Anyone who relies on Hollywood to tell them how to vote (for president or otherwise) should be barred from the polls, as should anyone who votes for Hillary simply because she’s a woman, or for Obama because he’s half black. Such criteria are not the way to make your choice for the nation’s leader.

Part of me is burning to ridicule Christopher Hitchens right now, but I digress ...

In all seriousness, my educated guess is that Mr. Hitchens had a bad childhood (and since I've been reading John Eldredge lately, I'll say a bad father in particular), and that he feels that God seriously screwed him over in some way at some earlier point in his life (perhaps it was the parent thing). Which goes to a crucial point that C.S. Lewis once made about his own former atheistic belief: He believed that there was no God, yet he was mad at God. How can this be? It can't. And when Lewis realized this about his own life, it was one of the things that ultimately led him to faith in Christ. It is also something that seems to be common amongst atheists (at least, amongst the vocal ones): They preach that there is no God, yet they are enraged in such a way as to suggest that they DO believe in a God and that this God gave them the shaft sometime in their lives, so they're trying to get back at Him by denying His existence. The very idea of God makes their skin crawl. Why is this? If Hitchens et al. truly believe that there is no God, why can't they simply be content in their own belief and let it rest? For as we've seen, they don't let it rest; they don't even argue respectfully. They ridicule. Again, why do they do that? Why does the idea of God make their skin crawl? Because in their heart of hearts they know that there is a God, and that they're angry at Him for some reason and so want to both get back at Him AND escape His presence, so they choose an atheistic course in an attempt to "hurt Him back" and to convince themselves that He's NOT right there in front of them all the time, beckoning them to just give in and let Him heal them.

So ... Mr. Hitchens ... Will you be secure in your own belief and let everyone else live in peace under the "to each his own" philosophy? Or will you continue to be angry at a God whom you insist isn't there?

Or ... will you break down and admit that your very anger is proof that there IS a God -- a God with whom you at last need to wrestle?

Recent events make it clear that the pro-homosexual lobby is doing its darnedest to scare the rest of America into submission. They’re hammering Dr. James Holsinger, President Bush’s nominee for surgeon general, because he’s labeled homosexuality as unnatural and unhealthy, and they accuse him of being more loyal to his ideology than to science. In fact, they view his ideas as a “rejection of science.” Yet they are the ones rejecting established fact: male and female genitalia were designed for each other, not for themselves, and anal sex is known to cause health problems, including hemorrhoids. It seems that the lobby’s complaint is mere sour grapes: they’re not concerned about health; they’re concerned that their own ideological pursuits will be harmed.

The rainbow usurpers also went crazy when Gen. Peter Pace called homosexuality immoral. Come on, people; you act as though this is the equivalent of labeling genocide “constructive.” Are you guys naïve enough that you honestly think it’s wrong to disapprove of homosexuality? Perhaps. But I’m more inclined to think that it’s an issue of ignorance – we now have at least two generations of Americans who were raised not in church but on the morally-bankrupt, reason-defying principles of the 1960s sexual revolution. Far from bringing them “enlightenment,” their sacred ideology has led them away from common sense (and common decency) and caused them to act only as their libido directs them. If you doubt this, let me present to you Exhibit A: a sharp increase in teen pregnancy since good ol’ “sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll”; and Exhibit B: a sharp increase in sexually transmitted diseases since then, including the AIDS epidemic.

The recent events surrounding Holsinger and Pace – events that are insane in themselves – are threatening the advent of something even worse, a terrible milestone: the coming of a time when anyone who calls homosexuality what it is – sexual immorality – will be locked out of public life, barred from participation simply because they refuse to cave to moral relativism. Looks like the preachers of tolerance are once again failing to walk the walk.

With America seemingly becoming more divided in recent years over social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, people in certain circles have been sounding the call for compromise. But when a situation involves opposing viewpoints that are as far from each other as can be, I find that the idea of compromise is difficult, perhaps impossible, and the proposed immigration legislation seems to support my conclusion.

Illegal immigration is a polarizing issue. On one hand you have illegal immigrants and their supporters, who are ardent in their belief that illegals should be allowed to remain in this country – without penalty – and receive all the benefits of being American citizens, while on the other hand are those who believe that immigration laws already on the books should at long last be given some sharp teeth, our borders secured, the proper pathway to citizenship followed to a T.

The way I see it, there is no middle ground here, and perhaps that’s how it should be. For a law must be either obeyed or disobeyed, and people are in this country either legally or illegally – and if illegally, they have broken a law and thus deserve to be punished, just as I should be punished if I’m caught stealing from the local convenience store.

But the proposed immigration legislation has muddied the waters considerably. How, for example, can we expect illegals to pay a $5,000 fine when, in order to do so, they must first continue working illegally to be able to save up that much money? And how can we expect future immigrants to follow the rules after they’ve seen us give 12 million lawbreakers a virtual “get out of jail free” card?

What this compromise immigration legislation portends for the rest of American life is more of the same illogical, reason-defying nonsense. Consider the issue of same-sex marriage. Some want it, many don’t. Whatever your position on it, I hope you can at least see that there is no middle ground: We must either allow it or not. (Civil unions, in case you’re wondering, are not a legitimate compromise, for it is simply marriage by another name – something that folks such as myself will reject.)

And how about abortion? A fair number of people are strongly for it, and a fair number are strongly against it. But I hope you can see that there are only two choices: abort, or don’t abort. An effort to compromise would probably produce something like the trimester test – allowing abortion during the first (and possibly second) trimester – but we would be forced into that excruciating gray area, for who are we to decide when life begins, and, therefore, when the process can be aborted?

Yesterday’s newspaper did bring some good news on the compromise front: Scientists have figured out how to turn the skin cells from the tips of mouse tails into cells that are “virtually indistinguishable” from human embryonic stem cells. If this discovery can be applied to human cells – and scientists are optimistic that it can – then we have found a suitable middle ground in this debate: stem cells that are as effective as those from human embryos but entail (pardon the pun) no thorny ethical situation. I find this to be quite amazing.

Despite this encouraging news, however, Americans still need to re-learn that there are some things that defy compromise, that right and wrong still exist, and that sometimes we need to draw a line and say, “No more.”

So I finally got around to seeing the much-lauded “Babel,” starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchette. I know, I know – I finally crawled out from under my rock and caught up with the civilized world. But it turns out that I wasn’t missing a whole lot.

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Perhaps the silliest thing concerning abortion, if any aspect of it can be called silly, is that the current debate over it’s constitutionality is built on the wrong starting point.

In Roe, the Supreme Court decided that the Constitution provides for a woman’s right to an abortion. Were they right? Well, yes and no. Amendment 10 to the Constitution, in laymen’s terms, says that any power not specifically granted to the government by the Constitution, or prohibited to the states, is to be left to the states to decide as they will. Now, if you read the Constitution, and also take into consideration the priorities of the Founders, as well as the time in which they lived, it’s clear that the document ignores the issues of health care and sexuality in general, abortion in particular, in regard to both the government and the states, and that it does so because these issues weren’t critical in the process of forming our republic. Since that is the case, then according to the Tenth Amendment, these issues should be left to the states to decide. That means that each state, by referendum or through its elected representatives at the state and/or national levels, should have the opportunity to decide the issue of abortion for itself. But the Supreme Court, in its Roe decision, denied us this opportunity. Even though I disagree with abortion, I recognize that every person in every state should have a right to weigh in on this matter – does have that right under a properly interpreted Constitution. That being said, it’s true that women do have a right to an abortion – if the majority of people in their state take that side of the issue. If, however, the majority in that state opposes abortion, then women in that state do not have that right.

You see, there’s a great difference between saying that the Constitution allows for something, and saying that the Constitution prohibits the disallowing of that thing. That’s the mistake the Supreme Court made in Roe – they were right to say that abortion could be allowed, but they were wrong to say that it had to be allowed, that it cannot be disallowed. According to the Tenth Amendment, it’s up to the people to decide the issue, and they can decide in either direction. In fact, the very phrase upon which abortion is constitutionally justified – “no one shall be deprived of life, liberty or property” – also gives constitutional justification to the banning of abortion. The problem is, people either ignore or are unaware of the rest of that phrase. Here it is in full: “No one shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law” (italics mine). Did you see that? Amazing. People can be deprived of life, liberty or property if there is due process of law. And this happens all the time in our society. For example, we’re deprived of the liberty to legally drive 100 miles an hour on our public roads. You or I may disagree with this law, but it came about fair and square – through due process of law. Likewise, women can be denied, through due process of law, the right to an abortion.

At least, that’s how things should be, but the high court’s flawed logic and misinterpretation of the Constitution have short-circuited this option. And unfortunately, the Roe distortion lives on in the minds of many – most, I daresay. People are, in one sense, debating the wrong question: While I agree that the question of abortion’s rightness or wrongness is the chief moral concern, the question we should be pressing, from a Constitutional perspective, is whether the banning of abortion, as well as the allowance of it, is constitutional, and the answer to that is “yes.”

So yes, the Supreme Court supremely botched this issue from the beginning. And Thomasson made the biggest botch of all when he decided that scientific and legal standards are more important than religious standards. I quote now the last paragraph of his column: “Doctors and pharmacists who form associations based on religious convictions seem beholden to standards other than science and the care of all patients required by their oath.” Why yes, Mr. Thomasson, they are bound to standards other than science and the Hippocratic oath, higher standards, and this is as it should be, especially since the morning-after pill has nothing to do with saving a mother’s life. It’s not like there’s a woman on the floor bleeding to death and the pharmacist is ignoring her. The morning-after pill amounts to a contraceptive version of elective surgery, and elective surgery is voluntary – it does not involve a life-or-death situation for the patient, therefore the doctor or pharmacist is under no obligation to assist, especially if they have religious or personal convictions regarding that particular situation. Don’t believe me? Read on.

 

While abortion is one of the most heated topics of debate in our country, it’s also one of the most misunderstood, with many people – especially abortion proponents – being woefully ignorant of the misapplied logic behind Roe v. Wade. Roe, of course, is the landmark 1973 decision that not only declared abortion to be legal, but a fundamental constitutional right that cannot be denied. This decision can be summed up in three words: Just plain wrong. And when I say “wrong,” I don’t just mean from a moral standpoint, but also from a legal standpoint: Roe doesn’t have a legality to stand on. For a fuller analysis of the sheer legal lunacy of this decision, see Mark Levin’s Men In Black; but for now, I ask that you hear me out, because what I’m about to say won’t be pointed out in most mainstream news sources.

Out of all the individual aspects comprising the abortion debate, the thing that sticks in my craw most painfully on the moral side of the issue is the often-voiced notion of “the health of the mother.” Thanks largely to Sandra “I’m a liberal in conservatives’ clothing” Day O’Connor, it’s nearly entrenched in legal minds and the public’s mind that any restriction on abortion must always allow this exception: that an abortion must be allowed to take place if the health of the mother is in jeopardy. Now, I’m going to give you three seconds to figure out the one absurdity inherent in that principle. Ready? Go. One … two … three. Did you get it? Well, hopefully you did, but just in case you didn’t: Why is it that proponents view the mother’s health as more important than the child’s? No wonder we can’t convince people that abortion is wrong; they think that the only person who matters in this situation is the mother. Why? Why is that? Tell me, if you please, because I want to know. On tonight’s CBS evening news, Eve Gartner of Planned Parenthood said that the mother’s health is paramount. Really? I’ll say it again – why is that? Why isn’t the baby’s health, the baby’s life, paramount? I don’t mean to sound cruel, but sometimes it’s nature’s course that the mother dies in childbirth – with humans as well as the animal kingdom. She dies so that the child gets to live. It seems selfish to me that the mother – someone who’s already had a chance to live – would prevent her child from getting to enjoy the same opportunity. It makes no sense to me; there are two people involved, but apparently only one who counts.

And did I say two? I should have said three. Yes, that’s right, don’t forget about the father. Yeah, yeah, spew all the liberal lines you want – “It’s the woman’s body; it’s her right to decide” – but it takes two to tango, so it should take two to decide. The child is half his, after all.

Some more ridiculousness for you to chew on (and maybe choke on), this from a Dan K. Thomasson column that appeared in the Sunday, Feb. 12, edition of the Kennebec Journal (Augusta, Maine). The background of the situation is this: Wal-Mart has refused to sell the morning-after abortion pill and is now being pressured to reverse its position. In his column, Thomasson rails against Wal-Mart’s anti-pill stance, stating that the company is not only undermining patients’ rights, but also putting people’s lives in jeopardy.

My first question for Thomasson is this: Why do you make this sound like a life-threatening situation for the mother? She’s not going to die if she doesn’t get the morning-after pill. On the other hand, if she does get ahold of the pill, the baby will die. Call it another case of screwed-up, “me first” ethics.

My next point of contention is this: Just because something is legal doesn’t mean that everyone has to like it – and it doesn’t mean that every business has to sell it. Free enterprise dictates that a company can sell any product it wants, so long as the product is legal. But nowhere does free enterprise – or the law, for that matter – dictate that a company must sell every legal product. Wal-Mart doesn’t sell cars, after all, even though they’re legal. Maybe we should force every Wal-Mart store to open a showroom. Or maybe we should force health-food stores to sell cigarettes.

Furthermore – and of much greater import, in my opinion – to force a pharmacist to dispense a medication that violates his religious beliefs (such as the morning-after pill) is a clear case of forcing him to go against the religious doctrine of his choice, which is a true violation of the First Amendment’s oft-misinterpreted free-exercise clause. Our Constitution grants religious freedom a much higher priority than health care – in fact, our Constitution doesn’t even mention health care, while it places religious freedom in the forefront of the Bill of Rights, which I can only presume means that the Founders viewed religious freedom – along with freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom to peaceably assemble – as being of the utmost importance. Abortion, on the other hand, is based on a so-called “right to privacy” (established in the Supreme Court’s 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision), a right based on one word – “liberty” – found in the phrase “life, liberty, or property” of the 5^th and 14^th amendments – amendments, by the way, that were intended, respectively, to protect people accused of crimes, and to ensure the rights of the newly freed slaves – both having nothing to do with privacy, sexuality or abortion.