{"id":6421,"date":"2012-02-26T12:04:11","date_gmt":"2012-02-26T17:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=6421"},"modified":"2012-02-26T12:04:11","modified_gmt":"2012-02-26T17:04:11","slug":"smart-people-saying-smart-things-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/02\/26\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart people saying smart things"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Jesse Curtis: \u201cA lot of Christians don\u2019t care about poor people<\/a>\u201c<\/strong><\/p>\n

What I hear from evangelicals a lot is that it is the church\u2019s job, not the government\u2019s, to care for the poor. I would dispute the either\/or proposition contained in that argument (after all, the laws God gave Israel included government mandated redistribution of wealth) but for our purposes, let\u2019s accept the premise. It is the church\u2019s job, period.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing \u2026 many of our evangelical churches don\u2019t like poor people. We look down on them. We assume irresponsible behavior is the cause of their condition. We stand in judgment over them, determining who is and who is not \u201cdeserving\u201d of help. We get excited about political candidates who scapegoat poor people (especially dark skinned poor people) as the cause of many of our problems. Worthy poor people live in places like Bangladesh and Mozambique. Here in America we just have lazy people.<\/p>\n

We say it is the church\u2019s job to care for the poor, yet attend churches that don\u2019t help people pay their rent or buy groceries. It is the church\u2019s job and yet the pastoral leadership has not told the business owners in our congregation that the hiring of ex-felons should prioritized. It is the church\u2019s job and yet we don\u2019t offer affordable child care during the week so single moms can go earn a living. It is the church\u2019s job but the kids at the poorly performing public school will have to go somewhere else to find tutoring and mentoring. It is the church\u2019s job but you can\u2019t expect us to take care of all the medical bills you can\u2019t afford. It is the church\u2019s job but if you have an addiction you\u2019re on your own, especially since you might be dangerous and steal from us. \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Marco Arment: \u201cRight versus pragmatic<\/a>\u201c<\/strong> (via<\/em> Squashed<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The signs never worked. Instead, they just annoyed and angered people. Some people even threw more<\/em> paper towels on the floor because they didn\u2019t like the condescending way they were being instructed.<\/p>\n

There was no chance the signs would ever work. The people who threw paper towels on the floor knew that it was \u201cwrong\u201d. Maybe their desire to avoid touching the doorknob was stronger than their desire to do the \u201cright\u201d thing every time. Or maybe they just didn\u2019t give a damn about making the bathroom slightly worse for someone else to make it slightly better for themselves. Either way, a sign\u2019s not going to solve the problem, because the problem isn\u2019t that they didn\u2019t know the right thing to do. They knew what they were doing, and for whatever reason, they didn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

This problem wasn\u2019t solved by the time I left that office. It probably still isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The pragmatic way to solve the problem would have been to adapt to what these people were going to do anyway: just put another trash can by the door. <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bryce Covert: \u201cReducing Abortions: It\u2019s the Economy, Stupid<\/a>\u201c<\/strong><\/p>\n

If conservatives are so hell-bent on preventing abortions, one of the best things they can do is support family planning services and access to contraception. Yet the last time we saw an openly pro-family planning Republican was the \u201980s, when George H.W. Bush was in office. Meanwhile, all Republican 2012 candidates have signed personhood pledges that endanger many forms of contraception, Santorum himself has said birth control is bad, and I\u2019ve lost track of how many times Republicans have tried to defund Planned Parenthood, which supplies contraception to low-income women.<\/p>\n

\u2026 There\u2019s another clue that this isn\u2019t about saving the babies. It\u2019s the blind eye conservatives have turned to the economic factors that are leading more women to turn to abortion.<\/p>\n

\u2026 If Republicans are concerned about reversing the rise in abortion rates, they need to focus on putting people back to work making decent pay. Putting women to work in large part means spending money at the state level to keep them on public payrolls.<\/p>\n

\u2026 Women choose to terminate pregnancies for all sorts of reasons and should be able to access abortion care when they do. Tight budgets aren\u2019t the only reason to choose not to have a child. But economic factors that prevent families from having children should be high on conservatives\u2019 list. If we ease those families\u2019 financial situations, they may not have to turn to terminating a pregnancy. But instead conservatives are fighting access to contraceptives, cutting off funding for services that would make life easier for women living in poverty, and blocking job creation policies.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sarah Fister Gale: \u201cWhy Rick Santorum would have killed my daughter<\/a>\u201c<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rather than turning to my local politician for prenatal advice, I followed the guidance of my obstetrician, who sent me to a perinatologist, who recommended I have an amniocentesis. Because he had a medical degree and years of experience treating pregnant women, I followed his recommendation.<\/p>\n

\u2026 If Rick Santorum had his way, I wouldn\u2019t have been able to get that test, and [my daughter] most likely would have died. Because according to him, tests that give parents vital information about the health of their unborn children are morally wrong. Though he has no medical training, and no business commenting on the medical decisions that women and their doctors make, he argues that such tests shouldn\u2019t be provided, or that employers at least should be allowed to opt out of paying for them on \u201cmoral grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eleven years ago,\u00a0 my husband and I had two kids and a mortgage, and like most young families we didn\u2019t have $2,000 to pay for a test that my husband\u2019s employer might object to on moral grounds.<\/p>\n

So, while Mr. Santorum may think that his blowhard opinions about when and where women should be allowed to have medical tests is righteous, I say it\u2019s ignorance.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jesse Curtis: \u201cA lot of Christians don\u2019t care about poor people\u201c What I hear from evangelicals a lot is that it is the church\u2019s job, not the government\u2019s, to care for the poor. I would dispute the either\/or proposition contained in that argument (after all, the laws God gave Israel included government mandated redistribution of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-6421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-smart"],"yoast_head":"\nSmart people saying smart things<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jesse Curtis: "A lot of Christians don't care about poor people" What I hear from evangelicals a lot is that it is the church's job, not the government's,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/02\/26\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-20\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Smart people saying smart things\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jesse Curtis: "A lot of Christians don't care about poor people" What I hear from evangelicals a lot is that it is the church's job, not the government's,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/02\/26\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-20\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-02-26T17:04:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/02\/26\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-20\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/02\/26\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-20\/\",\"name\":\"Smart people saying smart things\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-02-26T17:04:11+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-02-26T17:04:11+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"Jesse Curtis: \\\"A lot of Christians don't care about poor people\\\" What I hear from evangelicals a lot is that it is the church's job, not the government's,\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/02\/26\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-20\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/02\/26\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-20\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/02\/26\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-20\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Smart people saying smart things\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}