Gay "Equality" Totalitarian Movement (GET 'M)

From Reuters today, comes the report that eHarmony sued in California for excluding gays: "

The popular online dating service eHarmony was sued on Thursday for refusing to offer its services to gays, lesbians and bisexuals. A lawsuit alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of Linda Carlson, who was denied access to eHarmony because she is gay. Lawyers bringing the action said they believed it was the first lawsuit of its kind against eHarmony, which has long rankled the gay community with its failure to offer a "men seeking men" or "women seeking women" option."

Here's the question for Carlson. Why don't you use one of the many online services that does offer "men seeking men" and "women seeking women" services? Why not choose a dating service that offers the services you want?

The answer is because the Gay "Equality" Totalitarian Movement (GET 'M) disallows any and all dissent against homosexual behavior. Instead of Carlson having the freedom to choose a service that offers her the product she wants AND eHarmony having the freedom to choose to offer the services they want, the Totalitarians of GET 'M say if you don't approve of homosexual behavior we will make you pay!

The lawyer, Todd Schneider, claimed the lawsuit is "about changing the landscape and making a statement out there that gay people, just like heterosexuals, have the right and desire to meet other people with whom they can fall in love."

Really Mr. Schneider? How was your client denied the "right and desire to meet other people with whom they can fall in love." The only way that it can be classified as a denial of rights is if Carlson has the "right" to demand what she wants wherever she wants it from whomever she wants. Of course, that isn't a right, tolerance or liberty.

But it does show the true colors of a movement that long ago lost its moral grounding in true equality.

The solution for moral crimes

The following letter to the editor from George Thomas of Vancouver, WA appeared in May 25th The Columbian (Vancouver, WA) newsapaper. My response follows:

Animals act like animals

The Virginia Tech shooting brings it all up again, doesn't it? Murder, suicide, endless mayhem - sounds crazy, doesn't it? No wonder people have unanswerable questions. They're stuck dumb with wonder. They wonder why God allows such things to happen. They wonder why God's tornado strikes down this church and spares that topless bar, or vice versa. They blame themselves or others as sinners.

People have been putting blame or reading godly purposes into the cosmos since forever. They never get a satisfactory answer and the mayhem goes on. It's so simple, really. The only explanation that fits all the facts is that there is no "God," no "godly" purpose in any event and never has been. If their were a heavenly plan, would it look like this?

All mayhem is the result of natural accidents or of human animals, recently evolved from nonhuman animals, with the consciousness of hunter-gatherers who find themselves in a modern society they don't quite fit into yet.

They keep trying to understand the problem with the wrong set of instructions. If they want answers that fit the facts, they need to put down their holy books and read up in the cognitive sciences.
George Thomas
Vancouver

Thomas implies that there is something bad in these events and that a heavenly plan would not have bad events but good. But where does he find this notion of mayhem? As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity:

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?"[1]

Thomas' worldview cannot account for objective right and wrong. He tells us we've evolved from nonhuman animals. We're nothing more than animals ourselves. There is no objective standard outside ourselves. We animals make the rules. Thomas says we should "put down [our] holy books and and read up in the cognitive sciences." My question is why?

What gives Thomas the animal more moral authority over the animals who pick up holy books? Who is Thomas to say the Virginia Tech killings are an example of mayhem. If there is no objective standard then there is only personal preference, that is, what someone likes or dislikes. A "human animal" has a personal preference of ending the lives of "human animals" on a campus. Thomas dislikes that. Why is that bad or mayhem? Thomas' evolutionary atheology has no answer.

"Murder, suicide, endless mayhem" only make sense if there is an objective standard by which actions are measured. Thomas knows this. That is why he can say those actions are bad. He is denying the very thing his argument requires (an objective standard from a transcendant source) to be rational.

Thomas believes:

"The only explanation that fits all the facts is that there is no 'God,' no 'godly' purpose in any event and never has been. If their were a heavenly plan, would it look like this?"

In reality, the only explanation that fits all the facts is that there is a 'God,' with a 'godly' purpose in any event and always has been. And the Creator's heavenly plan, rejected by the creation, would have consequences that look exactly like this! The endless mayhem doesn't just include murder but every single moral crime that we have ever committed, no matter how small. I'm guilty. Thomas is guilty. Everyone reading this blog is guilty.

But there is good news. In an act of mercy and love, God provided a solution for us to escape His judgement.

He became a man himself and took the punishment on himself. He's the one who took the sentence for the crimes we committed so we can be pardoned, released, and go free.

That's why Jesus is important.


[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Collier Books, MacMillian Publishing Company, New York, 1960, p. 45.

Life is a Wisp

My youngest son turned 9 years old yesterday. We had a great day. I took him and his brother to see Spider-man 3, we went to lunch at Red Robin, went to a park, came home and had dinner and watched the Fantastic Four movie, had cake and ice cream and opened presents. It was a fun day.

Today, at work, I learned that a woman I work with lost her 22 year old son in a car accident. He was with a friend and their car crossed the median into oncoming traffic and hit another car killing themselves and the two people in the other car ( a father and his 12 year old son returning home from the boy's baseball game).

Life is a wisp. We never know when it might end. I don't know what caused the accident. I don't know if it could have been avoided. I do know that there are three families who are in a great amount of pain right now. I hope they remember the good times they had with their loved ones.

It reminds me to cherish times like our family had yesterday. We don't know what the morrow will bring.

Memorial Day - 2007

From bartleby.com, George Patton once said:

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God
that such men lived."

We have much for which to be thankful in this country and I could not agree more with General Patton. These men and women gave up there lives so that their fellow Americans and future generations of Americans could continue to enjoy our freedoms.

While we cannot thank them personally, we should still say thank you in our rememberance of them. So as we participate in BBQs, picnics, movies, or just spend a quiet time at home, may we remember their sacrifice and in our hearts say:

THANK YOU!

Pro-choice means never allowing conscience

Last month, the state of Washington (read Governor Christine Gregoire pressuring the oversight board) adopted a policy to force pharmacists to dispense the emergency contraception known as Plan B (or the morning-after pill). In response, Dr. Jerome Wernow of Northwest Center of BioEthics and a licensed pharmacist (he is also my pastor) wrote the following editorial for The Columbian (Vancouver, WA). The Columbian did not publish it because Dr. Wernow objected to their editing his piece without permitting him to approve of their changes before they published it.

Dr. Wernow has given permission for his unedited editorial to be printed here:

Healthcare without Conscience

Friday the 13th of April was reported as a banner day for women’s reproductive access in Washington, as pharmacists must now set aside their conscience and dispense Plan B contraception. As one editorial put it, it was a “welcome end to a political fight disguised as morality.” As a pharmacist and ethicist, I mused over just what women - and for that matter residents of Washington - had won. Women won the right to force pharmacists with conscience to participate in the dispensing of chemicals that might stop pregnancy, a claim that even Planned Parenthood board member Dr. James Tressel finds dubious in a recent study. Conscientious objection to forced participation in the termination of pregnancy, which has been honored since the Frank Church Amendment in 1973 (and is not a new idea, as one ill-informed pharmacy board member asserts) is now discarded.

A NARAL shill and pharmacy board member claims another victory, one for the majority and for pharmacists who can “separate their personal beliefs from their professional duties.“ Surely, her opinion was not informed by the HCD pharmacy survey that revealed 69% of pharmacists supported conscientious objection, was it? Has she read Robert Jay Lifton’s notion of “doubling” that accounted for Nazi doctors being brutal in their camp practice yet civil and respectable at home and in the public? Does she or the rest of the board really understand that those who claim to have a conscience claim it as part of their being and not an extraneous add-on for Sunday worship?

As curious as the answers to these questions might be, they are not what cause me pause or perhaps recollection of horror. That is reserved for something much larger, a victory that is much more disturbing. It is a victory of the power brokers, the instruments they command, the media that reports without question, and the public that is largely silent. Under Planned Parenthood’s “Pill Patrol,” “secret shoppers “ are sought as undercover agents to ferret out pharmacists who choose not to comply in dispensing Plan B medications and report them. The pharmacy board threatens to strip these professionals of their license, and the governor demands the new rules be kept. Does this not ring with similarities to the unofficial informants of Stasi in former communist Germany? Can the stripping of pharmacists of their wealth and means easily be separated from memories of Krystalnacht? How about a recent newspaper cartoon caricaturing a religious catholic pharmacist determining whether to dispense or not? How is this different from the propaganda of Goebbels, particularly when conscience is to be set aside? Maybe f those who “think they are free,” as said by author Milton Meyer, consider my query too derogatory or too large of a leap. I hope they are right and that the loss of freedom and tolerance I sense does not escalate to such proportions that “it becomes too late” to escape the terrible consequence of such perceived victories by the “majority.”

Jerome R. Wernow R.Ph., Ph.D. is a licensed pharmacist and directs the Northwest Center for Bioethics