma. I’d buy that as a probability.
But it’s still not all luck.
@colorlessblue
I appreciate the quotes, but I’m not sure if you are trying to support my argument about Jesus being more authoritative or to oppose it. Paul seems to be saying that Christ is the source, but that he is the font. Whether this means that he is saying he is less authoritative than Jesus or that he as as authoritative as Jesus seems ambiguous to me.
Or are you saying “Jesus is Christ, the rest are just men, so why are you even arguing about it?”

Good points. Conservatives like to say, the Bible’s entreaties are about private charity and not governments but the distinction is not clearly in the text. For example, regarding the Sheep and the Goats, “Nations” are judged (although it is ambiguous perhaps whether the nations are just gathered, or judged as such.) Try for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_and_the_Goats .
I pasted some below. Note also other hypocrisies we put up with, like calls for school prayer despite Jesus saying, not to pray in public “like the hypocrites” (!) and other issues. (Caveat: I don’t accept these texts as revelatory, it’s here regarding consistency and to show the relevant sentiments.)
31 “But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32 Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will tell those on his right hand, ‘Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. 36 I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.’
…
44 “Then they will also answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn’t help you?’ 45 “Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Most certainly I tell you, inasmuch as you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t do it to me.’ 46 These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
As for arguments above over how much sexual morality was emphasized in NT: It depends on whether you check what Jesus is quoted saying, or the writings of Paul etc. Jesus himself said little about private behavior and when he did, it was to condemn adultery (take that, Ronald Reagan the great hero of Middle America!) In any case, the emphasis on social justice is still there, deal with it.

Arrg. To clarify:
“People who heard the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth directly from the mouth of Jesus himself, …

@Saffi

The Gospels have the word of God related through the writings of persons writing under the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, just as the epistles tell the Word (or teachings, whatever) of God as written down by Paul.

Yeah, but we’re playing the game of ‘literal interpretations’. We’ve already excused questions of historical accuracy from the room. Who can say if Jesus actually said anything he is reported to have said? That’s a whole different conversation.
We’re building arguments based on the assumption that the Bible is to be taken literally, and in doing so, pointing out the inconsistencies either (a) in the Bible itself, or (b) in the way that folks who insist on “taking it literally” behave, in order to show that taking the Bible literally is impossible, potentially dangerous and, in the long run, un-Christian folly.
That being said, assuming that the gospel writers were divinely inspired to capture what Christ actually spoke, I think his words should carry more weight than Paul’s, the prophets, or anyone else’s short of those of Yahweh himself.
Peter

I could be wrong, I often am, but I think that most, possibly all, who are accusing Fred of cherry picking are missing something very important.
He isn’t picking verses he likes and telling people to follow them. The examples given in the post above are all of things he doesn’t follow. Also things he doesn’t expect others to follow.
Where fundies say, “Ignore the verses about X, everyone must obey the verses about Y,” Fred is saying, “Yeah, I’m not following the verses about Y, but neither am I following the much more numerous verses about X,” and then followed it up with, “Stop telling everyone that they must follow verses you cherry picked to the letter when you yourself refuse to follow huge piles of verses to the letter.” And he’s only saying that in the context of (and this one is an actual quote) “If you come to me as a Guardian of Biblical Authority, demanding to know why I do not join you in biblically condemning homosexuals…”
Fred isn’t telling anyone that they have to obey any part of the bible. He isn’t cherry picking verses for other people to follow. He is saying that he personally won’t take hypocrites seriously.
In saying that he didn’t cite Bible verses on hypocrisy. He didn’t demand that everyone obey Bible verses about hypocrisy. He says what you will have to do to make him take you seriously should you advocate for a certain point of view.
I’m having trouble imagining something further from the fundamentalist attitude people are claiming Fred is sharing.
-
Also, as has been pointed out, he applies his less than literal framework across the board, where the fundies apply their “This must be obeyed literally” interpretation to only certain parts.

@ Peter: “Jesus is Christ, the rest are just men, so why are you even arguing about it?”
I understand that Paul said that. I don’t think the community he was addressing would be taking sides between the different preachers if these preachers weren’t saying different things, and I think what he was saying was that Jesus had the ultimate word because of who he was.

But it’s still not all luck.

I’m not asserting that it is all luck, I’m asserting that all parts that are luck should be taken as an obligation to help those with less luck. To some degree, I also include ‘born with an aptitude for X skill/concept’ to be a form of luck. (This degree falls off as we begin to consider things like ‘born with an aptitude for not murdering people’, which I would consider sufficiently basic that no one owes anyone anything for displaying it.)

Fred isn’t telling anyone that they have to obey any part of the bible. He isn’t cherry picking verses for other people to follow. He is saying that he personally won’t take hypocrites seriously.

And from my reading, he’s also saying that the reason to obey a particular part of the Bible is the because of the effect that the obedience will have on one’s fellow humans.

I’m not asserting that it is all luck, I’m asserting that all parts that are luck should be taken as an obligation to help those with less luck. To some degree, I also include ‘born with an aptitude for X skill/concept’ to be a form of luck. (This degree falls off as we begin to consider things like ‘born with an aptitude for not murdering people’, which I would consider sufficiently basic that no one owes anyone anything for displaying it.)

That’s all well and good, but I think that doing all kinds of gymnastics to build a framework to justify why person A deserves to be helped or why person B owes it to society to help is straying from the point.
Far as I’m concerned, *it doesn’t matter who deserves what*. Even if it were true that person A is poor purely through their own bad choices and not because of luck, and even if it were true that person B pulled himself up by his bootstraps and got all he had through hard work, if person A is suffering what else are you going to to?. If someone is suffering, you help them, because to do otherwise is monsterous.

I used to be active in the Society for Creative Anachronisms. I have *many* tunics.
For many people, homosexuality is the most aberrant form of behavior that they can imagine. Which just shows the limits of their minds really. But it *obsesses* them. It confounds them. At least those that are also not deeply fascinated by it because they themselves are closeted homosexuals. I would in fact put forth the idea that the homophobes (straight and self-loathing gay) spend more time thinking about gay sex than the people actually having gay sex do.
I’ve been an ally of the gay community for 30 years. I fight the good fight on my YouTube channel regularly. I catch a *lot* of flack because I stand up for the rights of the LGBTQ community. As a non-Christian the Bible quotes don’t bother me. But the bald faced bigotry does.

Ross: In general, I agree, but I originally brought up the ‘luck’ thing in response to Mabus’ talk of personal property rights, and just wanted to point out that such claims were based an the absolutely ridiculous Just World concept. Bridging that to your position requires progressively greater quantities of charity (in the primordial sense of the word that Fred recently related to agape) that seem like a bit much to demand from someone who’s still stuck on “I earned what I got.” If someone can make the leap from that to what you said, that’s great, but I’ll settle for an evolution – first acknowledging that there are at least some poor who deserve better, then expanding the definition of ‘deserving’.

Peter:
Yeah, but we’re playing the game of ‘literal interpretations’. We’ve already excused questions of historical accuracy from the room. Who can say if Jesus actually said anything he is reported to have said? That’s a whole different conversation.
Which is why I opened with the fact that theoretically ALL books of the Bible are equally authentic. I was just replying to those who had already started giving different weight to different parts of the Bible.

Ross, excellent point. What Mabus and others don’t seem to understand is that social justice isn’t necessarily about handouts for the poor. In large part it’s about addressing the root causes of poverty, as well as the barriers that keep people from moving out of poverty. K.Chen mentioned microloans, and I see that as an example of a creative end-run around those barriers. And yes, some poor people add to the barriers by making bad choices, and educating them about more effective choices may be part of the strategy for reducing their suffering.
Why doesn’t it matter who deserves what? My answer is that life is not a competition. That’s like saying that the goal of school is to get good grades and not to learn.

I know this is late, but dammit I posted this last night and it got eaten by the Internet goblin, and it’s taken me this long to re-write!
****
Mabus:
The real problem is a mistaken attitude about what constitutes justice: the idea Fred mentioned in passing earlier about “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable”.
Since I know where that quote comes from, I’m pretty sure I would have spotted an instance of Fred stating that it was a definition of Justice, and I don’t recall any such instances. The quote comes from H.L.Menken*, and was used by him to define the responsibilities of journalists. The fact that people allude to the saying when discussing ethics is usually due to the fact that it’s witty, and its converse (afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable) is considered both pathetically syncophantic and also completely asshole-ish in any humane society.
* (Actually, Menken said the originator was unknow, but he said that about his own quips quite a lot. Others have attributed it to Finley Peter Dunne, another journalist.)
*********
Also Mabus:
Fred and other Christian liberals read passages that warned an aristocratic society that “the rich do not have more rights than the poor”, and they bring them forward into a largely (albeit not perfectly) non-aristocratic society as “the poor have more rights than the rich”.
I thought this discussion was about property rights and sexual mores, not the commandment against lying.
Please name one single passage where Fred has actually advocated this. Please name at least five “other Christian liberals” who believe this, and quote something they’ve said that indicates this belief.
It’s long past time that liberals stood up to this kind of deliberately false re-definition, and called it out explicitly out whenever it occurs.
Again, from Mabus:
The poor, in the “progressive” universe, have the right to be greedy. They have the right to envy.
Um, duh. Are you saying that among non-progressives they don’t? Oh, yeah – you’re supposedly talking about Christians, here, who are expressly commanded to not be greedy or envious. Except at this point you’ve stopped using the word ‘Christian’ so that now it sounds like you’re talking about progressives in general. Well done.
They have the right to steal.
I repeat, name just five progressives who have definitely advocated this. Unless you’re defining “stealing” as things like levying taxes, or enforcing contract penalties, or holding corportations accountable for their actions. Or unless you’re defining “progressive” to include obscure lunatics so radically far left of actual Progressivism that they equate us with John Birchers.
In some cases, they may even have the right to kill their “oppressors”.
Nice little conflation of people who get cheated by fat cats with people living under murderous tyrants for whom armed rebellion is their only alternative. Again, well done – you’ve again conflated Christianity with Liberalism, and technically you’ve given no ground for those whom you’ve slanders to call you a liar.
With this sentence, anyway.

Ross: In general, I agree, but I originally brought up the ‘luck’ thing in response to Mabus’ talk of personal property rights, and just wanted to point out that such claims were based an the absolutely ridiculous Just World concept. Bridging that to your position requires progressively greater quantities of charity (in the primordial sense of the word that Fred recently related to agape) that seem like a bit much to demand from someone who’s still stuck on “I earned what I got.” If someone can make the leap from that to what you said, that’s great, but I’ll settle for an evolution – first acknowledging that there are at least some poor who deserve better, then expanding the definition of ‘deserving’.

I understand why you did it — it was enough to give me pause before writing my previous message. But frankly, progressives have been *trying* this line of argument ofr decades and it doesn’t work. I think we’re making a mistake to address folks lime Mabus by conceding the inital point that whether or not the poor “deserve” help is a relevant concern to have in the first place. Because once we’ve given that up, we’re really just quibbling over where to draw the “deservingness” line.
(This is a frequent failing when progressive and conservatives argue: the progressives are usually too willing to concede the basic premises the conservatives set down. So it’s “No, conservative; some poor are deserving” instead of “Fuck you, conservative, ‘deserving’ doesn’t enter into this.” And it’s “No, conservative, some women aren’t whores who deserve to suffer” not “Fuck you, preganancy shouldn’t be a form of punishment.” And it’s “No, conservative, sometimes torture, though effective, is immoral” not “Fuck you, we don’t torture.”)

So it’s “No, conservative; some poor are deserving” instead of “Fuck you, conservative, ‘deserving’ doesn’t enter into this.”

In some cases, the conservative and the progressive may both want to relieve suffering, but may have fundamental disagreements on which approaches to use. But when the conservative talks about “deserving,” that suggests that his goal is not to relieve suffering at all. It’s like he sees life as about earning gold stars for good conduct. Imagine that mentality applied to lifeboat drills on ships – it would amount to everyone running like hell to get a spot in one of the boats, leaving the children and elderly to drown in their staterooms.

That is a good point, Ross, but in practice and for individuals, ‘deservingness’ does have to factor into our decisions, simply because each of us only has a finite amount of time/money/etc to give, and we’ve got to decide where it goes. We may want to focus on the most dire need (in which case we don’t care how the person got there, but merely that they are in the worst straits) or we may want to focus on the maximum benefit (which may depend on what actions we expect recipients to take). ‘Deservingness’ (or a better term that doesn’t have such a strong ‘good people / bad people’ vibe) is then not so much about whether to give, but what to give, where to give.

I think we’re making a mistake to address folks lime Mabus by conceding the inital point that whether or not the poor “deserve” help is a relevant concern to have in the first place. Because once we’ve given that up, we’re really just quibbling over where to draw the “deservingness” line.

On another board I condemned the assumptions about Elena Kagan’s sexual orientation. saying that this amounted to bearing false witness. Another poster there made the same point you did, claiming I was conceding the initial point that orientation should be considered in filling Court vacancies. I disagree – bearing false witness is wrong regardless of context, and pointing that out doesn’t undermine the separate point that orientation should be irrelevant as a qualification.

As a non (former) Christian, it always strikes me in conversations like this about how to interpret the Bible for modern times that The NT, at least, wasn’t actually meant to be interpreted for modern times. There was, after all, no real concept of societal progress at that time. The world, as it was, and always had been, was run more or less the same way. The economy was based on barter and to a sdmall extent, cash, rather than credit, as in the modern world; politics was the province of the strong (and rich, which was essentialy the same thing)and no one envisioned those things really changing in the world, even to the extend of general suffrage.
Technology was simply not a factor–there really wasn’t any that hadn’t been around forever in one form or another.
Then, of course, is the fact that the people writing it were quite sure that there wasn’t going to be a world for very long, anyway.
As for coats and shoes, think hot climate and a society where the only use for the vast expense of owning more clothing than you could wear was to display your wealth. (All of those things had to be hand made, including the cloth and leather.)Reason enough to condemnsuch extravagance, especially to a religion that was, at that time, composed largely of the poor.
It seems rather to undercut the universality of the Bible to note that it is clearly unequipped to deal with the concerns of modern society in any way due to a lack of foresight. All attempts to do so seem, to one such as I, to be forcing the square peg into the round hole by taking a chisel to it and claiming it was meant to be round all along, but maintains its essential squareness.

On the other hand, Jesus had kind of a Lewis Black shock-jock thing going at times. “And SODOM AND GOMORRAH will come and tell you how much you SUCK! And then you’ll be thrown into unending fire and unending darkness AT THE SAME TIME! That’s right, fire and darkness! You say ‘How can it be dark if I’m on fire?’ Because you’re in HELL, you son of a bitch!”

Yeee, the scary thing is, I can see that. Good heavens, what if Jesus was ahead of his time and injected scathing, biting humor into his words against the Pharisees and hypocrites?

When I’ve heard a rationale for the intense focus on sexual morality, it’s been the assertion that sexual relationships are, indeed, very much more important than any other type of morality. The reason given is that the Bible repeatedly uses sexual relationship as a metaphor for humanity’s relationship with God: for instance, Israel being compared to an unfaithful wife.
In a way I can understand this, because for many people, a sexual relationship is the deepest and most intense experience they ever have.
OTOH, I don’t think the reasoning is entirely honest here, because plenty of other things are also used as metaphors for relationships with God; and they are, after all, METAPHORS and not complete and literal representations of How Things Are. All metaphors are imperfect in one way or another. Why latch onto this one as somehow complete and essential when the others aren’t? This makes me suspect that there is indeed some unacknowledged bias in the selection of this one as “inherently” more important.

The reason given is that the Bible repeatedly uses sexual relationship as a metaphor for humanity’s relationship with God: for instance, Israel being compared to an unfaithful wife.

I call shenanigans on anyone who tells you this is the reason for their focus on sex. The Bible also repeatedly uses parental and master-servant relationships as metaphors for humanity’s relationship with God. In fact, the sexual metaphors are used mainly to talk about God’s relationship with the collective of his people—Israel in the OT and the Church in the NT, not an individual’s relationship to God. That might support a notion of sexual sin that’s focused on societal harm, but I don’t see how it supports being all up in everyone’s private business.

In a way I can understand this, because for many people, a sexual relationship is the deepest and most intense experience they ever have.
That’s just because we live in a society where most of us don’t encounter serious problems. For a lot of people, leprosy, starvation, or being tortured by their government are the most intense experiences they ever have.

[[ I'm mildly comfortable, and I'm semi innocent (at least I haven't killed anyone)Chocolate chip sounds very good about now.]]
I haven’t killed anyone **today** (although my sheep are locked and loaded). Could I have half a cookie?

In theory a professional woman could get by with one pair of work shoes if she took care to buy only work clothes that were compatible with black or gray or navy shoes, and I might very well do that were I (heaven forfend) ever to have a dress-up job again.
I have been known to manage with 1 pair black leather walking shoes, but I prefer not to go down to 1 so that my shoes can fully dry out and “rest” between wearings. I found that with 1 pair of shoes I would replace them more than twice as often as when I have at least 2 pair.

Lee: God wants us to help the poor but he does not want us to be poor at the same time
Well, it’s certainly harder to help the poor if you’re too poor to do it!

Chrissl: In a way I can understand this, because for many people, a sexual relationship is the deepest and most intense experience they ever have.
Spearmint: That’s just because we live in a society where most of us don’t encounter serious problems. For a lot of people, leprosy, starvation, or being tortured by their government are the most intense experiences they ever have.

I think it’s also because our culture places a higher value on romantic/sexual relationships than it does non-sexual ones. That tends to have an effect on how individuals perceive their own relationships.

Sir;
What is your opinion of Bryant Meyers’ Walking With the Poor?

Far as I’m concerned, *it doesn’t matter who deserves what*. Even if it were true that person A is poor purely through their own bad choices and not because of luck, and even if it were true that person B pulled himself up by his bootstraps and got all he had through hard work, if person A is suffering what else are you going to to?. If someone is suffering, you help them, because to do otherwise is monsterous.

So very much this.
As an individual, I do not have enough resources to help everyone who is suffering from a lack of resources. Therefore, when I set out to help people as a lack of resources, I have to choose who to help, and certainly I can include a judgment of how much I like them (which is really all the word “deserve” means) in that choice.
However, as a society, we DO have enough resources to help everyone who is suffering from a lack of resources, and so when we act as a society (i.e., through government programs) allowing that suffering to continue because some people think some of the recipients “don’t deserve it” makes monsters of us all.

Agreeing with Ross and Froborr, particularly Froborr. Personally, you do what you can, not everyone can do everything, and it’s not reasonable to expect people to give up all material possessions: I admire the really-self-sacrificing, but I’m not, particularly.
Societally, I think we’re obligated to create a framework by which nobody slips through the cracks, even if that includes people who made a bad decision or two. Because we all do that–no, seriously, we all do that–it’s just that, as people said above, nobody notices or judges when you’re above a certain level of wealth, because the consequences aren’t as dire. I have personally, and rather stupidly, spent more money this month than I should, largely on eating out and getting my nails done; as a result, I’ll have to withdraw fifty dollars from my savings, probably; but that’s not the kind of hardship it would be if I were unemployed or didn’t have savings or had dependents of any sort.

If we’re talking about social constructs to help the poor, then no question: there’s no point at which a person can somehow become unworthy of help. I was speaking of individual obligations, and I realise now that there may have been a blind spot in how I was talking, because it would never actually occur to me to think that society should flatly reject any person in need.
I tend to think, for example, of taxation (and subsequent public expenditure) as a natural part of existence, to the point where I wonder why employers bother stating ‘we will pay you $30K a year’ instead of ‘we will pay you $23K a year and we will pay the government $7K a year for the right to do so’. I realise that we’d have to rebuild the entire system to make the above function, because that’s just not how our tax structures work, but that’s how I tend to think of it. Thus when people complain about personal obligations to the poor, I’m thinking of charitable donations and volunteer work: “Why should I give part of my [after-tax] income to someone who didn’t work for it?” That strikes me as a reasonable question, even if I think the answer is good and obvious. It can take a while for me to register that they may be protesting taxes and social welfare structures. It’s like trying to imagine seeing in the ultraviolet.

I think it’s also because our culture places a higher value on romantic/sexual relationships than it does non-sexual ones.
Oddly enough, for the sex-as-metaphor-for-relationship-with-God folks, that’s a very un-Biblical understanding. Those individuals with the closest, most intimate relationships with God in the Hebrew scriptures are reckoned as God’s “friends.” In the New Testament, the most intense relationship was clearly the parent / child — Jesus called God “Daddy”, and both the Pauline and Johannine epistles refer to the saved as “children of God.”
When the community — not the individual — and God are described in a marital relationship, it isn’t ever presented* as being about sex, but about trust, faithfulness, and loyalty.
*Well, there’s the Song of Songs. But really, all the metaphorical interpretations designed to cover up the fact that Teh Bible celebrates Teh Smut are pretty much of a stretch.

Oddly enough, for the sex-as-metaphor-for-relationship-with-God folks, that’s a very un-Biblical understanding. Those individuals with the closest, most intimate relationships with God in the Hebrew scriptures are reckoned as God’s “friends.” In the New Testament, the most intense relationship was clearly the parent / child — Jesus called God “Daddy”, and both the Pauline and Johannine epistles refer to the saved as “children of God.”
When the community — not the individual — and God are described in a marital relationship, it isn’t ever presented* as being about sex, but about trust, faithfulness, and loyalty.

Very true.

*Well, there’s the Song of Songs. But really, all the metaphorical interpretations designed to cover up the fact that Teh Bible celebrates Teh Smut are pretty much of a stretch.

Seriously. I do find it amusing watching people contort themselves trying to read it as something other than Sex Yeah!

[[hapax: *Well, there's the Song of Songs. But really, all the metaphorical interpretations designed to cover up the fact that Teh Bible celebrates Teh Smut are pretty much of a stretch.]]
I always was told it was both about the relationship between a man and a woman *and* the relationship between God and people. However, it’s been ages since I’ve actually read Song of Songs (/Solomon), and I’m not a Biblical scholar.
[[Froborr: However, as a society, we DO have enough resources to help everyone who is suffering from a lack of resources, and so when we act as a society (i.e., through government programs) allowing that suffering to continue because some people think some of the recipients "don't deserve it" makes monsters of us all.]]
Yes, this. Also, I remember being told one that it’s not the state’s responsibility to help the poor; it’s the church’s. My reaction to this is multi-fold: one, there are people who are not part of the church who want to help the poor . Two, individual churches often don’t have the means to overcome poverty on their own (though some do). Three, if it’s the church’s responsibility, why the hell haven’t they done anything about it? This third one is usually directed at the person who makes that statement, who is invariably someone who has done *nothing* to help the poor in his own backyard. And while there are many, many churches that work to do good, there are many, many more that don’t. (*takes deep breath, calms down, ends rant*)
Anyone notice that Froborr’s is the second paraphrase of _Hamlet_ on the thread today?

I always was told it was both about the relationship between a man and a woman *and* the relationship between God and people. However, it’s been ages since I’ve actually read Song of Songs (/Solomon), and I’m not a Biblical scholar.

You should give it another try. A lot of it is pretty hot. Hot enough that even when I was working hard at not being an atheist thinking about it in relationship to God felt kind of icky.

[[Lori: You should give it another try. A lot of it is pretty hot. Hot enough that even when I was working hard at not being an atheist thinking about it in relationship to God felt kind of icky.]]
Yeah, I’ve been told that it’s hot. Though I’ll bet it’s not hotter than Pablo Neruda’s “Every Day You Play.”

Hey, I mentioned that first!
In all seriousness, I should actually go read the entire thing, if only to source a few good quips when I need one.

Talking about Mathew 25, this is probably the best biblical adaptation I’ve read on a while:
http://www.jesusmanifesto.com/2008/02/a-parable-for-super-tuesday/

Ah, shoes. I have three pairs currently “active”: my usual casual / semi-dressy pair (dark brown loafers), a formal dress pair (black dress shoes), and hiking boots mostly for walking through snow. I tend to avoid wearing shoes when I can get away with it, though, particularly in the summer and surrounding – I live on the northern end of a humid subtropical climate* so summers are invariably hot and humid, making shoes dreadfully uncomfortable for my cold-loving self. I also have one old pair that’s well on its way to coming apart entirely, sadly – the old workhorses lasted me quite a long time! In any case, for normal use I have only one pair, definitely practical, and only not well-worn because I had to get a new pair out of necessity (one could reasonably argue I don’t really need the dress shoes, though). Then again, I don’t have a high budget for shoes, and it seems men around where I am aren’t allowed to have any sort of fashion, sadly enough…
__________
*At least officially, though I can certainly believe it with the constant 25-30 C temperatures we’ve been having the past couple weeks. It’s borderline with a humid continental climate so winters are still decidedly cold and snowy – thus the boots.

[[Then the King will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was not yet born and you fervently fought for my death, I was hungry and thirsty and a stranger and poor and you did nothing but give money to more programs.’]]
Bull-fucking-shit. “Let’s see — I have to blame the lefties for some thing… I know — they’re all baby-killer who do nothing but throw money at problems!” Yeah, right.
Lefties have their problems but “fervently fighting” to kill the “unborn” and doing “nothing but [giving] money to more programs” are **NOT** among them.

@ Sarah -”Yes, this. Also, I remember being told one that it’s not the state’s responsibility to help the poor; it’s the church’s. My reaction to this is multi-fold: one, there are people who are not part of the church who want to help the poor . Two, individual churches often don’t have the means to overcome poverty on their own (though some do). Three, if it’s the church’s responsibility, why the hell haven’t they done anything about it? This third one is usually directed at the person who makes that statement, who is invariably someone who has done *nothing* to help the poor in his own backyard. And while there are many, many churches that work to do good, there are many, many more that don’t. (*takes deep breath, calms down, ends rant*)”
–I agree, plus what about the people in need who do not belong to that church. I’ve always felt a bit .. how can I saw .. squicky? or maybe that word is too harsh… about Christian medical and poverty relieving missions. I think: is it ok if they have their church name on the wall? do the people receiving the largess feel an obligation to go to that church? and does that count as real charity?
I also think that what we do as a society is very different than as an individual. For example: I might give a dollar or two to a homeless person, but I think that homelessness is enough of a systematic problem that as a society we need to work upon the problem to eradicate it. My one or two dollars might relieve the suffering a small bit for a small time for one person, but it doesn’t really relieve the suffering in the whole.
@ Jeff- I think cookies always taste better when shared.

Israel in the OT and the Church in the NT, not an individual’s relationship to God. That might support a notion of sexual sin that’s focused on societal harm, but I don’t see how it supports being all up in everyone’s private business.

Not to be pedantic, but its a better idea to use HB (Hebrew Bible) than Old Testament (OT).

But really, all the metaphorical interpretations designed to cover up the fact that Teh Bible celebrates Teh Smut…

Eh, it depends on what you mean by “Smut”. One could argue that the Bible teaches us the most wholesome and proper way to love our neighbour, in all meanings of the word. Heh.
On a somewhat less flippant note, it is my understanding that the venerable Kama Sutra does just that: it is part of an entire cycle of works that describe how a person might maintain the proper spiritual balance in all aspects of his life. Since one’s entire life is a sacrament, so are the sexual parts of it, and they should be treated with the proper (and properly ritualistic) respect.

Not to be pedantic, but its a better idea to use HB (Hebrew Bible) than Old Testament (OT). Not to be pedantic, but its a better idea to use HB (Hebrew Bible) than Old Testament (OT).

Considering that the people fussing about sex aren’t Jews I A) see no reason to bring them into it and B) figure it makes sense to call the books in question by the name the sex-obsessives use.

I still shake my head whenever I see people assuming that the goal of being Pro-Choice is ‘killing teh babies’. I cannot understand how that rationale is reached, because it’s about as far from the actual goal as you can get.
Reproductive choice is about *freedom* – nothing more, nothing less. It’s about allowing a woman to decide if she’s ready to be a mother. It’s about allowing that woman to live when she might otherwise have died due to complications. It’s about allowing a rape victim to live on without the complication of a child who is both part of her, and part of the person who raped her.*
Of course what the anti-choice crowd forgets – or maybe doesn’t want to acknowledge, is that the vast, vast majority of abortions occur in the first few weeks of pregnancy, when the fetus is literally nothing but a lump of cells.
Abortions that occur after that period are most commonly because of some form of danger to the mother. Ie: “If you try to have this child there’s a chance you could die.” Late term abortions are pretty much exclusively in this realm.
Absolutely no one that I’ve ever heard of has ever had an abortion ‘just because’.
There’s also this implicit assumption that pro-choice people WANT people to have abortions. That’s not logical at all. What I *want* is for women to have the option to decide for themselves what to do. To be pro-choice is *exactly what it says* – pro-choice. Choice. Freedom. Agency. Power of decision making in the hands of the person who has to live with the decision.**
*Seriously, most of us guys don’t give this much consideration, but sit down and think for a second if – after you’ve suffered through a nightmarish violation… you had to then struggle with what to do with a child. A child you weren’t ready for; a child who is both your own and not, a child who desperately needs love and yet that love might not be something you can provide. Sure, there’s adoption, but why should anyone have to suffer through 9 months of pregnancy because someone else decided to force themselves on them?
**Inevitably someone says “What about the father’s rights?!” – When the father can carry the kid, then he has room to talk. The thing is, whether we want to admit it or not, men always have the option to just walk away if they don’t want to deal with it. Oh the court might make them pay child support. Maybe. If they can track them down. If he can’t stall the court long enough to avoid paying.
It’s the wrong thing to do, but we men can simply pack our bags and go. Guess who gets stuck holding the ball if that happens? Yeah.

Doh – before I got on my soapbox I should have introduced myself >.<;
Uh… 'hi!' .> I’ll just go hide in the corner.

[[I think cookies always taste better when shared.]]
All food taste better when you steal it off your sweeties plate. Shared food is a close second, though.

Welcome JJohnson, and please don’t kill us with sheep.*
*Since you state you’ve been lurking for some time, I assume you know about our death sheep thing.

*waves at JJohnson* Welcome, and don’t kill us with sheep!

/e gets on the general welcome wagon, bearing cookies.
Also, for your rant? So. Much. Love.

@JJohnson: Indeed! Well said. And I definitely feel, as well, as a man, that it really is a no-brainer to be pro-choice. There is no other option for men, really, because we’re not the ones who have to wrestle with the emotional and physical consequences of pregnancy.

Now he’s Fenton, Lord of the Inferno,
Fenton, Demon King of the Dell,
Fenton, eyes of flame, breath of Sterno,
Fenton, Death Sheep from Hell.
BAA-AA-AHH!

The pleas to ask new folk to not kill everyone with sheep brings Tom Smith’s ‘Fenton, the Death Sheep’ cycle to mind. ^_^

@JJohnson: Ditto on both the welcomes and the love for the rant.

Considering that the people fussing about sex aren’t Jews I A) see no reason to bring them into it and B) figure it makes sense to call the books in question by the name the sex-obsessives use.
What right do you have to say they’re not Jews? They can be Jews if they want to be!
</snarkasm>

[[gets on the general welcome wagon, bearing cookies]]
I hope they go with strawberry cheesecake!

[[What right do you have to say they're not Jews? They can be Jews if they want to be!]]
LOL!!!

There’s also this implicit assumption that pro-choice people WANT people to have abortions. That’s not logical at all. What I *want* is for women to have the option to decide for themselves what to do. To be pro-choice is *exactly what it says* – pro-choice. Choice. Freedom. Agency.
Sometimes it seems like some anti-choice people don’t get that you can seriously favor women’s autonomy and freedom, so they assume that if you’re not trying to get them to not have abortions, you must be trying to get them to have abortions. There are ones who get the choice thing, and just think fetuses are more important than the woman’s freedom in that situation, but some just seem stuck on the idea that pro-choice people want as many abortions as possible. Like they can’t see why someone would honestly value a woman’s choice, so they create these pro-abortion strawmen who are usually in favor of abortion because they will do anything for money/hate motherhood/are evil.

Nicole: (while we’re on the subject of community in-references) Fluffy iguana cookies, I hope!

I cannot understand how that rationale is reached, because it’s about as far from the actual goal as you can get.

A combination of people in positions of authority insisting on it (either because they believe it themselves or because they find it a convenient way to pull people into a controllable fury), the Romanticist tradition’s emphasis on children, an overemphasis on the very often out-of-context Biblical quote “go forth and multiply”, the annoyingly persistent idea that only loose women who wanted sex without consequences get abortions (with the equally annoying and problematic appendage that women are naturally promiscuous) and therefore they’re following up sin with sin or something like that, and probably plenty of others. Mostly the first one, though, with the last a close second; it’s very self-perpetuating idea.

Hi! Former Right-to-Lifer here.
I used to believe there should not be any right to an abortion, and I can tell you that all this talk of choice and freedom is useless – just preaching to the choir.
I sincerely believed that abortion should be absolutely outlawed and was a confirmed menber of the “right to life” movement. (No kidding – I still have the stickers.) As such, I can say that all the argument about the rights of the mother (even if she’s a thirteen year-old rape victim) comes is worthless when arguing with a true believer. Much as it may sometimes appear, however, this isn’t because they’re heartless.
A pregnancy can be problematic, psychologically or physically stressful, or even tragic (as with the case I just mentioned), but unless it’s an unambiguous choice of the life of the mother or the life of the fetus, then it’s just not logically coherent to argue in favor of letting a woman control her own reproduction after she becomes pregnant. This is because the supposed position of the anti-choicers is that the fetus is a person, and as such cannot have his or her “right to life” outweighed by anything less than someone else’s right to life.
And any discussion with RtL’s on this issue is pointless unless the question of the fetus’s personhood is addressed.
(I say it’s their “supposed” position because while there many (many) are good-intentioned people on the anti-abortion side, far too many of the leadership are, in my experience, panty-sniffing fanatics who think pregnant women are either a) unmarried and therefore whores who deserve to be punished or b) married and therefore the property of the church, their husbands, and their fathers. In that order. But I digress.)
Like Fred with usury, I really struggled for a long time with this one. On a gut level, I just couldn’t stomach forcing anyone to carry an unwanted pregnancy, especially in the dangerous or tragic cases. But I thought that the demands of logic forced me to take the “Pro-Life” position, because, after all, the right to life trumps all.
Except it doesn’t.
Life isn’t sacred and it never has been. If it were, there would be no military. There would be no fishing or mining industry. The speed limit would be 10 mph, and building anything higher than 1.5 stories would be illegal. There would be no football. (Except for some girlie touch-football games, and who wants to watch that?) Taxes would be somewhere in the 90% range to cover the expenses for everyone’s healthcare, even for unwanted, painful and futile procedures. And that ‘everyone’ includes the “undeserving poor”. It also includes immigrants – documented or otherwise. (Conservatives will please hold back their heads from exploding until they exit the building.)
In other words, contrary to my mistaken belief that logical consistency DEMANDED that I reject the existence of a woman’s right to an abortion if she decided it was necessary, it is the “right-to-life” crowd that is being inconsistent. (Or to bring this rant back on topic, they are cherry-picking their facts.) The question of ‘personhood’ for an unviable fetus is immaterial. Grant fetuses theoretical personhood for the sake of argument – hell, grant it to blastocysts. It doesn’t matter.
What DOES matter is that the issue be addressed when arguing with right-to-lifers. Because otherwise we’re all just congratulating ourselves on how supportive we are of (women / babies) and how awful all those (mysogynists / baby-killers) are.

@Saffi: Welcome, and please do not kill us with fluffy wool-bearing animals.
Your points are well-made and well-taken. For me, it is just so self-evident that I don’t have the right to impose my will upon women, that it’s easy to forget that other people de-emphasize that point in favor of what they feel are worthy motives for doing exactly that imposition.
It is true that if all life were to be held as sacred as possible it would wreak such societal changes as to make a very different world.
In real life, we always accept there is some risk to losing life, or that sometimes even life may be deliberately ended. I think part of the revulsion some people feel about abortion is that they cannot imagine any other case where one person’s decision leads to a death, with impunity.
Yet military troops, in war, make decisions like this every day. Even police officers may have to. For that matter, it’s even more indirect. A company safety policy, written by someone in the back office, can potentially be demonstrated to be knowingly written inadequately, leading to deaths.
In a lot of these cases culpability is diminished or even extinguished legally, so abortion is not a unique case.
Again, thank you for a good post.

Saffi – those are good points. My feeling for a while has been that personhood is immaterial, because there are certain things that the right to life does not trump, and one of those is bodily autonomy. We do not force people to be blood donors, even though donating blood saves lives and the donation process is quite easy (nothing remotely comparable to pregnancy.) Hell, we don’t even force corpses to be organ donors, and there’s not even a life to weigh against that of the recipients.
I have in the past seen this issue raised to anti-choicers, and it usually comes back to pregnant women being responsible for the blastocyst/embryo/fetus/whatever, but once you start talking about who is responsible for what to whom, you move out of a straightforward “right to life” position and start introducing other factors. Right to life alone cannot account for opposition to legalized abortion (at least, absent other things, like mandatory blood and tissue donation.)

Burgundy – yes! I forgot about the organ- or blood-donation part. And don’t even get me started about the “pro-life” yet still pro-death penalty faction.
__________
Pius – Thanks, but you don’t need to welcome me – I’ve been posting comments for years, although intermittently. Which is why I’ve been dying to ask – what’s this about sheep???

You know, I asked about that myself.
Apparently what happened was that someone posted that they were new and would (or would not?) kill the denizens here with sheep. Only they meant sleep.
Someone else may have a less-apocryphal tale.

Ah, thanks. Good to know. I take it the injunction is not meant to be taken literally and extends to all sources of knitting material?

I have in the past seen this issue raised to anti-choicers, and it usually comes back to pregnant women being responsible for the blastocyst/embryo/fetus/whatever, but once you start talking about who is responsible for what to whom, you move out of a straightforward “right to life” position and start introducing other factors.

Yes, the responsibility argument doesn’t work in any case since we don’t force blood or organ donation even in cases where one person is responsible for another. Most of us would disapprove of a parent that refuses to donate for a child, but we don’t force the issue legally.

I need to make sure my organ donor status is registered. People are welcome to my organs, for what worth they are, once I kick the bucket since I won’t be around to benefit from them.

Yes, the responsibility argument doesn’t work in any case since we don’t force blood or organ donation even in cases where one person is responsible for another. Most of us would disapprove of a parent that refuses to donate for a child, but we don’t force the issue legally.
And if you hit someone with a car while driving, and they need blood, you’re not dragged off to the hospital, strapped down, and forced to donate out of some “Well, you’re the reason they need this!” logic. Even violent criminals who actually stab people aren’t sentenced to anything like that. It’s only sex where anyone thinks “You have to let someone else use your body for life support indefinitely” is a reasonable penalty.

Life isn’t sacred and it never has been. If it were, there would be no military. There would be no fishing or mining industry. The speed limit would be 10 mph, and building anything higher than 1.5 stories would be illegal. There would be no football. (Except for some girlie touch-football games, and who wants to watch that?) Taxes would be somewhere in the 90% range to cover the expenses for everyone’s healthcare, even for unwanted, painful and futile procedures. And that ‘everyone’ includes the “undeserving poor”. It also includes immigrants – documented or otherwise.
Umm.
Would it be terribly horrible of me, as the token “Consistent Ethic of Life”-r around here, to say I’d be pretty much fine, nay, ecstatic with this whole program?

Okay, I just realized that “indefinitely” was the wrong word. “For months on end” would be better.

And I definitely feel, as well, as a man, that it really is a no-brainer to be pro-choice. There is no other option for men, really, because we’re not the ones who have to wrestle with the emotional and physical consequences of pregnancy.

That’s my position as well. While I haven’t seen any polls breaking down the issue by gender, among the opponents I’ve met, many more have been men. When the choice of Sarah Palin was first announced, I thought of a half-dozen female Republican senators and governors who were better known, and it was revealing that they were all pro-choice.

Would it be terribly horrible of me, as the token “Consistent Ethic of Life”-r around here, to say I’d be pretty much fine, nay, ecstatic with this whole program?

Not at all. I’d be ecstatic if no one ever needed to have an abortion again–I would love for all pregnancies to be wanted and healthy and safe. The question isn’t whether it would make you happy. The question is whether you’re prepared to enforce it legally.

The question is whether you’re prepared to enforce it legally.
Seriously? Some yes, some no. (Would outlaw the death penalty tomorrow. The military, not so much, although I’d vote to have some serious limitations placed upon its use.) Still working on that whole Kingdom of Heaven thing; right now, we have to deal with the world we’re got.
I am prepared to, and indeed actively engaged in, trying to create a world in which I would indeed enforce those policies legally. Which would be a world in which there is no need to enforce them, because there would be no reason for such laws. Which is a world that I don’t expect to see in my lifetime, or my great-grandchildren’s lifetimes.
I can therefore understand and to a certain degree empathize with (although I am also frustrated, angered, and somewhat repulsed by) the desires of some others to shortcut the hard slog of creating that world, and jump right to the outlawing part.

The question is whether you’re prepared to enforce it legally.

From my perspective, the two sides of the issue seem to be talking past each other because they start from different premises. Putting aside for a moment the issue of control over a woman’s body, the side that wants abortion to be illegal seems to assume that laws are moral stances and not compromises between individual freedom and societal interest. It seems to assume that because pro-choicers want to keep abortion legal, they see abortion as a good thing.

Still working on that whole Kingdom of Heaven thing; right now, we have to deal with the world we’re got.

Which is pretty much why I think it’s wrong to legally interfere with the right of women to control their own bodies.

…How did this turn from a shoe thread into an abortion thread? Did someone kill us with sheep?
Would it be terribly horrible of me, as the token “Consistent Ethic of Life”-r around here, to say I’d be pretty much fine, nay, ecstatic with this whole program?
Hell, I’m in favor of killing people most of the time and even I’m okay with that program.

It’s always a dicey proposition when you start trying to mix law with morality.
As I see it (and I’m sure there’s a zillion legal scholars who’ve written whole books on the subject), law is an expression of the Social Contract, wherein the people who live in the society have given up their rights to the Leviathan (which I conceptualize as being democratically elected with no effects on Hobbes’s theory): their right to hurt or kill someone else for any or no reason.
Since those rights are given up to the Leviathan, in exchange the Leviathan protects all who are within the social contract from attack without and subversion within.
So no one in a society may harm or kill another person, ultimately, because the mutual defence pact known as the social contract forbids this.
One can go beyond my ersatz Hobbesian theory and say that basic human decency also commands not hurting or killing, but the Hobbesian theory assumes nothing about human nature as a starting point that needs to be incorporated into the theory, IMV.
So, what is law?
Law fulfills the function of guaranteeing protection from harm or death. But none of that presupposes the morality or lack of morality of harm or death – only that humans in the same social contract are obliged to not do these things.
I realize this can sound like the legalist chinese theory that all humans are inherently bad and need to be kept in line with harsh laws.
I’m not that morbid.
So any law that tries to go beyond the guarantee of freedom from harm or death is suspect, because it encroaches on areas in which rights are NOT given up to the Leviathan.
For example, my right to imbibe any intoxicating substance I wish in the privacy of my own home is clearly not one I give up to the Leviathan because harming myself does not affect the social contract.
Ditto consensual sexual relations. Ditto-ditto what books I want to read. Ditto-ditto-ditto the kind of car I want to drive.
So how does this affect abortion? Should the fetus be given the aegis of guarantee of protection from harm or death?
I say no, and the reason is this: since there is a definite guarantee of protection from harm and death for the mother, this must take primacy. The death of the fetus will not necessarily harm or kill the mother. The death of the mother will most assuredly harm the fetus. In short, the fetus cannot give up its rights to the Leviathan becuase it is not capable, in any meaningful way, of participating in the social contract.
/tl;dr digression.

…How did this turn from a shoe thread into an abortion thread? Did someone kill us with sheep?

No, they killed us with woolen boots.
Pius, excellent observations about the social contract. I briefly encountered Hobbesian ideas in college but hadn’t attempted to articulate it the way that you did.

I realize this can sound like the legalist chinese theory that all humans are inherently bad and need to be kept in line with harsh laws.

That’s almost what American authoritarians seem to believe. But the attitude toward abortion strongly resembles the attitude toward poverty – the idea that life is about earning gold stars, or getting demerits for an unwanted pregnancy.

Generally I think that conservatives keep bringing up the concept of the deserving poor and because they believe that a person’s virtue and morality should reflect their level of material comfort in their life. To help poor people that are not seen as deserving is seen as helping evil people. Liberals and people to the left of liberals believe that people deserve a base minimal lifestyle simply by virtue of being human and alive even if they happen to be a miserable human being.

And if you hit someone with a car while driving, and they need blood, you’re not dragged off to the hospital, strapped down, and forced to donate out of some “Well, you’re the reason they need this!” logic.

Surely I’m not the only one that sees the appeal of doing exactly that.

From a practical standpoint, it would be a horrible idea. Blood type compatibility, diseases, it’d be a bit of a crapshoot and has a good chance of screwing the patient up even worse.

those are good points. My feeling for a while has been that personhood is immaterial, because there are certain things that the right to life does not trump, and one of those is bodily autonomy. We do not force people to be blood donors, even though donating blood saves lives and the donation process is quite easy (nothing remotely comparable to pregnancy.) Hell, we don’t even force corpses to be organ donors, and there’s not even a life to weigh against that of the recipients.
This goes back, in a way, to what Fred said in the first installment, about people who take the Bible as being rules for others, but not themselves.
To believe in an ethic of life that demands forcing women to carry pregnancies against their will, but not have donated blood consistently, and donated your kidney,and bone marrow and any other organs that can be donated while alive, and signed your organ donor card, but still demand that other people be forced to use their bodies to support the life of others, is hypocritical.

On the other hand, I’m not particularly averse to making regular blood donation a legal obligation, subject reasonable medical exceptions.
Or making it certain governmental benefits subject to regular blood donations, perhaps. We do this with vaccinations after all (most public schools will not allow students to attend without either current vaccinations or a reasonable exception); I don’t see how blood donations would be more intrusive.
Of course, by Lee Ratner’s definition of “liberal” as “someone who values individual rights absolutely more than social benefits” (if I am remembering him correctly), I’m a pretty bad liberal.
I doubt this would fly politically, however.

[[Except for some girlie touch-football games, and who wants to watch that?)]]
It depends on whether I get to touch the girlies or not!
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[[Apparently what happened was that someone posted that they were new and would (or would not?) kill the denizens here with sheep. Only they meant sleep.]]
Pooh-Bah to Nanki-Poo: The facts are just as you’ve recited.
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[[as the token "Consistent Ethic of Life"-r around here]]
[looks around nervously for a certain ex-poster...] Whew!!!
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[[Which is a world that I don't expect to see in my lifetime, or my great-grandchildren's lifetimes.]]
I love you, hapoax, and wish to have your babies. (Not your actual children, although they are awesome, tto.)

Still working on that whole Kingdom of Heaven thing; right now, we have to deal with the world we’re got.
If I understand the position correctly, Enlightenment Deists felt that the Kingdom of Heaven would become the world we got at the point that we, here on Earth, successfully created the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth. I’m not sure that makes sense, but it’s late. Anyway, I like the idea that our duty as human beings is to strive to make our lives and the lives of our neighbors as close to heavenly as possible.
Hobbes and Locke – I do a thought experiment with my history classes, when I teach the Enlightenment. I get someone to admit that, in extremity, they could kill a (duck/turkey/bunny*) with a primitive spear. The class generally agrees that the duck/turkey/bunny killer gets to keep the whole of the dead d/t/b, and get all of the benefits of said d/t/b. I then suggest that, given primitive weapons, d/t/b killer will need help killing an elk/mammoth, and have that person solicit aid. I then ask the class who gets to eat the e/m. Hobbes suggests that, baring the intervention of Leviathan, the strongest member of the party gets to eat the e/m. But Locke suggests that, given proper training, the group will share the e/m. My classes tend to need to be argued around to the position of Hobbes – I guess we’ve been teaching our children right, at least in terms of implicit social contracts.
*I have a stuffed turkey which makes a turkey noise and a stuffed elk which makes an elk noise (truly alarming, btw), and when I can find both of them, I use those. When I can’t, I usually use a picture of a bunny and a picture of a mammoth. But last semester, I had a running gag about ducks (they make very bad money), and so the duck became a thing.

I know I’m late to this but seriously Mabus what the hell is wrong with you?
Passages telling those with property to be generous are one piece of the whole. Another piece speaks to the poor: “Be content. Keep your hands off what doesn’t belong to you. If you want or need more, work for it. Give a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage.”
Oh so the only reason the poor don’t have anything is because they’re not willing to work for it. Well that’s kind of a stupid attitude to have.
I have a job right now (I got kind of fortunate), but before this job I was doing job searches and NOBODY was hiring. I was able to snag a nice job with the Census Bureau but unfortunately it’s only a temporary job (with the census happening only every ten years and all) and after it’s over I go right back to being unemployed and having to search for a job in a town where nobody’s hiring.
See the problem with this “The poor should give a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage!” is that if nobody will give them work, they can’t get a wage. If we lived in a country where a man couldn’t walk down the street without being offered a job, then maybe I’d agree with you. However, when people are applying to many different places and being told “Sorry, we’re not hiring anyone” then you can’t just sit there and go “If you don’t work you don’t eat! You’re a leech, you’re lazy!”
Pretty much everything Mabus said was stupid but everyone has been smarter and better than me in pointing out all the other stuff. But this particular part bothered me above all the other stupidity in his post, and felt the need to mention it.

@hapax

…as the token “Consistent Ethic of Life”-r around here…

Not the only one, FWIW.

@mike.timonin: Well, my Hobbesian Social Contract theory is a rather ersatz derivative. I never liked the Rousseauian one we discussed in class partly because it seemed overly complicated, and also because the Hobbesian one rather appealed in how its simplified basis seemed to match up with what we have today.
Also: I would argue that in my ersatz add-on, that the Leviathan has, as part of its duty to guard the members of the social contract from harm, the duty to ensure that the harm can’t be indirect between members of the contract.
To that extent, it forms the basis (albeit fuzzy) for egalitarian and redistributionist policies.

Out of curiosity (and in the fervent hope that I’m not any waking any sleeping dogs or reopening sore wounds), does anyone know what happened to Not Really Here? I don’t think I’ve seen her post here in ages.

Or making it certain governmental benefits subject to regular blood donations, perhaps. We do this with vaccinations after all (most public schools will not allow students to attend without either current vaccinations or a reasonable exception); I don’t see how blood donations would be more intrusive.

You run into two basic problems, reflected in our law and culture. The first level of violation is the bodily integrity violation. If I were to say, knock you unconscious, take your right femur out, and replace it one with one made out of titanium and rockets, but otherwise functions exactly the same, you have not been made any worse off. But, I’ve violated your bodily integrity (and your consent) even if I got nothing out of it, and you got everything out of it. Incidentally, if that happens to you, expect to rake in a non trivial amount of cash at most courts.
The vaccination is different – they’re not forcing you to get a vaccination, they’re forcing you to get a vaccination in order to enter a building. Instead of forcing you to do something, they’re not allowing you to do something. Now, there is the legal requirement to go to school, and the practical effects confounding the issue, but the general principle is the same.
The second problem is is, and continuing with the hypothetical, I’ve taken your femur and I’ve given it to someone else. On some level, that femur has value, also, its yours! There are some dicey bits with whether or not body parts are property here, but the basic idea, is that I’ve taken something of value from you without giving you anything in return.

@Leum: Incidentally that makes me wonder about what happened to MadGastronomer. I hope she’s okay as well. I have the $$ and time to go to Seattle some time in the next few weeks and wanted to give her a heads-up.

I say no, and the reason is this: since there is a definite guarantee of protection from harm and death for the mother, this must take primacy. The death of the fetus will not necessarily harm or kill the mother. The death of the mother will most assuredly harm the fetus. In short, the fetus cannot give up its rights to the Leviathan becuase it is not capable, in any meaningful way, of participating in the social contract.

I just read this, and it reminds me of an idea I had on rights, specifically in the animal rights context. Which is to say, the only beings that have rights are those than can respect those of others. Relatedly, if a cat kills you, it under no circumstance has murdered you.
Thus, animals have no rights. But we still make laws against cruelty to animals. Why? Because being cruel to animals is bad for us. Its bad for the person doing it, its bad for us as a society. If you don’t mind the phrase, it coarsens our soul*, individually and collectively.
The problem being of course, my thesis implies that children may not have rights and sociopaths probably don’t either.
—
*Used in the poetic, not supernatural sense.

…the only beings that have rights are those than can respect those of others…The problem being of course, my thesis implies that children may not have rights and sociopaths probably don’t either.

Or people with profound intellectual disabilities.
The problem with basing the assignation of rights on what one can do is that there will always be people who fail to meet the requirements. And not to get into the ‘deserving’ thing from upthread (Ross, I’m completely with you BTW), at least some of those people could not meet the requirements even if they wanted to and tried really hard to. Therefore we have a situation in which some people will be condemned to have no rights and there is nothing they can do about it. And here my maxim applies: it is not acceptable for society’s final word to anyone to be “sucks to be you”.

@kaemmerite: I agree 100%. I don’t know why some people think that getting a job is as easy as making a phonecall.* I’ve been turned down by more jobs than I care to remember, including completely menial and unskilled ones. And I’m white, young, a PhD, no criminal record etc.
*With your unnecessary mobile phone, of course.

And here my maxim applies: it is not acceptable for society’s final word to anyone to be “sucks to be you”.
This is the most succinct statement I’ve ever read of what I think liberalism should mean. Thanks, Sgt.

Not clear to me that Matt 5:27 is really about sex since Jesus of Nazareth seems to be making the point that adultery isn’t about sex per se, but about what is in one’s heart (regardless of whether one acts on it). I’ve often wondered if he was trying to get the focus off of sex and onto something more fundamental. It’s also possible he was trying to help and protect women (since in those days men tended to help themselves to anything they happened to be lusting after in their hearts), but that’s probably as radical a concept as helping and protecting gays.
I’m no theologian. In my rather primitive and sporadic reading of OT & NT, it has always seemed to me that the crux of J of N was a shift from 10 Laws and many rules to 2 Laws: Love God most and love your neighbor as yourself (with the 10 Laws providing guidance). I say “guidance” despite them being commandments, because it is easy to imagine situations in which the 10 laws conflict, e.g. violating the proscription against killing to protect oneself or one’s parents whom one is commanded to honor). Then the 2 may help resolve the conflicts. Interestingly neither the 10 nor the 2 mention homosexuality. Shouldn’t they if it were that big a deal?
Unfortunately, we humans like to externalize all our inner psychological battles, especially those most discomfiting to us. So much easier to focus on the imagined moat. It distracts from the actual beam.
(Apologies for any grammatical errors. )

And don’t even get me started about the “pro-life” yet still pro-death penalty faction.
I always figured it was the belief that once the innocent was born, it got its whopping dose of Original Sin and unless it said the magic words it was pretty much doomed to hell anyway– and it’s not seen as a sin to execute the evil.

Thanks Karen. I’m assuming you’re using liberalism in the American way of being synonymous with progressivism, because I have to say that I don’t identify as a liberal, and I can think of plenty of instances where my maxim conflicts with liberal philosophy.
Most obviously, I don’t support minimalist government, because without society acting collectively, at times against the ‘greatest freedom’ of many of its members when considered as unrelated units, there always will be people left on the scrap heap. I believe that collective action has to happen through government, which is the only place that can guarantee universality.
Classic liberalism (I think – I’m no political science scholar) prefers to limit government authority to ensuring basic rights of its citizens, usually narrowed down to not being killed or having your stuff stolen, and maybe also not having cholera in your drinking water. My list of basic rights is much more expansive, and I support actions that result in individuals having less than perfect freedom if those actions enable everyone to have at least the basic rights. So I wouldn’t say I necessarily believe in the primacy of the individual – at least, not the way I’ve often seen it defined. I’m OK trading a little individual liberty for some collective liberty (circumstance-specific, of course. There’s basic liberty and there’s bonus liberty. No one gets their basic liberty taken away for any reason.)
It doesn’t help that where I live the Liberal Party are right wingers, who support (a bastardised) economic liberalism (which I don’t support) and social conservativism (which I don’t support either).
Here endeth my treatise against liberalism. For my edification, what do people call social democracy in America?

@K.Chen: But we still make laws against cruelty to animals. Why? Because being cruel to animals is bad for us.
Will you please stop making universalist statements.
I (and many others) do not support laws against cruelty to animals because such cruelty is bad for us. I support such laws because cruelty to animals is bad for the animals.
Animals feel pain.
BTW#1 — Do you realize that many of the old ritual religious laws involve killing animals in a way that does not inflict unnecessary pain?
BTW#2 — Yes, I am a vegetarian.
BTW#3 — Do you realize that in palliative care pain killers are given even when the nurses/doctors think the (human) patient can no longer feel pain. As long as there is any, trivial, chance that the patient could be feeling pain the medications are dispensed. Not because it is good for the nurses/doctors — rather because they believe that no feeling being should feel pain if it can be prevented.
BTW#4 — Yes I am talking about experiences outside the United States. In Canada adequate medical care is not given because it makes the doctor/nurse/giver feel good. It is provided because the patient needs it not because it is good for the caregivers.
BTW#5 — One of my family members now works in the shelter movement for mistreated animals. She used to work in the shelter movement for mistreated humans. Everyone in my family (atheist and religious) thinks that both jobs involve doing good work. For others. Not for the care givers.

Sgt. Pepper: I am using “liberal” in the US sense, which is more like “social democrat” in the rest of the world. On freedom in general, I like a quote from “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” which should terrify anyone ranting about ‘liberty’ these days: “There is one freedom I don’t miss at all; the freedom to starve.”

And here my maxim applies: it is not acceptable for society’s final word to anyone to be “sucks to be you”.
May I use this*? Great summation of a huge complicated argument.
*That is, may I quote you?

@Karen: That brings to mind another quote that has always stayed with me.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. (Anatole France, from The Red Lily, 1894)

I am using “liberal” in the US sense, which is more like “social democrat” in the rest of the world.

I don’t know… many days it more seems like the rest of the world’s “sane conservative”. Then again, I’m a fairly confirmed socialist, so I suppose I would see it as perhaps more rightward than it really is.

@mmy – please do, I’d be honoured.
I love the Anatole France quotation, btw, and use it all the time.

Will you please stop making universalist statements.

Uh, I was explaining a thesis on how to regulate a social contract and understand rights as an exchange in order to justify, or not justify certain laws. I really don’t know how to make that statement not universal. Appending “my view” or “one take on it” doesn’t really change that we’re talking about an abstract model that makes claims about how Societies Function.

I support such laws because cruelty to animals is bad for the animals.
Animals feel pain.

Erm… I agree? My model justifies animal cruelty laws because deliberately causing pain to a being that can feel it is a Bad Thing, regardless of whether that thing has rights in itself. (Roughly analogously, some people defend laws against the wanton destruction of art because destroying a thing of artistic value is a Bad Thing, and others defend it on the artist’s rights, regardless of whether the artist is alive.)

BTW#1 — Do you realize that many of the old ritual religious laws involve killing animals in a way that does not inflict unnecessary pain?

I’m aware that Jewish practices involve a swift and clean cut, which I’ve always assumed lead to a painless as practicable death.

BTW#3 — Do you realize that in palliative care pain killers are given even when the nurses/doctors think the (human) patient can no longer feel pain. As long as there is any, trivial, chance that the patient could be feeling pain the medications are dispensed. Not because it is good for the nurses/doctors — rather because they believe that no feeling being should feel pain if it can be prevented.

The way you phrase this, its still for the sake of the nurse/doctors beliefs that the medication is given, not out of concern for the rights of the patient. Did you mean something else?

BTW#4 — Yes I am talking about experiences outside the United States. In Canada adequate medical care is not given because it makes the doctor/nurse/giver feel good. It is provided because the patient needs it not because it is good for the caregivers.

Alright. Again, this is phrased in such a way that is somewhat tangential to the rights question. It could be you’re saying that patients have a right to something – but you could also be saying that as a society, Canadians have decided that responding to the needs of a patient is the right and proper thing to do, and/or not responding to the needs of a patient is somehow wrong and improper.
In the context of animal rights, if I take care of that one wounded bird that shows up in every tv show, “because the bird needs care” that doesn’t answer at all whether or not I think the bird has rights, nor does it say that I my motivation for doing so is not coming from a concern for my own adequacy as a human being.

BTW#5 — One of my family members now works in the shelter movement for mistreated animals. She used to work in the shelter movement for mistreated humans. Everyone in my family (atheist and religious) thinks that both jobs involve doing good work. For others. Not for the care givers.

‘Kay. I don’t see how these things don’t involve both good work for the worker as well as the beneficiaries. In fact, that would be rather sad for me if your family member didn’t get anything out of it.

Here endeth my treatise against liberalism. For my edification, what do people call social democracy in America?

O_O WOW THAT EXISTS!?!?!
Seriously, that’s the reaction some USians probably would have to the idea that even more advanced levels of government interventionism exist, produce viable societies, and haven’t caused world catastrophe.
The US political spectrum is shockingly narrow and rightward-focussed by any other reasonably democratic nation’s standards. It actually has more in common with Iran, IMO, where there’s basically “slightly more reformist” and “slightly less reformist”, and that’s about it.

which should terrify anyone ranting about ‘liberty’ these days: “There is one freedom I don’t miss at all; the freedom to starve.”

I do believe it was a US army general who said “being a patriot on 1000 calories a day or a communist on 1500 – not much of a chouce there.”
Political ideology means rather little if the folks in charge can get you fed and quell society generally. For a modern example – see the Taliban. They held an iron grip on Afghanistan for five years and part of it was because they effectively imposed social order.

@spearmint: “…How did this turn from a shoe thread into an abortion thread? Did someone kill us with sheep?”
It was my fault
to Jeff: the article is supposed to be a satire. That is, not to be taken as literal or as a set of rules or steps. Maybe the author tried to be polically correct (though the idea of sending both repugnicans and damnocrats* to hell is not that bad), and probably is some way of pro-life (I think, some way of “non-enforcing pro-life politic´s” pro-life).
* I’m southamerican, don’t expect me to take side in USA’s political parties (after all, both of them have been harmful to people abroad).

To Jeff:
BTW, not all right wingers are for starving people, or torturing arabs, or building up fences. I must repost this article at a right wing blog to be blamed from the other side.
And please excuse me for the late answer.

Or making it certain governmental benefits subject to regular blood donations, perhaps. We do this with vaccinations after all (most public schools will not allow students to attend without either current vaccinations or a reasonable exception); I don’t see how blood donations would be more intrusive.
…because they remove blood from your body?
It’s that active vs. passive harm distinction again- vaccinations prevent you from being a disease vector (they prevent active harm to other people’s health) whereas blood donations (or carrying a fetus around) prevent passive harm to other people’s health by not supplying them with blood/a womb.
NRH and MG were alive and kicking two weeks ago, so I wouldn’t panic. They’re probably just busy.

@K.Chen: Will you please stop making universalist statements.
Uh, I was explaining a thesis on how to regulate a social contract and understand rights as an exchange in order to justify, or not justify certain laws. I really don’t know how to make that statement not universal. Appending “my view” or “one take on it” doesn’t really change that we’re talking about an abstract model that makes claims about how Societies Function.
Yes, it does change things if you state “in my view” because if you do not you are not acknowledging that you are arguing from a postulate rather than a universally recognized truth.
How to do it? Simple. You say something like this
“Given that governments of Canada, the United States and Australia pass laws against cruelty to animals because being cruel to animals is bad for the population in general.”
See how different this statement is? For one thing it is easily falsifiable. One could, for example, research the arguments made for and against animal cruelty laws in a number of countries. You see “we” is not an identifiable group and particular governments are. And one of the things you would quickly realize is that over time and across cultures there has been a wide variety of theories about the rights of animals, about whether animals can even feel pain, whether governments should step into the relationship between human beings and animals. Given that moral and political philosophers over time have argue long and hard about these issues you cannot wave them away with a simple “we”.
Erm… I agree? My model justifies animal cruelty laws because deliberately causing pain to a being that can feel it is a Bad Thing, regardless of whether that thing has rights in itself. (Roughly analogously, some people defend laws against the wanton destruction of art because destroying a thing of artistic value is a Bad Thing, and others defend it on the artist’s rights, regardless of whether the artist is alive.)
Sigh, really sigh. Look if you attempted to argue as you are here in any of the political or moral philosophy classes I took you would get a failing grade. Really. You make definitive statements, then when you are called on them you make some other statements that move the goalposts.
Please — state your premises clearly and then argue from those premises.

BTW#3 — Do you realize that in palliative care pain killers are given even when the nurses/doctors think the (human) patient can no longer feel pain. As long as there is any, trivial, chance that the patient could be feeling pain the medications are dispensed. Not because it is good for the nurses/doctors — rather because they believe that no feeling being should feel pain if it can be prevented.

The way you phrase this, its still for the sake of the nurse/doctors beliefs that the medication is given, not out of concern for the rights of the patient. Did you mean something else?
No, I mean exactly what I type. I clearly stated that even when the doctors/nurses think the patient can not longer feel pain the shots are given. Because the system is set up to default to maximum protection against pain. That is why when I was exhausted and needed sleep I could leave my mother in the care of palliative nurses who I did not know. Because it didn’t matter what the nurse thought, it didn’t matter what the nurse would get out of it the system accorded my mother (any person) the absolute right to not feel preventable pain. Not because it made anyone’s special feelings ache.

BTW#4 — Yes I am talking about experiences outside the United States. In Canada adequate medical care is not given because it makes the doctor/nurse/giver feel good. It is provided because the patient needs it not because it is good for the caregivers.

Alright. Again, this is phrased in such a way that is somewhat tangential to the rights question. It could be you’re saying that patients have a right to something – but you could also be saying that as a society, Canadians have decided that responding to the needs of a patient is the right and proper thing to do, and/or not responding to the needs of a patient is somehow wrong and improper.
In the context of animal rights, if I take care of that one wounded bird that shows up in every tv show, “because the bird needs care” that doesn’t answer at all whether or not I think the bird has rights, nor does it say that I my motivation for doing so is not coming from a concern for my own adequacy as a human being.
Okay, I am going to take an anvil and drop it on your head. The anvil reads:
“the political philosophy adhered to by my government holds that no human being should ever fell preventable pain (except in cases where that pain is the means to the end of preventing greater pain and suffering: see surgery.)” That belief is not predicated on how it makes anyone who administers pain relief or prevents pain feels.
BTW, you missed the point about working in the animal shelter movement which was that neither the person involved nor most of my family see any difference between the moral qualities of working for animals or humans.

Shoes.
1. Plastic yellow cherry-scented pointy toe flats with text and drawings from “The Little Prince”
2. Plastic cherry-scented glittery black spiderwebby flats
3. Sneakers for working out. Not worth describing.
4. Sandals (two to three pair, get trashed every couple of years and need replacing)
5. Orange quasi-sneaker flats recommended by my chiropractor
6. Black versions of #5
7. Red satin heels for my wedding (not recommended by said chiropractor)
8. Brown heels (ditto)
9. Black closed toe heels (ditto)
10. Black open toed heels (ditto)
11. Black winter dress boots (ditto)
12. Tan suede winter flat boots
Okay. I need to stop. It’s been established. I have more shoes than the average person and like a previous poster, ought to go out and just buy two serviceable pairs of ULTRA-EXPENSIVE-HIDEOUSLY-UGLY orthopedic shoes for my arthritic feet. But instead I make do by rotating all my different pairs…

On clothes:
Having recemtly moved to other country (Argentina) I had to leave much back in Colombia, but I’ve noted how easy is to live with no many things (clothes in this case). The only things I´ve bouhgt since is two t-shirts and three pair of socks (two of them white beacuse I didn’t have any socks of this color), and now I have to look for a Jersey (to deal with winter).
Shoes:
1. A pair of very cheap Reebok sneakers (red, white and blue).
2. A pair of blue Adidas sneakers (my aunt gave me them as christmas gift in 2001, and they´re still working)
3. A pair of brown shoes
4. A pair of blak shoes
And I’m looking for mountain boots for going to the country.

@Jenna: I have more shoes than the average person and like a previous poster, ought to go out and just buy two serviceable pairs of ULTRA-EXPENSIVE-HIDEOUSLY-UGLY orthopedic shoes for my arthritic feet.
Yup, know exactly whereof you speak there. I have exactly one pair of shoes that my prescription orthodic inserts fit into. Feeling that I really couldn’t go to my mother’s funeral wearing those good-for-me shoes (okay, grotty walking shoes) I bought a really nice pair of dress shoes for the funeral. Which I couldn’t stand in for any length of time without a cane.
Goodwill is getting a really nice pair of shoes from me next week.

I have been a lurker around here but have never happened to read the comments when the pro-choice/pro-life debate was being discussed, which is really the only topic I personally have the passion to discuss on a forum. Having read through some, though not all, of the comments on the topic, I believe I have managed to understand some of the fundamental principles pro-choice advocates typically place as paramount to the whole discussion/debate. For that I am immensely grateful, as reaching new understandings of issues, subjects and people is one of the highest joys I personally can experience. That being said, I would like to voice my own position on the topic; however, I honestly do not know where I end up on the spectrum as I believe abortion is justified is certain instances, though probably not in the vast(?) majority of cases. That alone is enough to disqualify me in some circles from being a pro-life advocate or a pro-choice advocate.
To give a brief summation, personhood is a fundamental property which grants an object the right to continue to exist in its current ontological (i.e. living) state. This right to life is primary and cannot be actively interfered with by any other person’s rights, even the right to bodily autonomy, save her (I prefer using the female pronoun both from an academic perspective and considering the subject matter) own right to life. That is, should a person be forced to choose between one’s own life and the life of another, then her own right to life takes primacy over the other person’s (whether she should do this from a moral perspective is another matter). The question arises when personhood begins, to which I honestly do not have any real answer. From a pragmatic perspective, and wishing to be be safer than sorrier, I find the position that the presence of any brain activity in the developing fetus to be enough to warrant the conclusion that personhood is presently a property instantiated by the fetus to be reasonable and preferred from a policy perspective. The present(?) limitations of medical technology make discovering the true instantiation of personhood an impossibility, though should this limitation be lifted in the future, I look forward to learning the results.
As far as autonomy of any kind (e.g. financial, ethical, bodily) is concerned, I have yet to discover any persuasive argument that a violation of a person’s right to autonomy of any kind is enough to warrant the justification to end another person’s life. A thought experiment might help explain what I mean by this.
Suppose that there is some person A (I would prefer this person be viewed as a very close loved one, rather than yourself, like a child, spouse, parent or any other close relative) who has been given some drug which places person A into a coma for some duration. For our purposes, this duration can be about nine months. Also, this person A has been placed on some other person B (who may also be viewed as a close loved one), where person A, through some technology, is now totally dependent on person B for all nutrients, warmth and life. Person B possesses the ability to cease this relationship at any time through cutting the wires that tethers person’s A to person B.
Obviously, the question is now whether person B has the right to directly lead to person A’s death by cutting the tether. And, also importantly, whether the government has the right to dictate what person B can do with the tether.
In my own view, I do not believe even in this situation that person B has the right to cut the tether, even if the tether exists through no fault of person B’s own. I believe this because person A’s right to life exists and takes precedence over person B’s right to bodily autonomy. Person A is just as much a victim in this situation as person B, regardless of the pain, psychological or otherwise, physical trauma and financial burden person A’s, arguably parasitic, relationship with person B results in, especially considering its temporary nature. I also consider person A’s right to life so paramount that governmental prohibitions and penalties should exist against person B’s severing the tether. However, there are some obvious grey areas, but this is simply how I view it presently.
This thought experiment, however, is an abstraction of a very general form. Since most first world pregnancies are a result of behavior people engage in with either partial or full knowledge of the possible consequences, then the thought experiment should change to adequately address such considerations.
In such a scenario, person B engages in a behavior understanding that person A may become tethered, through no fault of person A’s own, and dependent on them for a period of about nine months. Person B has autonomously engaged in a behavior where those consequences are understood. This situation seems to provide, at least in my own view, a more palatable scenario where person A’s life is now in control of person B who understood the nature of such actions to appreciate person B may become tethered to person A and also understood the consequences of such. Should person B end person A’s life in this situation, action should be taken in some way to prevent person B from ending person A’s life since person B understood that such a situation may occur for actions person B consciously and willfully engaged in. Person A is a victim in this situation, and person A’s life should be protected and valued, even at the cost of person B’s remorse of this consequence, pain and finances. In a balance in this situation, person A’s well being takes precedence over person B’s.
Such a scenario seems to provide ample ethical and legal wiggle room that should an abortion possess the characteristics of this modified thought experiment, then the abortion should be prevented, by force of law if necessary.
As a matter of public policy, I am in full favor of sex education that provides free birth control and counseling so as to ensure that situations in both the original and modified thought experiments never occur. I do not want to see any unwanted pregnancies at all, and I am in full favor of prevention, though I am mostly against termination save in instances where the mother’s life is at stake, and, possibly, where a fetus, if born, would have no quality of life.
Some may notice I did not provide a scenario where person B must continue to take care of person A after the nine months has ended. I did not mention it because adoption in our society is a viable option, and I believe it should be exercised at any time a mother or couple feels taking care of a child is not possible for any reason. Since adoption is a fairly well known and applicable alternative in our society, I chose not to incorporate it into the thought experiment.
Anyway, hopefully my post has added to this discussion in some way.

And here my maxim applies: it is not acceptable for society’s final word to anyone to be “sucks to be you”.

It’s not the spirit in whichyou meant it, I think, but I suspect that sometimes, there’s *just no choice* but to say “Sucks to be you”, and that one reason we have a tendency to wander off the rails is an unwillingness to acknowledge that yes, sometimes it does just suck to be you. Thats’s why we create notions of deservingness and moral blame and “bad choices” to justify bad things happening. I interpret “sucks to be you’ as the opposite of Just World Theory — sometimes, there’s no *reason* you get screwed; sometimes it’s not because you deserve it, sometimes it just *sucks to be you*.
—-
Two pairs of loafers, because they appear to have been discontinued so I bought two pairs when the soles wore through on my last pair.
One pair of boots because you can’t wear gel insoles on an airplane.

@Sayel: so, since you think right to life trumps bodily autonomy, should people be legally required to give up a kidney if someone else needs one to survive?
If not, why not?

If it helps … adding on to my social contract theory idea, the thing that keeps the fetus from being able to effectively participate in the social contract is because he or she is not a truly independent entity until he or she has finally been born.
Now it could be argued that the fetus’s mother has already accepted the social contract on the fetus’s behalf and so the fetus becomes guaranteed against harm or death, but really, it’s just not practical. Being so dependent on his or her mother just to stay alive means that the question of whether the baby can be a viable independent participant has to wait until the baby is actually born.

Sayel,
You’ve basically recreated a classic pro-choice thought experiment – that of the “famous violinist.”
A world-famous violinist becomes severely ill, and requires to be attached to a particular person as life support to survive. So the violinist’s fans kidnap you, and attach you to him, to keep him alive. In that situation, the law does not compel you (or anyone) to use your body to support the violinist. His fans would be guilty of assaulting you, and he would be guilty of assault if he was aware of and cooperated with the plan.
That is what the law is, and what the basic principle is, that no one can make a claim to use another person’s body against that person’s will.
The question being why anti-choice people want an exception for fetuses, and uteruses, while not making any serious attempt to pass general laws regarding the medical use of others, such as to save the hypothetical famous violinist.
Saying the hypothetical famous violinist situation seems okay, and therefore anti-choice laws should be passed applying specifically to women who are pregnant, isn’t a logical conclusion.
Either go all the way, and fight for laws that apply the principle in general, or admit that you don’t believe in the general principle, and stop interfering with how other women live their life.
But the moment you espouse a law or policy that only affects pregnant women, you can’t claim the benefit of the general principle.

Aaaugh, another abortion debate!
Fundamentally, I don’t care as much about right to life, or bodily autonomy (and I’d happily support a program that declared that giving blood was mandatory, outside health reasons or a phobia of doctors/blood/needles that caused severe stress for the donor), as I do about suffering human beings.
In my estimation, it’s likely that unwanted children and their parent(s) will be put through a great deal of suffering if the child is carried to term. In the scenario that the child is kept by the biological parent(s), the child will have to suffer with the knowledge of its being unwanted (and children do find out), as well as the parental neglect/abuse/mistreatment that may go along with being unwanted. Add to this the stress placed on parent(s) forced to deal with a baby they didn’t want, and you have a recipe for suffering and misery that may last for the entirety of a child’s dependent years, and probably beyond. Simply put, if the parent(s) cannot bond with the baby, both they and the baby will be subjected to prolonged emotional pain, at the very least.
In the scenario that the child is adopted, there remains the fact that there are more children looking for adoptive parents than parents who are willing and qualified to adopt (and many anti-choice types support restricting this set even further, by denying gay people access to adoption). There is a chance that the child will not find a loving family at all. Furthermore, the mothers of babies given up for adoption have been shown to suffer more psychological damage than those who aborted (there’s a site that’s been brought up on this blog before talking about this; I can’t remember the link at the moment). Adoption is not a simple solution, and also causes suffering.
If you want to minimise the amount of suffering within families, ensuring that every child is wanted from the moment of their birth is a good place to start. In my opinion, it’s not enough to give people life and leave the question of what happens to it up to them. In that case, you’re honouring the ideal of giving life but not the ideal of providing an environment where that life can be safe, comfortable and happy. I believe the latter is at least as important as the former.

I think one of the ways the blood donor analogy (which I myself use) becomes complicated is that blood donation allows us to pass along responsibility – it doesn’t matter if I don’t donate, because unless I have a really rare blood type then there are a lot of other people who could donate, so it doesn’t have to be me. Of course, the more people there are to share responsibility, the less likely it is that someone will step up, so you still end up with not enough blood.
Marrow donation, on the other hand… I registered several years ago as a marrow donor. The chances that I will ever be called upon as a match are negligible, but if it ever does happen, I will be in the position of quite probably being the only person who could save the recipient’s life. Tissue matches between strangers are very, very rare, so the chances of matching to two people you’re not related to, much less two people you’re not related to among the group of people who’ve registered with the donor program, are incredibly low. If they ever come to me and say, “this kid has leukemia that’s not responding to treatment, and she really needs a marrow donation, and you’re the only person we’re aware of in the entire world who can save her,” there’s no option for me to pass along responsibility to someone else. That child would be nearly as dependent upon me for life as if I were incubating her inside me.
Marrow donation is still entirely voluntary. I personally think it would be a terrible thing for me to volunteer for the program, get somebody’s hopes up so that they think there’s a chance for successful treatment, and then back out. But legally, I would be able to, because the alternative is the doctors strapping me down while they punch holes in my pelvis.
If someone wants to say that I should be legally required to donate marrow to whoever needs it, because in signing up for the program I accepted the risk that it might one day be required… well, at least that would be consistent with forced birth.

@Spearmint
In the thought experiment, a person must actively perform some action that directly violates a person’s right to life, whose life is now totally dependent on another person through no fault of her own. In the kidney example, no one has a duty, legally or otherwise, to give up her kidney since this results passively in another person dying, and there is no legal duty or penalty for letting someone passively die through inaction. In one situation, a person’s life is physically connected to another person. Should this physical connection be severed, the person dies. No one has the right to actively perform some action that will lead to another person’s death, even if a person’s bodily autonomy is being violated. In the kidney example, it is only a passive action that leads to a person’s death, and there is no physical connection among either person. Further, a person’s right to life only trumps a person’s right to bodily autonomy insofar as another person is “innocently” physically connected and dependent on another person. Should a person have consciously chosen to become dependent on another person, then it is up to the violated person to decide whether or not to sever the connection. Whatever the choice, there should be no legal duty or penalty for the person whichever way they decide. The ethics of the choice is another discussion entirely.

If someone wants to say that I should be legally required to donate marrow to whoever needs it, because in signing up for the program I accepted the risk that it might one day be required… well, at least that would be consistent with forced birth.
A better analogy for forced birth would be if you were required to sign up for the program and give your medical information to the program, as well as being required to donate if a match is found.

Also, re: adoption.
Before people wave it around like it’s some kind of magic amulet that wards off abortion debates, consider this:
If you’re against abortion, would you personally commit to adopting the first child that was brought to you, or would you – let’s face it, you would – be picky and choosey and end up asking for a child that looked “perfect”?
‘Cause that right there is why adoption is not the full answer.
Bearing one’s own child that turns out to have problems later in life — that’s hard enough in terms of financial and emotional cost.
Very few people are equipped to take on doing this for a child not genetically theirs.

@Ursula
I was using the “famous violinist” as a bit of inspiration, but I feel you have not properly understood my own position, which I take full responsibility for. The reason I phrased the thought experiment the way I did was to force it into abstraction, so it could be applicable to all persons, whether young or old, human or alien, angelic or demonic. The first thought experiment was a general one outlining of my own principles and how I think they should be applied ethically and legally. To state it again, should a person were to become innocently physically dependent on another person, then the person on whom that persons is dependent on rights to autonomy end when it comes to severing the connection and directly results in a person’s death. The person who is now dependent is innocent, and her life is not forfeit, even if it does violate a person’s autonomy for a time
My position is indeed not modeled under present law, but that is really a problem with the law as far as I see it.

In the kidney example, it is only a passive action that leads to a person’s death, and there is no physical connection among either person.

Change the scenario just a tiny bit. The fan kidnaps you, knocks you out and when you come to you’re connected to the violinist. You didn’t volunteer to be hooked up and in fact where totally unaware of it when it happened. If you sever the connection the violinist dies. The fan was clearly in the wrong, nevertheless the deed is done. Are you now obligated to remain connected?
In my mind this whole line of thought leads down pretty much the same path as deciding who gets assistance based on which poor people are deserving.

As another point of clarification, I am a strong supporter of the notion that is there is no legal duty to rescue, so things like blood donation, bone marrow transplants or even pulling a person away from the path of a bus are not particularly problematic under my own position; no one is legally required to perform such actions, nor should they be. An ethical duty to rescue is another issue entirely, however. This duty to rescue ends, however, when a person must actively engage in a behavior that leads directly to another innocent person’s death.

Sayel,
Reality > thought experiments.
Argument by analogy is virtually useless when applied to abortion. Pregnancy isn’t quite like anything else, and the analogies are inevitably so contrived that everyone can see where you’ve built your logic around the desired conclusion. We had a thread here a while back that specifically invited women who have been pregnant and considered abortion, and chosen one way or the other, to talk about their situations. I found it very helpful in grounding the discussion in reality, and I suggest you read it.

Sayel: Welcome to slacktivist, please don’t kill us with sheep. Like many commenters, you’ve chosen to introduce yourself with a relatively unpopular (here at least) position. I hope you aren’t dissuaded from staying around.

@Lori
I am pretty sure my original thought experiment answers your question. In the abstraction, how person A became attached is irrelevant, whether through the actions of a mad scientist, an act of God or that some wizard did it. The implications are the same regardless of how the two individuals wound up in that situation.
I am concerned with the rights of person A just as much as I am concerned with the rights of person B, but I don’t believe that person A could acceptably die for what, ultimately, amounts to a temporary negative impact on person B. This belief is so strong that I believe it should be legally enforced in some way.
I believe my own view respects the rights of both individuals, but I believe the opposition to my own position respects the rights of one person over the rights of another person, and that lack of respect actually can result in it being acceptable for another person to actively kill another person for through no fault of her own.
That, I think, should not be acceptable at all.
I also understand a lot of my position have a great many consequences for health insurance, property laws and other such rights. But I’m game if you are.

It’s that active vs. passive harm distinction again- vaccinations prevent you from being a disease vector (they prevent active harm to other people’s health) whereas blood donations (or carrying a fetus around) prevent passive harm to other people’s health by not supplying them with blood/a womb.
The active / passive distinction is a good one, and probably more relevant to crafting good legislation.
I was thinking more along the lines that blood donation involves taking something *out*, and is very rarely harmful to otherwise healthy people; whereas vaccination involves putting something foreign *in*, and is harmful in a small but non-trivial number of cases.
I’m not really wedded to the idea of making it mandatory. It does seem relevant to the whole “two tunics” command, however, since almost all people have more blood than they really need right at this moment.
Also, I’m just really saddened by the fact that I received yet another e-mail plea for “targeted” blood donations, because a friend of a friend has hit their limit for what the hospital will provide for free.
Best damn health care system in the world, my ass.

Sayel,
The connected person is not innocent, however.
They are doing active and permanent damage to the other person’s body. They are continually exploiting it for nutrients. They are actively preventing the other person from moving freely. They are interfering with the circulation of the other person. They are causing ongoing physical pain. They are interfering with the ability of the other person to obtain life and health preserving medical care on their own behalf. The effects of the so-called temporary dependency will last for the rest of the other person’s life.

Mark Z,
I have found in my own experience that both ethical and legal discussions are best discussed in abstraction with a full knowledge of empirical data that either support or contradict various positions. I try to be very scientific in my intellectual life, and ethics and legal theory happen to be present in that arena.
By the way, I have spoken personally with women who have had abortions, and I have also read a great many personal accounts, as well. I have also read those testimonies you’re referring to. I am afraid, while immensely valuable for helping to foster a deep respect and love for those women who have made the choices they have made; they did very little in changing my mind on the topic of abortion, because I keep coming back to the fact that these testimonies very rarely talk about the POV of the fetus.
Abstracting the discussion does away with this bias, and so I find it a more acceptable route. Your mileage may vary, though.
Oh, and if you find that my thought experiment does any significant injustice to the topic at hand, please enumerate them, and I will place them under careful consideration.

Now it could be argued that the fetus’s mother has already accepted the social contract on the fetus’s behalf and so the fetus becomes guaranteed against harm or death, but really, it’s just not practical.
A contract you didn’t sign consensually isn’t legally binding anyway. If the mother has to accept on the fetus’s behalf, then in any case where she doesn’t want the fetus, she can just refuse the contract, and the fetus loses its honorary personhood.
there is no legal duty or penalty for letting someone passively die through inaction
But cutting the umbilical cord isn’t actively killing the fetus. It’s just a refusal to continue to allow the fetus to freeload.
Suppose you have leukemia and I’ve been keeping you alive with bone marrow transplants. Am I allowed to refuse to supply your next transplant, or do I have to continue donating my bone marrow indefinitely once I start?
See also Lori’s thought experiment.

But I’m game if you are.
We’re not, but you’re welcome to keep trying to convince us.

@Spearmint: That having been said there’s some legal aspect of contract law ISTR reading wherein parents often implicitly accept on behalf of their minor children, contracts or elements of contracts. So to extend that to the more abstract social contract is not much of a stretch IMO, and anyway the child can always refuse on his or her own upon reaching the age of undiminished capacity and, in doing so, emigrate from the country.

Sayel,
Nor are those who could be Person B randomly distributed among the population. Both legal and political philosophy make a point about laws being drawn in such a way that they do not only effect (or only NOT effect) one group of people. When, as it sometimes happens, it is impossible for laws not to effect/not effect only a particular then they must be written in such a way as to minimize such an impact.
Strangely enough one of the best places to look for discussions on this issue is among the writings on racial profiling.

@leum
Thank you for your kind words, but after I feel I have said what I feel needs to be said, I will return back to lurking.

@Ursula B
y innocent, I mean they have no cognitive awareness of the harm they are doing, not that there are no resulting negative consequences for whomever the person is dependent on. There is no mens rea, in other words.
Death for an action a person has no personal knowledge of doing, much less guilty knowledge of, seems amazingly severe.

That having been said there’s some legal aspect of contract law ISTR reading wherein parents often implicitly accept on behalf of their minor children, contracts or elements of contracts.
Oh, yeah, I totally agree if the child is wanted- carrying the fetus to term means that you want the baby to be part of the community and you’re accepting the social contract on its behalf.
My point was, the parent has to consent to that- for the contract to be binding on them and everyone else, they have to have the option of rejecting the fetus by aborting it. Otherwise it was accepted under coercion and it’s not a valid contract- which presumably means the kid is a nonperson and has no civil rights until it’s adopted by parents willing to sign on its behalf or until it reaches its majority, whichever comes first.

One of the comments modern Jews often get from Hasidim is that Hasidim have 5,000 years – or whatever – of Jewish tradition, while modern Jews have none. Of course, even a quick look at Judaism and a perfunctory reading of the Bible puts that entire idea to rest. The Bible, which for Jews is just the Old Testament, is a history, a story of how Judaism changed over time. Unlike the New Testament which narrates a relatively short interval, the Old Testament starts before the time of Ramses and ends in the Greco-Roman era. That’s over a thousand years, depending on how you count it. It covers even more time if you include all the pre-Abraham stuff which rehashes old Ugaritic tales.
All through The Bible, the religion keeps on changing. No Jew in the time of Moses or David would countenance human sacrifice, but Abraham was willing as God was willing, and Abraham was considered eminently reasonable what with smashing all the idols in his father’s shop and arguing against idolatry. No Jew was prohibited from eating oysters or pork in the time of Solomon. That prohibition came in after the Babylonian Exile. Keep reading and the religion keeps changing. Jews don’t even sacrifice animals anymore. They don’t practice polygamy and concubinage. They plow to the edge of their fields.
Judaism didn’t stop changing with the end of The Bible. A modern Passover Seder is modeled on a Greek symposium. The Hagaddah barely mentions Moses, who was still front and center in Exodus, and it isn’t clear when The Three Questions in early versions turned into The Four Questions. I won’t even get into the entire biblical annotation business with its centuries of precedent and interpretation.
There is no reason Christianity, or Islam, or Hinduism, or any other religion, has to be bound by its past. Religions change with the times. After all, they have to meet human needs. Wasn’t one of Christianity’s big draws the idea that even slaves could marry? Romans would have considered the idea of a secret marriage an oxymoron. How could a public declaration be a secret, but for those forbidden to acknowledge their love, a religion that offered such a sacrament was attractive. It is tempting to pick and choose, as fundamentalists often do, an era, and a subset of ideas and precepts from that era, but that is just foolishness. We are alive now as are our religions.

@Spearmint,
I think cutting the umbilical cord is more akin to suffocating someone than ensuring someone isn’t freeloading.

Lack of cognition, however, is not a reason to allow someone to continue to harm another person.
If anything, it is more of a reason to intervene stop the harm, as they lack the ability to do what any decent person would do, if they knew they were hurting another, which is stop any actions causing active and ongoing harm.

Death for an action a person has no personal knowledge of doing, much less guilty knowledge of, seems amazingly severe.
We condemn innocent people to death by inaction all the time, though, and even you are okay with it.
I think our fundamental disagreement lies in what counts as “active” and “passive” harm. My view is, if I have to carry you around all day and allow you to drink my blood, I am actively providing life support and retain my right to revoke it.
(Also I don’t think you count as a person until you’re capable of symbolic thought and until then we can kill you for food, but that’s a separate issue.)

I am pretty sure my original thought experiment answers your question. In the abstraction, how person A became attached is irrelevant, whether through the actions of a mad scientist, an act of God or that some wizard did it. The implications are the same regardless of how the two individuals wound up in that situation.

Not to put too fine a point on it, this is one of the most morally repugnant things I have ever seen in my life.

I keep coming back to the fact that these testimonies very rarely talk about the POV of the fetus.

First of all you’re assuming facts not in evidence. The only way that the fetus can have a POV is if it’s a person.
Second, as others have pointed out the anti-choice position regarding abortion is the only time that we be give this kind of preference to the “taking” party at the expense of the free will and bodily integrity of the “giving” party. All the thought experiments in the world can’t change that.

One of the comments modern Jews often get from Hasidim is that Hasidim have 5,000 years – or whatever – of Jewish tradition, while modern Jews have none.
Um… Dude, Hasidim are modern Jews too. Modern Jews with a fashion sense that’s 200 years out of date, but modern Jews nonetheless.
I think cutting the umbilical cord is more akin to suffocating someone than ensuring someone isn’t freeloading.
How? The fetus can breathe if it wants to; I’m not stopping it. It can’t? Well, the guy who needs the kidney can’t metabolize toxins, but that’s not my problem.
Also, what’s your answer to my bone marrow question?

@Ursula
I think it would be better to provide whatever support is needed to ensure that the person who presently is incapable of being “decent” is able to grow and develop into becoming a decent person (i.e. to be brought out of their coma in the thought experiment, or to be born for pregnancies). That, I think, promotes the most good for the greatest number of people.

That, I think, promotes the most good for the greatest number of people.
So do mandatory kidney donations, but you’re against those. So you can’t claim to be arguing from a purely utilitarian standpoint here.

Sayel,
Fine, then. We’ll do it your way.
In the abstraction, how person A became attached is irrelevant, whether through the actions of a mad scientist, an act of God or that some wizard did it. The implications are the same regardless of how the two individuals wound up in that situation.
In the reality that the abstraction is supposed to represent, a great many people will insist that it does matter how they got into that situation. Does anything change if person B consented to be attached? If person A did not consent? If person A was never asked, and wasn’t mentally capable of answering anyway? What if (the far more common situation) person B didn’t specifically agree to be attached, but consented in an assumption-of-risk kind of way? Does it matter if person B made reasonable efforts to prevent it, which failed?
You might take the position that anyone who’s concerned about that is wrong, but handwaving the entire issue away as “suppose a wizard did it” is, as I said above, constructing the logic around your desired conclusion. This will convince nobody, so you might as well tell us how YOU came to that conclusion.
I am concerned with the rights of person A just as much as I am concerned with the rights of person B, but I don’t believe that person A could acceptably die for what, ultimately, amounts to a temporary negative impact on person B. This belief is so strong that I believe it should be legally enforced in some way.
I also suggest you read up on what happens in places where that belief is legally enforced. Abortion is still practiced, usually later in pregnancy (which, for my money, is more ethically problematic), and by unreliable, unsanitary methods which result in awful infections and perforated and herniated this and that and permanent crippling injury, and these women know this and still decide that abortion is the best of their bad options. Can you give them a better option? If not, maybe the strength of your convictions is not the most important issue in the room.
I believe my own view respects the rights of both individuals, but I believe the opposition to my own position respects the rights of one person over the rights of another person, and that lack of respect actually can result in it being acceptable for another person to actively kill another person for through no fault of her own.
For that matter there’s a certain amount of question-begging in referring to one of the parties in your scenario as “person A”. It’s not at all unanimous that “person” is a correct term for, say, a blastocyst with no organs. Again, you may think the personhood of “person A” is obvious; I disagree.
Your thought experiment would be closer to reality if you were to talk about “undifferentiated cell mass A”, but harder to jump to an intuitive judgment about the right choice, and therefore less useful as a thought experiment.

@Spearmint
The fetus actually can’t breathe as you are depriving it access to oxygen. If someone places a pillow over my face, I can still “breathe”, as my lungs and the like still work. I just don’t have any access to oxygen. Suffocation in this scenario seems more active than passive, so, too, does cutting the umbilical cord. It’s just as much suffocating someone as placing a pillow over someone’s face or taking out all of the oxygen in a room. Or rather, it’s more closely related to this than it is to simply making sure someone simply isn’t freeloading.

I think it would be better to provide whatever support is needed to ensure that the person who presently is incapable of being “decent” is able to grow and develop into becoming a decent person (i.e. to be brought out of their coma in the thought experiment, or to be born for pregnancies). That, I think, promotes the most good for the greatest number of people.

Greatest good for the greatest number doesn’t get you anywhere in discussing abortion since it’s usually 1 vs 1. And of course it runs up against the personhood issue. One absolutely, definitely person vs 1 might possibly be a person by some definitions is, IMO, not even a contest.
Also, all this abstraction is frankly spoken like a person who feels very confident that no one is ever going to come along and force you to make an involuntary sacrifice of part of your body in order to benefit the “greater good”.

It’s just as much suffocating someone as placing a pillow over someone’s face or taking out all of the oxygen in a room.
There’s a perfectly good atmosphere out here. It’s good enough for the rest of us. I’m not putting the fetus in an anoxic environment; I’m just cutting off its access to the oxygen in my blood. The fetus is more than welcome to breath atmospheric oxygen or to make its own arrangements with another supplier. I’m just refusing to continue enabling it.

@Lori
The original thought experiment is trying to cut away from what is irrelevant and look at the cognitive and ontological properties of the two individuals involved. Person A is now attached to person B, and unaware of what is going and will die is detached from person B. What is the ethical thing to do for both person A and person B in that situation alone? You find how person A was attached to person B a relevant fact; I do not. I am more concerned with whether or not person A knew they were going to be attached. In the case of pregnancy, person A would not be aware. In the case of some parasitic alien organism, person A would actually be aware.
In the case of pregnancy, I think that the fetus’s lack of awareness of its own actions and its personhood does not warrant ending its life.

@Sayel?
I’m turning my head sideways and trying to read what you say like that but it’s still not making much sense to me.
I agree with other denizens here that the problem with certain thought experiments in the moral/ethical realm is that they’re highly contrived and usually built to support a particular conclusion that not all agree with because the premises are highly artificial.
I think it’s great that you also try to bring a scientific mindset to ethical/etc problems but may I suggest that there are limitations to attempting to abstract away certain things?
There’s corollaries in scientific thought experiments, actually.
I can hypothesize two objects on an airless planet, which will indeed strike the ground at the same time when dropped.
On Earth it doesn’t work like that; that doesn’t mean the model’s wrong, it’s just incomplete. So abstracting away air resistance lets us derive the fundamental behavior of gravity, but adding in air resistance lets us correctly account for the more complex Earth situation.

In the case of pregnancy, I think that the fetus’s lack of awareness of its own actions and its personhood does not warrant ending its life.
No one thinks the fetus’s lack of personhood in itself warrants ending its life. It’s the whole “nonconsensual parasitism” thing that’s the problem.
You still haven’t answered my bone marrow question.

I should append that like adding the correction terms to kinematic equations to account for air resistance and Coriolis effects, the model of involuntary parasitism needs to be considered carefully as well.

The original thought experiment is trying to cut away from what is irrelevant and look at the cognitive and ontological properties of the two individuals involved. Person A is now attached to person B, and unaware of what is going and will die is detached from person B. What is the ethical thing to do for both person A and person B in that situation alone? You find how person A was attached to person B a relevant fact; I do not. I am more concerned with whether or not person A knew they were going to be attached. In the case of pregnancy, person A would not be aware. In the case of some parasitic alien organism, person A would actually be aware.

Whatever. This still doesn’t address the fact that “Person” A is quite possibly not a person at all.
And it’s also still the sort of abstraction indulged in by people who know that no one is coming for parts of their bodies. The day thousands of screaming protesters waving signs showing people dying of kidney failure come and demand that you fork over one of yours we’ll talk about this again.

@Mark Z,
I believe the preface to my thought experiment states that brain activity is enough to warrant, from a pragmatic perspective, the idea that there is some personhood going on. I do apologize if I did not mention this is in the post, but I meant to qualify it by stating that there is brain activity in a fetus of a species where healthy members of that species develop personhood. As far as a fetus and public policy is concerned, I think treating them as persons is the safest way to go.
I also had a modified thought experiment that I believe answers the majority of your question in your first paragraph towards me, where person B has knowledge that her behavior could result in the situation described in the first thought experiment.
Beyond that, I believe illegal abortions is a problem of logistics, and their existence does not really appear to be relevant to the legality or illegality of abortions. Simply because a number of people will break the law does not really mean there should be no law regarding it. As far as the numbers are concerned, I would need to look at them to see if a logistically tenable plan of action to prevent abortions is possible.

Boooooooone maaaaaaaaarroooooooow.

@Sayel: Ok, I’ll try to tackle your latest post here.
Whether or not you accept my premises will affect whether or not you think my conclusion is well-founded, but I shall try.
If the purpose of all law is to satisfy the basic requirement that all people covered by it are protected from harm or death to the extent that the State is able to do so, then exactly how does a law prohibiting abortion fulfill that function?
I don’t see that it can, since it has already been mooted that a woman must be free to act to preserve her own life if possible, and this means treating the fetus of secondary importance.
It sounds callous, I know, and I wish no woman ever had to make this choice. But sometimes a pregnancy can kill a woman, or seriously harm her.
In that case a law prohibiting abortion would result in exactly the opposite consequence: instead of protecting the woman against harm or death, it exposes her to harm or death.

@Spearmint
I could say the same to a guest sleeping in a host’s bed. If the host places a bag over the guest’s face and she doesn’t wake up and make alternative arrangements to find another source of oxygen outside of the bag then that’s really her problem. After all, it’s the host’s air if it’s inside his house, and the host has a right to choose who has a right to his air and who doesn’t.
As far as the bone marrow question (I wasn’t avoiding it…I just kept forgetting to answer it considering the amount of people and issues I have to respond to), since there is no direct physical connection between the two people, then any contractual obligation to continue donating the marrow would be unenforceable as far as I am concerned.
@Pius
That’s why I said that it helps to be aware of all relevant empirical information. It believe this enables a person to make relevant, binding and responsible decisions that affect a very large amount of people, without being biased
by the truly heart wrenching testimonies of the parties involved.
@Lori
I believe from a pragmatic perspective that it is best to assume that an organism with brain activity that is a member of a species where healthy members develop personhood, and there is no other evidence that suggests they aren’t a person…then it’s best to assume the organism in question is a person. If they do not turn out to be, then policy can be changed to reflect that. But the potential cost of being wrong is too high not to proceed with utmost caution.

@Pius
In my original post, I believe there are exceptions to the general rule. I just believe the majority of abortions are not justified, not that all of them are unjustified.
@the question of utilitarian ethics…
In using the greatest good…I was using the 1 on 1 scenario, too. On one view, you have one person whose autonomy is respected and one corpse. On the other, you have two persons who can go on to live and thrive. I think, if at all possible, the second scenario is the one that should be given preferential treatment, unless for some reason that is no possible.

@Sayel: On the other, you have two persons who can go on to live and thrive.
So I take it that if the local pharma lab needs a human body to try out a new medical technique — as long as you will “in the long term” be able to thrive — hell they can have you.
Signing up are you?
BTW I find this thread offensive to the many women I have known who have consciously chosen to bear children. Apparently it is a trivial concern according to your thought exercise. Stupid them.

A determination to prove someone else wrong (a far stronger motivation, IMO, than the parallel determination to prove oneself right)
“One of the Laws of Usenet is that the best way to get an answer is not to post a question, but to post a wrong statement, because people enjoy showing off their smarts more when they can also make someone look ignorant. ”
sometimes it’s not because you deserve it, sometimes it just *sucks to be you*.
Sometimes, yeah. But when sometimes approaches always, then something is really screwed up, especially when the corresponding “sucks to be me” approaches never.
Person A is now attached to person B, and unaware of what is going and will die is detached from person B.
That sort of thing has come up in some cases of conjoined twins, and sometimes the least-bad decision *is* to detach Person A, if the other choice is a miserable quality of life for both of them.
People can, and do, volunteer to do things for other people that don’t appear to be in their best interest. That’s fine. It’s when you start forcing them to do it that you get into trouble. Once you start doing that, where do you stop?

I believe from a pragmatic perspective that it is best to assume that an organism with brain activity that is a member of a species where healthy members develop personhood, and there is no other evidence that suggests they aren’t a person…then it’s best to assume the organism in question is a person. If they do not turn out to be, then policy can be changed to reflect that. But the potential cost of being wrong is too high not to proceed with utmost caution.

And still this begs the question, which parts of your body do you think anyone with brain activity should be entitled to take as long as they can get themselves attached to you, even against your will? Unless the list is pretty long you really need to stop acting as if you’re just making a rational, pragmatic decision to force women to carry pregnancies to term. A woman’s right to bodily integrity is not a game.

I’m curious as to what penalties you believe should be attached to having an abortion. Do we treat it as first-degree premeditated murder? Or it’s own, separate class? If we don’t treat it as murder in the first, why not?

I could say the same to a guest sleeping in a host’s bed. If the host places a bag over the guest’s face and she doesn’t wake up and make alternative arrangements to find another source of oxygen outside of the bag then that’s really her problem. After all, it’s the host’s air if it’s inside his house, and the host has a right to choose who has a right to his air and who doesn’t.
Except the fetus isn’t a guest, and we don’t generally construe air as “belonging” to anyone. It’s more like if a thief came into someone’s house, stole some food from the kitchen, and then starved to death after the owner put a lock on the refrigerator. Did the owner kill the thief? In a sense, I suppose, but we’d hardly charge her with murder.
As far as the bone marrow question (I wasn’t avoiding it…I just kept forgetting to answer it considering the amount of people and issues I have to respond to), since there is no direct physical connection between the two people, then any contractual obligation to continue donating the marrow would be unenforceable as far as I am concerned.
Yeah, I figured you were swamped. But I think it’s important; that’s why I kept poking you.
So you think it’s continuous donation that differentiates active or passive killing?
Okay, here’s a hypothetical, which is medically absurd but hey, it’s a thought exercise.
Suppose the donor’s service is intermittent. The host is being used as a living stomach donor, so they’re digesting for the parasite, but obviously only after the host eats something. They’re hooked up continuously, but amino acids aren’t being constantly transferred because digestion only happens after meals.
Under what circumstances is separation murder, and when is it okay?
a) Always murder
b) Murder only during the active transfer of digested amino acids; acceptable during the rest of the day
c) Never murder
And why?

I find it difficult understand such outrage. A fetus has brain activity, indicating, at least, that they may be a person. The fetus exists through no fault of their own, and, by way of growing and developing, seeks to develop mature into a person, and, with proper teaching, could develop into a decent person. The mother is an individual who probably had sex in full knowledge that a pregnancy, and thus the fetus, might develop and could conceivably give up 9 months of her life and other resources as a result, and give the baby up for adoption. I do not understand how a person can understand these things and decide that a mother has a right to end another person’s life.
Even if you disagree that a fetus is a person, if the fetus actually is a person, then this position is, at the very least, a position worthy enough to be considered and understood to see what its potential conclusions and implications. It is a hard position to consider, but then abortion and unwanted pregnancy is a hard issue to consider even in the “best” of circumstances. I place a high value on the life and development of the fetus, and others place a high value on the the right to bodily autonomy. I do not believe the latter inevitably, properly considered, can be considered to be a higher value on the life of a fetus, who I consider to be a person, both pragmatically and actually. With such considerations in tow, my position would seem to be far more reasonable than the interlocutors here would care to admit. Those considerations should be debated, since the cost of being wrong, for either side, is very high considering the pain and death that could result.

Except the fetus isn’t a guest, and we don’t generally construe air as “belonging” to anyone. It’s more like if a thief came into someone’s house, stole some food from the kitchen, and then starved to death after the owner put a lock on the refrigerator. Did the owner kill the thief? In a sense, I suppose, but we’d hardly charge her with murder.

If I’m tracking you correctly, wouldn’t the above model change dramatically if the hypothetical gravid in question was trying to get pregnant?

I believe the preface to my thought experiment states that brain activity is enough to warrant, from a pragmatic perspective, the idea that there is some personhood going on. I do apologize if I did not mention this is in the post, but I meant to qualify it by stating that there is brain activity in a fetus of a species where healthy members of that species develop personhood. As far as a fetus and public policy is concerned, I think treating them as persons is the safest way to go.
What Lori said. It’s very easy to call this “safe” when your own safety isn’t on the table.
I also had a modified thought experiment that I believe answers the majority of your question in your first paragraph towards me, where person B has knowledge that her behavior could result in the situation described in the first thought experiment.
I think you’ve misunderstood my objection. I’m sure you could easily adjust your thought experiment to make some small concessions to realism. The problem is that you assume that that won’t change the result–and it won’t, because in the pocket universe of your hypothetical scenario, you are God and the outcome will serve your ends. Nonetheless, you’re abstracting away (as “irrelevant”) an issue that many people find very relevant, namely, how “person B” came to be connected to “person A”.
Beyond that, I believe illegal abortions is a problem of logistics, and their existence does not really appear to be relevant to the legality or illegality of abortions.
Really? You don’t think the fact that your proposed law would fail to achieve its objectives and also cause widespread injury, disability, and death is a problem with the law? Maybe reality is at fault for failing to fit the model.
Simply because a number of people will break the law does not really mean there should be no law regarding it. As far as the numbers are concerned, I would need to look at them to see if a logistically tenable plan of action to prevent abortions is possible.
You might want to get started on that.

Even if you disagree that a fetus is a person, if the fetus actually is a person, then this position is, at the very least, a position worthy enough to be considered and understood to see what its potential conclusions and implications.

Even if you disagree that a fetus is not a person, if the fetus actually isn’t a person and you deny safe legal abortion you’ve taken the fundamental right to bodily integrity away from all women, destroyed the lives of untold numbers of them and killed some of them all for no good reason. This position is, at the very least, a position worthy enough to be considered and understood to see its potential conclusions and implications.
And one more time, which parts of your body are you willing to involuntarily surrender to anyone with brain activity who can somehow rig a situation where you would have to take action to avoid giving up the body parts? If you’re not actively engaging with that question then I see no reason whatsoever to engage with your reasoning about abortion because as far as I’m concerned it’s a smokescreen for denying women full humanity.

And one more time, which parts of your body are you willing to involuntarily surrender to anyone with brain activity who can somehow rig a situation where you would have to take action to avoid giving up the body parts? If you’re not actively engaging with that question then I see no reason whatsoever to engage with your reasoning about abortion because as far as I’m concerned it’s a smokescreen for denying women full humanity.

Can I offer a kidney, four of my fingers, a bunch of skin, and my gall bladder in Sayel’s stead?

@Lori
I am not considering body parts, but physical dependence on another person. Speaking of body parts sidesteps the actual issues involved as far as it relates to pregnancy. In pregnancy, it’s understood that it won’t be life threatening (most of the time in our society), and that there won’t be any lasting harm. It’s also understood most pregnancies result from consensual sex, which is understood to result in pregnancy given proper conditions and that no solution is foolproof.
The exceptions to this are, of course, rape and situations where pregnancy can harm the life of the mother. I, actually, would be happy to promote legislation that prohibited all abortions save in the cases of incest, rape and life-threatening damage to the mother. I just don’t believe the majority of abortions, resulting from consensual activities with an understanding of the potential consequences, is enough of a reason to provide someone with the ability to kill another life, who may be a person herself.
@Leum
Since the personhood of a fetus is unknown, I feel that a first degree murder is harsh from a public policy perspective. I honestly do not know what would be a proper punishment for individuals carrying on illegal abortions.
@Spearmint
This is not a thief, since most fetuses are present through consensual, informed activities of the host. If a person becomes dependent on someone, then it’s up to them to provide them for whatever they need when the alternative to “cutting off the supply” is certain death. It’s more akin to someone coming into a person’s home invited, lying down, falling into a coma, the host taking care of them for a duraton, and then deciding to just cut off their supply to oxygen, food and water.
As far as the parasite question…is the parasite a person or not? That really makes all the different. Further, how did the parasite happen to get there? Did I know eating a certain food might be carrying a parasite?

If I’m tracking you correctly, wouldn’t the above model change dramatically if the hypothetical gravid in question was trying to get pregnant?

Women who were trying to get pregnant rarely seek abortions unless there is something drastically medically wrong. So lets try to manipulate this ridiculous burglar thing a little to fit that reality. You invite someone in need of shelter to temporarily live in your home. Once he’s their you discover that you are deathly allergic to something about him and if he stays you’re going to go into anaphylactic shock and die. Are there any circumstances under which you are obligated to allow that person to remain in your home?

If the purpose of all law is to satisfy the basic requirement that all people covered by it are protected from harm or death to the extent that the State is able to do so, then exactly how does a law prohibiting abortion fulfill that function?
I don’t see that it can, since it has already been mooted that a woman must be free to act to preserve her own life if possible, and this means treating the fetus of secondary importance.
It sounds callous, I know, and I wish no woman ever had to make this choice. But sometimes a pregnancy can kill a woman, or seriously harm her.
In that case a law prohibiting abortion would result in exactly the opposite consequence: instead of protecting the woman against harm or death, it exposes her to harm or death.

Are you talking about hypothetical (American) justice or actual (American) justice system? Hypothetical system excuses all otherwise illegal conduct on the grounds of self defense or other necessity doctrines. Actual system of course, involves judges, juries, lawyers, risk adverse doctors, politics and time.

I am not considering body parts, but physical dependence on another person. Speaking of body parts sidesteps the actual issues involved as far as it relates to pregnancy. In pregnancy, it’s understood that it won’t be life threatening (most of the time in our society), and that there won’t be any lasting harm. It’s also understood most pregnancies result from consensual sex, which is understood to result in pregnancy given proper conditions and that no solution is foolproof.

How convenient for you. You’ve created a whole morality that can never create any obligation for you, only for other people. That’s some impressive righteousness you got there.

Can I offer a kidney, four of my fingers, a bunch of skin, and my gall bladder in Sayel’s stead?

You know K.Chen, given how much you’ve offended atheists and agnostics recently you might want to try to avoid flippantly offending all the women too.

The mother is an individual who probably had sex in full knowledge that a pregnancy, and thus the fetus, might develop and could conceivably give up 9 months of her life and other resources as a result, and give the baby up for adoption.

Do you believe that abortion should be legal for rape victims?

The mother is an individual who probably had sex in full knowledge that a pregnancy, and thus the fetus, might develop
Or, you know, got raped. Possibly by her father.
If I’m tracking you correctly, wouldn’t the above model change dramatically if the hypothetical gravid in question was trying to get pregnant?
Uh, no, because this isn’t ancient Greece and you’re not obligated by modern hospitality laws to extend hospitality to someone indefinitely regardless of their behavior, having once invited them into your home or uterus. If they start breaking all your china or making racist remarks about your grandma you can throw their ass out; you don’t have to keep feeding them.
If you did it for spurious reasons I might not want to come over to your house, but then, you probably weren’t competing on “Who Wants To Live In My Uterus?” anyway, so my evaluation of your suitability as a womb has very little bearing on anything.
As far as a fetus and public policy is concerned, I think treating them as persons is the safest way to go.
Safest for whom? Not for women, clearly.
since the cost of being wrong, for either side, is very high considering the pain and death that could result.
We know what the cost of being wrong on the anti-abortion side is. What’s the cost of being wrong on the pro-choice side? The mother is on average less upset by having an abortion than by not having one, the fetus has no opinion because it doesn’t understand what’s going on. What’s the cost of the abortion?
True, the fetus never grows up to be a person, so I guess you could claim the cost is to society. But you have no problem if children with leukemia fail to grow up because no one was forced to donate bone marrow. Why are fetuses so special that their lives have to be saved at the cost of someone else’s bodily autonomy?

@Mark Z
I am afraid you still fail to consider my own first post. It is simply the case as far the first thought experiment that how person A was attached is simply irrelevant. It all really depends on what person A is aware of. I may be misunderstanding you, but then I also think you have misunderstood my original post. Restate your objection again and I’ll try to respond in a fuller way.
As far as safety, I know myself pretty well, and I would not have abortion precisely because of what I believe about the personhood of fetuses. I know it’s easy to say that, and it is. I know myself well, though, and I am pretty certain that should I ever find myself pregnant, that I would not choose to terminate.
Regarding illegal abortions, I think it really becomes a question of logistics and education and support. Even so, such considerations really are irrelevant to the morality and legality of abortion. If abortion really does kill a person in such huge numbers presently, then abortion, legal and otherwise, should be stopped. The efficacy of such a law can only really be looked at when all relevant factors are considered, which would require some raw data I don’t believe anyone has access to (unless there are some countries where abortions are, on the whole, illegal and there are millions of woman dying in dark alleys getting illegal abortions, which I’d be interested in looking at).
@Lori
The reality is that most fetuses will grow and thrive and become a person, if they are not already one. That thought alone should make anyone pause and consider that maybe in focusing so much on women’s bodily autonomy they have themselves dehumanized babies. In focusing on group, you must invariably harm the other.
Oh, and by “no solution” is foolproof, I meant individuals who engage in heterosexual sex and use birth control.

The snark center of my brain supplies the following rebuttal to Sayel: If Terrorist A kidnaps Physician B, and says “I want an abortion. Do it or I blow up Los Angeles with a nuclear weapon,” is Physician B justified in performing an abortion? In refusing? We’ll assume for the sake of argument that there is a nuclear bomb, that it will go off if the doctor doesn’t perform the abortion, and that it won’t explode if he does, that he has no opportunity to escape or resist even though his captor is lying motionless on a table while he tampers with her organs with sharp steel, that Los Angeles contains at least ten righteous men, and that the doctor knows all this with total certainty.
Also, it’s Tuesday. I think this is relevant.

Can I offer a kidney, four of my fingers, a bunch of skin, and my gall bladder in Sayel’s stead?
Which fingers? I want both thumbs and maybe an eye.
Sayel: To go with this coma analogy- how long are you obliged to provide life support for this person out of your own pocket? (Current law, incidentally, would say “No time at all.”)
As far as the parasite question…is the parasite a person or not? That really makes all the different. Further, how did the parasite happen to get there? Did I know eating a certain food might be carrying a parasite?
Yeah, the parasite is a person- I’m just calling them a parasite because the host is digesting their food for them. Let’s assume some unscrupulous doctor hooked the host and the parasite up without either person’s consent, because he’s a mad scientist or something.
Why are fetuses produced by rape or incest less deserving of life than other fetuses? It’s the innocence of the fetus that means it’s not okay for Mom to uncouple it, right? Are fetuses conceived through rape guilty of something?

@Lori
I would actually keep a child should I ever become pregnant because I believe that is the right thing to do, even if I was raped. The only time I would consider not carrying to term would be if my own life is in danger or the child may have a horrible quality of life.
@Spearmint
I believe that with proper governmental support and other social programs that a non-abortion nation would be reasonably safe for both mother, prospective adoptive parents and, of course, the child.
The fetus is a in a special environment where the fetus may be a person (I believe it is, and from a pragmatic perspective is best to go on since it could be ethically considered murder if consistency is affirmed) and where it is in that environment through no fault of its own and where it is physically dependent on another individual who understood that behavior she engaged in could result in a pregnancy.
As far as abortion and rape, abortion is rarely done for rape, but I am not averse to a policy that outlaws abortions ave in cases of rape, incest, or life-threatening conditions as a result of the pregnancy.

You know K.Chen, given how much you’ve offended atheists and agnostics recently you might want to try to avoid flippantly offending all the women too.

I’m not sure if there is a better response than levity when you see someone accuse someone else of being an Enemy of all Women because (s)he/it hasn’t proferred abstract organs in the course of an abstract debate.

Women who were trying to get pregnant rarely seek abortions unless there is something drastically medically wrong. So lets try to manipulate this ridiculous burglar thing a little to fit that reality. You invite someone in need of shelter to temporarily live in your home. Once he’s their you discover that you are deathly allergic to something about him and if he stays you’re going to go into anaphylactic shock and die. Are there any circumstances under which you are obligated to allow that person to remain in your home?

Me, personally? I dunno. I’d like to think I’d at least consider it, and I’m certain members of strong hospitality cultures would seriously consider it, or try to rig some sort of clever situation where I merely suffer and invitee doesn’t die.
If you’re asking me to stand in for Jane M. O’Society, then no, obviously not. I think however, the thief, the guest, and the turns out to be deadly guest and so on all lie on a continuum of real situations that are useful for determining culpability, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. If you’re not, well, you’re not. I don’t know how “most” pregnancies occur except to know that most are lost before they’re known at all, which probably really well and truly fouls up the statistics.
On one end we have an inexplicably otherwise helpless thief breaking into your home (body). Such being will be helpless for 9 months. It is malicious, a clear violation, with no fault of your own as far as moral culpability.*
On the far other, we have a helpless someone you sent an embossed invitation to, have been trying to invite in to your home, and then on a whim, (or, sadly, in real cases, saw the gender of) you decide to kick them out into a howling storm.
In between it seems, you can have the equivalent of lottery runners. People** who, for whatever reason, hold a lottery that has imprecisely but generally known chances of teleporting a being that will be helpless for nine months into your home.
The “life of the mother” issue seems to override any situation on the continuum because its self defense. Whether thief or guest, you’ve got a free pass to defend yourself. It gets trickier with more general sorts of harm, if you believe that increasing culpability justifies increased suffering. There are also serious complications once you try to write laws.
Of course, all of this is dependent on the assumption that the fetus is a being that can be talked about by analogy to a person, which is not a settled issue at all.
—-
*Whether or not you should have locked your doors has to do with prudence, not culpability, unless you think prudence is culpability, at which point we’re off the races.
**I say people because the moral culpability (or lack thereof) of the father does seem interesting to me – although someone has pointed out adroitly that women will always suffer consequences and men will suffer them less than that.

@Spearmint
Until such a time as it becomes feasible to remove the person without endangering the coma patient’s life. For most coma patients, that means however long it takes for an ambulance to arrive.
As far as fetuses who are results of incest or rape, I think those exceptions are necessary to get an anti-abortion law on the books. The fetuses are just as deserving of life as everyone else, but I would take half-measure right now and worry about getting the whole shebang after societal attitudes towards abortions were altered enough to allow for it. It’s unfortunate most people lack the detachment necessary to properly discuss ethical issues, but that is a limitation I must work inside if I want to change anyone’s minds.

Mark: is Terrorist A a Muslim? I ask because if so, it’s not a violation of B’s Hippocratic oath for her to use her scapel to torture A for access codes to the bomb instead.
If A is a Tea Partier we’re SOL, because I know from TV torture just causes white people to think up snappy comeback lines and anyway hurting them is wicked. Instead, I recommend telling A that Glenn Beck is in LA at a book signing and will be killed if the bomb goes off.

@Spearmint
Regarding the parasite, I would be fine allowing the parasite to remain feeding inside me if it’s a person and that it has no idea what it’s doing. It deserves to live just as much as I do, and I am willing giving up a few extra calories a day if it means it can remain alive and continue to thrive. So long as its existence does not present with any medically life-threatening nor destroy my quality of life (i.e. situations that result in my eventual deterioration in my abilities to thrive), then I am ethically obligated to offer myself up so it can live. And yes, I deserve to be punished should I end its life just so I can be more comfortable. Doing otherwise would ultimately be selfish and indecent and result in the death of a person through no fault of its own.

It’s unfortunate most people lack the detachment necessary to properly discuss ethical issues, but that is a limitation I must work inside if I want to change anyone’s minds.
*Plays a sonata for you on the world’s smallest violin*
So, just for the record, you think abortion is wrong in the case of rape and incest as well?
I believe that with proper governmental support and other social programs that a non-abortion nation would be reasonably safe for both mother, prospective adoptive parents and, of course, the child.
As Ursula le Guin once said, “Belief is the wound that knowledge heals.” Shockingly, women who want abortions tend to… really not want to carry their fetus to term. If you make abortion illegal, some women don’t abort, but a lot get unsafe, illegal abortions.
Like in Brazil.

Doing otherwise would ultimately be selfish and indecent and result in the death of a person through no fault of its own.
Doesn’t this reasoning apply equally to the bone marrow case? Why should the continuous or discrete nature of the donations make a difference.

The only time I would consider not carrying to term would be if my own life is in danger or the child may have a horrible quality of life.(emphasis added)

You’ve just struck a major problem, because you’ve just suggested you’d override a possible person’s life because the person might suffer. Which is not something, I would say, you’d do to a being you know is a person.
If I come across an unconscious man who, I dunno, has all of his skin flayed off, is immunodeficient, and mostly helpless, indefinitely unable to communicate his desires to me, but likley to live indefinitely with even moderate care. Do I then kill him because he’s going to have a horrible quality of life?

@Spearmint
I’m not shocked at all that a country where the majority of its residents who don’t use birth control have a large amount of unwanted pregnancies. Obviously, if there was a more widespread sex education and the absurd belief that birth control is a sin was shown to be, well, absurd, we’d see a lot less unwanted pregnancies and illegal abortions.
That really seems to be more an issue of widespread ignorance and improper application of welfare programs than it does anything else.

If I come across an unconscious man who, I dunno, has all of his skin flayed off, is immunodeficient, and mostly helpless, indefinitely unable to communicate his desires to me, but likley to live indefinitely with even moderate care. Do I then kill him because he’s going to have a horrible quality of life?
…Yes? Assuming there’s no chance his quality of life will eventually improve? Clearly yes?
Especially given he’s going to spend the next five months drinking my blood.

Obviously, if there was a more widespread sex education and the absurd belief that birth control is a sin was shown to be, well, absurd, we’d see a lot less unwanted pregnancies and illegal abortions.
Yes, but the number of unwanted pregnancies isn’t the point. The point is, outlawing abortion doesn’t make abortion go away, it just makes it more dangerous. That would be true even in the U.S. where people have access to condoms. The total percentage of women with unwanted pregnancies might be lower, but abortions would still continue.

@Sayel:
The thing is, while it may seem to make sense to be “detached” and “abstract” about cases like this, it is often human compassion that moves people do things.
That said, you’ve demonstrated the limits of that compassion in one direction, since you’re talking of actively getting an anti-abortion law on the books even though you’ve actually met people who would be hurt by it.
Here’s another old example Joe Califano wrote about in his book regarding the limitations of compassion.
Lyndon Johnson would sometimes movingly talk of the black people he knew when he was young, who were constantly hurt in many ways by the racist culture in Texas. He would relate these stories to Congressmen or Senators to try and get them to understand why it was so important to him to pass the Great Society programs he had in mind.
And yet–
There was one man who obstinately refused to be moved by LBJ’s passion. He would keep reciting the one time he knew a woman on relief who had had eleven children.
This man’s compassion was inconceivably limited by his notion that all his social inferiors ever did was have babies to make money.
It’s things like this that can let people say with a straight face that helping someone who’s in distress is actually hurting them.

@Spearmint
Actually, it does. But not enough to the point that governmental involvement is required. I believe the situation with pregnancy does, at least most of them.
@K.Chen
I meant horrible quality of life in that there will horrible abnormalities, or will die within a few years even with the best medical care, or some other horrifically painful medical condition. If the child is going to certainly die anyway within a few months or a year, but only live in pain the entire time, then abortion may be a justifiable option. That’s a gray area that I feel properly belongs with a woman or couple and that government interference is inappropriate.

…Yes? Assuming there’s no chance his quality of life will eventually improve? Clearly yes?
Especially given he’s going to spend the next five months drinking my blood.

I guess that would be consistent with what you’re saying sure, but I was addressing Sayel. Sayel, unless I’ve misunderstood dramatically, is suggesting more or less that the fetus might be a person, thus it is to be treated as a person, as well as a culpability argument in the background about fault and lack of fault, which the poor hypothetical unconscious man represents. I suppose I should have made it a child for full impact, but too late now.

I’m not shocked at all that a country where the majority of its residents who don’t use birth control have a large amount of unwanted pregnancies. Obviously, if there was a more widespread sex education and the absurd belief that birth control is a sin was shown to be, well, absurd, we’d see a lot less unwanted pregnancies and illegal abortions.
That really seems to be more an issue of widespread ignorance and improper application of welfare programs than it does anything else.

You’d be surprised. There is some evidence to suggest that our best attempts at sex education and increased birth control rates has not actually reduced the nominal abortion rate.
Also, welfare programs?

Actually, it does. But not enough to the point that governmental involvement is required. I believe the situation with pregnancy does, at least most of them.
Why the difference, then?
Also, welfare programs?
I think she means that with more government support for new mothers, women would be less inclined to abort.

I meant horrible quality of life in that there will horrible abnormalities, or will die within a few years even with the best medical care, or some other horrifically painful medical condition. If the child is going to certainly die anyway within a few months or a year, but only live in pain the entire time, then abortion may be a justifiable option. That’s a gray area that I feel properly belongs with a woman or couple and that government interference is inappropriate.

I’ll let someone else handle your last sentence, no doubt with a feral gleam and malice aforethought. What if said child is certainly going to die – but at age two? Four? Eight? Sixteen? Eighteen? Twenty-one? How do you judge “horrible quality of life?” What if the best medical care is outside of the practical reach of the parent and state in question?
And, this is where it gets personal, and I don’t want you to feel any obligation to answer this unless you desire to address it:
How can you be sure that it isn’t your pain you’re preventing?

@Pius
I have a choice between two individuals. Either the fetus or the woman; I believe both have rights to be respected. In the case of a woman wanting an abortion, one of the parties has to be hurt. I believe the death of the fetus is a greater evil than the harm the woman may go through. That is why I believe very firmly that sex education and welfare programs are absolutely essential for women with unwanted pregnancies. I do not believe abortion solves the problems since it results in the death of another person; that is simply an unacceptable cost. You are moved by your compassion towards helping only the women; I am moved by my compassion to help both the women and the child by proper education and welfare programs. If the fetus is understood to be a person, then abortion simply becomes an untenable option in the vast majority of cases as far as I can see. In order for abortion to be practiced as it is now, the fetus must be dehumanized, viewed as less than a person. It is this fact that I disagree with. If the fetus is not actually a person, then abortion is actually justifiable in any situation as far as I can see…it’s akin to removing a toenail than killing a person. If the fetus is a person, then we as a society and the government should do everything possible to prevent all unwanted pregnancies and afford maximum care and treatment to both women and the unwanted child.
Abortion is a horrible issue, but my own conscience cannot abide the idea that countless person are killed every year because some women just didn’t understand their boyfriend ought to wear a condom or because it might provide undue hardship on them. If there is undue hardship, then it’s our responsibility to the unborn child to make the mother as comfortable as possible so that abortion become an unfavorable option.

Abortion is a horrible issue, but my own conscience cannot abide the idea that countless person are killed every year because some women just didn’t understand their boyfriend ought to wear a condom or because it might provide undue hardship on them. If there is undue hardship, then it’s our responsibility to the unborn child to make the mother as comfortable as possible so that abortion become an unfavorable option.

I agree that its a horrible issue, and I sympathize with your discomfort with abortion. A couple points though: you’re basically saying you want to punish women for not using birth control. You didn’t say it, but you implied it. You’re also talking about culpability in terms “some women” who didn’t understand what “their boyfriends” should or should not be doing which is myopic at best. When it comes to safer sex, it seems that moral culpability is not divided among gender lines, and there are more than some women with boyfriends at stake here. When you talk about our collective responsibility, you also have to accept that just because carrying pregnancies to term becomes a less unattractive option, does not mean we’ve solved any of the complicated issues or that women will make what you think is the “right” decision. Barring major medical advancements such as “tubing” from the Honor Harrington series (and even then) pregnancy is always going to be a gigantic honking deal on every practical level. That isn’t even beginning to count for the emotional toll that can probably never be fixed by making a woman “comfortable.”

Abortion is a horrible issue, but my own conscience cannot abide the idea that countless person are killed every year because some women just didn’t understand their boyfriend ought to wear a condom or because it might provide undue hardship on them. If there is undue hardship, then it’s our responsibility to the unborn child to make the mother as comfortable as possible so that abortion become an unfavorable option.

Okay.
Why does your right to feel less discomfited trump the right of women to be able to abort their fetuses for reasons which really aren’t any of your business?

@K.Chen
That involves ideas about euthanasia, which is not really relevant presently, and is a whole other can of worms that I can’t and won’t get into.
As far as horrific quality of life, it’s really a question of the situation. When it involves questions of euthanasia and the like, the morality of abortion goes into gray in my ethical system, and so I feel the government should stay the hell out of it for the most part. There is an issue of not being able to consent, but I really think that should be decided by the woman, her partner and her doctor on what to do with a pregnancy that will result in a child who live in constant, severe pain for the rest of its life, however long it is. I believe that knowledge in that situation is the best indicator of what to do.
Also, as far as I am aware, evidence for the abortion rate as it pertains to increase sex education and the like are, for the moment, fairly inconclusive. I do look forward to seeing more research done on the issue, though.
@Spearmint
The difference is the whole direct, physical dependence thing, where there is a constant, immediate threat of death should a person sever a physical tether with another person.

@Pius
When their right to do what they want their bodies means another person has to die through direct application of those rights. Those stakes make it into a public policy issue almost instantaneously.
In other words, their rights end when the fetus’s rights begin, and it is up to the government to enforce the right of the fetus who cannot enforce its own rights presently.
@K.Chen
It ultimately comes down to the fact that a fetus should not die because it’s at the wrong place, at the wrong time, even in the wrong body. We must accept the consequences that women will be uncomfortable, even to a severe degree, to bring a fetus to term, but the fetus deserves that chance. The woman, however, does not have the right to take that chance away. We can try to make everyone involved as comfortable as possible, and we should. But no matter the pain involved, we cannot let the woman have a right to her own body at the cost of her being able to kill a fetus she helped bring into this world herself and who depends on her every second for its own sustenance. The baby deserves the full force of law behind it, and we owe to the fetus to provide it with that.

That involves ideas about euthanasia, which is not really relevant presently, and is a whole other can of worms that I can’t and won’t get into.

If you believe that a fetus is close enough to a person, and you believe in killing it because its suffering, then you are talking about euthanasia. You’ve already crossed the line into brand new moral territory. Which was my point.

There is an issue of not being able to consent, but I really think that should be decided by the woman, her partner and her doctor on what to do with a pregnancy that will result in a child who live in constant, severe pain for the rest of its life, however long it is. I believe that knowledge in that situation is the best indicator of what to do.

What if the woman is a girl? And the important thing I picked about those ages was not just the mathematical progression, but the indicate varying points where some combination of developmental psychology, our law, and our society indicate that people having increasing awareness and capability to make decisions.
The horrible quality of life issue involves those moments at its heart, because if you believe there is a moral imperative to carry a pregnancy to term in general, and you have reason to believe that the child could be raised to a point where it has capacity to communicate its own desires, you have a Giant Problem.
Because the situation is now analogous to me finding innocently, or for that matter, not so innocently the aforementioned flayed immunodeficient man, and having the option of
A.) Taking care of this being, watching him go through years of suffering, and then asking him once he can speak and is conscious “Do you want to continue to live?” Which is where your assisted suicide problems start anew
or
B.) Making the decision to kill the man while he is still helpless, preempting any choice that man might make.

Well, I am afraid I must return to being a lurker. This has been an informative experience, though I confess I am actually more convinced of my own position than I was previously. I am continually impressed by how concerned all of you are with the rights of individuals, though I fear there will be a huge gulf between pro-life advocates and pro-choice advocates since they both have fundamentally different premises they argue from. Anyway, thanks for the chat.

The difference is the whole direct, physical dependence thing, where there is a constant, immediate threat of death should a person sever a physical tether with another person.
But in the bone marrow example, if I’m the only available donor, I know it’s eventually going to result in the child’s death if I stop donating.
Why is there a moral difference between a death caused by my disengagement ten seconds from now, and a death that takes a month to occur?
We must accept the consequences that women will be uncomfortable
No we don’t. And I’m still not clear who is hurt by the abortion. The fetus isn’t yet cogitating at a sufficiently advanced level to have an opinion on the matter, and the mother’s in favor of it. Where’s the cost?

So long as its existence does not present with any medically life-threatening nor destroy my quality of life (i.e. situations that result in my eventual deterioration in my abilities to thrive), then I am ethically obligated to offer myself up so it can live.
See, now I’m curious about that “destroy my quality of life.”
Does that include:
*permanent physical disability that is not life threatening (e.g., diabetes, epilepsy)?
*severe psychological damage?
*low-level but unending physical and mental stress?
*a life sentence to grinding poverty?
*living with a husband or partner who abuses you?
*significant likelihood that your other children will suffer greatly decreased “quality of life”?
I’m pretty sure that you would say that the hypothetical personhood of the fetus outweighs all these considerations, but that’s where I get stuck. Because while I agree with you in the abstract realm, these outcomes are all the real life (and pathetically horrible) results of your position. I’ve never met one of those women who had an abortion because “darn it, they were out of condoms and a kid would be a nuisance” that you claim (without a single citation) to be the overwhelming majority.
And I live, and laws are made, in the real world and not the abstract realm. And once I start saying “Okay, this and this situation *deserves* an abortion, and the rest don’t meet my standards of worthiness” — well, then we find ourselves back in the situation where we arguing that “sucks to be you” is somehow an ethical response.
But this:
If there is undue hardship, then it’s our responsibility to the unborn child to make the mother as comfortable as possible so that abortion become an unfavorable option.
Why don’t we try putting all our efforts into making THIS true, first, BEFORE we outlaw abortion (except in “worthy cases”), leaving all that “undue hardship” as collateral damage?

It ultimately comes down to the fact that a fetus should not die because it’s at the wrong place, at the wrong time, even in the wrong body. We must accept the consequences that women will be uncomfortable, even to a severe degree, to bring a fetus to term, but the fetus deserves that chance. The woman, however, does not have the right to take that chance away. We can try to make everyone involved as comfortable as possible, and we should. But no matter the pain involved, we cannot let the woman have a right to her own body at the cost of her being able to kill a fetus she helped bring into this world herself and who depends on her every second for its own sustenance. The baby deserves the full force of law behind it, and we owe to the fetus to provide it with that.

Taking this on its own terms, the woman could suffer, severely because she is at the wrong place, at the wrong time, having the wrong body. No matter how innocent (that is, not culpable) of a party the fetus is, the woman may also be equally innocent. And again, I think you’re getting your willingness to punish mixed up with your protection of human life – which has a certain poetic appeal to it, certainly, but if you’re going to do it, you should do it explicitly.
We also have a major leap to “full force of law” or for that matter, what we “owe”. Again, taking you solely on the terms you’ve presented – the law among other things, balances competing duties, that is, what we owe. So, talking about what we owe the fetus is not merely mean without talking about what we owe women, but it is ultimately meaningless. If we (as a society) have a duty to the fetus and if a woman has a duty to the fetus, we also have to talk about what duties we have to that woman, what duties that woman has to us, what duties that woman has to her self, and possibly what duties the fetus has to the woman, executed by proxy.

I’ve never met one of those women who had an abortion because “darn it, they were out of condoms and a kid would be a nuisance” that you claim (without a single citation) to be the overwhelming majority.

Maybe moot of Sayel has left an no one picks up the pro life cause, but courtesy of the Guttmacher Institute: (original source in pdf)
*74 percent of US women in 2004 reported “Having a baby would dramatically change my life” as a reason for inducing abortion
*73 percent reported “Can’t afford a baby now”
*48 percent reported “Don’t want to be a single mother or having relationship problems”
*38 percent reported Have completed my childbearing
*32 percent reported Not ready for a(nother) child† 32 36
*25 percent reported Don’t want people to know I had sex or got pregnant
*22 percent reported Don’t feel mature enough to raise a(nother) child
*14 percent reported Husband or partner wants me to have an abortion 14
*13 percent reported Possible problems affecting the health of the fetus
*12 percent reported Physical problem with my health
*6 percent reported Parents want me to have an abortion
*1 percent reported Was a victim of rape
*<0.5 percent reported Became pregnant as a result of incest
There are plenty of sub reasons an analysis and math in the full report, and my brief search didn't turn up a more recent study. There were 1160 respondents for this survey. One sub reason I didn't include (lest I include them all), but I think is relevant 2% reported not wanting to bear a child because her husband or partner was abusive.

I’d note, to add to K. Chen’s list, that every single one of the reasons for having an abortion is actually a subcategory of “Having a baby would dramatically change my life”, being a particular way in which a woman’s life would be drastically changed.
That is, her life would be changed by having the costs of going through pregnancy and raising a child when she can’t afford it, or her life would be changed by the fact that she’d now be a single mother, or her life would be changed by having people know she had sex/got pregnant (presumably in a social/family context where people would disapprove) etc.
Having a child is life changing. That’s just a fact. And any attempt to discuss child bearing or abortion while ignoring the ways in which it changes women’s lives isn’t being “objective”, it’s throwing out 90% of the relevant information.

Spearmint: And if it weren’t for Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, the Hassidim would be walking around in Kaftans, which would frankly be more awesome than their current attire. Tsar Nicholas I wanted to make his Jewish subjects where more up to date European and less “Oriental” clothing as part of his grand attempt to convert them to Orthodoxy. The Hassidim did not want to wear European clothing because the Torah says that Jews shouldn’t follow Gentile customs, which apparently includes wearing the latest Parisia fashions. Eventually a negotiated settlement was reached where Jews would dress in European clothing but would be allowed to dress in 18th century clothing.
The Lubavitchers as part of their Chabad movement to get non-Hassidic Jews to convert to Hassidism seem to ease up on the dress code a lot. Most Lubavitchers men wear trousers, a sports jacket and a button down shirt rather than the Hassidic uniform.

I’d note, to add to K. Chen’s list, that every single one of the reasons for having an abortion is actually a subcategory of “Having a baby would dramatically change my life”, being a particular way in which a woman’s life would be drastically changed.

I get your point, but just incase anyone is accidently misled about the contents of the study itself, the study looks at the reason “having a baby would dramatically change my life” assigns it three possible relevant subreasons: Would interfere with education, Would interfere with job/employment/career, Have other children or dependents. It then treats all the other things I listed in my other post as separate reasons, usually with other subreasons.

“I have found in my own experience that both ethical and legal discussions are best discussed in abstraction with a full knowledge of empirical data that either support or contradict various positions. I try to be very scientific in my intellectual life, and ethics and legal theory happen to be present in that arena.”
Ah, there’s your problem.
Did you follow the whole Rand Paul kerfluffle a couple of weeks ago? Remember the interview where Rachel Maddow kept asking him whether he thought restaurant owners ought to be allowed to turn away black customers, or businesses to fire employees in wheelchairs, and Paul just went on about how much he wanted to keep the discussion on an “intellectual” plane where he wouldn’t have to answer such messy questions? Remember how he didn’t seem to have put any thought whatsoever into how his tidy theories might affect people in the actual, physical world? Remember how nobody found this very impressive?
There’s only so far you can go with daintily-constructed little abstract thought experiments. One day you have to step out into the real world and decide whether you’re willing to strap a real woman down to a real table and force her to give birth to a real, unwanted infant against her will.
Otherwise you’re just wasting everyone’s time.
(Heh… “In my own experience.” I talked like this in my freshman year of college, too. I was such a prick.)

I would actually keep a child should I ever become pregnant because I believe that is the right thing to do, even if I was raped. The only time I would consider not carrying to term would be if my own life is in danger or the child may have a horrible quality of life.

And you’re perfectly welcome to make the decision. The problem is that you’ve created a moral scheme that obligates ever other woman to do the same. I have no problem giving blood, would gladly give bone marrow and would probably be willing to give a kidney is called on to do so. However, neither I nor are making that mandatory on everyone. Like I said, very convenient for you.

I’d note, to add to K. Chen’s list, that every single one of the reasons for having an abortion is actually a subcategory of “Having a baby would dramatically change my life”,

Actually, I think some of them are a subcategory of “my child would have a really crappy life if he was born”, f.ex. the surprisingly insightful “Don’t feel mature enough to raise a(nother) child”.

I’m not sure if there is a better response than levity when you see someone accuse someone else of being an Enemy of all Women because (s)he/it hasn’t proferred abstract organs in the course of an abstract debate.

Yes, there is a better response. The fact that you can’t think of one demonstrates yet another failure of imagination on your part. You might want to work on that.

@Sayel: When their right to do what they want their bodies means another person has to die through direct application of those rights. Those stakes make it into a public policy issue almost instantaneously.
Do you realize that you lose a significant proportion of your audience (those whom I presume you intend to influence with your writing) every time you pull that fast one. You are talking about abortion here — you have yet to demonstrate why the fetus should be considered “a person” and therefore the rest of your argument is nonsense.
Literally, IT MAKES NO SENSE.
I do not believe that you are arguing in good faith — I think you are just repeating a “talking point” that you have been given/read. My reason for thinking so is the rather rote way in which you respond to a variety of interesting questions that have been given you. And the way in which you do not respond to others.

Posted by: Will Wildman | Jun 04, 2010 at 10:38 AM
I’m not asserting that it is all luck, I’m asserting that all parts that are luck should be taken as an obligation to help those with less luck. To some degree, I also include ‘born with an aptitude for X skill/concept’ to be a form of luck. (This degree falls off as we begin to consider things like ‘born with an aptitude for not murdering people’, which I would consider sufficiently basic that no one owes anyone anything for displaying it.)

Hey, what about ‘born with an aptitude for murdering people’? Do I get any credit for *not* displaying it? Do I get a cookie? (One of those fluffy iguana ones if they’re available. If not, I’ll settle for peanut butter.)
OB Shoes: I have 5 pairs, all black. One dress pair that I wear for job interviews, weddings and funerals. Three I’m not sure the style, but basically walking shoes that look nice enough to wear at the office, that I cycle through to reduce wear and foot strain. The other is my pair of hiking boots, but the heels are so worn that they’re probably dangerous to walk in. Haven’t really decided what to do about them.
OB Death Sheep: I believe the original quote was closer to “I’m going to bed. Please don’t kill me in my sleep.” Talking about killer sheep always reminds me of a certain Monty Python sketch.
-Tommy “Born with an aptitude for not needing an abortion” Tanaka

>(That’s not an achievement, that’s a tautology.)
Iced tea. nose. keyboard.
Thanks.

Well, I am afraid I must return to being a lurker. This has been an informative experience, though I confess I am actually more convinced of my own position than I was previously
Shorter Sayel:
“You mean people have actually heard my slut-shaming-thinly-disguised-as-concern-for-the-fetus’s-rights argument before, and will not be awed into submission by my unsupported assertions or total ignorance of the real world consequences of banning abortion? Run awaaaaaay! Run awaaaay!”
The Hassidim did not want to wear European clothing because the Torah says that Jews shouldn’t follow Gentile customs, which apparently includes wearing the latest Parisian fashions.
My personal feeling is that fashion choices involving beavers are always a mistake.

>they are a tiny subset of an even bigger set of passages regarding property and the laws relating to it. And that bigger set depends, completely and totally depends, on the absolute nature of private property rights.
Miss Rand, you have a call on the courtesy phone.

I have three pairs of shoes. In theory they’re the nice shoes, the sneakers and the hiking shoes, but actually I don’t use hiking shoes that much, I bought this pair when I discovered that the geniuses who designed my sneakers put two nice air holes right in the middle of the sole. I found this out by walking through snow and wondering why my feet got wet. Yeah. Turns out they’re not great during or after rain either. My nice shoes are good with rain, or as the shoplady said : “We’re in Brittany. Of course they can take rain”. But the same shoplady told me they didn’t like snow, so I’m being a good little customer and following her advice.
Which means in practice the three pairs break down as one for dry weather, one for rainy weather and one for snow.
Dunno what I’ll do if it ever hails here…

Oh dear. It turned into one of those threads while my back was turned.
Everyone else has said everything I could say about that topic– thanks especially to Lori for fighting the good fight with civility but ironclad determination.
Just to add a personal note, it was the rape-and-incest issue that, many years ago, moved me past my youthful pro-life views. I heard so many people say they opposed abortion “except of course for rape or incest” that I began to wonder: why “of course”? If abortion is permissible in cases of rape, where the fetus is as “innocent” as any other, then why isn’t permissible for any other reason? It makes no sense– unless, waitaminute, it really is more about controlling women than preserving babies?
And any society that permits people to executed by the state has no business at all to talk about an inviolable right to life. Not, at least, the way the death penalty seems to operate, where who lives and who dies seems to depend on a lot of things besides “innocence.”
—-
The NT, at least, wasn’t actually meant to be interpreted for modern times. There was, after all, no real concept of societal progress at that time. The world, as it was, and always had been, was run more or less the same way.
Oh, I don’t know about that. The writers of the NT were clearly quite familiar with the OT, which demonstrates quite a bit of social change– you’ve got your wandering pastoralists, tribal cities, centralized kingdoms, semi-autonomous client states, sudden overthrows, exiles and returns. And different religious and familial organizations to go along with the differences in political state. I don’t think anyone who read the book with any attention would believe in a static world. In fact, that’s kind of the point: that there is a history, and a God who operates in history.
—
I have personally, and rather stupidly, spent more money this month than I should, largely on eating out and getting my nails done
So spouse and I, who are trying to save some money, decided to get out of the house for an inexpensive evening, and went downtown to the free concert in the park. It rained; the concert was halted, so we wandered into the new bookstore down the street. Thirty dollars later, it was still raining, so we dropped into the club for a drink and a snack. Twenty-five dollars later, the rain stopped and we went back to the free concert.
Now, fifty dollars or so isn’t going to make or break me. But it was still fifty dollars that I hadn’t meant to spend. And it was fifty dollars that didn’t go into the savings account or toward the debt or to the poor. We all eat the cake sometimes.
—-
See the problem with this “The poor should give a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage!” is that if nobody will give them work, they can’t get a wage.
Today’s depressing dose of poetry:
No man has hired us
With pocketed hands
And lowered faces
We stand about in open places
And shiver in unlit rooms.
Only the wind moves
Over empty fields, untilled
Where the plough rests, at an angle
To the furrow. In this land
There shall be one cigarette to two men,
To two women one half pint of bitter
Ale. In this land
No man has hired us.
Our life is unwelcome, our death
Unmentioned in ‘The Times’.
- T.S. Eliot, Chorus of the Unemployed, from “The Rock”

@hapax (ages ago, but I slept through the last few pages):

Also, I’m just really saddened by the fact that I received yet another e-mail plea for “targeted” blood donations, because a friend of a friend has hit their limit for what the hospital will provide for free.

Sorry, what? Do you mean that hospitals have a cap on how many transfusions a person can receive? I HAVE to have misinterepeted this, right?

>the POV of the fetus
Dark
Warm
Wet
Sloshy…

See the problem with this “The poor should give a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage!” is that if nobody will give them work, they can’t get a wage.

I mentioned this the cell phone thread, but it’s sort of dead and I think this is worth noting so I’ll repeat it here. It has apparently now become acceptable to simply discard the unemployed, even those who are unemployment through no fault of their own. There are companies advertising job openings that are saying flat out that they won’t even look at the resumne of anyone who is not currently working, regardless of the reason why the person is unemployed. No unemployed need apply
The current real unemployment rate is still running around 19%. Congress has once again allowed unemployment benefits to expire and the Republicans go right on saying that people are unemployed because they’re enjoying sitting around collecting a government check.

And any society that permits people to executed by the state has no business at all to talk about an inviolable right to life.

See, part of me sees the sense there, in a weird sort of way. If you’re willing to remove someone’s bodily autonomy to the extent that you can force them to suffer an acute existence failure, then it’s not that hard to leap to the conclusion that some loon’ll willingly force everyone else (and it’s always likely to be everyone else) to gestate a whole new bunch of people, if only to increase the number of potential targets. That said, however, I do find myself wondering quite what these very people who are so happy to cut it both ways would say when someone inevitably decided to remove their bodily autonomy. I’m sure we’d hear them whining at that point.

Do you mean that hospitals have a cap on how many transfusions a person can receive? I HAVE to have misinterepeted this, right?
I know. I can’t wrap my brain around it myself.
Apparently health insurance companies limit how much blood they’ll pay for, which is for most people a de facto limit on how much they’ll receive. It’s a large number (75 pints, maybe?) but not difficult to exceed with a severe chronic condition, like cancer treatment. The idea is that you’re supposed to bank your own blood in advance, but it’s not like anybody plans on getting cancer.
The alternatives are to bankrupt yourself to pay for what insurance doesn’t cover, or round up a whole bunch of people to donate blood in your name.

@hapax: The alternatives are to bankrupt yourself to pay for what insurance doesn’t cover, or round up a whole bunch of people to donate blood in your name.
I remember reading as a child in Canada about countries so uncivilized that when you went into hospital you were dependent on family members for basic necessities of life to such a degree that those not fortunate enough to have family and friends near and willing to pay for or provide for those necessities you would die.
Never thought that the country to the south of me would become like that.

Oh my freaking God.
Leads to an interesting question, though (other than how a society with a big pro-life movement and a claim to be founded on Christian values blithely puts money ahead of lives when it comes to healthcare /rant): is the cost of blood borne by health insurance the cost of the transfusion procedure, or the cost of buying blood from the people whose veins it comes from? Because you can’t be paid to give blood in Australia (hence blood ‘donation’). There are costs associated with collecting and transporting it, covered by our universal public healthcare, but I’d be interested to know how much extra cost is created by paying ‘donors’.

Sgt Pepper – No payment for donating blood here, either. You do get money for donating plasma, but that’s pretty much for research purposes, not health care.

Then what’s this I hear about poor people donating blood to get a few bucks, and some bonus anaemia? Has pop culture (The Simpsons) misled me again?

I am not an expert in this area, so I have done some brief research (i.e. a few minutes on Google.) I thought you could only get paid for plasma, but it looks like you can get paid for whole blood as well. I believe the primary means of giving blood are still non-paying entities like the Red Cross, but there appear to be some places that will buy blood and then sell it. The Federal Drug Administration has a cap on how much you can be paid for whole blood (I think it’s max $25 in cumulative value). So now I have learned something. Hooray! The day has not been a total waste.
Presumably, if free blood donations were more common, there would not be a market for the for-profit stuff, but now I’m just speculating.

You can definitely sell blood products. I have a friend who supplements her disability income that way and another who is considering starting to.

Yeah, I know I’m late to the party, because usually I avoid abortion discussions as if they were a necrotizing virus, but this stood out for me:
A fetus has brain activity, indicating, at least, that they may be a person.
Not for the first few months, they sure don’t. There’s a commonly repeated factoid about brain activity beginning at 40 days, based on a misrepresented study that wasn’t even measuring brain wave activity (i.e., neural function) in the first place. It’s typically quoted by people who will also assure you a fetus can feel pain at some ludicrously low number of weeks, which actual research does not back up. (And if that one’s not new enough for you, there’s also this one from JAMA.) From that first article:

Functional maturity of the cerebral cortex is suggested by fetal and a neonatal electroencephalographic patterns, studies of cerebral metabolism, and the behavioral development of neonates. First, intermittent electroencephalograpic bursts in both cerebral hemispheres are first seen at 20 weeks gestation; they become sustained at 22 weeks and bilaterally synchronous at 26 to 27 weeks.

Because, see, in the course of determining when and how fetuses feel pain, oddly enough, they investigated when brain wave activity occurs. Turns out there simply isn’t enough brain or nervous system development in the early weeks for a fetus to feel pain or have cortical activity with. I suspect it’s not a coincidence that the youngest surviving pre-term babies post-date that 20 week figure.
I’m a lot more sympathetic to people who want to institute first-trimester limitations on abortion, because at least they’re typically basing that on a standard of viability that fits what we know about fetal development. To be honest, if it weren’t for the hideous societal atmosphere for people considering abortion, I’d support that myself, provided there were reasonable exceptions for certain circumstances. Of course, I also support the use of RU486, and believe it should be offered to any woman reporting a rape, so I’m obviously secretly a hideous baby-killer, but, you know.
Incidentally, when I got pregnant, I did carry to term, and put the kid up for adoption, because I didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of having an abortion. Strangely, that didn’t change my ability to recognize not everyone can do that.

[[it has always seemed to me that the crux of J of N was a shift from 10 Laws and many rules to 2 Laws]]
And the crux of I of A was to 3 Laws!
=======================================
[[BTW, not all right wingers are for starving people, or torturing arabs, or building up fences.]]
The vast majority of Republican law-makers and radio “personalities” are just fine with 2 and 3, and don’t seem to mind 1 too much as long as it’s done “off-screen” (see A Schwartzenegger cutting Welfare-to_work. Do you think that WON’T result in more people starving?)
On the other hand, name just one highly visible “baby-killer”. You can’t, and that’s what made the “satire” so stupid.
===========================
Many cooments direced at the jerk Sayel have been deleted. Did she contribute **ONE** new thought to the discussion? Not that I could see.
===============================
[[The Hagaddah barely mentions Moses, who was still front and center in Exodus]]
Every Hagaddah I’ve read has the story of Exodus, with Moses front and center, as the main portion. Dayenu.
==============================
[[I'm a lot more sympathetic to people who want to institute first-trimester limitations on abortion]]
I tink even 2nd and 3rd trimesters should be totally at the discretion of the mother and her doctor. If she can’t (for WHATEVER reason) bring the fetus to term, and her doctor agrees, we should still allow her to have the abortion. Because the alternative is ghastly.

I’ve got to say, it’s interesting to see how this thread has evolved. The post pointed out that the Bible has a hell of a lot more to say about possessions and poverty than about one of the issues that most vexes large numbers of Christians, viz. sex, gay sex in particular. We then had a few pages of people pointing out that the Bible does include a handful of verses about sex, before moving on to a flamewar about the other obsession of many modern Christians, abortion.
Apart from a lightweight discussion about how many shoes one has/needs (which, to be fair, I contributed to) we seem to have nicely avoided the question posed by our host. Maybe he has received lots of direct emails in reponse; if that’s the case I look forward to hearing about them in Part III. But it has been interesting that the general response to the point that the Bible is not about the things we obsess about was to obsess about the things the Bible is not about.

I know we stopped talking about Mabus a long time ago, but did anyone else notice how (presumably, but there are Coulters and Thatchers in the world)he said that helping the poor is the equivalent of telling the truth in that it shouldn’t be mandated by law? Does Mabus not live in a country where fraud, perjury and libel are crimes, or does he think that people should be able to lie to the court, portray snake oil and industrial chemicals as medicine, and accuse him of horrific crimes with no legal consequences? What a total nutter.

Apart from a lightweight discussion about how many shoes one has/needs (which, to be fair, I contributed to) we seem to have nicely avoided the question posed by our host. Maybe he has received lots of direct emails in reponse; if that’s the case I look forward to hearing about them in Part III. But it has been interesting that the general response to the point that the Bible is not about the things we obsess about was to obsess about the things the Bible is not about.

I think that purely on the subject of poverty and what the Bible says about it, the problem is that most people here agree that they could be doing more than they currently are to help the poor, but they won’t because they don’t want to just right now. (I’m going to take a page from the Opoponax here and say we actually “need” very little, so saying “I don’t give my extra shoes to the poor because I need them” doesn’t fly. Even if it’s true for a less restrictive definition of “need”)
Those that feel confortable with this don’t feel the need to debate it, and those who are unconfortable with it don’t dare.
I guess the only people who could make a debate of this are those who disagree we should be helping the poor in the first place, and there aren’t that many of those commenting here.
We could also talk about different ways of helping I suppose.

Hospitals put a cap on the amount of blood one person can receive.
And yet, there are people willing to scream about abortions. They might have their priorities wrong.

Apart from a lightweight discussion about how many shoes one has/needs (which, to be fair, I contributed to) we seem to have nicely avoided the question posed by our host
It’s tricky to discuss something like this, because my default response is pretty much just “Word.”
For what it’s worth, here are my thoughts:
1) A strictly literal version of the Bible means that nearly everyone who might be reading this has extra shoes we’re supposed to give away, and no “But I need those!” excuses apply.
2) I’m not religious, so what the Bible says isn’t a big issue for me.
3) Fred’s right that you can’t insist on strict Biblical literalism on sexual matters and handwave everything about poverty as a metaphor without being a hypocrite.
4) You can look at matters such as the principle behind the instructions and the history of when and where they were given, and decide you can reasonably hang onto a few pairs of shoes, so long as you accept that the same questions are relevant when it comes to sex. Even gay sex. “Well, in that time and place, those statements would have referred to pederastic exploitation or ritual prostitution, and pledging myself as a loving helpmeet to my same-sex partner fulfills the spirit of what God wants for people in romantic relationships” is every bit as reasonable as “Well, in that time and place they didn’t have blizzards, and professional requirements for clothing were far different, so keeping enough coats and shoes that I can stay warm and not hurt my career, while doing some giving to charities that provide clothes and shoes for others fulfills the spirit of what God intends.”
5) Accusing Fred Clark of being “glibly dismissive” of what the Bible says is very much a sign of willful stupidity. Whether you agree with his views or not, you’d have to be deliberately obtuse to read what he wrote and conclude he was casually throwing any inconvenient Bible verse out the window.

@Sayel:
I’m not shocked at all that a country where the majority of its residents who don’t use birth control have a large amount of unwanted pregnancies. Obviously, if there was a more widespread sex education and the absurd belief that birth control is a sin was shown to be, well, absurd, we’d see a lot less unwanted pregnancies and illegal abortions.
You’re absolutely clueless about Brazil. You know absolutely nothing AT ALL. Really. Trust me on this. Or don’t trust me, and do some research on your own, you might learn something, considering the extent to which you know nothing.
I’m almost too shocked to even start to say what’s wrong with that statement, but
1) real sex ed is compulsory part of school curriculums here, not abstinence only crap (it runs into the general problems with quality of public education but so does everything else)
2) public healthcare system includes planned parenthood advice, free distribution of condoms and contraceptive pills in public hospitals
3) contraceptive pills are included in the category of drugs that are subsidized by the government so that they’re available to the general population at significantly reduced prices if you’re buying directly from drugstores (a month’s supply costs around 20 US cents).
4) only close to 5% of the population is opposed to birth control usage
5) though most of the country is catholic, brazilian catholicism is widely recognized as not dogmatic – about 80% of brazilian catholics don’t care what the church says about sex and contraception, going to 90% if you look at only catholic *women*.
6) brazilian’s program of combatting AIDS/STDs is frequently mentioned as an example of success. Universal distribution of anti-retroviral drugs is a big part of it but also, condom usage is incentivated aggressively and has been for decades.
I’m sorry that reality doesn’t fit your condescending ideas, but we’re not a country of poor ignorant catholic savages. Brazilian women have abortions because they weigh going on with a pregnancy against their current life situations and judge that having an abortion is the better, ethical decision, regardless of the legal and health risks.

Incidentally that makes me wonder about what happened to MadGastronomer. I hope she’s okay as well. I have the $$ and time to go to Seattle some time in the next few weeks and wanted to give her a heads-up.
I acted like a jerk, and have retreated to lurking until I can behave myself.* Self-imposed grounding, more or less.
Also I’m insanely busy, and typically far behind what’s being said. Thanks for the concern, though, and if you make it in, ask for me! My name’s Rebecca, and if they ask which one, say “the redhead.” (We have had multiple Rebeccas, including a General Manager, currently on sabbatical, who was sometimes mistaken for the owner.)
*That is, I was told I had acted like a jerk by enough people that I had to accept it by my own rules, even if I still felt my essential position was correct, and so I’m keeping mum until I can sort it out well enough for my own satisfaction.
Furthermore, the mothers of babies given up for adoption have been shown to suffer more psychological damage than those who aborted (there’s a site that’s been brought up on this blog before talking about this; I can’t remember the link at the moment).
I think you mean this piece. Just so it’s handy for the next time.
Aaaaaand . . . back to lurking.

What ako said, especially “I’m not religious, so what the Bible says isn’t a big issue for me.”
FWIW, I recently bought my third pair of shoes. I had dress shoes and sneakers — I bought flip-flops for my up-coming cruise.

Thanks for the link, MG. And I’ve now forgotten what the fuss was about regarding your being or not being a jerk, but I think your attitude is a very mature one.
@colorlessblue, re: Brazil: It saddens me that the more the facts come to light regarding what various countries’ stance on sex ed, birth control, etc. actually is, the more it seems like the US is one of the only remaining countries out there that actually fits the stereotypes that people so love to assume are true of non-US nations, at least on this matter.
The history books will not treat this kindly. It’s going to be interesting, looking back.

@The Right Hon’ Mouse:
I tend to think that Brazil and USA aren’t that different. Both countries are very big, have a few rich people, lots of poor people and most people in some level of middle class that goes to sucky public schools, has indoors plumbing, TVs and internet, and if you have any chance to buy private healthcare, you’ll do it. Unfortunately some people who don’t live here insist in thinking we’re a Banana Republic (*warning, TVTropes link, click at your own risk of getting stuck for hours*).
I think there’s education fail on birth control issues, but it’s more about using it wrong, in ways that cause failure, than not using it at all. For example, I’ve seen reports that in USA, around 80% of the women use birth control. Here the number is a little lower. The countries are not that different in size and population (like, USA and any european country, for example), and the estimative of the number of abortions in Brazil is close to the number of legal abortions in USA. I’m just giving it a glance and not examining in depth, but seems to me that there must be women in USA getting unwanted pregnancies while on birth control, same as here.
I also think, in the cases of not using it at all, how much of it is a woman’s choice. I think about the studies that have been coming out lately about men actively sabotaging their partners and trying to get them pregnant against their will. For example.
I know that here, historically, birth control is woman’s province and even married men would refuse to incovenience themselves with it, so rather than use a condom or pay for pills, in the 1980′s 1/3 of married women would ask doctors to get unneeded c-sections to take the opportunity to get tubal ligations. They didn’t have any other option to reduce family size and be responsible for their fertility, so they took the extreme measure and got sterilized.
In my university time, I was part of a group of students who organized sex ed events. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told, by other students in the same group with the same info that I had, giving the same public speeches I was giving, that their boyfriends pressured and coerced them into having unprotected sex (not in these words, of course they always use euphemisms and protect the boyfriends while saying it’s just too hard to tell no time after time to someone you love and is afraid of losing). One of them was virtually raped by a guy working in the same group. She consented to having protected sex and he tried to pressure her into not using a condom. After she refused, he pretended to comply, gave her alcohol and did as he wanted when she couldn’t resist. (full disclosure, this guy assaulted me too but not as far as rape, so feel free to think I’m biased about him.)

I think the proper TVTropes article I should have linked to is The Capital of Brazil is Buenos Aires.

There was an awful _Babylon 5_ episode where doctors tried to save a child’s life in the face of cultural reasons why his parents didn’t want treatment. Awful episode because the humans involved seemed exceptionally stupid, not thinking ahead at all about the consequences of their actions, and then we seemed to be expected to feel sorry for them when the consequences were bad.
But. One thing it drove home to me is that it makes *no sense* for society to say “We’re going to save this baby’s life!” by forcing the mother to bear the child to term, and then to turn around and disclaim any further responsibility.
I adopted a child from the US foster care system. It’s an ungodly mess, and what has happened to many of these children is heartbreaking. When people have children that they do not want or are too damaged to take care of, the consequences are sometimes staggeringly bad. And we as a society do not do that much to protect such children.
I love my son. I couldn’t say, on a personal level, that he should never have been born. But I really do think that his mother should not have had children, and any law that forced her to have children against her will would have been a law with a too-high human cost. Because we have shown some willingness to force people to have children, but much lower willingness to do the awful things necessary to keep the resulting children actually safe and healthy. And–this would have to be faced–you have to do awful things to protect a child whose parent is incapable of parenting, because removing a child from its parents is incredibly traumatic, and providing in-place support is incredibly hard and not necessarily feasible.
If abortion is a necessary tool for “every child a wanted child” then I’m in favor of it, because unwanted children are a source of extraordinary misery and horror, for the child and for those around him or her.
I will happily work shoulder to shoulder with pro-life believers as long as they are working to make children’s lives better; but losing all concern for the child at birth is wicked nonsense. If your laws are the only reason a child got born, “sucks to be you” is not an acceptable response to their misery.

“Well, in that time and place they didn’t have blizzards, and professional requirements for clothing were far different,
And people who really did only have one set of clothing were rather more common. While there are still plenty of poor in modern industrialized countries without enough clothing that fits and is in good repair, it’s usually not literally only one set (though that happens, too, alas).
That having been said, this is a great time to mention to people that if they have any clothing that doesn’t fit right or they don’t like anymore that’s in good repair, there’s a lot of places one can donate it. I actually have a pile of that to go through myself. Some of the possible donatees: Salvation Army, Goodwill, Big Brother Big Sister (they sell it for funds), a local homeless shelter, a local abuse shelter, or if it’s business-appropriate women’s clothing you never really wore, there’s always Dress for Success. Worn clothing’s a bit less easy to find a place to reuse, but you could always contact your local animal shelter and see if they want it (some use it to line cages) or try a community center to see if they might want scraps for crafting. (Or if you’re interested in crafting yourself, you can use it for quilts, pillow stuffing, and braided rugs.)
@MG I’m glad you’re doing okay, but I’m sorry again for contributing to the lurkdom.

And, uh. I have no pants. My last pair just ripped at the seams, right now. I can afford to buy pants, but the shopping experience is so de-humanizing and tear-inducing that I’ve been avoiding it until now, and now I don’t have pants that I can wear to go out to shop for pants.
I probably should learn from this and buy new shoes too, before this part follows the example of the pants. (Shoe-shopping makes me angry instead of depressed, so it’s better than pants.)
(I mean, trousers.)

@MG I’m glad you’re doing okay, but I’m sorry again for contributing to the lurkdom.
Don’t be. It appears to have been necessary. Plus, it kept me out of the abortion discussion this time around, which is probably better for my blood pressure.

That having been said, this is a great time to mention to people that if they have any clothing that doesn’t fit right or they don’t like anymore that’s in good repair, there’s a lot of places one can donate it.
Given our discussions here about the need for a telephone in order to get a job — people forget just how expensive it is to furnish the simplest of homes. The homeless, people who have fled abusive relationships and others in such circumstances don’t even have a knife and a fork. They own no dish towels or linen. They haven’t even a chair to sit on. People who come from a cultural background that associates starting out with lavish weddings where there is a gift registry don’t get it that there are people in the world who don’t get a truck load of possessions when they strike out on their own.
When my mother-in-law died we found drawers filled with underwear that still had the price tags on them. This is, apparently, not uncommon among women who grew up in the depression or in poverty. Indeed, most of the clothes in her closet and her linen had never been used. I like to think of how nice it was for the women at the shelter we donated things to, to get underwear that that no other person had ever used.

@spinetingler:
LOL
@colorlessblue:
I’m kind of envisioning you as Lord Shiva trampling the head of the Dwarf of Ignorance into the ground with the power of FACTS ABOUT THE WORLD. Just so you know.
@MG:
We said you were being a jerk in that one thread, not that you should lurk moar! Come back, we miss you!
@Sayel:
You should feel free to lurk moar, though.

@Spearmint: I LOLed. XD

I know Sayel’s gone back to lurking, but there was TOO MUCH to respond to last night and it took me this long just to finish!!
Sayel: I also consider person A’s right to life so paramount that governmental prohibitions and penalties should exist against person B’s severing the tether.
Why? You need to establish that this person’s right to life is so paramount as to outweigh everything else. THIS IS KEY. (See my post from last Friday night as to why I believe it’s not.)
This point is KEY, the whole enchilada, and if you don’t have persuasive argument as to WHY you believe one person’s right to life outweighs even the basic right to bodily integrity plus the possibility of harm both physical, psychological, and economic for both potential mother and theoretical child, then your argument can be reduced to “I think abortion should be illegal because I think it should be illegal.”
Anyway, I stand by what I said in that earlier post, but I’ll try to re-phrase it in respect to the point you are emphasizing. Your claim that if person B is connected to person A and separating them would result in the death of person A then person B has no right to deny person A that connection. Let’s forget about the whole sci-fi connection tube business and get real simple.
There’s a child in an impoverished country somewhere who desperately needs a special operation. Transportation and medical bills will come to a hundred thousand dollars. If YOU don’t pay it, then he’ll die.
Should you be legally required to cough up $100,000?
If you’re not willing to give up mere money, then why are you requiring a subset of the population to remain for months in an extremely intrusive, insanely expensive*, physically taxing**, health-endangering*** and possibly even life-threatening**** condition?
* the expense of: maternity clothes, pre-natal care, delivery care, time lost from work, loss of clients during your absence if you’re self-employed, loss of perceived reliability by your (clients/co-workers/boss), possible loss of job (sure it’s illegal but it happens)…
** the extremely high likelihood of: loss of calicium in bones and teeth, loss of mobility, back-aches, lack of sleep due to backaches, swollen feet, hemorrhoids, permanent adbominal scars, permanent weight gain, fatigue, nausea, constipation, painful varicose veins, anemia…
*** the potential for: post-natal depression that could become permanent, painful sciatic nerve damage that could result in life-long pain, kidney damage, hypertention, fistula resulting in permanent urinary and/or fecal incontinence…
**** the risk of death from: gestational diabetes, gestational diabetes that turns into type 1 diabetes mellitus, gastroparesis, preeclampsia, eclampsia, stroke, placental rupture…
A womb is not a theoretical place you can theoretically use without very non-theoretical consequences. I don’t think enough people realize the extent of those consequences.
=============================

You invite someone in need of shelter to temporarily live in your home. Once he’s their you discover that you are deathly allergic to something about him and if he stays you’re going to go into anaphylactic shock and die. Are there any circumstances under which you are obligated to allow that person to remain in your home?

Good for you (and I’m giving you the big benefit of the doubt that, once faced with a real situation, you really would make an actual commitment to that level of self-sacrifice, especially considering that in this thought experiment, you’re probably going to die.)
But: what does the initial invitation has to do with anything? – either this other being has a claim on you to the degree that it’s endangering your life, or it doesn’t.
(Actually, I know why the initial invitation gets emphasized. I’m not saying this is why Sayel did it, but among far too many in the Right-to-Life leadership – and remember, I used to be an RtL – it’s because of a burning opposition to any kind of sexuality disconnected from purposeful procreation. It’s still all about a creepy obsession with teh sex.)
Anyway. The question isn’t whether you’d let the person stay – that is YOUR CHOICE. (Remember: Pro-CHOICE, not “pro-abortion”.) The real question is whether you, as the district attorney, should be able to bring murder charges against the allergic homeowner person who chose to evict unwanted or wanted-but-hazardous guest.
=============================
and then on a whim …* you decide to kick them out into a howling storm
Ah ha. So motivation counts, and the right to life is no longer “paramount” (your word). Denying the underlying basis of your argument is usually a sign of trying to justify a pre-decided conclusion. You may not even be aware that you’re doing this, but you should rethink this one. I’ll start:
Which is it?
1. Person A is a person whom it is impermissible to kill under any circumstances, or
2. Person A is a person whom it is OK to kill so long as it’s not on a “whim”.
You now seem to be suggesting the latter. (That’s not really the status of a “person” under the law in any country I can think of, so maybe we’re not talking about a “person”? But that’s a different point than the one under discussion.)
The opposite of a whim is a long-deliberated good reason. What qualifies as “long-deliberated”? What qualifies as a “good reason”? And WHO DECIDES what defines “long” and “good”?
Does the government decide? Because that’s the way it works in the US today. And right now there are a lot of states where the definition of “long” is “as long as it takes to make it impossible” and “good” is “having enough money to take multiple days off to travel to a state that actually obeys the spirit of current Constitutional law.”
And at the risk of opening a whole new can of worms, why do we think that the government** has ever been any good at making ethical judgments? This is the same government that has decided to go to war repeatedly despite the sure knowledge that civilians and other innocents would die as a consequence. This is the same government that permitted slavery until 1863, and de-facto slavery for decades more. This is the same government that engaged in genocide against the indigenous North Americans, and encouraged civilians to do the same.
OTOH, this is the same government that stood by and did NOT use its insanely large military to prevent the murder of millions in Rwanda, or East Timor, or Guatamala… actually, they covertly assisted the side that was doing the slaughtering in that last one, but you get my point.
* The whole quote was “and then on a whim, (or, sadly, in real cases, saw the gender of) you decide to kick them out into a howling storm which was just confusing because it injected into the “thought experiment” yet another undefined element (feminism).)
** And don’t anyone dare question my patriotism for mentioning these things. I know the US government has also done wonderful things and I am incredibly proud to be a citizen of my country. I was born in the Constitution state, grew up in the Cradle of Libery and now live in the Land of Lincoln, and anyone who says I’m not a “real American” can kiss my patriotic …
=============================
Jeff: I think even 2nd and 3rd trimesters should be totally at the discretion of the mother and her doctor. If she can’t (for WHATEVER reason) bring the fetus to term, and her doctor agrees, we should still allow her to have the abortion. Because the alternative is ghastly.
Exactly. Despite the efforts to convince us otherwise by the people ultimately resposible for the murders of Barnett Slepian, David Gunn, John Britton and George Tiller, doctors do NOT perform late abortions except in extreme circumstances and women do NOT elect to have such an extreme and often dangerous procedure without strong cause. And the consequences of assigning the right to choose one to anyone other than the mother with the counsel of her doctor is, indeed, ghastly. (I’d have to either break Godwin’s Law or cite (bleh) Margaret Atwood to go into detail as to why.)
=============================
Sgt Pepper: we seem to have nicely avoided the question posed by our host
The reason I was talking about it was because my struggle with the question paralleled Fred’s struggle with usury: I thought that my religious/ethical code expressly forbade abortion, but that was because I was concentrating on some of it “Do Not Kill.” to the exclusion of the whole (motes and beams, he who is without sin, charity for all, etc.).
Plus, the whole “YOU are not allowed to have an abortion (my daughter is merely having an emergency D&C.)” part, and the “Rules for Other People” thing.

Ouch. I just saw how long that was. Apologies for abusing Fred’s space if that breaks posting protocol.

@Saffi: This may appear to be the quirkiest thing to pull out of your long posting so before I quote it let me say that I found the post interesting and that you made very good points. And kept your temper far better than I have at points.
On to the quirky thing to pull out or cite (bleh) Margaret Atwood to go into detail as to why
I have mine own reasons for disliking Atwood — I am interesting in the reason for your bleh. Was it about Atwood or just the way that one book keeps coming up in conversation?

There’s also the small matter of the Bible being a pasted-together, repeatedly retranslated and mistranslated, self-contradictory amalgam of myths shared between illiterate desert-dwellers thousands of years ago. Why would you even TRY to live your life in accordance with such a piece of junk?

Sayel and her impenetrable legalese have run away now, but:
Sayel said:

…I keep coming back to the fact that these testimonies very rarely talk about the POV of the fetus.

The vast majority of abortions are performed when the offspring is a collection of dividing cells (blastocyst, or similar). Something that hasn’t even developed a brainstem doesn’t have a point of view, and projecting one onto it isn’t very “scientific”.
Or, what tls said.
Of course, Sayel’s claim that she’s just trying to be “scientific” is a load of steaming bullshit anyway, considering that science is based on the observation of reality. Insisting on arguing in purely abstract terms while blissfully ignoring the real world is, if anything, anti-scientific.
Amaryllis said:

Just to add a personal note, it was the rape-and-incest issue that, many years ago, moved me past my youthful pro-life views. I heard so many people say they opposed abortion “except of course for rape or incest” that I began to wonder: why “of course”? If abortion is permissible in cases of rape, where the fetus is as “innocent” as any other, then why isn’t permissible for any other reason? It makes no sense– unless, waitaminute, it really is more about controlling women than preserving babies?

Something else: exactly how is the “rape exception” supposed to work? Do you have to wait for a rape trial and conviction? What if someone failed to get a rape kit done (easily plausible, especially if the victim is young and ignorant)? What if the victim fears that nobody would believe her anyway (which fear, unfortunately, is anything but unfounded) and doesn’t want public drama to compound her private anguish? Anti-choicers are always silent on this question, which makes me believe that they’re not really interested in implementing any kind of working exception; they just say they are as a sop to public opinion.

Ouch. I just saw how long that was. Apologies for abusing Fred’s space if that breaks posting protocol.

Posting protocol here is “Don’t use italics if you can’t close them.” That’s about it.

@Spearmint: I can’t STOP LOLing. It’s embarrassing because I’m in public. But thanks, I needed a laugh.
Oh, I have PANTS now!

There’s also the small matter of the Bible being a pasted-together,

So Bruce Barnes and the Bible are both pastede on yay?

[[There was an awful _Babylon 5_ episode]]
Not just one. I saw about 3 before I gave up.
=========================
[[Plus, it kept me out of the abortion discussion this time around, which is probably better for my blood pressure.]]
That was annoyingly stupid. What a waste of perfectly good pixels.
(If I contributed to the lurkerdom, I’m truly sorry. I can be a jerk at the best of times, and when I post here, it’s not always the best of times.)
==========================
[[There's also the small matter of the Bible being a pasted-together, repeatedly retranslated and mistranslated, self-contradictory amalgam of myths shared between illiterate desert-dwellers thousands of years ago]]
J, is that you?
=============================
[[Oh, I have PANTS now!]]
And there was much rejoicing!

Furthermore, the mothers of babies given up for adoption have been shown to suffer more psychological damage than those who aborted (there’s a site that’s been brought up on this blog before talking about this; I can’t remember the link at the moment).

I feel like I need to comment on this. I’m absolutely not trying to minimize the difficulties that women can experience carrying a child to term and giving it up for adoption. I think it’s unconscionable that anti-choice people talk about adoption as if it were a simple fix-all. It can be very difficult and no one has the right to tell someone else that she should take that on.
That said, there’s a strong selection bias in these stories. Women who gave up a child and are OK with it don’t write articles or spend time on the internet talking about how fine they are. It’s the same thing you find with adoptees. People like me who were adopted and are fine with it don’t tend to talk about it all that much. As I’ve said before you really can’t get a big crowd to show up and wave signs that say. “We’re here, we’re adopted and we’re fine, thanks”.
I say this because I wouldn’t want someone voluntarily considering adoption to be scared off by the horror stories. It can be very difficult and anyone considering it needs to understand that, but she also knows needs to know that if the choice is freely made it can be a good thing.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

And there was much rejoicing!
Well, I’m still wearing the ripped ones.
*shifty eyes*

@MadG-
It was certainly not my intention to send you into lurk-dom.

There’s also the small matter of the Bible being a pasted-together, repeatedly retranslated and mistranslated, self-contradictory amalgam of myths shared between illiterate desert-dwellers thousands of years ago.
I don’t think any Christian or Jew who has studied their Scriptures seriously and honestly would disagree with that.
Why would you even TRY to live your life in accordance with such a piece of junk?
Because those illiterate desert-dwellers were just as human as I, with all the same joys and sorrows and hopes and fears, and through dumb luck or Divine Grace managed in those myths, stories, and poems to say something about the profoundly self-contradictory human condition and our place in the universe that still, through all the mistranslations and accretions, manages to echo and inspire hundreds of millions of people over thousands of years?
I mean, even if it doesn’t have that same impact on you (and I don’t see why it should, no work of art works for everybody), it’s certainly worth thinking about seriously, just for the impact that these writings have had on our society even today.
Although, personally, I’m more likely to spend this particular afternoon reading the new Lee and Miller {squee!} than Luke and Matthew. And I’m likely to pick up a few pointers on how to live my life there, too.

mmy:
The “bleh” was more about the cliché of referencing The Handmaiden’s Tale. It’s almost a corollary to Godwin’s law when it comes to discussions on reproductive rights: the ultra-extreme case that can’t help but insult somebody, and which describes a society that we (in the western world, at least) are nowhere near. Yet.
Plus, the fact that it’s a piece of fiction muddies the logic if you’re not careful.

Something that hasn’t even developed a brainstem doesn’t have a point of view, and projecting one onto it isn’t very “scientific”.
Ow. I was just reminded of that (hopefully there’s only the one) treacly song from the POV of an aborted fetus. Ow, ow, ow.
So to eradicate that
Oh, I have PANTS now!
One of Cartoon Network’s more amusing filler bits was a meeting where the Evil League of Evil was discussing what they *really* want: one tights-clad villain exclaimed plaintively “I’d just like some pants! A simple pair of pants! Is that too much to ask?”

“I’d just like some pants! A simple pair of pants! Is that too much to ask?”
YES! I’m joining that League. Sometimes it feels like it’s too much to ask. Last time I tried to buy pants I heard people outside the room where I was trying them on snickering “Why do they even try after Size ___? They just don’t look good.”
Today the first one I tried fit, so I’m happy, but then I’m taking diet pills and not eating normal. =/

What I usually do is I know I’m between a size X and Y and I just grab pants of Y and leave. Being round (for varying values of such) may make shopping quick, but that doesn’t mean it’s nice, especially when one is at the age where primping WOULD be kind of fun instead of Just That Thing All Your Friends Do.
Oh well.

@colorlessblue: I assume that all those snickering people are wearing size 2? And are about 20? Yes, I thought so.
I sympathize. I haven’t worn size 2 since I was 2 (if then) and I’m not a huge person, just short-waisted and on the dumpy side. I can’t figure out why clothing is not made to flatter anyone but models.

Reminds me of the Futurama “Tales of Interest” episode where all these video game characters invade Earth for quarters so they can all do their laundry.

Being as I’m male, men’s clothing is ridiculously simple. Grab a shirt that looks like it’ll fit, grab a pair of pants of size this, walk out, pay.
Whether it actually fits well when you get home is another matter, but meh.

Yeah, unfortunately that’s not an option for women. Thanks to different cuts and different standards used by various brands, I fit into at least three distinct sizes of pants, at least that many in skirts, and even more in tops.

YES! I’m joining that League. Sometimes it feels like it’s too much to ask. Last time I tried to buy pants I heard people outside the room where I was trying them on snickering “Why do they even try after Size ___? They just don’t look good.”
I hate that attitude. It’s like there’s no good choices – if you try to wear something nice, it’s “Why do they even bother?” and if you go for stuff that’s easy to find in your size, it’s taken as confirmation of every “Icky fat slob!” idea out there.
Same thing happens with food – get a slice of pizza, and it’s “Oh, you fat pig.” Have a diet soda, and it’s “Why are you even bothering?”
I spent ages afraid to hit women’s plus-sized stores, but when I finally hit the point where I both needed well-fitting professional clothes and was having trouble squeezing into the upper end of what they carried at normal stores (mostly 14-16 at the stores I could find), I went to Catherine’s.
And not only was it nice to find a good selection of clothes that fit, it was great to not get any sneers or eye-rolls while shopping. Everyone acted like it made sense for me to want decent clothes and to look reasonably good in them, despite being fat.

Being as I’m male, men’s clothing is ridiculously simple. Grab a shirt that looks like it’ll fit, grab a pair of pants of size this, walk out, pay.
Nice if you’re built like a normal person. My waist is pretty low, so trousers are always way too long for me. Then my shirts just about meet them, so when i sit down or bend over, the world gets a good view of my ample buttocks. I’ve been wearing jackets on my bike to keep covered, not sure what I’ll do when it gets too hot for that.
And don’t get me started on shoes. My feet are…. duck feet. Rather than the indented ovals shoes are made for, I have a pair of trapezia. Shorter and wider than your human feet. Sandals are great because my toes can stick out at the edges. Most boots are not that bad. Sneakers I need to get a few sizes too long in order to get the width. So, clown shoes on duck feet. Yuch.
I’ve recently started buying shirts from the big’n'tall section of the store. It does amuse me that at 5’8 I’m buying tall people clothes.
Anyway, point is that man shopping is not as easy for all of us.

“Christendom is a boring version of Sodom and Gomorrah” -mountainguy
Amen.

@ pepito
Duck feet – I’ve referred to mine as horseshoes. Or pony shoes, given that I fit in the kiddy size range.
It sure limits my choices, though.
Two pair of athletic shoes for workdays.
Older pair(s) for weekends when I need shoes.
Flipflops for the rest of the time (if it isn’t raining, well below freezing, or at least an inch of snow is on the ground)
Two pairs of girls’ Mary Janes (one black, one navy) bought for dress shoes (they’ll be going in a dropbox because they’re not fitting well)

It was certainly not my intention to send you into lurk-dom.
I know. It was my choice, in accordance with my principles. I’m perfectly ok with it. I hope you will be, too. I’ll be back, eventually, but if I can’t keep my temper and discourse in a way that doesn’t piss off multiple people I respect, then whether I’m right or wrong, it’s time for me to step back for a bit.
Please, don’t anybody worry about it. It’s ok, really.

It’s almost a corollary to Godwin’s law when it comes to discussions on reproductive rights: the ultra-extreme case that can’t help but insult somebody, and which describes a society that we (in the western world, at least) are nowhere near. Yet.

I’m not familiar with that particular rhetorical use of Atwood’s novel. I have sometimes used it as the ultimate end-game of theocracy in general. However, the novel is not really suited for that because its focus is on the status of women in such a society. I was expecting scenes of gays and suspected gays being herded into cattle cars for a Final Solution, although that would be too obvious of a scenario.

I too have non-standard feet. To this date, I haven’t found a pair of shoes that fits properly — especially since most shoe stores either cater specifically to women, or to men who are much richer than I am

American stores seem to be in denial about the existence of short, skinny men. Shirts with a collar under 16″ and pants with a waist under 30″ seem about as common as bird teeth. Nothing a belt can’t fix to some degree, but it’s annoying. Suit jackets are just a mess unless I look for boy’s sizes… or so I was told some years ago; I don’t shop for clothes all that much.
As for shoes, I have one old pair of sneakers that I should replace soon since I don’t even remember when I bought it and the sole’s nearly worn through. And a pair or two of horribly uncomfortable dress shoes that either need breaking in or some foam glued around the top. Bony ankles do not mix well with stiff leather. If I didn’t need them for interviews and such, I’d be tempted to just throw them over a phone line and forget about it. Well, if they had laces.

When I was trying to make Christanity work for me, I read the Bible.
I was stunned by the misogyny in it. I asked various pastors about it and they- all men- dismissed it.
I eventually decided I could not work with a god that was so cruel to my sex/gender. So: reading the Bible actually drove me away from Judeo-Christian religion… but only because I took it seriously, unlike all th3e people who sought to dismiss aspects of Scripture that they, personally, found inconvenient.

I was expecting scenes of gays and suspected gays being herded into cattle cars for a Final Solution, although that would be too obvious of a scenario.
If I recall, gay men were either herded off to “the Colonies” to die of radiation poisoning or executed and then left hanging in public with a purple sign, so everyone would see their corpses and know what they were killed for. Which is about as close as you can get without directly copying thing Nazis.
(As much as I can judge from the limited focus of the novel, the society seemed to be less concerned with lesbians – so long as they could be coerced into providing sexual/reproductive services to men, lesbians were allowed to live. They could even obtain marginally-acceptable social status as handmaidens, although were presumably expected to keep their hands off other women if they did so. It was only the women who couldn’t be threatened into obedience who were shipped off or killed.)

ShifterCat,

The vast majority of abortions are performed when the offspring is a collection of dividing cells (blastocyst, or similar). Something that hasn’t even developed a brainstem doesn’t have a point of view, and projecting one onto it isn’t very “scientific”.

Chances are good, in fact, that the fetus doesn’t have a point of view until birth. Having the proper anatomy for consciousness is necessary but not sufficient; anesthetized adult humans have perfectly formed brains but, for the moment, those brains aren’t doing the point-of-view thing. (Which is good, otherwise open-heart surgery would be an unconscionable act of torture.)
Available evidence, such as it is, suggests that even late-term fetuses are effectively under heavy sedation, thanks to a combination of low oxygen levels, neuroinhibiting and sleep-inducing hormones, and the warmth of the womb. During birth the brain effectively “boots up” as oxygen levels rise, skin thermoreceptors pick up sensations of cold, and excitatory hormones flood the brain. That’s probably the first point at which the baby can be said to become aware. (Doesn’t mean it doesn’t respond to stimuli in some fashion before that point, of course, but so do drugged humans and any animal more advanced than a sponge.)
Lori,

That said, there’s a strong selection bias in these stories. Women who gave up a child and are OK with it don’t write articles or spend time on the internet talking about how fine they are. It’s the same thing you find with adoptees.

Even more so, I imagine, since a woman who actually admits to giving up a child and being OK with that is likely to be condemned as selfish and wicked. Who wants to bring that down on herself?

This is a complete topic wrench, but I want to signal-boost a PSA from a former Slacktivite.
Basically, Yahoo wants to create its own new social network, by sharing the information of its existing email userbase without prior permission. If you use Yahoo mail and aren’t OK with that, you need to opt out– this article explains how. (You may have to scroll down to see the text; I did, but that might just be my wonky old Ubuntu-running hardware. Also, the second step of the process already seems to be different– I had to go to profiles.yahoo.com/settings, instead of profiles.yahoo.com/settings/permissions, and there was a pop-up with boxes I had to clear before going on to delete my profile.)

Even more so, I imagine, since a woman who actually admits to giving up a child and being OK with that is likely to be condemned as selfish and wicked. Who wants to bring that down on herself?
Yeah, I don’t run into that much, but anyone who wants to pull that on me I will simply tell to fuck off. I did the right thing. I was 19, piss-poor, had recently left an emotionally abusive relationship, the pregnancy was almost certainly due to being coerced (via guilt, mainly) to screwing without a condom given timing, and, oh yeah, I didn’t know if I even wanted to have kids anyhow. (The answer turned out to be “no”.) Having grown up with a mother who got pregnant accidentally, got married to my father thanks to pressure from both sets of parents, divorced when I was 4 because she and my father are simply not compatible, and then took it out on me my entire life, I was sure as fuck not going to repeat her mistake. But I didn’t feel right having an abortion, which left adoption.
I occasionally wonder if my biological son grew up happily, but the couple who adopted him seemed like good people (private adoption with the help of an attorney friend of my father) who really, really, really wanted a kid; they’d been trying for like 10 years and had had a previous adoption fall through when the mother changed her mind, and people who want kids that badly probably are at least more likely to be good parents. I’m almost certain they were better parents than I would’ve been. I’m not going to say I never had any doubts or that it was an easy decision, especially given my age, but the one thing I am sure it was not was “selfish”; I gave the kid a chance to be raised by people who wanted him and who could afford to raise a kid.

Thanks, interleaper! I’ve passed it on.

@Anton Mates: Huh, that’s interesting. Have you got a cite? Not that I don’t believe you, I’d just like to have the info at my fingertips.

Ruby, if you are around anywhere — I just read your incisive review/commentary/analysis of Babylon Rising Chapter 14 (I am still catching up on things after mom) and just about bust a gut laughing.

The snark center of my brain supplies the following rebuttal to Sayel: If Terrorist A kidnaps Physician B, and says “I want an abortion. Do it or I blow up Los Angeles with a nuclear weapon,” is Physician B justified in performing an abortion? In refusing? We’ll assume for the sake of argument that there is a nuclear bomb, that it will go off if the doctor doesn’t perform the abortion, and that it won’t explode if he does, that he has no opportunity to escape or resist even though his captor is lying motionless on a table while he tampers with her organs with sharp steel, that Los Angeles contains at least ten righteous men, and that the doctor knows all this with total certainty.

Consider the following case:…

I think I made a comment a little while back in this thread (though possibly in the last TF thread) about the Anglican/Episcopal church thing, and in particular that there is only one Episcopal Church, the US (Anglican) Church. However, I have since learned this was wrong, and in fact there are several Episcopal Churches that are part of the Anglican Communion. While most of these are in more-or-less American-dominated areas (thus making it likely that Americans essentially founded the church), the Spanish and Scottish churches are of course not, and I would guess predate the foundation of the Episcopal Church USA.
(As a side note, the Scottish Episcopal Church must be in a difficult position, as they are the representative of the Established church in a different region of the country, while themselves not being established, and in fact located in a country with an Established church quite hostile to Anglican doctrine, and traditionally opposed to the region in which the Episcopal church is Established)

ShifterCat,

Huh, that’s interesting. Have you got a cite?

David Mellor and Tamara Diesch at NZ’s Massey University have (among others) written a number of papers on the subject. Here’s one that’s not behind a paywall. It’s a little more focused on nonhuman fetuses (livestock, mostly) than some of their other papers, but since almost all the actual data’s based off animal research anyway, IMO it’s the best we have to go on.
If you throw “fetal + consciousness + pain” or something into Google Scholar you’ll find some other relevant papers within the first twenty hits or so. To be fair, you’ll also find those of people arguing on the other side, but I tend to think their arguments don’t really knock down Mellor & Diesch’s central point. Basically, the pain-before-birth camp is saying, “late-term fetuses react to unpleasant stimuli in the following ways, and have the anatomical structures necessary to feel pain,” and the no-pain-before-birth camp is saying, “yes, but they also react to neutral stimuli in similar ways, and they don’t have the necessary neural activity to feel pain, both of which are closely analogous to the case of a mature organism that’s under sedation.”
Of course, none of this is proof, and someone might argue that we ought to give fetuses the benefit of the doubt on pain sensitivity and awareness and whatever other mental properties we consider germane to personhood. But unless they’re willing to do that for, say, a cat or dog–which has markers of consciousness a hell of a lot more obvious than those of any fetus–I’m not much moved by that argument.
(And yes, I know that there are arguments both for and against abortion rights that don’t depend on the personhood question at all. I find it very important to forming my opinion, though.)

truth is life: “As a side note, the Scottish Episcopal Church must be in a difficult position”
They get by. So do the English Presbyterians, of whom there are also not a few (my best friend at school was one). Both communities tend to be guided by grown ups, so they work together when it makes sense and avoid flicking ink pellets at one another.

@interleaper: Thanks for the link. That makes me so angry. I couldn’t believe Google was so stupid when they did it to Google Buzz, after seeing last year’s controversy about Facebook, and can believe even less that Yahoo is being this stupider now.

*pops head up for a brief instant from amidst the moving chaos*
Let me tell you, there is NOTHING like being forced to pack up all your possessions to move them cross-country to make you realize just how much needless stuff you have accumulated. Stuff that you really should spend time finding a home for with someone who actually does need it, but since time is what you have a dearth of goes to Goodwill or the dump.
(cjmr’s husband and the seedlings and I are moving to MA this summer. Once we find a house there. I probably won’t resurface for good until September or so.)
*goes off to find something else to clean or pack*

Dammit, let me try that again.
Consider the following case…

My family has been to this amusement park a few times, and on a good percentage of those trips, we’ve found that there is a Christian event going on at the park that weekend. Most recently, one of the guest performers in the park was a ventriloquist who used adults in the audience for a gag version of American Idol – they mimed a comically dramatic version of “Jesus Loves Me.” Is that song denomination-specific? My wife never heard it during her many years of Catholic school. Even stranger, to me, is that when I tell people that we’ve been to that already, they almost always ask if we’ve ever been . All this gives the impression that we’ve stumbled upon an American Mecca.

Oops. Let’s hope this works…

While I think “The Handmaid’s Tale” is excellent, I would never use a novel to argue a political point (unless my point was specifically about the author’s mind or opinions), and I wouldn’t really respect the debating of anyone who did.
But yeah, Tonio, there’s a scene where Offred sees the hanged corpses of gay men.

Thanks for the reminders about the novel. I read the book and then saw the movie, so the latter stayed more in my memory, such as the TV scenes of the “tribe of Ham” and Robert Duvall siring a child with all the passion of having having a wart removed.

Oh, and with the fashion store customers sneering at the overweight – where the hell do they get off? Have their minds really not progressed past the primary school level of “ha ha, YOU’RE FAT!”? Reminds me of the person mentioned a few threads back who was upset that they no longer could gloat over people paying with food stamps.
I don’t like shopping either, despite not having problems finding stuff my size. When the shop is fairly empty, it’s all right. Otherwise, it’s a bleeding hassle.

Jason and Lucia, yep. I think the minimum a woman could get by with in a dress-up job would be four pairs of shoes, something that works with a skirt and something that works with pants, in both black and brown. And those are only work shoes. That doesn’t count sneakers, hiking boots, flip-flops, etc.
(In theory, my job is “business casual” enough that I could get away with khakis and a polo shirt every day, if I could *find* a fricking pair of khakis in my size.)

Another Chris: that was the clerks, not just customers. I’m getting more and more convinced that we’re going through a reverse vanity sizing movement here, where clothes that are smaller get labelled as big sizes. Like, I have medium shirts from years ago that still fit, but nowadays extra-large are tight. I’ve compared notes with a cousin who buys in the same store (they have a more classic, less fashion-crazed style that we both like) and she says the same, except she’s tiny, and went from extra-small to medium. Plus there’s a number of stores that’ll tell me they just decided to “work with small and medium only”.
It scares me that Brazil might be going the same way as Argentina, where things got so extreme they had to make a law against microsizing.
Officials wielding tape-measures were unleashed on the glitzy shopping malls of Buenos Aires Province last month to enforce the new “law of sizes”. The legislation, which came into effect in December, stipulates that fashion retailers must stock a full range of clothing sizes for women, roughly equivalent to UK sizes 10-20.

Just to chime in briefly on the fashion thing, I worked for some years at a ladies’ clothing store, and not one of my co-workers made nasty remarks about a customer’s weight. Occasionally we snarked about their behaviour, but we were careful to do that out of earshot.
The Argentina law is just nuts. Not the law itself, but the fact that they had to pass it.

Clerks?
That’s even worse.

Pepito: For me the hardest thing to buy is footware. My feet are small and wide and a lot of stores really do not carry footware for men with small and wide feet. Dress shoes that won’t crush my feet are especially hard to find. I wonder if you could create a chain of clothing stores aimed at small men, say men 5’6″ and bellow, a sort of a parallel to the Big and Tall stores. Some really short men have been known to buy clothes in the boy’s section.

To clarify: I’m not saying I don’t believe you, colorlessblue. I just wanted to express my displeasure, as an ex-clothes clerk, at the unprofessionalism of the ones you ran into.

I occasionally wonder if my biological son grew up happily

Almost certainly. I’ve met many of other adoptees over the years. There are a lot of us and like other semi-invisible groups we seem to have a knack for finding each other. The vast majority of them were happy people with good family relationships. Like you said, when people work that hard to get a child it’s because they really want to be parents. Also, the psych testing and home studies done for a responsible adoption weed out the nuts pretty effectively.
I’ll say again something that I’ve said here at least once before—I would hate to think that either of my bio parents ever felt guilty for giving me up. They did the right thing and I hope they know that and are at peace with it.

I wonder if you could create a chain of clothing stores aimed at small men, say men 5’6″ and bellow

And now for an obscure joke due to that height and spelling mistake…
Are you sure your name isn’t John Bigman Jones?

Talking about clothing sizes –
I’m 6’4″ and 300+ lbs. I have a terrible time buying “off the rack” unless it’s a Big & Tall place, and those aren’t cheap. Which is why I’ve never been tempted to look at the clothes available at Family Dollar and Dollar General – I just assume they’ll have nothing that fits me. Has anyone ever bought any clothes from those places? Did they fall apart in the first week, or no?

Anton,
Is that heavy sedation a 24/7 thing? Because most women in late stages of pregnancy experience periods (sometimes for hours) when their fetus is very active and kicking.

I read the article on Jesurgislac’s web site about opting out of Yahoo group sharing. One problem I ran into: doing the first step (“To opt-out of the new program, go to http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/updates and uncheck the box next to Share My Updates.”) works out fine.
However, the second step (In addition, to opt out of sharing authorized by your friends, you need to go to http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/permissions, and uncheck “Allow my connections to share my information labeled ‘My Connections’ with third-party applications.”) doesn’t work at all. As soon as you go to the link, a new window pops up saying, “Get started on sharing your information” and you can’t even access your profile to uncheck anything. When I uncheck the share options, they reappear immediately as re-checked. Anyone have suggestions on how to deal with this?

Reposting that last paragraph:
However, the second step (In addition, to opt out of sharing authorized by your friends, you need to go to http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/permissions, and uncheck “Allow my connections to share my information labeled ‘My Connections’ with third-party applications.”) doesn’t work at all. As soon as you go to the link, a new window pops up saying, “Get started on sharing your information” and you can’t even access your profile to uncheck anything. When I uncheck the share options, they reappear immediately as re-checked. Anyone have suggestions on how to deal with this?

Addendum: the problem I’m talking about only appears if you’re logged into your Yahoo account.

When I uncheck the share options, they reappear immediately as re-checked. Anyone have suggestions on how to deal with this?

No and in fact mine had defaulted to unchecked. Weird.

Bah. Clothes. I’m short, and it’s frustrating because the petites are made for women who are at least 5’4″. So things don’t fit right, and the bottoms of my pants’ legs (ah, trousers for you non-USians) always end up dragging on the ground (mainly because I don’t have the patience to hem anything, and that’s my fault). The one place I can find jeans that fit properly is Old Navy, and their “short” jeans still are a little too long.
My roommate has the opposite problem. She’s 5’10″, so pants are always too short for her. The height difference makes for funny times in the kitchen. She’ll put things on top of the cabinets, and I’ll stand there and say, “Uh, I can’t reach the rice…”

Consumer Unit 5012: I’m thinking you’ve come down with a bad case of Libertarian’s Disease. Its main symptom is an inability to perceive any difference between paying sales tax and the Mongolian Horde slaughtering your village.
You get a cookie. That may be my second favorite quote about Libertarians ever. My first is something like “You Libertarians are amazing. You’ve constructed an entire political philosophy out of the phrase ‘f-you’ “

@Thrifty: And the Mongolian Horde would slaughter villages for not paying sales tax, thereby bringing it all into a neat little loop.

The snark center of my brain supplies the following rebuttal to Sayel: If Terrorist A kidnaps Physician B, and says “I want an abortion. Do it or I blow up Los Angeles with a nuclear weapon,” is Physician B justified in performing an abortion? In refusing?

For purposes of this exam, assume a perfectly spherical Los Angeles.

If Terrorist A kidnaps Physician B, and says “I want an abortion. Do it or I blow up Los Angeles with a nuclear weapon,” is Physician B justified in performing an abortion?

That sounds like an L&J premise – marauding bands of gun-toting feminists (wearing sensible shoes, of course) kidnapping single pregnant women and doctors and forcing the latter to perform abortions on the former.

@Tonio: Hah!
By the way, I’m wearing sensible shoes right now (black flats). Guess that makes me dangerous in L&J’s eyes. Could start a revolution just sitting at my desk with these babies on my feet…

Daughter,

Is that heavy sedation a 24/7 thing? Because most women in late stages of pregnancy experience periods (sometimes for hours) when their fetus is very active and kicking.

That poses two distinct but related questions.
On the first: I don’t think we have the data right now to distinguish between 24/7 and almost 24/7. The papers I’ve seen usually say something like “the fetus is always or almost always unconscious and unaware.”
On the second: physical activity and kicking don’t actually indicate that the higher brain functions aren’t currently under sedation. That sort of activity–even the “practicing” of facial expressions that late-term fetuses do–is governed by the brainstem, and occurs while the cerebral cortex is still basically shut down. (The brainstem requires much less oxygen to function than the cortex.)
We tend to associate unconsciousness with being physically inactive, but I think that’s because the two examples of unconsciousness we’re most familiar with, normal sleep and medical anesthesia, both involve auxiliary mechanisms to immobilize the body. When consciousness is shut down in other ways (think Terri Schiavo, or someone who gets KOed in a martial arts match), the body may still be quite active and responsive to stimuli.

[[And a pair or two of horribly uncomfortable dress shoes that either need breaking in or some foam glued around the top.]]
I found out that Dr Scholls makes dress shoes, and they’re comparitively inexpensive (around $50 IIRC). My feet are happy feet (as much as they can be in shoes, anyway).
==========================
[[Basically, Yahoo wants to create its own new social network, by sharing the information of its existing email userbase without prior permission.]]
Bastards. I’ve opted out of everything I can opt out of. Ick.

Daughter and Lori:
It seems that Yahoo may be rearranging some things in the last week before rolling things out. I got the popup window too, and the redirect from /settings/permissions to /settings; I believe I cleared as many boxes as possible on both and pressed a “save” button. Looking at it now, all the pages say my profile is hidden (and offer me big attractive buttons marked “Unhide”) so I guess whatever I did stuck.

@ interleaper, I finally got the unchecks working, too, but it took a lot of clicking around.

@Anton Mates: you know, I’m thinking this lends some backbone to the pagan concept of “ensoulment at first breath”.

You note that variations of John the Baptist’s ascetic statement “can be found throughout the entire Bible, in the law and the prophets, the Gospels and the epistles”. It’s curious, though, that in the Gospels Jesus himself did not encourage fasting, the essence of asceticism. Instead, he wanted his followers to eat: bread, wine, olives, plentiful fish. And at The Last Supper, food took on deep spiritual significance, which probably would have confused the permanent-fasting John the Baptist.

Very well put! Unfortunately, it’s a very well-written distraction from the whole point of life.
The Bible isn’t about keeping the rules at all, whatever rules there may be. It’s a revelation to us of God, Jesus, and how to lay our lives down and allow Jesus to live his life through us.
It’s also contains mysteries — for who could completely understand an infinite God in this life — so there are things that aren’t completely spelled out in rational, logical steps. There are things you “get” only after hanging out in Jesus for several years… decades even. And that’s ok. God is not put off by our imperfections; he knows what he’s shaping us to be as we walk in relationship with him.

“If you would be perfect, sell all that you have and give it to the poor…” “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven” and for the tea baggers:
“render unto Caesar that which is Caesars.

Lori: There are a lot of us and like other semi-invisible groups we seem to have a knack for finding each other.
…We are?
Wait. Are you talking about all adoptees, or just those who were adopted at an age old enough to remember something about it, or…?
Maybe it’s just that I don’t really identify as being adopted. It’s just a fact of my life. It’s not even a fact of my experience, as I was a single-digit number of weeks old at the time it happened. It is a fact I was told about my life, is all. So it doesn’t come up in conversation, unless the conversation turns to the subject of inherited traits (“Yeah, it’s weird, my mom squeaks instead of burps too, so clearly I picked it up from her–except that we’re not genetically related! How do you pick up involuntary bodily functions via assocation?” or “Yeah, I have this weird finger–if I ever meet my biological parents, I’d be interested to see if they have it too. Maybe we’re all werewolves or something”). So I have no idea if I’m running into other adoptees all the time. It doesn’t matter a heck of a lot to me, though; that I don’t get a sense of being a part of the adoption community or have a lot of fellow adoptees to talk to about being adopted isn’t really a hole in my life or anything.
But I’m willing to raise my hand and say, “Adoptee here. So not an issue,” just to add one to the count. I am also willing to say that any anti-abortion campaigner looking to use my life as a political point (“Aren’t you glad your parents were pro-life?”) can go DIAF. I am for every woman’s right to absolute reproductive choice, and I make no hypothetical exceptions for the woman who gave birth to me. Abortion was a valid choice. That she didn’t choose it and here I am doesn’t make me less willing to acknowledge it was a valid choice.
I do hope she’s as OK about it as tls is. Since I don’t know who or where she is, I can’t offer her the reassurance that everything turned out for the best. I hope she doesn’t need it, and is having a great life somewhere.
…All that stuff about “Not an issue” notwithstanding, the next time my lonely, brain-damaged, and absurdly bigoted neighbor starts mouthing off to me about all the different kinds of people she can’t stand, one of which is “adopted people”,* I’m going to fling it in her face. “So why are you hanging around with me?” And then she will start refering to my mom as “your adopted mom,” in which case I will probably say something extremely rude to her and she’ll never want to talk to me again. Which will be fine.
*She has told me she is brain-damaged. Presumably this is why her socialization skills are shot to hell. One way in which they are fubar is, she views every trait, no matter how trivial, as a Significant Personality Feature. If you and her brother have the same name or were born in the same month, then it only proves you were meant to be her best friend ever. If you are a plumber and you piss her off, she will decide she can’t stand plumbers. It leads to a very strange list of types of people she can’t stand, which includes married people and adopted people and younger people and I think plumbers. Thus: absurdly bigoted.
Regarding the Sayel portion of our programming: I kept being reminded of “If you make exceptions for rape, then it isn’t about the life of the unborn, is it? It’s about punishing women for consenting to sex.” Only along a different axis: If passive killing is OK (withholding bone marrow or blood donations) but active isn’t (abortion), then it’s not really about death, right? Because–posit octuplets. And anti-abortion campaigners who scream how selective abortions is wrong wrong wrong, regardless that without doing so there’s a good chance that all the potential babies will die, and possibly the mother with them. “Because then it’s in God’s hands!” So it’s not about preventing a baby or a fetus from dying; it’s about deciding whether you can absolve the mother of the crime of killing it. At which point it begins to sound like concern trolling. “I can’t let you abort! Then you’d have blood on your hands!” And I’m all like, “You know, I’m an adult, just like you. I think I can handle the consequences of my own decisions.”
And speaking of blood donations. And the unconscionable act of insurance companies limiting the amount of transfusions they’ll pay for before it’s “Go bankrupt, get some friends who’ll donate, or die.” Hapax speculated that maybe the theory is you’re supposed to bank blood beforehand.
If that is the logic the insurance companies are working from, then 1) they’re discounting people who need blood transfusions before they’re old enough to donate in the first place, and 2) they’re discounting all the people who can’t donate blood for all the many reasons that disqualify you from giving blood.
I was diagnosed with AML when I was 11. You have to be 16 or 17 to donate blood to the Red Cross, and if you ever had a cancer of the blood, you’re out. Thus: I have never in my life been eligible to donate blood. So according to insurance companies, “Sucks to be me” if I ever develop a chronic illness requiring ongoing blood transfusions.
(And at least those restrictions make sense! Another reason I can’t ever give blood: Any man who has ever had sex with a man, even once, since 1977**, is ineligible to give blood because they’re tainted with teh gayHIV risk. Anyone having sex with such a person in the past 12 months is ineligible. My husband is bisexual, he’s got a boyfriend, and no, I’m not likely to stop having sex with him for a 12-month period.)
(**But gay sex in 1976 was totally HIV-proof!)
(Citation: “Eligibility Criteria by Topic,” American Red Cross)
Wow, that was a long post. Time to reload and see what I was missed while I typed this up.

I’ve always found it telling that we poll people to “discover” their religious associations, instead of looking at statistical data that could give us the real answer.
Want to find out how many Christians are in America? Correlate stats for salary, disposable income, and charitable giving. Remove from the rolls those who own their own homes or drive cars (the Ichthys badge applied to an automobile is one of the great ironies.) Television owners are out, as is everyone viewing this website on a their very own personal computer.
These are not my judgements, they are the unambiguous directives of the Bible. It’s no good saying that “people are imperfect,” when in fact *no one is even trying*.
The Bible doesn’t say you can’t have stuff. But you can’t have it until everyone else has it too.

Science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein once suggested that the Bible can be used to justify any point of view — you just have to know what verse or verses to quote. I’ve even seen (more than once) someone quote chapter-and-verse from the Bible to prove that abortion is not contrary to Biblical teachings.
Excellent post, as always.

Nicole, I find it extremely hard to believe that doctors would prevent a person from banking their own blood for their own use for an operation due to ineligibility to donate to others. If you’re the one using the blood the risks the usual rules were created to handle would be irrelevant. Then again, I suppose some people get so obsessed with rules they forget the reason the rules exist in the first place. Or maybe I’m misunderstanding how banking blood works. Still, I recall my grandmother (cancer survivor and hypochondriac) talking about banking blood for an operation, and I doubt she’d be otherwise eligible to donate.
That said the obsession with sex in the Red Cross guidelines has always struck me as pointless and stupid. Especially given that there is no restriction at all on unprotected sex with any number of partners, as long as none of them are gay, prostitutes, hemophiliacs, or British diabetics (if I’m remembering the British-bovine-insulin rules correctly).

…We are?
Wait. Are you talking about all adoptees, or just those who were adopted at an age old enough to remember something about it, or…?
Maybe it’s just that I don’t really identify as being adopted. It’s just a fact of my life. It’s not even a fact of my experience, as I was a single-digit number of weeks old at the time it happened. It is a fact I was told about my life, is all. So it doesn’t come up in conversation, unless the conversation turns to the subject of inherited traits (“Yeah, it’s weird, my mom squeaks instead of burps too, so clearly I picked it up from her–except that we’re not genetically related! How do you pick up involuntary bodily functions via assocation?” or “Yeah, I have this weird finger–if I ever meet my biological parents, I’d be interested to see if they have it too. Maybe we’re all werewolves or something”). So I have no idea if I’m running into other adoptees all the time. It doesn’t matter a heck of a lot to me, though; that I don’t get a sense of being a part of the adoption community or have a lot of fellow adoptees to talk to about being adopted isn’t really a hole in my life or anything.

I think somehow we’re talking past each other a little bit. I was adopted at a very early age and told about it so early that I have no memory of ever not knowing that I was adopted. As a result I think of it as just a fact of my life. I don’t think of other adoptees as a community, probably largely because I don’t feel a need to see it that way. And yet, I somehow meet a lot of other adoptees. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever had long-term a job where I didn’t know of at least 1 other adoptee in the office. IME it seems to mostly come up either when the conversation turns to inherited traits or when someone says something totally off base about adoption.

I kept being reminded of “If you make exceptions for rape, then it isn’t about the life of the unborn, is it? It’s about punishing women for consenting to sex”…So it’s not about preventing a baby or a fetus from dying; it’s about deciding whether you can absolve the mother of the crime of killing it.

In fairness, many opponents seem to perceive such exceptions as a reasonable compromise, or as a simple concession. But you’re exactly right about the horrid logic of that compromise. It treats consent to sex as equating consent to pregnancy.

That makes sense, Lori. My personal guess is simply that, rather than having a knack at finding each other, we’re simply more numerous than we might expect. If you get a bunch of people in one room and the subject comes up (in the ways you and I both mentioned), a couple of people will raise their hands.
Banking blood – perhaps I misunderstood the “you’re supposed to bank your own blood” thing. Most of the time, when people donate blood, it goes into a blood bank meant to serve the people who eventually need tranfusions. I heard hapax’s speculation in the context of that, which is all I know.
I have never before heard, outside of exceedingly specialized cases*, of people having their own blood banked against their own hypothetical future need. By which I mean–unlike in the example you offered, which was more like “I am likely to need this blood back because of X known condition,” I have not heard of banking blood against a need that is purely hypothetical: “Bank blood every year! You never know when you’ll need it back!” Of all the routine medical things I and those I know have been subjected to – vaccines, CBCs, cholesterol testing, etc. – I’ve never heard of routine “going in to put some blood away in the bank in case I need it later.” And it sure would be silly to expect it of us as a condition of getting a transfusion, because no one knows whether they’ll need two transfusions after a car accident, or none at all ever, or an ongoing course for a lifelong chronic illness. Meanwhile keeping the blood viable over the years costs money, so the hypothetical banker would have to pay for that, and not everyone can afford that kind of rent, let me tell you.** Meanwhile maybe I’m sitting on 50 accumulated liters and I remain in good health but my neighbor has just gone through her lifetime accumulation thanks to a chronic condition and she still needs more–but somehow she was supposed to know she was going to need that much, according to her insurance company…
No, thinking of it that way doesn’t make it any more of a reasonable expectation on the part of the insurance companies.
*After I’d been in remission for a year and a half and my chemo schedule was almost done, I submitted to a bone marrow extraction such that if I ever relapsed I could be my own donor. We never found a match for me, see.
**Because sustaining that bit of bone marrow costs money, my family has to decide each year whether we still want Children’s Hospital of New Orleans to continue holding onto it in their freezers or whatever. Tell you the truth, I’m not sure if it’s still even there. We may have said “nah, pitch it, it’s been almost 25 years already” in the last decade. I should ask Dad about that. I think we were, thankfully, not directly responsible for the “rent”–but I’m not the one to ask, as, like I said, I was 11 or 12 at the time.

My understanding is that blood banking works like this:
-I am planning to have an operation, so I bank blood.
-They try to keep my blood for me, but if…
-There is an emergency, my blood is used to treat the victims, and other blood is used for my operation.

In fairness, many opponents seem to perceive such exceptions as a reasonable compromise, or as a simple concession. But you’re exactly right about the horrid logic of that compromise. It treats consent to sex as equating consent to pregnancy.

They frame it in terms of “you have to take *RESPONSIBILITY* for the *CONSEQUENCES* of your actions!!!111oneoneone.” What wit h the anniversary of The Pill recently, there’s been a glut of articles which come right out and say (literally in one case) “The Pill, be removing the fear of pregancy, has turned women into rutting sows.” (They go on to say how they totally don’t hate women, and it’s really the feminists who hate women and want to turn them all into whores, but by this point, I’m too filled with the need to stab someone to really follow their argument)

(And at least those restrictions make sense! Another reason I can’t ever give blood: Any man who has ever had sex with a man, even once, since 1977**, is ineligible to give blood because they’re tainted with teh gayHIV risk. Anyone having sex with such a person in the past 12 months is ineligible. My husband is bisexual, he’s got a boyfriend, and no, I’m not likely to stop having sex with him for a 12-month period.)

I happened not too long ago on a report out of one of the agencies that tracks such things about whether or not the ban ought to be lifted. And the answer was “There’s no real logic or sense behind this ban, but nonetheless, statstically, testing still shows a higher rate of infected blood among those groups.” I’m never sure how to deal with that kind of thing. The actuary doesn’t care if the categories are logical or reinforce prejudices or priviliges: the actuary looks at the bottom line, and if the infection rate is higher in that group, well, what you gonna do? (IIRC, the report went on to say that you could get around this if you (a) asked a whole bunch of much more detailed questions about someone’s sexual behavior or (b) only accepted donors who had been tested, but both of those options had the net result that a lot fewer people would bother)

Ross, I’ve heard those anti-Pill arguments as well, and I share your anger at them. Here are some examples of boneheaded arguments:
the Pill reduces the number of children available for adoption
Muslims who don’t use The Pill will become majorities in European countries and gain control of the nuclear weapons there
it treats fertility as a medical malady and thus encourages the objectification of both genders
it removes children as a natural consequence of sex and thus leads to devaluing and neglect of children
it resulted in sexual activity at a younger age, since girls would have one less reason to resist pressure from boys
it endangers the social covenant between generations by creating fewer younger people to fund the Social Security of their elders. I loved the response from one poster: “I make no apologies for not feeling as though I owe it to the GNP to reproduce beyond my own desire to do so.”
Beyond the general sexism involved in many of these arguments, I’m not sure if there is any core attitude. Maybe it’s the false belief that owning a womb entails some responsibility to society.

They frame it in terms of “you have to take *RESPONSIBILITY* for the *CONSEQUENCES* of your actions!!!111oneoneone.”

And it’s invariably men, I find, who seem to trot this crap out and will be unmoved by the fact that paying taxes for an abortion is cheaper than paying taxes for the woman to be stuck on welfare for the next few years until the kid is old enough to go to school and she can get a job again.

“•it resulted in sexual activity at a younger age, since girls would have one less reason to resist pressure from boys”
And this is bad because? Oh, that’s right, sex is bad, and must only be shared with someone you love after paying a fee to the state and a religious authority figure gives his* ok.
It ignores the possibility that Girls might like sex too, and the fact that teenagers have always engaged in sex even before the pill (How did a teenage boy propose to his girlfriend during the 1950′s? He said “You’re what?”). And so on.
*Having had my habit of using ‘male’ as my default point of view recently, I’ll point out that to the mindset I’m describing “Religious Authority Figure” is default male. I’d like to think that with me it’s a bad habit that I can grow out of.

And those men’s arguments imply that women bear sole responsibility for getting pregnant. They might believe that women are the gatekeepers of sex and that men bear no responsibility because they can’t say no.

And it’s invariably men, I find, who seem to trot this crap out and will be unmoved by the fact that paying taxes for an abortion is cheaper than paying taxes for the woman to be stuck on welfare for the next few years until the kid is old enough to go to school and she can get a job again.
Posted by: Pius Thicknesse
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That’s in part because they have no wish to pay taxes to support the woman with welfare either. They’re pro life right up to the moment the woman gives birth, at which point she and her child can starve or die of exposure for all they care.
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Beyond the general sexism involved in many of these arguments, I’m not sure if there is any core attitude.
Flailing rationalisation seems to be the common element. They all come across as having an invisible ‘and anyway,’ tacked on to the beginning, as if the main reason was implicit and these are just afterthoughts that don’t need to be key arguments – or even make sense on their own terms. I mean, if you remove children as a consequence of sex, exactly which children are getting neglected and devalued? You don’t have any children to neglect and devalue, because the sex you had did not result in having children. (I know, it’s actually a false premise, because unwanted children are almost certainly at a greater risk of mistreatment than planned ones, but even on its own premises it’s pretty garbled.)
The main reason is presumably a religious taboo, but that doesn’t cut much ice in a secular state, hence the struggle.

So pretty much “If people could have sex without risking pregnancy, nobody would ever have kids!” “If people could have sex without risking pregnancy, all those sluts would get away with having sex!” and “I don’t know what ‘objectification’ means, but the feminists sure seem to hate it!”

if you remove children as a consequence of sex, exactly which children are getting neglected and devalued?

All of them, presumably. I would think the argument would work the opposite way, where people would think of children as an inconvenience if they can’t control when they conceive. I’m not making that opposite argument, but simply pointing out that the one as presented doesn’t make sense. Unless the premise is that people would make a connection between their offspring and the intense feelings of intimacy in creating those offspring, which is what I’ve heard some religious people claim.
I’m not sure a religious taboo is involved here. Why the flailing rationalization? Maybe many people are scared to think that they wouldn’t exist if their mothers had used contraception, or that their births could have been “accidents.”

I’m not sure a religious taboo is involved here. Why the flailing rationalization? Maybe many people are scared to think that they wouldn’t exist if their mothers had used contraception, or that their births could have been “accidents.”
To say this with any degree of authority I’d have to have a whole load more statistics at my fingertips than I currently do (current volume of statistics: nil), so this is only a speculation. But it’s not unreasonable to say that there is, at least, a big overlap between the anti-contraception movements in America and elsewhere and the religious, particularly the more socially conservative Christian religions such as recent Catholicism and the Baptist church.
Pretty much all religions have some sexual taboos. Adultery is generally frowned upon, for example. But when it comes to deciding what’s sinful and what isn’t, some religions are, shall we say, a bit more trigger-happy than others – and again, it tends to be the socially conservative ones that really go for it.
And there’s a common strand of thinking in such faiths that tends towards the believe that sex is just inherently sinful. It’s excusable if it’s done within the confines of a properly sanctioned marriage, but even then, there’s a line of thought that married couples really shouldn’t have sex just for fun, they should only do it if it’s absolutely unavoidable – which is to say, when they want to have children.
I think the opposition to contraception is rooted in the religious taboo against unnecessary sex. Making contraception available means that society is accepting unnecessary sex as a legitimate activity, and providing means to make it as unnecessary as possible.
Since the idea that sex is inherently sinful and should only happen when it’s totally unavoidable is a difficult one to defend on rational or political grounds, any argument you make that supports the idea but doesn’t acknowledge it is going to sound like a rationalisation because you’re trumping up arguments to justify what’s basically an emotional recoil, which is pretty much what a rationalisation is: an attempt at justifying by logic what you believe for non-logical reasons.
I’m not sure about the idea ‘people are scared to think that they wouldn’t exist if their mothers had used contraception’. I mean, I wouldn’t exist if my mother (and father, and all her previous boyfriends) hadn’tused contraception. She would have had several other children before me, and very possibly been pregnant or too busy to have sex on the particular night that would make it possible to combine that particular sperm with that particular egg. I probably owe my existence to the Pill, and I bet a good proportion of the rest of us do too.

I think the opposition to contraception is rooted in the religious taboo against unnecessary sex.

I was trying to avoid label the taboo as “religious” since it could exist as a secular idea, even though I haven’t personally encountered a secular version of the taboo. In any case, I’m trying to track down the source of the taboo, wondering if the emotional recoil created the taboo and not the other way around.

I probably owe my existence to the Pill, and I bet a good proportion of the rest of us do too.

True. I was proposing that the emotional recoil may be preventing opponents from taking that perspective.

In any case, I’m trying to track down the source of the taboo, wondering if the emotional recoil created the taboo and not the other way around.
You’d have to go back into pre-history, I bet. Sex is one of those things that all societies try to control to some extent; it’s also something that people usually have strong feelings about, some of which are negative – and sometimes the negative feelings belong to those who carry moral authority. When that happens, you get a taboo – or alternatively, one person’s taboo becomes more widely accepted. So ultimately I’d guess the recoil probably created the taboo, but we’d be looking at the dark undercurrents of human nature that people aren’t generally open about, and going back many, many generations … and even then, there might be an element of chicken-and-egg.

it resulted in sexual activity at a younger age, since girls would have one less reason to resist pressure from boys

I did once hear a purported feminist say against the pill that “It involves fiddling around with your body chemistry just to benefit *men* by making you more available to sex with them, and relieving them of any responsibility for contraception” Which, yeah, also seemed to have the undertone of “Because there’s no reason any sane woman would ever actually *want* to have sex. At least not with a *man*.”
And then there’s the rather backhanded “The pill takes away the socially acceptable excuse ‘I’m afraid I’ll get pregnant’ for a woman to use to avoid unwanted sex.”

At the risk of using a No True Scotsman argument, here is A short history of “feminist” anti-feminists. If one ignores that specific word, it’s a good overview of how women who favor limiting freedom for their gender often claim to favor expanding that freedom.

I did once hear a purported feminist say against the pill that “It involves fiddling around with your body chemistry just to benefit *men* by making you more available to sex with them, and relieving them of any responsibility for contraception” Which, yeah, also seemed to have the undertone of “Because there’s no reason any sane woman would ever actually *want* to have sex. At least not with a *man*.”
Hm, yeah. The Pill does, of course, involve ‘fiddling around with your body chemistry’, so you can make a more moderate version of that argument, which is that the Pill has negative side-effects and it’s not very fair for one person in the relationship to suffer all the fall-out of a decision that benefits both of them. Which is true, but then, there’s a limit to what you can do about it: there isn’t an effective male equivalent because it just happens that it’s easier to stop an egg than lots of sperm. So it might be a reason to say, ‘I’m not taking the Pill, it’s condoms or nothing,’ (or indeed, ‘I’m not taking the Pill, let’s find another method’) but that’s a personal issue to be worked out within a relationship – like most contraceptive decisions ultimately are.

Another issue in the anti-contraception debate: one incident Daniel Radosh describes in Rapture Ready! is encountering a table at a Christian festival where people where handing out anti-IVF fliers. They were actually opposing using medicine to create pregnancies rather than prevent them, on the grounds, it seemed, that it was refusing to accept God’s will. (They also argued something similar to the anti-Pill thing: that IVF means children aren’t loved because they’re turned into commodities. Since Radosh himself had a twin son and daughter born from IVF treatment whom he loved very dearly, this really pissed him off. There seems to be a general sense that only accidental children are loved, perhaps because it’s believed that children are only loved when they’re considered gifts from God? Which doesn’t seem very realistic about human nature, but hey, we’re talking about abstinence movement types here.)
Which to my mind suggests the persistence of the anti-sex taboo, in that seeking out fertility treatment acknowledges that the sex you’ve been having doesn’t create babies and was thus unnecessary – which means that God, presumably being responsible for the infertility, can create situations where unnecessary sex takes place, which would seem to be a crack in the foundations of the whole sex-is-for-babies ethos. Or, alternatively, just the sense that sex is best done in the dark with crossed fingers, and exercising any kind of agency over its results is bad. But I’m just speculating.

Sex is one of those things that all societies try to control to some extent…

Sure, but I was talking about a specific taboo against unnecessary sex. Over the years I’ve detected a subtle societal push to get people to procreate, and I wonder if some people have a hard-wired revulsion to non-procreation that’s similar to a possible hard-wired revulsion to human waste.

seeking out fertility treatment acknowledges that the sex you’ve been having doesn’t create babies and was thus unnecessary

Maybe some people want to believe that babies are literal miracles and not just metaphorical ones, perceiving the human ability to procreate as a godlike power. That could even be the origin of the misogyny in many religions – jealousy over the female’s ability to bear new life may have led men to subconsciously transfer that ability to gods. (To clarify, I’m not suggesting that men thought of the idea of gods for that reason.)

Which is true, but then, there’s a limit to what you can do about it: there isn’t an effective male equivalent because it just happens that it’s easier to stop an egg than lots of sperm.
And also, from the perspective of someone who has and would like to go on having multiple partners, it’s easier for me to have a long-term form of birth control than to make sure the same is true of every guy I sleep with. (Yes, I use condoms with non-boyfriend guys, but I have also had bad luck with condoms, and an IUD/course of the Pill/diaphragm is cheaper than easier than an abortion.) Since my body reacts…badly…to having its chemistry screwed around with, that’s *not* the Pill, but other women don’t have as much of a problem with it.

[[it just happens that it's easier to stop an egg than lots of sperm.]]
But vasectomies are quite simple compared with any equivalent surgery.
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[[one incident Daniel Radosh describes in Rapture Ready! is encountering a table at a Christian festival where people where handing out anti-IVF fliers.]]
IVF uses a number of embryos which are then destroyed. If one is opposed to abortion, being against IVF is morally consistant.

[[it just happens that it's easier to stop an egg than lots of sperm.]]
But vasectomies are quite simple compared with any equivalent surgery.

And the last time I checked, the “state of the art” in a male birth control pill involved two pills: one you took when you started, which effectively permanently killed your sperm production capabilities, and a second one you had to stay on for the rest of your life to prevent the side effects of the first pill from taking away your secondary sex characteristics (I think I heard that there were high hopes of something more akin to the female pill being right-around-the-corner).
Thing about birth control from the male side is that the male gametes get produced in quantities along the lines of “a million every couple of minutes”, so shutting that down requires a pretty extreme and frequently irreversible action.

FWIW, Tonio, I’ve had to read lots and lots and lots of religious / philosophical discussions of sex, mostly in the Christian tradition, but also in the Muslim and Jewish tradition (for comparison purposes) and the classical philosophies that underpin it.
While it is a very very complicated and tangled topic, with all sorts of issues about children and duty and misogyny and basic squick involved, if I had to tease out a single root cause for the taboo against non-procreational sex, I’d pick out the perceived lack of control.
Remember, for most of human history, things that are “natural” are BAD. Tamed animals give you food and service; wild animals will kill you. The ocean, the sky, the weather are your enemies and must be placated. Wilderness and wood are dangerous and hostile; cultivated land provides food, but is still unpredictable and filled with poverty and ignorance; cities, inside walls, are where safety and plenty and leisured culture are to be found. And so on.
The writings I refer to that speak of sex as sinful, irrational, “dirty”, alway eventually come around to the perception that the sexual desire is a incredibly powerful natural power that is out of our control, often opposed to our wills, and devastating in its consequences. (It’s no accident that goddesses of “love” were usually also goddesses of war.) Restricting sexual expression to its “rational function” (usually the procreation of children, although others are occasionally allowed) is seen as the equivalent of taming the beast, building the city walls, and harnessing the power of the wind and the river.

Hapax: I think you’re right on the history here.
Which makes it somewhat ironic that most of the anti-sex, or at least anti-contraception and probably anti-gay, arguments have ended up being at least partially on the grounds that whatever-it-is ain’t natural.

the perception that the sexual desire is a incredibly powerful natural power that is out of our control, often opposed to our wills

I’ve heard that many times, but it doesn’t jibe with my own personal experience. I’ve never had the experience of that desire fighting against my will. The only times I felt “out of control” in that regard were when my body put me in embarrassing situations in my teen years, but that was merely a physiological thing. (I hope that isn’t TMI.) If someone has the desire and there isn’t someone who has a reciprocating desire, I don’t understand why the person wouldn’t just let the feeling pass and move on.

It’s probably partly cultural, Tonio. Western society has (particularly in Canada/US) contradictory phenomena going on where on the one hand people try to stress sexual responsibility, but on the other hand, many images in advertising (and for that matter, pornography) can make people feel like they need to be having MORE sex to be cool.
So… uh yeah. *shrug*
The strategically placed notebook thing was a rather helpful feature of my high school existence, I’ll say. But beyond that not so much.

[[Thing about birth control from the male side is that the male gametes get produced in quantities along the lines of "a million every couple of minutes", so shutting that down requires a pretty extreme and frequently irreversible action.]]
Yeah, but you have a narrow hole they come out of. Devising a “Top Kill” shouldn’t be that hard.
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[[It's no accident that goddesses of "love" were usually also goddesses of war.]]
Examples? Not Greek/Roman (Aphrodite/Athena) or German/Norse (Freyja or Sjöfn/Hel or Rindr)

Ross :

Thing about birth control from the male side is that the male gametes get produced in quantities along the lines of “a million every couple of minutes”, so shutting that down requires a pretty extreme and frequently irreversible action.

To expand, it’s not really the amount of sperm that’s the problem, it’s the “every couple of minutes” bit. The female body has circumstances where it naturally stops producing ova, all you need to do is to make sure the natural inhibitors are always in place. But sperm production just doesn’t have an “off” switch like that.

The strategically placed notebook thing was a rather helpful feature of my high school existence, I’ll say. But beyond that not so much.

Yes. What Hapax describes sounds like a mentality of “Dammit, I gotta get laid now!” which sounds like internal pressure rather than external.

Kit Whitfield :

You’d have to go back into pre-history, I bet. Sex is one of those things that all societies try to control to some extent; it’s also something that people usually have strong feelings about, some of which are negative – and sometimes the negative feelings belong to those who carry moral authority. When that happens, you get a taboo – or alternatively, one person’s taboo becomes more widely accepted. So ultimately I’d guess the recoil probably created the taboo, but we’d be looking at the dark undercurrents of human nature that people aren’t generally open about, and going back many, many generations … and even then, there might be an element of chicken-and-egg.

I read that some of it might simply come from the fact that sex is a legitimately risky activity, what with sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy and all. And that this squared somewhat with the way feelings of disgust tend to correlate with how likely something is to spread disease.

@Jeff: Aphrodite was occasionally a battle goddess (remember how her most frequent lover is Ares), Athena was definitely one (also had fertility roots, despite the virgin propaganda — look at the Erechtheus myth and how it evolved)
Freyja was definitely a battle goddess and patroness of warriors.
And then there’s Hathor, who is explicitly Drunk Sekhmet; Brigid; Inanna; Parvati, in her aspect as Kali; Oya; Anahit; Annan; possibly the Morrigan through her association with cattle fertility; and don’t start me on Astarte.
That’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure I’m missing a lot.

@Tonio: The perceived “loss of control” is not so much the urgency of unfulfilled sexual desire (although the literature is crammed with examples of both men and women acting stupidly to pursue their passions), but more the nature of the actual sexual act.
YMMV, of course, but “controlled”, “rational”, “tamed”, “self-disciplined”, etc. are not adjectives as usually associated with the throes of passion as “frenzied”, “wild”, “loss of self”, and the like.

Getting back to shoe/clothing woes:
Generally I get by all right, having a relatively normal male body type, though I did just have to get an XL T-shirt because the L wouldn’t have fit across my shoulders. That’s far more a ‘weird company sizing’ issue than a ‘me’ issue, though.
On the other hand, one year back in high school, I got measured for light dress shoes and the clerk told me a size that seemed off, then leaned over and whispered something to my mother.
I asked her what that was about afterward, and apparently the only shoe they had that fit me at the time was actually a women’s shoe size. The clerk was worried I would react badly, and so whispered that bit to her. Me, I didn’t care; I was just happy to have black dress shoes that fit comfortably.

Hapax: Your theory on why human societies have attempted to control sexuality is very persuasive, especially your theory about “loss of control.” The ancient Greeks and Romans were very much concerned about loss of control, its why Dionysius was often contrasted with Apollo. Dionysius was considered to be the personification of out of control passion and wild behavior while Apollo was disciplined and in control of himself. The other reason why society wanted to control sexuality is of course property. Heterosexual sex can lead to pregnancy and when inherited property was important, property owners generally wanted their property to go to their children and not somebody else’s kids. Since most property owners were men, the best way to ensure this was to ensure that women lost their virginity after the wedding ceremony. Naturally, among people where inherited property was not important than there was a lesser attempt to control sexuality.

[[Aphrodite was occasionally a battle goddess (remember how her most frequent lover is Ares), Athena was definitely one (also had fertility roots, despite the virgin propaganda -- look at the Erechtheus myth and how it evolved)]]
I know Athena was a battle-goddess (her relation to Perseus and Ulysses are shining examples, if the story of her being born in armor wasn’t enough). I’ve never heard of Aphrodite as a battle goddess, her shaking up with Ares was more a rejection of Hephaestus in the stories I remember.
[[Freyja was definitely a battle goddess and patroness of warriors.]]
I tried to find the goddess associated with the Valkyries — I couldn’t rmember if it was Freyja or not and didn’t search far enough. (Knowing the Norse, I had a feeling it might have been. If ever there was a culture that would make the goddess of beauty and goddess of battle the same, it would be them.)
Per Wiki (I know, I know, but it’s the closest thing to a library I have), Kali and Parvati are both devis but they’re fairly different aspects of the “devine feminine”, just as Brahma and Shiva are different aspects of the “devine masculine”.
I welcome further elucidation.

Thank you for this intelligent and decent post. I am a British atheist. In the UK, much of what we hear about American Christianity involves right-wing extremists. This is probably because such people tend to shout the loudest, and because it makes good TV.
Your post, and blog, remind me that there is still decency in American Christianity, and that it is not just the thin cover for extremist views bordering on fascism that certain dangerous preachers would like it to become. Seen from a non-religious point of view, Christ’s great achievement was to propose a society based on friendliness and brotherhood, much as I understand that America itself is meant to be. Long may it stay so. Good work sir.

Freya isn’t specifically associated with Valkyries, but she is associated with death and somewhat more circumstantially with battle.

Restricting sexual expression to its “rational function” (usually the procreation of children, although others are occasionally allowed) is seen as the equivalent of taming the beast, building the city walls, and harnessing the power of the wind and the river.
Which interesting theory might also account for all the ‘breaking in’ and ‘taming’ and even ‘ploughing’ metaphors that sexist culture has enjoyed using about men having sex with women. Classical writers could be pretty explicit in their belief that women were more animalistic than men. Under those conditions, sex – during which, in a patriarchal era, a man imposes his physical strength on a woman with or without her consent and very possibly creates a state of pregnancy which will drastically decrease her independence – is likewise the act of turning a wild animal to your service.

Luke 3:11 is about John’s answered that “the man who has a food should share of what he have and the man who been shared by will do the same if he had”. Well its just my own understanding on the verse.
-vibrators