This is just a question… Why are we always trying to get the government to adopt Catholic values as law? I mean we want to outlaw abortion and contraception, …
Well, because…
, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.unalienable RightsLIFE
So you might want to ask George Washington about that one. After all, if the king (or the Supreme Court) can take a right away, it is not inalienable, and so it isn’t a right at all.
No one is trying to outlaw homosexuality. ** What is being opposed is the government recognition of homosexual (or incestuous, or polygamous, or bestial) relationships as marriage. So, again, no one is trying to outlaw homosexual behavior;** the question is whether the government is going to sanction it and promote it as it does heterosexual marriage.
Let’s leave religion out of the question for a moment. From a purely civil perspective, heterosexual unions are given special privilege by the government; tax breaks, subsidies, in some states community property, and so on. All of that is done because
only heterosexual couples can procreate, and the government is trying to encourage procreation by paying the expenses thereof, because if there is no procreation, there is no United States of America.
Look at another popular tax break: hybrid vehicles. Let’s say that Bob is a Southerner, and Southerners enjoy their trucks, and so Bob wants to buy a pickup truck with a V12 engine. Bob does not need this truck for his business; it is purely for Bob’s own use. So Bob buys the truck, and he claims on his tax return as a hybrid vehicle. Obviously Bob’s truck is not a hybrid vehicle, but Bob does not think that the government should be in the business of legislating morality, i.e., forcing people to conserve natural resources by telling people what kind of vehicle they should drive.
You better believe that in a few months, the local revenue agent is going to show up at Bob’s house and ask where the hybrid vehicle is. If Bob points to his truck, the revenue agent is going to arrest Bob. Bob can yell and scream about his “value system,” about how the government is discriminating against Southerners, how the government is under the control of the environmental lobby, and how the government should not be legislating morality. None of that matters,
because the government is not discriminating.
The government never said Bob could not buy his truck. The government simply will not subsidize a pickup truck as if it was a hybrid vehicle simply because of the personal preferences of Bob or his fellow Southerners.
There is no public interest in encouraging the purchase of inefficient vehicles, or in encouraging homosexual relationships. The government should not subsidize homosexual relationships as it does heterosexual marriage because that is effectively allowing the people who are in those relationships to violate the social contract, much like Bob. They would get all of the benefits of marriage with none of the duty of procreation and the attendant expenses that go along with it. And unlike Bob, a homosexual couple who decide that they want children can only get them through unnatural means like in vitro fertilization or by adopting them from a heterosexual couple. If the government is made to pay for the IVF, that is an inefficient subsidy because of all the expenses and complications that go along with it. On top of that, the government would then be discriminating against
heterosexuals, because homosexuals would be able to get more subsidy per child due to the IVF, etc.
And if the homosexual couple adopts, it’s a “free baby” because the birth mother and natural father had to pay the hospital, etc. If the homosexual couple was “married,” then they would be getting a free child AND the government cash that they would have had to pay had they been heterosexual and procreated the child themselves.
So this is not a “civil rights” issue. Men and women are, biologically speaking, not equal. There is no way that the government can legislate them into equality because any attempt to do so will result in the other side getting less money or having more expenses.
Virtually all protestants while opposing abortion use some kind of contraception
All of the above groups also hold the Book of Genesis to be inspired Scripture. And it says this about contraception:
[BIBLEDRB]Genesis 38:6-10[/BIBLEDRB]
Likewise with the Book of Leviticus, and it says this about abortion:
Leviticus 18:21 (NRSV)
You shall not give any of your offspring to sacrifice them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.
A Quaker or Reformed Jew may be a gay or want an abortion… Why are we to oppose their value system?
You note that “We are governed by separation of church and state…” We are also governed by equal protection of the laws.
Fourteenth Amendment:
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
So… Does
the baby want the abortion? I would think not. So why does the state deny
the baby the right to choose… or live? Isn’t that a violation of the very amendment that is cited (in Roe v. Wade) as supposedly legalizing abortion?
