Whence Comes Rights?
Last week the Department of Health and Human Services announced the rollback of the Obama era birth control mandate that all employers must provide contraceptive coverage for their employees. "'No American should be forced to violate his or her own conscience in order to abide by the laws and regulations governing our healthcare system,' Caitlin Oakley, HHS press secretary, said in a statement." The Justice Department issued legal guidelines for the federal government in respecting and protecting fundamental freedoms. And the crowd goes wild. It is an assault on women's rights, an attack on freedom!
Consider. On one hand you have the Bill of Rights that guarantees, among other things, the right to the free exercise of religion. On the other hand you have the right of women to kill their babies in the womb (Note: the issue of whether or not to provide abortifacients is an issue of killing babies in the womb). Which of these two are a recognized right in our Constitution? Which position, then, has its basis in the Constitution? Clearly the ACLU thinks the latter, not the former. It is an American Civil Liberty, apparently, to force companies to violate their religious convictions in favor of providing drugs to kill babies.
We are so quick to seize rights not recognized by either Scripture or the Constitution that I have to wonder about the source of rights conferred. Clearly not God nor the government.
To the Pure
Scripture says, "To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled." (Titus 1:15) Perhaps that explains how authors are boycotting an event at a museum in Massachusetts dedicated to Dr. Seuss because it is a mural on the wall that (apparently suddenly) contains a "jarring racial stereotype." From his book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, taken from the very pages of the book, there is a picture of a Chinese boy eating with chopsticks. Jarring. Racism. Indeed. Or ...?
That's Just ... Odd
Reports are out that Russia hacked the NSA for, among other things, information about how the US defends itself against hackers. Irony. "Psst! Russia! If you can get that information, the answer is 'Not very well'."
Crazy California
California has apparently lost its governmental mind. "Under a new California law, those who work in health care who use the wrong gender pronoun when referring to a transgender patient could face prison time." Not crazy enough for you? The San Francisco democratic senator, Scott Wiener, argued that it was a scare tactic to claim that anyone would be prosecuted for using the wrong pronoun from his law which includes a $1,000 fine and up to one year in prison. Um ... Scott ... if you were writing a law that wouldn't result in prosecution, why are there criminal penalties included? And I want to know when the government of California decided that free speech and the free exercise of religion was erased from the Bill of Rights. (The law specifically does not exempt religious organizations.) "You will agree with -- not merely tolerate, but agree with -- this unscientific, irrational, unbiblical notion of gender fluidity or you will be prosecuted." At this time the law only covers senior care facilities and is aimed primarily at medical professionals who work in them, but that can't hold out for long.
Unclear on the Concept
It had to happen, of course. The Boy Scouts held their ground for a short time on who they would allow to lead ... but caved. Then they surrendered more ground with the transgender question. It seems to be their "thing". They now have plans to admit girls into Boy Scouts, beginning with the Cub Scout program. Now, that's all fine and good, but please, please stop calling it "Boy Scouts". And why are the Girl Scouts not admitting boys? Because the Girl Scouts still excludes boys. (Can you say "double standard"?)
So the public is upset with the Boy Scouts for no longer being boy scouts and the Girl Scouts are upset with the Boy Scouts for allowing girls when that was their domain. How's that working out for you, Boy Scouts?
Wrong on so many levels
I'm not particularly concerned about a Catholic school's "First Communion" rules, but the story was interesting. Nine-year-old Cady Mansell picked out a snazzy white suit to wear for her First Communion at her Catholic school. The school, however, warned that she couldn't participate if she didn't wear a skirt or a dress. Their reasoning? "We should all be equal and wear what we would like." Here ... let's put it another way. "Equality means wearing whatever we like. Your rules don't count. My presence at your school -- which is not mandatory, but voluntary -- means that you must submit your rules to my version of 'equality' and give in to my whims." The school's reasoning? "What? We've always had the same dress code and we've always enforced it. Dress codes exist in lots of places and you don't get to change them on your command." By the way, they said she could take her First Communion in the suit privately; she just couldn't attend the ceremony in that outfit. "We couldn't go to the real Communion Mass." Then the priest did the unpardonable. He told her mother that the parents' job was to teach their child what is good rather than letting her decide what is good. What a loser! The family "dug in their heels" and ended up pulling their daughter out of the school and the church.
Missing it entirely. 1) Communion is not the ceremony, but the practice. 2) "Equality" is not defined as "wear whatever you want." 3) Private entities -- businesses, churches, schools, etc. -- are not obligated to submit to the desires of those who voluntarily go there. 4) It is the job of parents to teach their kids rather than to simply cater to their whims and desires. And when kids, taught to live by their own untaught wishes, run up against others who have been taught the same, it can get really, really ugly.
New Biblical Scholarship
Finally, biblical scholars have cleared up this issue that we've been confused about for so long. Jesus's famous "love your enemies" "was never intended to include those who disagree with you politically." And now we learn that we can say, "I am not ashamed of the gospel—as long as it doesn’t cause me to defy any cultural trends or fads ..." What a relief! Must be true; I saw it on the Internet.
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