In Defense of Rush

Not really. But sort of.

Rush Limbaugh has gotten himself in trouble again, doing the same thing he's done before.  I don't know why anyone is surprised.  He seems to delight in being sensational, stirring up controversy and, in his own words, "illustrating absurdity by being absurd".  It's a trademark of sorts. So why is anyone in the least surprised that he called a professional women's rights activist who demands we pay for her birth control a "slut"?  Why?

[Just to settle the gentleman or not debate - as far as this blog is concerned anyone divorced from three wives and married to a fourth is no gentleman, whatever he says or doesn't say about an activist putting herself on the national stage  He's just not. But I wouldn't whine about not supporting his advertisers.  I don't listen to talk radio much any longer, but if I did, this wouldn't be the straw to break the camel's back shooing me away from his show.]

The only thing about this whole sordid episode that should give anyone pause is the screaming double standard here.  Sarah Palin, Laura Ingraham and others have all been called similar names and more - but did they get any call from the president to encourage them for standing up on principle?  Did any of their accusers sponsors pull their ads?  No, in fact one sponsor that has pulled their ads from the Rush Limbaugh show is still advertising on the Ed Schultz show MONTHS after he repeatedly called Laura Ingraham a slut.

You see, it's OK to call conservatives names for their views because their views are wrong, according to the kind, caring and thoughtful Left. It's OK to call yourself a slut in defiance of advice to dress modestly, when you wear it as a badge of honor. But it's not OK to call someone a slut based on their self-confessed behavior because that would be, well, it would be true and we simply cannot have that.

Slut was never a nice name.  But it has always been and remains a perfectly good name for someone demanding birth control be given to her for free.

For that reason, Rush should not have apologized.

Foreign Service Perspective? Narrow world view

NOTE: My comment has been published.  I'm thankful the caution was unnecessary.

I ran across mention of a blog post today.  The Blogger touts her experience living overseas due to her husband's career in the foreign service - as if this made her wordly wise.  It didn't.  In fact, it seems to have narrowed her vision.  Since I've also been told that she doesn't always publish contradicting viewpoints, I'm publishing my response here.

Contraception: A Foreign Service Perspective


And my response:

The Catholic church hasn’t taught the “rhythm method” in many years. What they do teach is called Natural Family Planning or Fertility Awareness.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8401097

Mother Teresa was teaching Natural Family Planning among Hindus, Muslims and Christians in Calcutta and that BMJ study found a virtual “0″ failure rate.

The other problem with your scenario is that birth control is not the panacea you present here. Not only has the WHO-IARC listed COCs as Class I carcinogens, but hormonal contraceptives also make women more susceptible to infection with the HIV virus. It increases a woman’s susceptibility to serious and potentially fatal blood clots, a risk that is multiplied many times if she has one of a number of normally silent genetic mutations (the Factor V Leiden mutation being the most common one).

Natural Family Planning also does not require the use of a thermometer. There are other effective means for determining a woman’s fertile period that are low-tech and easily teachable. It does not poison women’s bodies or the environment. Instead it helps women own their own fertility and understand how their body functions.

Finally if you have genuinely never heard one woman of your acquaintance explain this as a religious liberty issue – well, you may have lived in several more countries than I have, but your world is much narrower.

Ministry to Single Adults: The Post I'm not writing

Numerous articles culled from the internet, a good long slog through the website of a local singles' ministry and 8 paragraphs into the blog post, I deleted it all.

Yep.  No lengthy article.  Just a few words of caution about ministry in general, but particularly ministry to single adults:

First, you can't assume that numerical growth is godly growth. Weekly "member alerts" and reminders to pay your own bill at the coffee shop after are your first clue.  People openly admitting they are barely out of disastrous marriage #2 and ready for spouse #3 is your second.

When you wink at or studiously ignore fornication, you've got a problem.  When your attitude toward it, when you are forced to acknowledge it, is "get 'em married, quick!", you've got a problem.

When you are afraid to name divorce for the evil it is and instead wrap sin in the cotton-fluff euphemism, "single-again", you are failing as a teacher and leader.

The two biggest problems with singles ministries are the same problems the rest of the Evangelical culture is afraid to approach.  We are afraid to name sin for what it is and then we approach it therapeutically, never really saying "no" except to the stuff we think is really, really, bad like when Bob's wife and Carol's husband show up to church together with her wearing a pajama top and him wearing the matching pajama bottoms.  In other words, sin has to be bigger than the 300-pound gorilla in the corner for us to do anything about it.

Sometimes being single is not sinful or unhealthy.  And many times getting remarried after a divorce is both sinful and unhealthy. Until our leaders stop treating the symptoms and get radical about sin and a theology of marriage and vocations to marriage or singleness, they are going to continue to miss the boat and singles are going to hop from church to ministry to social group and back around again, never being confronted in their sin and never being comforted in their repentance.

Belatedly added proverb of sorts: There is an old saying that if you meet a guy in a bar, you'll find yourself dating a guy who likes to hang out in bars.  If you meet a guy at a singles group, the only thing you can be pretty sure you have in common is your singleness.  Instead, give yourself to what you love and you will find love, whether it be in giving to others by doing that which you love or finding someone who shares your love.  

Book Review: No Easy Choice

Disclosure note: I have commented previously on Ellen Painter Dollar's work.  Last summer, I was one of several commenters who took exception to her work at Christianity Today.  She blames our criticism for CT choosing to sever their contractual relationship with her. You can read about it here, here, and here. At the time, Dollar said we/I were being unfair to her work, which could not be presented in full in a few short blog posts.  Wait for the book, she urged.  The book is out, I have read my copy and here is the review.

Ellen's Story


Ellen Painter Dollar has a compelling story to tell.  Suffering from a genetic bone disease (Osteogenesis Imperfecta - OI) which has left her body twisted and scarred from numerous broken bones and surgeries for pins and plates, Dollar knew from an early age (8 years old) that motherhood had a deep call on her life.  In the most affecting passage in the book, she displays a remarkable understanding of parenthood as a vocation and the responsibility of Christians:

Understanding parenthood as a vocation also means that Christians must consider bearing and rearing children within the context of God's intentions for marriage.  In tradition Christian theology, sexual intercourse and procreation are God-given and necessary components of marriage.  That sex and procreation were designed to go together may seem to be an obvious fact, not even worth mentioning, except when one considers what happens when sex and procreation are separated, as they are in assisted reproduction. (49)

The potential commodification of children that arises from the separation of sex and procreation is also a major concern, as is the Catholic Church's belief that from the moment of conception, embryos are fully human, with all the rights of a human being and created in God's image. (50)

Having a genetic mutation which leaves you with a body that betrays, one that breaks simply sitting down on the floor or stepping off a curb funny is not the way things are supposed to be.  It is the natural wish of parents to spare their children known physical and emotional suffering. I applaud Dollar's courage in embracing her calling as a mother.  There can be no doubt that it took tremendous courage to marry without considering surgical sterilization, and to welcome the possibility that she would find herself shepherding children through the same physical and emotional turmoil she faced.

She also showed a great deal of courage in choosing to tell her story publicly, on blogs and now in a book.  She was going to be criticized no matter what choices she made about childbearing.  Unfortunately, in between the choices she and her husband made to welcome children into their family who were conceived naturally, they made a detour into Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART).  It is this journey and the choices they made that form the basis of the book and the reason she tells her story.

Choices Unmoored

Dollar presents herself as a narrative ethics writer and the book blurb says in part, "Dollar's story will help parents who want to understand and make good decisions about assisted reproduction as well as those who support and counsel them, including pastors and medical professionals."  And yet Dollar's presentation of narrative ethics is idiosyncratic and the book utterly fails to provide any rubric for decision-making.  In addition, medical professionals will find it fundamentally dishonest on key points.

In her explanation of narrative ethics, Dollar repeats last summer's theme that narrative ethics in accessible to the masses while more traditional ethical systems are only accessible to the professionals.  In an effort to present narrative ethics to the average man, she creates her own version:

Narrative ethics strives less for a clear-cut decision about which choice is morally superior, and more for consensus on which choice seems best in the context of people's stories. (144-5)

There are inherent problems with such an approach: It is difficult to come up with a decisive answer about what is right, and those wrestling with an ethical question can be swayed by their personal feelings about the people involved. (145)

Deciding which story to believe requires an informed community of listeners who help the parents uncover their motives and assumptions.  Narrative ethics is more about deliberate, informed , and supportive conversation than the dispensing of authoritative opinion. (146)

Instead of this view, Narrative Ethics at its best does aim at a normative way of life for individuals in the Christian community.  Christ's story comes first and is the context through which our own stories are to be read and through which we come to understand their meaning.  What Dollar presents here is dangerously close to situation ethics and might more accurately be termed an ethic of consensus.  For a serious treatment of narrative ethics from a Christian perspective, see Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament.

Because Dollar's use of narrative ethics is rather idiosyncratic, it leaves her untethered, unmoored from any transcendent ethic, no way to adjudicate between competing stories, there is no sense of any intrinsic limit to our use of ART and we are left with the sense that everything is permissible so long as we don't violate some imagined community consensus or breach an ethereal "ick" barrier.  For instance, Dollar present us with no way to understand why her use of ART/PGD may have been acceptable while the use of an Indian woman as a gestational surrogate may not be.

Dollar denies the possibility of a metanarrative in her rejection of more juridically focused ethical systems, such as Catholic moral theology.  In fact, much of the book seems to pay more attention to secular media and secular views than it does to Christian sources.  At points it reads as if Christianity is simply one more source, one more tool for helping us make decisions that are good so long as we stop and think about it and don't violate that community consensus.  While she pretends to have respect for Catholic teaching, she evinces little understanding of it and waves much of it away with a criticism about language and the use of words such as "illicit" (which word she dismisses as being more appropriate to the relationship between a Congressman and a highly paid escort!).

Eugenics Whitewashed

PGD doesn't cure genetic disorders; its successful use merely ensures that children with particular genetic disorders are not born, which is a significantly different endeavor. (148)

Indeed, it is.

Dollar asks if PGD is a new eugenics.  In an effort to convince us that it is not, even though she does express some concerns about the devaluing of certain human lives, she engages in a bit of historical revisionism. Associating the practice largely with the Nazi regime, and ignoring that fact that Hitler learned about it from Margaret Sanger, she dismisses it as a pseudo-scientific practice which we can be assured is not the case with PGD because it relies on "scientific fact".

In fact, Eugenics is the practice of improving populations by controlled breeding.  It can be practiced in two ways:  Positive Eugenics is the increased reproduction of positive traits where Negative Eugenics works to reduce the reproduction of negative traits. While Dollar does try to discredit Eugenics as merely the pseudo scientific practice of the Nazi regime, it has a long and varied history.  At times it garnered the support of luminaries such as Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.  While early eugenicists such as Margaret Sanger may have been primarily concerned with race and social status, it has also long been concerned with the elimination of certain heritable diseases such as Huntington's and Sickle diseases.

But science progresses and a generation after the birth of the first "test tube" baby, the process of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is entering the public consciousness.  PGD is a highly technical form of eugenics that can be used to promote positive eugenics (selecting for a desirable trait) or negative eugenics (selecting against an inherited disease such as OI).

Redefining Life


In her effort to help people tell and think through their stories, in spite of the book blurb which promises help in making good decisions, Dollar steadfastly refuses to give direction, to ascribe to any sort of metanarrative or foundational belief about life.  She appears to be utterly ignorant of the necessary place anthropology plays in such conversations and even says the moral status of the embryo is not her primary concern.  While I would certainly agree that it is not the only thing to consider, we simply cannot discuss the permissibility of various ART practices until we understand what it is we are discussing.

... I've concluded that making one's view of embryonic life the central concern in reproductive ethics is potentially misleading and overly simplistic ... (111)

Efforts to name embryos as fully human beings seem to ignore some of the fundamental truths of pregnancy and birth.  Human technology has not yet found a way for even the healthiest fertilized eggs to become babies without a woman's womb.  I wonder if this is not merely biological fact but also a hint that our human identity is rooted in relationship ... We can, literally, not become human without an early and fundamental connection to another person... (118)

When does life begin? We can't really know from a scientific perspective. (119)

On the contrary, we do know that at conception, at union of sperm and egg, a new genetically unique human person comes into existence.  There is nothing else it can be but human, fully human.  The only difference between the fertilized egg, the blastocyst, the embryo, the fetus, the infant, the child and the aged grandparent reminiscing about life in the old country is age and development.  You are one unique human person from the moment of conception until your death.

Scientists and ethicists have long recognized this fact.  For further information on this point see the document, When Does Life Begin? by the Association of Pro-Life Physicians and When Does Human Life Begin?, a white paper from the Westchester Institute.

Conclusions


Ellen Painter Dollar's story is deeply moving, but when she attempts to move into the sphere of ethics, her efforts are deeply and fatally flawed.  She appears to want to dismiss some ethical principles because people don't consistently apply them.  One example is her treatment of the way some ignore pregnancy loss, not treating the baby as fully human.  Here she seems completely unaware of how some Christians and their communities are dealing with pregnancy loss.  Although it happened after the book was written, the Duggar's funeral for their last baby was a very public example of a family mourning the loss of one of their own.  Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum and his wife Karen have a similar story about the death of their son Gabriel and how they took him home so his brothers and sisters could meet him before he was buried.  Even so, the inconsistent application of a moral principle does not negate the validity of that principle.

The book fails in its central purpose of offering guidance for the decision-making process.  Couples looking for guidance will find none.  At the point at which this guidance might be offered, Dollar retreats behind her conception of narrative ethics and wants us to believe a community can come to a better decision than individuals -- even though neither the individual or the community has a rubric through which to work their way toward making a wise decision.

After quoting from Psalm 139, Dollar writes this:

The idea that God has known and loved us always, from the moment we were conceived, can be tremendously comforting. (117)

If only Ellen Painter Dollar had owned that truth, had wrapped herself in its comfort, she might have pursued a different course with respect to PGD and the three embryos determined to carry OI.  And she would have had a different story to tell.






For additional reading, I recommend:

Embryo: A Defense of Human Life 2nd edition by George and Tollefson
Humana Vitae, a foundational papal encyclical for understand issues of procreation.  It is interesting to note that while Dollar refers to some Roman Catholic documents, she ignores this seminal work on the topic.

Addendum:  My brother in the faith, Tim Bayly, has responded to No Easy Choice telling of his family's Simple Choices to embrace love and the children God sends.

Even the title is wrong

Poor Nick Kristof.  He can't even get the title of his column right.  That should be your first clue that he still doesn't get it and likely never will.  Sadly, I have to say Dr. Mohler appears not to get Kristof. Though I greatly appreciated him using his platform to shine the light on this issue, in his column on the Kristof column, Mohler calls the NYT columnist a public intellectual.  Kristof is not an intellectual, he is an ideologue whose interests happen to coincide with those of Christians on one strikingly important point: human rights.

That Kristof is an idealogue and not an intellectual is most clearly revealed in those aspects of human rights concerns that touch on the dignity of women as women.  Kristof closes his column this way, a good example of his ideology:

In this case, we should make a good-faith effort to avoid offending Catholic bishops who passionately oppose birth control. I’m glad that Obama sought a compromise. But let’s remember that there are also other interests at stake. If we have to choose between bishops’ sensibilities and women’s health, our national priority must be the female half of our population.

Nothing has been a worse bargain for women's health than contraception.  In the original study for the contraceptive pill, 3 women *died* and all they did was adjust the dose.  In a study, conducted at roughly the same time, on a possible contraceptive pill for men, ONE man exhibited a slightly shrunken testicle and the study was abandoned.  The record of contraception and women's health has not improved since.  New reports from the FDA show that there have been 14 known deaths due to RU-486, more than 2000 other adverse events, more than 600 of which have required hospitalization.


There is also continuing controversy over Yaz, one of the newer forms of birth control which has an ever higher risk of dangerous blood clots than older forms of the pill.  A significant number of women also have a normally silent genetic mutation which multiplies their risk of potentially fatal blood clots if they take hormonal contraception.


In addition, the adverse health effects of hormonal contraception don't end with blood clots and increased risk of reproductive cancers.  As SCOTUS held in the decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the wide availability and frequent use of birth control entails the desire for abortion as a "back up" plan.  Recent history shows that the demand for legalized abortion tracked with the availability and use of contraception.  One follows the other like a dog and his master.


So no, Mr. Kristof, this is not a choice between the sensibilities of the USCCB and defending women's health.  It is a case of the USCCB being on the side of women's health.  It's not about "pelvic politics", either.  It's about women's lives, their health, their dignity as women qua woman, and "soul politics".


Update I've written about the health effects of birth control in these posts:


Might I suggest a Co-Q10 chaser with that Ortho-Evra?


Even Guttmacher recognizes the problem

The Pill - A Timeline

Update 2 While Kristof's attempt to re-write the 1st Amendment was bad enough, his pretense that the post was about alleviating poverty was even worse.  More birth control isn't going to help lift women out of poverty.  If that were the case, free clinics and the half-century "War on Poverty" would have eradicated female-headed household poverty by now.  The truth is that we have long known there are three things you can do to virtually guarantee you will never fall below the poverty line.  When it comes to poverty, behavior matter matters most:

1) finish high school
2) get married before you have a baby
3) get a job, any job, and keep it

Other behaviors associated with the likelihood of avoiding poverty are living frugally and regular church attendance. So Kristof has missed on both counts in his article - the sensational swipe he attempts to take at what he wants you to think are a few, benighted celibate men (the Bishops) is misdirected, but he is also wrong in his main point about what alleviates/the behaviors that help on avoid poverty.

How would you respond?

When the Patriarchalists saw I asked hard questions, some of them prayed for me.

When the Egalitarians saw I asked hard questions, they blocked me from their blogs and shunned me in life.

To which group do I owe my life (in some very real ways)? Which do I love?

And who breaks my heart?  Where do you think I focus the same sorts of prayers?

Sexuality and Authority

The goodness of the created order is founded on the primordial covenant in which God the Creator names something else, something other than Himself as good.  This something other is His creation constructed according to the beauty of covenantal differentiation.  The primary symbols of this covenant are the male and female person.  Salvation does not annihilate the self, thus it does not annihilate sexual difference, but according to the faith of the Church, the order of redemption rests upon the bodily symbols of man and woman.  The manner in which these symbols function redemptively in the order of grace is the basis for male and female authority in the Catholic church.

---Monica Migliorino Miller, Sexuality and Authority in the Catholic Church

Fried Rice Pilaf, sort of

This is one of my favorite ways to use rice.  You can toss in tons of veggies, whatever you like.  Or you can have it plainer as a side dish -- even without the eggs.  With the eggs and veggies though, it is a complete one-dish meal.

Brown Rice
1 cup brown rice
2 cups (1 small can) chicken broth
1/2 cup water

--- cook the rice as you normally would, a day or two ahead of time and refrigerate.

Fried Rice Pilaf
 medium onion, small dice
2-3 cloves garlic, smashed and diced
1/4 cup sliced almonds
1/8 to 1/4 cup chopped hazelnuts or whole pine nuts
pinch of cinnamon
3 cups cooked brown rice
3 eggs lightly beaten
1-2 cups julienned spinach
3 T Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste

Saute onions and garlic in the olive oil until clear.
Add rice, pinch of cinnamon and spinach, stir until spinach wilts
Stir in nuts and eggs, keep stirring until eggs are cooked

You can add any other veggies you like or omit the veggies and eggs for a plain side dish.  It will keep in the refrigerator for several days in a well-sealed container.

Social Darwinism at Work

With little evidence in their favor, and sometimes great evidence to the contrary, courts are increasingly imposing death sentences on the innocent.

Names like Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan ring distant bells, having been forgotten by most.  Terri Schiavo, whose battle was more prolonged and received much more attention, is remembered by more people. But how many people yet know that name of a 32-year-old Massachusetts woman who suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder who is the subject of the latest court-instigated death order?  Not for her, but for the child she has carried in her womb for 5 months now.

The parents of the woman are seeking legal guardianship so they can order the death of their grandchild.  Her court-appointed Guardian ad Litem found that the woman who has described herself as being "very Catholic" would want to have the baby.  In the face of the woman's beliefs and the findings of her GAL, the lower court went far beyond merely making a contrary order.  In fact, the lower court pulled out of thin air a sterilization order in addition to ordering an abortion. Thankfully the appellate judge has thrown out the sterilization order but has remanded the abortion ruling back to the lower court which will hear the case and make a new ruling.

All this in direct opposition to a 1982  Massachusetts Supreme Court decision which found that the right to give birth, "must be extended to all persons, including those who are incompetent."  The lower court abortion/sterilization ruling is even more troubling given the woman's previous history - she suffered a psychotic break after a previous abortion.  She believed people were telling her she killed her baby.

By the way, about her name?  We don't know her name.  She is only known as "Mary Moe" in the court records.

Pray for "Mary Moe".  God loves her and does know her name.

Life Site News coverage here

"History of Death" story here

On the Feast of the Epiphany

I've seen a meme that seems to be gaining traction in the twitterverse.  Instead of making a boatload of New Year's Resolutions that last all of three hours, choose one word.  Instead of buckshot, it's more like a sniper approach.  One word makes one theme to guide your year.  It provides focus and clarity, a foundation instead of sixteen rooms with nothing holding them up. (how's that for a bouquet of metaphors?)

I have thought about this off and on since I started hearing about it between Christmas and New Year.  But every word I came up with seemed as if it was someone else's word.  And then this morning, I had my own personal epiphany.  In an uncertain place where I seem to be facing a mid-life career change and having spent a year arguing with God about that, about how I thought my life would look and how I was so very wrong about it all, I found peace.  I realized that whatever I end up doing to keep a roof over my head and beans in the crock pot, I've known for a very, very long time what my vocation was.

That's the word: vocation

And here's a website to help you: My One Word