Throwing the Baby Out With The Beer: The Pro-Life Movement and the Idolatry of Party Politics

Throwing the Baby Out With The Beer: The Pro-Life Movement and the Idolatry of Party Politics September 28, 2016

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(image via Pixabay)

Let’s say you needed to move a fridge full of beer, and you needed to move it quick. Let’s say you had a fridge all stocked up with icy-cold beer for this evening’s game, but suddenly your power went out. Now, let’s say that your friend Charlie offered to help you move the beer to his house and watch the game over there, but his house is pretty far away and the beer might get warm in transit, so your best bet is to bring the fridge along too.

You, Charlie and your other friend Nadine agree to help move the fridge into Charlie’s pickup truck. You unplug the fridge. Charlie and Nadine each take a side of the fridge to steady it; you push from the other side. The fridge is very heavy, and the beer bottles are jangling around inside the fridge, and every time you think you’re getting somewhere Charlie or Nadine have to stop and scratch their noses. But eventually, you get the fridge to your kitchen door.

At that point, you realize the fridge won’t fit across the threshold. The carpet’s too thick on the other side of the door.

Charlie says you should tip the fridge back and carry it sideways.

Nadine protests that that might damage the beer bottles.

You’re trying to tell them that that won’t work, because the corner you have to turn once you get out in the hall won’t allow something as long as a refrigerator turned sideways. You’ve tried to move the fridge through this particular door and it never works.

Now Charlie is furious.

“I can’t believe you don’t want to save all this good beer from getting warm,” he says.

You explain that you do want to save the beer; you’d love to save the beer. But the beer is not going to exit the house while it’s still in the fridge. You have to think of some other way.

Charlie protests that you paid good money for this beer, and now it’s going to waste.

You open the fridge and grab a beer to drink while you think this over.

Charlie chides you for saving one beer when all the beer in the fridge is in danger of getting warm.

As you drink, you come up with a plan: you could take the beer out of the fridge one case at a time, stick the cases in your cooler, and drive them to Charlie’s house in separate trips. If you and Nadine both pitch in, you could get all the beer there before kickoff.

Charlie is not amused. He asks again why you want to give up on all this beer, let it get warm, when you should be struggling to get the fridge out the door. “Getting the fridge out the door will save the beer,” says Charlie. “True, you can’t get it over the threshold, but maybe we can knock a hole in a wall. Which do you think is the load-bearer? We’ll try to avoid that one if we can.”

You say again that the fastest way to save the beer from getting warm, would be to put the beer in your cooler case by case and drive it over.

Charlie starts calling you a beer-lover in name only, a false beer-lover, a horrible fraud and a crook.

Meanwhile, Nadine has been down in the basement fixing your electricity. She comes back up, excited, to tell you that you can plug the fridge back in and turn on the TV for the big game now.

Charlie tells her she’s going to undo all his progress if she plugs the fridge back in, and that she ought to go to confession.

It’s silly, isn’t it?

Now, try to imagine how I feel.


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