Sorry Obamalings: Despite MN Law, A Gal is NOT a Dad, a Guy is NOT a Mom

What Is a Mother to Do? Questions for Same-Sex Marriage Advocates

by Deborah Savage at Witherspoon Institute

article sent by Mark Waldeland:

To demand that we recognize same-sex romantic relationships as marriages, and teach our children so, is to prevent them from discovering reality.

The speed at which marriage was redefined last month in the state of Minnesota has left me with a sense of vertigo. My head is still spinning. And though the war wages on, one thing seems clear: Those of us for whom same-sex marriage has been, until now, almost impossible to contemplate, have some things to figure out. Of those, the most urgent is the question of what we are to tell our children.

I am the mother of a ten-year-old girl, a beautiful child, more precious to me than anything you can imagine. When, on June 1, same-sex marriage became legal in the state of Minnesota, I needed to know what to tell her. How is this supposed to work—actually—in the concrete world of a ten-year-old child and her mother? Her father is wondering too, of course, but he is rather speechless at the moment. And the way it works in our house, though he is really good at protecting her from possible physical threats, it usually falls to me to protect her from the more psychological threats she encounters occasionally in her young life. But this is a new one. So I need some advice.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should state that, as a philosopher, I have gotten fairly skilled at treating the philosophical errors of our age in the classroom setting. But a ten-year-old is at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to the arguments I have developed against relativism, nominalism, dualism, materialism, and so on. And then of course, parenting comes with its own specific challenges. So I am hoping those who advocate same-sex marriage have given some thought to this, eager as they seem to be to take on the task of parenting themselves.

For starters, can we agree that, along with her father of course, I am still responsible to her for doing my part to raise her to be the intelligent, responsible young woman she is destined to be? If so, how should I help her grapple with what it means to know the truth about something? Doesn’t any claim to the truth have to begin with a grasp of what is actually so? Should there not be some sort of correspondence between what is so and what she thinks is so? At least, that is what I have been trying to teach her.

Can her efforts to come to grips with reality as something independent of her personal opinions still include the evidence of her senses—or not? Is she now required by law to doubt them? In other words, if she sees a man—or a woman—walking down the street, whether together or alone, is she now required to pause before drawing any conclusions about them?

With her child’s natural grasp of real things, she already knows that married people have babies, and she knows it has something to do with mothers and fathers. But since our state has declared that the categories of mother and father are no longer relevant for marriage, that marriage has nothing really to do with children, how shall I explain to her where babies come from? She already knows that little people like her would not even exist in a world where same-sex marriage was the norm. Do I get to make any claims about the fact that only a mommy and a daddy can actually produce one?

And what shall I tell her about what her body is for? Am I to tell her that it is sort of like a ship and her personal identity is the equivalent of the ship’s pilot, someone in charge but not personally affected by any damages to the vehicle in which she is riding? That her identity has actually nothing to do with her embodiment in a female body? That self- consciousness resides in her mind and that at some point it will simply be a matter of discerning which way her body is leading her? (She is pretty smart and so she might ask me if those two ideas don’t contradict each other somehow; any guidance on that would be appreciated).

But help me understand this. Is it sort of like one of those divining rods they used to use to find water? That might be hard for her to get at first but if we all keep at it, I am sure she will understand it eventually. And just as an aside, how shall I help her to reconcile this idea with all that stuff about the mind-body connection everyone is talking about? Her school offers yoga classes now and her teacher is always talking that way.

Oh, and will I now be required by law to sit silently when, a few years from now, I find her school has introduced a module into her sex education class on how homosexual persons go about having sex? Any suggestions on how I should help her with her homework for that class?

And how I should help her with her language arts studies? Do the definitions in the dictionary have any reference to any reality at all? Or am I now to teach her that words are just labels we annex to things, that they have no real meaning, no matter how long we have connected a word with the reality to which it points? What should I do if she argues with me about the definition of parent? Of freedom? Of truth? It has already gotten a little tricky—children seem to grow up so fast these days.

It doesn’t help to simply explain to her that same-sex marriage is a matter of civil rights. There are all sorts of things we are permitted to do in our culture, choices we make for which there is no actual law identifying it as a specific “right.” If marriage were a “civil right,” a lot of single women I know would be married already.

Besides, this issue has absolutely nothing in common with the civil rights movement. My daughter already knows that the civil rights movement had to do with who gets included in the category of human. Hopefully we have figured that one out by now, at least on paper. People have civil rights in virtue of being human and you have all the same rights that I do.

No, this debate is not about a civil right. No one has a “right” to pretend that a physical union (one of the characteristics of marriage in that dictionary I was talking about a minute ago) is possible when the body parts involved simply do not fit together in any feasible way.

The more I think about it, I am pretty sure those who favor redefining marriage have taken on a battle that they will never be able to win. Because as any parent knows, raising a child requires that I help my daughter grasp that there can be no debate whatsoever about whether or not any of us—gay or straight—get to define reality for ourselves.

I am also pretty sure that, even though the Supreme Court seems to have ruled that we all get to do that (remember Planned Parenthood v. Casey?), in the end we will discover that nature’s laws determine what is so.

I’ve also heard that rumor about reality being socially constructed. But I experimented with that when I was in my twenties and I have empirical evidence that it just isn’t true. No, really. And I think it will continue to be false no matter what our legislature says, no matter what the president says, no matter what the Supreme Court says. Even the media can’t make it true.

Which reminds me—it might be worth your while to take another look at George Orwell’s novel, 1984. It is amazing how prophetic that book was, though I doubt Orwell had in mind our current situation. But to save you some time, let me provide just a brief summary.

In the novel, Orwell’s hero-of-sorts, Winston Smith, works for the totalitarian government—everyone does as a matter of fact; his job is to change history by changing old newspaper records to match with the new truth decided by the Party. At the beginning of the novel, Winston is trying to find a way to escape the Thought Police long enough to join a mostly imagined resistance movement. He becomes obsessed with this and takes the incredibly courageous and foolhardy step of beginning to keep a journal to record his thoughts on the matter. Somewhere along the way, he encounters someone named O’Brien who he thinks is in the resistance. And at one point, Winston writes:

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

This debate is not merely about whether or not you get to have sex with whomever you like and still qualify for spousal benefits. Ultimately what it is about is the freedom to say that 2 and 2 is 4. At the end of the novel, poor Winston, having been captured and tortured by the Thought Police, having finally submitted to the demands of the Party and relinquished his grip on what had seemed patently obvious only months before, writes in his journal at a moment he describes as a victory over himself—that 2 + 2 = 5. And his life is over.

A long time ago, August Comte (the father of positivism) said something quite profound. He said that the only safe way to destroy something is to replace it. Clearly, this is the attempt that is underway. But I will never abandon my child or my grandchildren—or my neighbor’s children—to this.

For when you ask my daughter to accept that a man may marry another man, that a woman may marry another woman, you are asking her to suspend her capacity to judge the world around her and judge it truly. You are requiring her to declare that 2 + 2 = 5 as an act of victory over her natural inclination toward the true and the good. You are trying to trap her in a world where nothing is as it seems.

Deborah Savage is a professor of philosophy and pastoral ministry in the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity at the University of St. Thomas.

Matt Birk Snubs Obama’s Aid in Planned Parenthood Killings

HOW SUPER BOWL CHAMPION MIKE BIRK HELPED WOMEN

by Katie Kiefer article sent by Mark Waldeland:

Super Bowl champion and retired NFL center Matt Birk is helping women by bravely speaking the truth.

Birk won the Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens last year and six-time Pro Bowl honoree. Birk is also a former Minnesota Viking and St. Paul, Minnesota, native so he is close to my heart. As a Super Bowl champion, Birk had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to join his team at the White House. Birk declined the invitation because he disagrees with President Obama’s recent statements to Planned Parenthood:

“I love you!” an audience member shouted out on April 26 as Obama prepared to speak to the national Planned Parenthood conference.

“I love you back. Thank you,” Obama responded to roaring applause.

Obama went on to tell Planned Parenthood that they were: “providing quality healthcare to women all across America.” He said the core principle guiding Planned Parenthood was: “that women should be allowed to make their own decisions about their own health.” He ended his speech by saying: “Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you.”

Birk went on Fox’s News Channel’s Hannity last Thursday to explain his decision:“…I think when you evoke the name of God when you’re the president and you’re the first president to address Planned Parenthood, you can’t acknowledge God and say ‘God bless Planned Parenthood.’ It’s a contradiction. 330,000 lives ended last year at Planned Parenthood … being pro-choice is one thing but bringing God into it?”

Hannity asked: “How did your teammates react to this?”

Birk answered:

“Everybody’s great with it. The Ravens Team is a spiritually deep team and a lot of guys congratulated me. They were glad that I did what I did. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I just declined the invitation. … I just wanted to tell the truth.”

President Obama left the word “abortion” out of his speech. He only mentioned contraception. But the truth is that Obama unconstitutionally uses federal taxpayer dollars to promote a culture of disdain for human life in two ways.

First, Obama supports fungible federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which performs in-clinic abortions. Secondly, his U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate circumvents the First Amendment and requires religious organizations to offer contraceptives, sterilization methods and abortion-generating prescriptions in their private insurance plans.

I agree with the president in that, as women, we have the right to make our own health decisions. However the right to look after our own health is totally different from our right to kill, which is only a “right” if we kill in self-defense. Save for the extraordinarily rare cases where carrying or delivering a baby naturally will result in the mother’s death, there is no argument for killing an innocent baby out of self-defense.

I am sure it must be very distressing and frightening to face an unplanned pregnancy. For the young woman, I can see how she would feel like she should have the right to choose to end her baby’s life so that she does not need to deal with the expected inconvenience. But how can we compare inconvenience to life? It seems like they cannot be weighed against each other.

Using this logic, a single father could take his teenage daughter’s life if she became a “burden” to him. If life itself is worth less than maneuverability, then life is not worth much at all — including the woman’s own life.

I think our president should tell women the truth: Not all free choices are beneficial. Abortion by and large harms a woman psychologically, emotionally and physically because an abortion is not a natural or healthy way to deliver a baby. Not only is the procedure unnatural, it also results in death instead of life.

If a young woman carries her unplanned baby to term, has a natural delivery and then gives her baby up for adoption to a family that will love and care for her child, it will be a choice that she never regrets.

Birk told Hannity:

“I’ve been involved in the pro-life movement for a few years and I’ve met … maybe 1,000 women who have had abortions and regret it and those women are my heroes for their courage and their strength to join the pro-life movement and try to stop future women from making the same mistake. I have yet to meet a woman that has given birth to their child and said: ‘Boy, I wish I had had an abortion.’”

None of us can judge women who have abortions; we can only do a better job of telling women the truth about how abortion will impact them. And Planned Parenthood should not receive any federal funding let alone a presidential blessing.

If God is looking down on Earth, I bet he’s saying: “Thank you, Matt Birk. God bless you.”

Obama Running Immigration Bill Show

Obama runs immigration bill from White House, according to new report

from the Daily Caller:

The White House is playing a larger role in developing the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill than its supporters publicly admit, according to a forthcoming article in The New Yorker.

“‘No decisions are being made without talking to us about it,’ the official said of the Gang of Eight negotiations … ‘This does not fly if we’re not O.K. with it,’” a senior Obama official told author Ryan Lizza for the pending article.

White House officials also believe the emerging bill will be a huge success for President Barack Obama.

If a Gang of Eight-style bill is signed into law by the President, it will probably be one of the top five legislative accomplishments in the last twenty years,” the official said. “It’s a huge piece of business.”

The report points out other evidence of close White House involvement.

For example, Obama met with four top Democrats pushing the bill on Thursday, and a White House spokesman said earlier that White House lawyers are participating in the drafting of the bill.

But Obama and White House officials have kept a low profile to avoid deterring GOP cooperation.

However, they expect to seize the credit from Latinos once a bill is signed, the New Yorker article said. “We’re not worried about short-term political credit. We’ll get plenty of it if it gets signed,” the official told The New Yorker.

The Senate continues debate on the bill this week.

The New Yorker article also highlights unflattering statements and infighting among the GOP side of the Gang of Eight Senators, including Sen. John McCain, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. Marco Rubio and Florida’s former Republican governor, Jeb Bush.

During a debate over guest-worker rules, “Rubio sided with the Chamber against the construction workers,” according to the article.

“There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it,” a Rubio aide told Lizza. ‘“There shouldn’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. And so you can’t obviously discuss that publicly,” said the aide.

McCain also complained to Sen. Chuck Schumer, the leading Democrat in the gang, about Rubio’s tactics to win support from other GOP.

“Schumer often found himself mediating disputes between Rubio and McCain, who felt that Rubio’s public statements sometimes positioned him positively with [GOP] conservatives at the expense of the Gang,” said the article. “McCain would call Schumer and fume, ‘Look what Rubio’s doing!’”

An aide to Rubio dismised the New Yorker article, but did not deny the quotes.

“Sen. Rubio declined to participate in the piece, and our office strongly objected to the magazine using the background quotes like they did because they misrepresented the Senator’s position,” the aide told Politico.

The 1,077-page bill is expected to provide amnesty to at least 11 million illegal immigrants, bring in another 20 million people over the next decade, accelerate the future inflow of immigrants’ relatives, increase the supply of agricultural laborers and boost the annual inflow of blue-collar and professional guest-workers above 1 million.

Since July 2008, the number of Americans with jobs has dropped by 3 million to 144 million, while the working-age population has climbed 9 million to 245 million, including roughly 4 million working-age immigrants. Roughly 20 million Americans lack full-time jobs.

The total cost to taxpayers is unclear. The amnesty of roughly 11 million low-skill workers is expected to spur benefit spending by $9.3 trillion over 50 years, but advocates say the bill’s various costs will be offset by economic gains.