Senator Larry Craig and Hypocrisy

Last year I wrote a column about the scandal which broke when Congressman Mark Foley of Florida was found to be making sexual advances toward pages in the House of Representatives. I said that there was a great deal of hypocrisy among the Republicans about such "Family" issues. Now Senator Larry Craig of Idaho has been exposed as a homosexual. There are probably still are some other Republican representatives and senators hiding in the closet. I have no problem with their being gay. What bothers me is that the Republican Party continues to cater to the anti-gay elements in America. While not all Republicans are homophobic, Republicans have taken the lead in efforts to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. Senator Craig has spoken out in favor of such an amendment. The 2004 Republican Platform called for the amendment and opposed allowing gays in the military.

Shortly after I wrote the Mark Foley column, Ted Haggard, a key Evangelical in the religious right and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, admitted that he had had a homosexual affair with a man. As an evangelical, Haggard was expected to speak out against homosexuality as sinful. When Haggard spoke against same-sex marriage, his homosexual lover, exasperated at the hypocrisy, exposed him.

I don't think Senator Craig should have resigned because of his homosexuality. Rumors regarding Craig's sexuality have circulated for decades. In 1982, as a congressman, Craig denied having inappropriate relationships with male pages. According to The Idaho Statesman, a 40-year-old man reported having sex with Craig at Washington's Union Station in around 2004. The Statesman also spoke with a man who said that Craig "cruised" him for sex in 1994 at the REI store in Boise. There are other reports of Craig’s homosexuality going back to his college days. He has obviously been an active gay man all his life. I do not approve of anybody, heterosexual or homosexual, soliciting sex in public places, but the description of what Senator Craig did hardly seems like enough to justify criminal prosecution or the frantic calls by leading Republicans for his scalp.

In my opinion, Senator Craig was entrapped by a police officer. In an article in the Op Ed section of The New York Times, Laura MacDonald explained the series of signals given by gays who wish to solicit sex in a bathroom (what an awful, smelly place to solicit sex!) The signals described by Ms. MacDonald are identical to those attributed to Senator Craig. There are several phases. Senator Craig allegedly peeks into the stall. Then he takes the stall next to the policeman. He then taps his foot and touches it to the officer’s shoe, which is positioned close to the divider. He then slides his hand along the bottom of the stall. There are more phases — maneuvering, contracting, foreplay, and payoff — but Senator Craig was arrested after the officer presumed he had “signaled.”

Ms. MacDonald explains that no straight man would be offended by these signals because he would not know what they mean (until now). In order for the signals to progress to a higher level, the recipient of the signals would have to signal back a willingness to go further. No straight man would do so. It is clear that the police officer, by tapping his foot, did signal back to Craig that he was ready for gay sex. That is entrapment.

Frankly, I do not understand how any gay person can be a Republican or an Evangelical Christian. There is even an organization of gay Republicans called the "Log Cabin Republicans." I can understand that gay people may be conservative on many issues and may consider themselves born-again Christians, but right-wing Republicans and Evangelicals have viciously attacked gays for many years. They have not only sponsored efforts to prevent gay marriage or civil unions but have opposed including homosexuality in equal rights laws and hate-crimes legislation. They have opposed allowing gays in the military and have spoken out against the Supreme Court decision nullifying anti-sodomy laws. I would think that the right to be free from bigotry and discrimination would be by far the most important issue for gay people.

Senator Craig should have followed the lead of former Governor Jim McGreevey of New Jersey and come out of the closet. He should have declared that he is a homosexual. He should have announced that he was not going to resign and that he was switching to the Democratic Party. He would probably have been welcomed by the Democrats. The Democrats have not been as hypocritical on the subject of homosexuality as the Republicans.

Here is the column I wrote last year:

HYPOCRISY

Republicans proclaim themselves to be the party of morality, family values, and religion. At the time of the Clinton impeachment proceedings, they self-righteously condemned Clinton for lying under oath about having sexual relations with a White House intern. On the floor of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston, Bob Barr and others called for Clinton’s scalp. It later turned-out that at the time of the impeachment, Gingrich was having an adulterous affair with a congressional staffer. In addition, a campaign worker admitted that she had sex with Newt while he was still married to his first wife.

During the impeachment, Henry Hyde, who oversaw Clinton's impeachment proceedings as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, admitted he had had an extramarital affair with a woman who was married and had three children.

Bob Livingston, Speaker of the House after Newt Gingrich, resigned from the House in the wake of revelations about his past adultery.

Bob Barr, a leader in the impeachment battle, said: "The flames of hedonism, the flames of narcissism, the flames of self-centered morality are licking at the very foundation of our society, the family unit." Barr was married three times, paid for his second wife's abortion, failed to pay child support to his first two wives, and while married to his third wife was photographed licking whipped cream off of the bare breasts strippers.

Over the years we have been subjected to repeated lectures on morality by the likes of Bill O’Reilly (charged with sexual harassment), Rush Limbaugh (guilty of drug abuse), and William Bennett (gambling addiction). We have been bombarded by the moral sermonizing of right-wing ministers like Jimmy Swaggert (voyeurism), Jim Baker (sexual affair and prison time for fraud), Pat Robertson (got wife pregnant before they were married), and Robert Tilton (exposed as a fraud by Diane Sawyer). We have seen the Republican Congress degraded by unscrupulous lobbyists like Jack Abramoff, corrupted by big businesses like the Tobacco, Oil, Health Insurance, and Pharmaceutical industries, and besmirched by the lure of pork and earmarks.

In recent years the Republican Congress has been led by the likes of Tom DeLay (indicted), Bob Ney (indicted), and Randy Cunningham (convicted). Now we are confronted with the scandal of Mark Foley. It appears that Republican leaders like Dennis Hastert, John Boehner, and Tom Reynolds knew about inappropriate advances by Mark Foley toward congressional pages months ago —and possibly years ago. One can pity Mark Foley for hiding in the closet so long, but it was profoundly hypocritical for him to act as chairman of a committee for protection of children while he was writing sexually suggestive emails to teenage pages. It was far more hypocritical, however, for those congressional leaders, who obviously knew about Foley’s behavior, to ignore it.

I am not saying that Republican sexual and other misbehavior is more reprehensible than that of Democrats. We are all human beings and are subject to all the weaknesses conferred on us by human nature. The sexual drive in most people, both heterosexual and otherwise, is the most powerful instinct we have. Sexual misconduct is probably commonplace by members of both parties.

But I believe that there is a striking difference between Republicans and Democrats on one item—hypocrisy. Republicans, conservatives, right-wing commentators, and evangelical and religious leaders specialize in hypocrisy. You would think that the constant sermonizing about morality and family values would stick in their hypocritical craws, but they go on telling us what is moral and what God wants.

The Republican leaders of the House of Representatives at the time of the Clinton impeachment were a bunch of hypocrites. The Republican House leaders today, who knew months--and possibly years--ago about Mark Foley’s improper behavior toward pages, are hypocrites. They covered-up in the hope of retaining a congressional seat in the coming election.

This November, if you want to have a government free from sexual, moral, and ethical scandals, you will not do any better with the Republicans than with the Democrats. If, however, you want to reduce the sheer size of the dung-heap of hypocrisy that has been spread by Republicans around Washington for the past six years, you are better-off voting for the Democrats.

The Soul of Mother Teresa

Recent reports that Mother Teresa suffered from profound doubts about God throughout her life, and may have been an atheist, yet went on helping the poor and destitute of Calcutta without the support of religious beliefs, makes her legend more remarkable. It is not remarkable that an atheist would devote her life to helping others; many atheists have done so. What is remarkable is that a woman who became a nun and dedicated her life to God, suffered long-term doubts about the existence of God but continued on her mission anyway.

Her story reminds me of the story of Jean Meslier, a French priest in Etrepigne, Champaigne, during the Seventeenth Century. For forty years Meslier attended to the needs of his congregation, performed all Catholic rites and rituals, and never complained or let-on that he did not believe in God. When he died, people found a 633-page manuscript in which Meslier explained his non-belief in God and gave reasons for such non-belief. He stated that religion was “but a castle in the air,” and that theology was “but ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system.” He argued that religion was not necessary to morals. Meisler’s writings were influential with Voltaire and other thinkers during the Enlightenment.

The theologian William Lane Craig and others have claimed that it is impossible to be a moral person without belief in God. Without God, they say, there are no absolutes and everything is relative. After describing the horrors of Auschwitz, Craig said: “And yet, if God does not exist, then in a sense, our world is Auschwitz: there is no absolute right and wrong: all things are permitted. But no atheist, no agnostic, can live consistently with such a view.” Yet if you look at the life and works of Mother Theresa, it seems that Craig is wrong.

The philosopher Blaise Pascal claimed that although people could not prove the existence of God, they should believe in God anyway. If they were right, they gained heaven and if they were wrong they lost nothing. On the other hand, if people disbelieved in God and were wrong, they would suffer damnation. It was called “Pascal’s wager.” The idea was that if you were smart, you would bet that there was a God.

The problem with Pascal’s wager is that many atheists cannot so cavalierly ignore their doubts. It seems that Mother Teresa, like Jean Meslier, could not shake her doubts about the existence of God. Nevertheless, she went on through the filthy, fetid, malodorous, impoverished slums of Calcutta tending to the needs of the most destitute, downtrodden, diseased, starving people of India. She did so because she thought it was the right thing to do regardless of whether there was a God. She did so out of natural human pity, compassion, and love. She did not take Pascal up on his wager and just believe in God for the sake of hedging her bets. She persevered in her work without God.

I suspect that the sheer misery and misfortune of the people she was tending to may have strengthened Mother Teresa in her disbelief. How could God allow people to suffer so much? Why did God not answer her prayers and come to the aid of these wretches? She probably concluded over the years that God was not going to do anything.

Richard Dawkins said that “Pascal’s wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God.” William James said that such a “mechanical calculation would lack the inner soul of faith’s reality; and if we were ourselves in the place of the Deity, we should probably take particular pleasure in cutting off believers of this pattern from their infinite reward.”

The philosopher Martin Buber said: “he who knows God as something by which he is to profit is the godless man--not the atheist who addresses the Nameless out of the night and yearning of his garret window.”

Many atheists would like to believe in God, but can’t. Nevertheless, they believe that there is right and wrong. They seek to do the right thing, and to live rich, good, worthwhile lives. They are not known for wild, riotous, immoral behavior. Many scientists, college professors, and intellectuals are atheists. They contribute much to the world. Many modest, decent, kind people are atheists. They strive to live exemplary lives. Some are, like Mother Teresa, saintly.

The Medicare Drug Benefit Law

The Medicare drug benefit law is one of the most repugnant and corrupt laws ever passed by Congress. By enacting it, the Republicans sold out to the powerful and wealthy pharmaceutical and insurance industries in return for huge contributions to their campaigns. Senior citizens were shafted.

Last year Senior citizens received a shock. They realized that although they paid deductibles and had been paying insurance premiums and co-pays for their prescriptions, their coverage under the Medicare Part D drug law would expire about halfway through the year. According to USA Today, an estimated 3.4 million people covered by the law fell into a “coverage gap” under which they had to pay the full cost of their medications for the remainder of the year. The gap, which Congress calls the “doughnut hole,” begins when drug expenses, including the amount paid by insurance, total $2,250. There is no further coverage until expenses reach $3,600, an amount which most seniors would not reach by December 31. Nevertheless, seniors were required to go on paying premiums to insurance companies or be expelled from the plans.

The “coverage gap” is hardest on people not poor enough to qualify for extra financial help under the program but who still cannot afford $3,600 or more for their drugs. Many people with multiple prescriptions and people with expensive medical conditions, such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and heart disease, reach the gap early in the year and are going into debt in order to pay the full cost of their medications. Senator Byron Dorgon of North Dakota said: “under the Medicare prescription plan, the pharmaceutical companies got the doughnut and seniors got the hole.”

The Medicare Prescription Drug Law, which was narrowly passed in 2003 by Republicans, and was opposed by most Democrats, was dictated by the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Between 2000 and 2004 those industries contributed over $68 million to Republican candidates for public office.

In return, the Republicans made sure that the prescription drug law would be taken out of the hands of the government and put into the greedy hands of private industry. In their zeal to destroy Medicare and Social Security, the Republicans created a confusing web of competing and inefficient plans run by private insurers who receive huge subsidies from the federal government. Seniors were required to choose from a maze of differing plans by May 15 or suffer serious penalties.

Republicans repaid their corporate sponsors by insuring that the federal government could not negotiate the price of drugs with manufacturers. They further prohibited the importing of less expensive drugs from other countries such as Canada.

If you are a senior citizen who has now reached the “coverage gap” and must now pay the full cost of your prescriptions, consider the fact that if the Congress had simply established the drug program as an add-on to basic Medicare, there would be no coverage gap and all of your medications would be paid for the rest of the year directly by the government. It would cost far less than the government pays for the present program.

It is estimated that the waste and inefficiency of the present program will cost the government $800 billion more over the next eight years than it would have cost by making the program an added benefit under Medicare. That means that it costs the taxpayers $800 billion more under the present program to provide seniors with coverage of less than 25 percent of their drug costs than it would cost under Medicare to provide seniors with 100 percent of their drug costs.

The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the administrative costs, marketing, and profits of the insurance industry will add many billions more dollars to the cost of the current program than would be required if the program were purely governmental under Medicare. Moreover, if the government were allowed to negotiate the prices of drugs with pharmaceutical companies, as it now does for the Veterans Administration, it could save almost $560 billion over the next eight years.

Virtually every other country in the industrialized world imposes constraint on drug prices, either through formal price controls or governmentally negotiated prices. As a result, people in other countries pay much lower prices for medications than do people in the United States.

Pharmaceutical Companies and Drug Costs

In the movie, “The Constant Gardener,” the beautiful Rachel Weisz plays the wife of a British diplomat in Africa. She discovers that a pharmaceutical company has been testing a new drug on unknowing African people and that the drug has been causing deaths. The drug company is covering-up the deaths, and it has the wife murdered. When the husband takes-up the cause, he is hounded by the company and by his government and is finally murdered. After the credits in the movie are shown, there is the usual disclaimer by John Le Carre, who wrote the book, that none of the characters in the story are based upon actual persons; but then he goes on to say, “as my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard.”

It turns out that there are some similarities to the movie in the testing on African children by Pfizer of a drug for meningitis called “Trovan.” Apparently, Pfizer failed to obtain informed written consent from the parents of the children tested, and obtained a back-dated approval for the testing by the Nigerian ethics board. The medical group, Doctors Without Borders, harshly criticized the testing. There have arisen questions of whether the drug was linked to a number of deaths from liver damage. Families of the children who died have filed suits. A documentary called “Dying for Drugs” has been made describing this incident as well as other predatory behavior by big pharmaceutical companies carrying out testing in Africa. The drug companies have been able to test drugs in Africa without complying with FDA regulations. They also attempted to stop the manufacture and shipping of cheap AIDS drugs into Africa .

The picture of a rapacious pharmaceutical company painted in “The Constant Gardener” is reflected in the activities of the rich, powerful, and avaricious drug companies in America. These companies have, by constantly raising the prices on their most needed drugs and by the exertion of enormous lobbying power in Washington, brought-on a crisis for people, particularly older people, who cannot afford critical medications. It is hard to believe that this suffering of Americans is being inflicted by fellow Americans in greedy drug companies.

In 2002, the average price of the fifty drugs most used by senior citizens was nearly $1,500 for a year’s supply of a single drug. Many seniors use from six to ten medications a day, and the prices for their drugs are higher than for other drugs. As a result, for the past few years, nearly one in four seniors reported that they skipped doses or did not fill prescriptions because of the cost.

Pharmaceutical companies justify the high cost of medications by the claim that they must engage in Research and Development (R & D) of new drugs. In fact, R & D is a very small part of drug companies’ costs. Much of the R & D for new drugs is done by taxpayer-funded research at academic institutions, small biotechnology companies, or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). These organizations license the medications to the drug companies. Most of the drugs developed by the pharmaceutical companies are slight variations of older drugs already on the market. These new drugs are manufactured in order to cash-in on already profitable drugs. For example, we now have six statins (Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor, LPravachol, Lescol, and Crestor) which all do basically the same thing.

The real reason for the high cost of drugs is profits. The pharmaceutical industry is by far the most profitable industry in America. According to Fortune, in 2002 the combined profits ($35.9 billion) for the ten top drug companies on the Fortune 500 list were more than half the profits of all of the other Fortune 500 businesses put together. Drug companies increase prices on drugs several times a year, and during 2002 the drug companies increased prices by almost double the rate of inflation. The non-profit group, Families USA, stated that the former chairman and CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb, Charles A. Heimbold Jr., made $74,890,918 in 2001, plus $76,095,611 worth of unexercised stock options. The chairman of Wyeth made $40,521,011 plus $40,629,459 in stock options. Meanwhile, millions of Americans have been forgoing their necessary drugs because the costs are so high.

Needless to say, the pharmaceutical industry has enormous clout in Washington, particularly among Republicans. Drug companies contributed $17 million to candidates for office in 2004, two-thirds of it going to Republicans and one-third to Democrats. They have bought themselves considerable power. Since 1998, the drug companies have spent $758 million on lobbying—more than any other industry. In Washington, the drug industry has 1,274 lobbyists, more than two for every member of congress.

The pharmaceutical industry had a direct hand in writing the Medicare prescription drug benefit enacted in 2003. The law provides only limited coverage for seniors, but promises a windfall for the drug companies. The drug lobbyists were able to insert a provision in the bill that the government could not negotiate with drug companies on the price of the drugs. They also made Congress provide that less expensive drugs could not be imported from Canada or other countries, even if they were American-made drugs which were being re-imported. There were rumors that congressmen were either bribed or threatened in order to pass the bill. After the new law was enacted with the help of Rep. Billy Tauzin (R. La.), the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which had jurisdiction over the bill, Tauzin became head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the drug industry’s major lobbying group. His salary is reportedly $1 million a year.

The pharmaceutical industry is a disgrace to America. The Senators and congressmen from both parties who play footsie with them are a disgrace. It is time the American people woke up and spoke up.

America's Sick Health Insurance System

Are you covered by your employer’s health insurance plan? Are you confident of continued coverage in the years to come? Well, good morning! Did you forget to set the alarm? It is time to wake up and face the obvious. You are not going to have health insurance in the years to come. Forget it! Let’s start with a few facts.

General Motors recently agreed with the United Auto Workers Union to cut back on its annual expense for employee health care by about $1 billion per year. Because the costs of health insurance are rising dramatically, the amount of those cuts, plus the huge increases in health insurance premiums, are going to have to come out of the pockets of GM employees.

Delphi Corp., currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, will demand that the unions agree to drastic cuts in health insurance coverage for employees. In the future, Delphi employees will have to pay much of their health insurance coverage out of what little remains in their pockets. Ford and Daimler Chrysler are also negotiating similar health insurance cuts with the UAW. Companies all over America are either eliminating health insurance coverage entirely or significantly raising the amount of employee contributions to premiums and co-payments. You may love your company’s health insurance plan, but you can start kissing it goodbye.

A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research Educational Trust found that in the past five years the number of companies offering health insurance to their employees declined by 13 percent. This does not include the large number of companies, such as GM and Delphi, which are vastly reducing the amount of health care coverage and raising employee contributions to premiums. According to the Kaiser study, health insurance costs are escalating far faster than the rate of inflation. For the four years prior to 2005, the increase in health insurance costs was over 10% per year. They continue to rise. This rate of growth is more than three times the growth in workers’ earnings (2.7%) and two-and-a-half times the rate of inflation (3.5%). Since 2000, health insurance premiums have gone up 73%. Most workers whose companies provide health insurance paid $2,713 in 2005 toward the $10,880 premiums for family coverage. As the companies cut back, and the cost of insurance surges, this amount will continue to rise like the floodwaters of Katrina.

Meanwhile, it is not surprising that health insurance companies continue to be hugely profitable. Health insurance company profits are rising every year. Weiss Ratings said that profits for the nation’s health insurers jumped $5.9 billion to $8.7 billion in just the first three months of 2004. In May 2004 Aetna announced an 11% jump in first quarter net income. Meanwhile over 45 million people are without any health insurance at all and the number is rising every year. A study by the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine found that 18,000 people die prematurely each year as a result of being uninsured. Lack of health insurance is a major cause of bankruptcy in America. It is also the cause of untold suffering.

We need governmental action now to protect the citizens of America. Even Roger Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, said: “We would welcome a more proactive role from elected officials at the national and state levels in broad-based strategies to address the U.S. health care crisis.” The answer is to do what Canada and virtually every other developed democracy in the world has done; switch to a single-payer health care system. In such a system the government could provide universal health care coverage for all Americans at a cost to taxpayers well below what’s now paid annually by employers and workers.

The system we now have is enormously expensive and wasteful. A study by the Cambridge Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Public Citizen Health Research Group, stated that the U.S. wastes more on health care bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to all of the uninsured. Administrative expenses for health insurance companies cost more than $400 billion a year. This is substantially more than would be needed to provide full insurance coverage for the uninsured. Companies and individuals pay for these administrative expenses in the form of higher and higher premiums.

If we had a single-payer system, all of the extra administrative expenses would be eliminated. The Harvard study illustrated that the participation of private insurers in any health care system dramatically raises administrative costs. That is why the new Medicare drug benefit program will be so expensive. The study said, “A fragmented payment structure is intrinsically more expensive than a single payer system. For insurers, it means a duplication of claims processing facilities and reduced insured-group size, which increases overhead.”

We already have an agency set-up to administer health insurance—Medicare. In a single-payer system, everybody in America, like everybody in Europe and the rest of the industrialized world, would be guaranteed health care. Companies like Delphi would be less likely to file for bankruptcy, and American workers would have far greater job security. GM, Ford, and Daimler Chrysler, could lower the cost of cars by around $1,500 per car and become more competitive and profitable. American workers would actually have more money in their pockets to buy the cars and goods produced by the companies they work for. The huge reduction in the cost of premiums would more than offset the taxes needed to fund the system.

If all those other industrialized countries can have a single-payer system, we can. Don’t say that the other countries have inferior health care. That is nonsense! Our citizens are less healthy than those in Europe, Canada, and Japan. We may have high technology, but the United States ranks 21st out of 27 countries in infant mortality, 17th in life expectancy of women, and 21st in life expectancy of men. While our health care costs rise, and the health care industry in America grows fat and wealthy, the quality of our health care is slipping into third-world status.
We like to think that we live in an open democracy where every person has a say in our government, but actually, we live in an oligarchy where our President and Congress are beholden to wealthy and powerful companies which really run America. These companies are able to thwart every effort to provide our citizens with health care at reasonable cost.

U.S. Health Care Compared to Others

In one of my columns I called for a governmental single-payer system of health insurance. Although health insurance was the main topic of my column, I remarked that health care systems in other countries, such as Canada, were not inferior to ours. One reader wrote that in Canada, there is a lack of choice: “people are assigned a doctor, not necessarily the one they want.” He also mentioned that Canadians have long waits for surgical and other procedures and that doctors “are leaving Canada in droves” to practice in the United States. He argued that, “We might not have the most efficient system, but, without a doubt we have the best.”

Lets start with the last point first. In 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked the United States 37th in the World in providing health care; hardly the best! It found that France provided the best overall health care followed among major countries by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria, and Japan. It noted that the United States had by far the most expensive health care system in the world. It noted that the U.S. is “the only country in the developed world, except for South Africa, that does not provide health care for all of its citizens.”

The WHO found that the two countries with the highest percentage of people who were either very satisfied or fairly satisfied with their country’s health care system were Denmark (91%) and Finland (81%). The U.S. was comparatively low with only 40 percent who were satisfied with their health care system.

In a 2004 survey entitled Primary Care and Health System Performance: Adults’ Experiences in Five Countries, comparing health care in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, The United Kingdom, and the United States, the journal Health Affairs found that “the United States performs poorly on most care dimensions in the study.” The survey found that “Based on a question also asked in 1998 and 2001, the United States stands out as the most negative in overall public views and the United Kingdom as the most positive, repeating a pattern observed across the six years.”

Under its system, informally called “Medicare,” patients in Canada are free to choose their own doctors, hospital, etc. Although some Canadian doctors may have left Canada in the past for more lucrative practices in the United States, new statistics compiled by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) show that now, more physicians have returned to Canada than have moved abroad. In a joint survey of health, 2002-2003, by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Canadian Health Analysis and Measurement Group (HAMG) it was found that more Canadians (85%) than Americans (80%) reported having a regular medical doctor. The 2004 survey by Health Affairs found that the United States was notably lower than the other four countries in patients having either a regular doctor or place of care such as a clinic, health center, or group practice.

Most Canadians are highly satisfied with their health care system. While waiting periods for certain procedures are long in Canada, Americans also have some long waiting periods. The Health survey found that although Americans generally have shorter waits for elective surgery than Canadians, Germans have shorter waits than Americans. Overall, more Americans than Canadians reported that they experienced an unmet health care need in the previous year (13% vs. 11%). In Canada, emergencies are promptly treated and nobody is turned away from a hospital because he is uninsured.

Even though the government of Canada covers everybody with health care, the United States, with its limited governmental involvement in health care under Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs, spent a higher percentage of its budget on health care than Canada. While Canada’s health system is cheaper than ours, it compares well with ours. Life expectancy in 2002 was about 2½ years higher in Canada than in the United States. Infant child death rates are markedly higher in the United States than in Canada. So are the death rates for adults. Although Canada has a higher rate of smokers, the death rate for all cancers was significantly higher per capita in the U.S. than in Canada.

The people who are suffering the most from lack of insurance in America are not the poorest citizens. Poor people have Medicaid. The ones who suffer are working people who work for small businesses or for themselves. They are not poor enough for Medicaid or rich enough for the rapidly rising costs of health insurance. They either die prematurely, forego necessary medical treatment, or get wiped-out by exorbitant medical bills. Are these people unimportant? Are their children unimportant? Must we abandon 45 million fellow Americas as an obscene sacrifice to the bloated god of profit? Let us not forget that there is a human tragedy happening to uninsured people in the United States of America.

UFOs and Other Nonsense

Do you believe that there are UFOs flying around with aliens from other planets inside? Do you believe that some people, such as John Edward, can talk to the dead? Do you believe in the Loch Ness Monster, the Yeti, witches, and ghosts? Do you believe in psychics, fortune tellers, or the signs of the Zodiac? To most well-educated people such beliefs are indications of profound ignorance; but the truth is, the superstitious mind is actually the product of our evolution.

According to anthropologists and cognitive scientists, our brains have evolved basic forms of thinking which enable them to believe in “counterintuitive agents.” Such agents explain or solve the inescapable problems of world, including morality and death. We may find the beliefs of primitive jungle tribes to be weird, but there is some similarity between their beliefs and ours. Many of the native people of remote areas live in a world that is permeated with spirits, especially the spirits of ancestors and witches. These spirits are not always benevolent. They fly about at night and cause or cure illnesses. They enter into and depart from the bodies of living people. They require propitiation and sacrifice. Scientists hold that belief in such spirits evolved in order to help early man deal with the dangers of predators, the requirements of hunting, and the perils of life.

We may think of ourselves as modern, rational, scientifically-minded people, but the structure of our minds enables us to imagine and even believe in a host of supernatural entities which are not so different from the spirits of primitive tribes. People who are very religious are more likely to believe that we are being observed by aliens from other worlds. Carl Sagan, in his book The Demon Haunted World, noted that Christian fundamentalists accept the existence of UFO aliens but attack them as demonic. According to Sagan, they do not use the blade of scientific skepticism to doubt the existence of the aliens because “that tool, once honed, might accomplish more than just a limited heresiotomy.” In other words, skepticism about UFO aliens could encourage skepticism about other beliefs.

The credulous mind wants to believe in ETs, ghosts, Bigfoot, psychics, mediums, and fortune tellers. Such beliefs bring satisfaction that we do not live in a world governed by purely scientific principles. To the uneducated mind, a world without goblins, monsters, spirits, and demons seems cold, harsh, brutal, and without comfort.

There are, however, many shrewd people willing to take advantage of gullible people. John Edward is a con artist who uses an old magician's technique called “cold reading” to convince people that he is speaking with the dead. He starts by having his assistants mingle anonymously with the audience before the show in order to gather information. Edward then uses the information to throw out words. If the words attract the attention of someone in the audience, he uses the cold-hot approach. An affirmative or “warm” answer to a question leads to other questions likely to elicit warm responses. As the warmth of responses grows, Edward is able to sound like he has actually established connection with the dearly departed.

There are similar techniques used by clairvoyants. The Amazing Randi has exposed these hoaxes many times. Once, while he was in Russia, he showed a couple of Russian psychics a picture of a well-known handsome young American man and asked their opinion of the man. The psychics made a number of bland assertions about him, but did not identify the one essential fact about him that most Americans know. The man was Ted Bundy, the serial killer. When Randi told them who the man was, they claimed they had been tricked.

One characteristic of beliefs in aliens, demons, witches, seers, and monsters etc. is that even after they are exposed as hoaxes, people want to go on believing in them. No one has ever located the Loch Ness Monster, and one local man has admitted to faking the picture which was for so long used to claim its existence. Nevertheless, people go on believing that the monster bathes in the Loch. Similarly, even after some local farmers admitted to creating crop circles in England, people went on believing that the circles were created by UFO aliens!

What is this need to believe in the unbelievable? It stems from the same mental architecture that makes people want to believe in God. So we may ask why, if the structure of our minds leads to superstitious beliefs, doesn’t everyone share such beliefs? The answer, I surmise, is education. It is mental Ajax. Education is as useful for what it erases from as for what it adds to our knowledge. Education naturally leads to skepticism. As we learn more, we doubt more. Our parents tell us that there is a Santa Claus, but soon we learn that it is not true. We also learn that there is no Easter Bunny, no Tooth Fairy, no Superman, and no talking animals. We gradually give up the superstitions of youth. If we pursue education, we learn to doubt many other old-wives-tales. Eventually, we become skeptics who demand proof to support unreliable assertions. I am not sure that this is a good thing, but without education, we would be like primitive tribes in a demon haunted world.

Global Warming

George W. Bush would not be president if it were not for his expressed willingness to grovel before the might and money of Republican fat-cat big-businessmen. It also helped that he was the son of a president and the recipient of outrageous decisions by one of his campaign chairpersons, the Florida Secretary of State, and by the Republican-dominated Supreme Court.

When the time came for the United States to sign-up to the Kyoto global warming treaty, Bush returned the favor to the fat-cats. Acting on the basis of pressure from Exxon/Mobil and other industries, he declined to sign the treaty. This must have been reassuring to the magnates and tycoons who bought and paid for the Bush presidency. For the rest of us, however, it meant continuation of a policy allowing the emission of greenhouse gases in amounts that will be catastrophic for the world.

In the Kyoto Protocol, the developed countries committed themselves to reducing their collective emissions of six key greenhouse gases by at least 5%. This group target was to be achieved through cuts of 8% by certain European countries, 7% by the United States, and 6% by Canada, Japan, and other countries. Each country’s emissions target had to be achieved by 2008-2012. The three most important greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N20). These gasses are produced in America by cars and by industry.

Instead of signing the treaty, the Bush Administration and its Republican lackeys in Congress denied that there was any such thing as global warming. Republican Senator James N. Inhofe of Oklahoma said, “the threat of catastrophic global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." The conservative American Policy Center stated flatly: “There is No Global Warming. Period.” The “Cooler Heads Coalition,” a front group for big business, claimed that global warming was a myth. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a business lobbying group, claimed that Carbon dioxide was not pollutant and did not contribute to global warming. There is a whole industry of scientists and scientific organizations paid by the oil companies and other energy and automobile companies who attempt to sow doubts in the public mind about the threat of global warming.

There has been, of course, plenty of evidence for global warning. Global warming is a fact, not a hoax. It is caused by the emission of greenhouse gasses. Al Gore has been campaigning for steps to be taken since before he was Vice President. There is now no doubt that he was right. Even the Bush Administration has tentatively acknowledged the existence of the problem, but denies that it is caused by human activity. Bush has rejected calls by environmentalists and some in Congress to regulate carbon dioxide, the leading heat-trapping greenhouse gas going into the atmosphere.

In a report issued recently by The National Academy of Sciences, which advises Congress and the government, the Academy stated that a sharp rise in temperatures has made the planet the warmest it has been in 400 years and probably made the late 20th Century the warmest period in 1,000 years. After reconstructing global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia, the Academy said that the data showed that the increase in global warming was caused by greenhouse gasses. Recent reports by international conferences of scientists have declared that global warming is real and that one of the causes is the production of greenhouse gasses by humans.

The consequences of this warming are frightening. The events shown in the movie, The Day After Tomorrow, may not be an exaggeration. Unless steps are taken now to reduce greenhouse gasses and reverse global warming, we are likely to see a melting of the ice caps. This would mean inundation of cities along the coasts of the oceans, including submersion of New York, Baltimore, Miami, and other cities around the world. Global warming will continue to lead to dramatic changes in weather patterns, including more hurricanes with violent weather in some places and droughts in others. The movie and book by Al Gore, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which are currently out, illustrate the dangers of continuing the present course.

Under pressure from industry, the Bush Administration is going to avoid doing anything about the problem. In a case before the Supreme Court, it recently sought to prevent the EPA from controlling the emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases," claiming that they are not pollutants and do not cause the greenhouse effect. Such a position is not only wrong, but dishonest.

God forbid that the President and Congress should step in and force big business to lower the emission of greenhouse gasses. Such a requirement would cost the fat cats billions of dollars. It was the fat cats who put the Republicans in office, and such legislation would be treason by the Republicans to their benefactors. On the other hand, failure to act is treason to the American people and to the planet.

Televangelists

When I picked up my newspaper I was surprised to see a picture of former televangelist Jim Bakker, founder of the PTL Ministry, praying at his new church, Morningstar Fellowship. Apparently Rev. Jim, who was ensnarled in a lurid sex scandal and was sentenced to prison for defrauding PTL parishioners, has purchased 52 acres of the former Heritage USA site for Morningstar.

It made me wonder. Why do people continue to flock to churches even after their leaders have been exposed as blatant frauds? Perhaps it is because many people do not want to know the truth. Some televangelists appear to be legitimate, but others seem only to be after the shearing of the flock.

Jimmy Swaggert was one of the most powerful televangelists in America. His weekly telecasts consisted of fiery denunciations of liberals, atheists, Catholics, and every other kind of “sinner.” He had millions of followers and made millions of dollars. Then he was caught with a prostitute. Despite the fact that he was exposed as a phony and a hypocrite, he just went on preaching to crowds of followers and has been recently heard on television.

Robert Tilton was another smooth purveyor of the television evangelist’s scam. His empire reaped $80 million a year from the sheep. His message was that if you sent in donations or “vows of faith” to his “Success-N-Life” program, you would reap financial rewards. Poor, gullible people paid their money in the hope that God would grant a large return on their investment. Tilton became fabulously rich with mansions around the country and fancy cars. Then, TV’s “Primetime Live” exposed the fraud. They found dumpsters behind the ministry’s headquarters filled with the “prayer requests” on which “Brother Bob” was supposed to act. That didn’t stop Robert Tilton. He got back on TV, doing the same old thing.
In 2002, NBC’s Dateline did an expose’ of Benny Hinn, the televangelist, faith healer, and minister. Hinn appears regularly on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN). Dateline did a follow-up on Hinn’s healings and found evidence that people were not cured. Former employees of Hinn said that they were instructed to look for people who were standing in front of their wheelchairs, They were not to take genuinely disabled people. A women who said on television that Hinn had cast-out cancer from her and her son’s bodies lost her son to cancer two weeks later. She herself died from cancer a few weeks after her son.

On television and at his crusades, Hinn promised that God would not only improve people’s health, but their financial life as well. People were to do this by giving money to Hinn’s ministry. Hinn called this “sowing the seed,” and the idea was that people could reap large profits by donating money to Hinn and waiting for God to reward them financially. Hinn makes about $100 million a year, but his contributors don’t get rich. They stay poor. Dateline reported that Hinn flies around the world in a private jet, stopping-off at expensive resorts. It also reported that Hinn was building a palatial new home for $3.5 million in an exclusive gated community overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

It is one thing to say you are healing people through the power of God. Even if God does not cure them, sick people might improve just thinking they are going to get better. Medical studies have shown that the right attitude can help in the treatment of illness. It is another thing to tell people that if they donate money they will get rich. They do not get rich. They would be better-off if they invested in a Lotto ticket at odds of ten-million-to-one.

Paul and Jan Crouch, who own TBN, the network that carries the Benny Hinn appearances and other religious shows, harp on the theme that viewers will be rewarded, even enriched, for donating to TBN. "When you give to God," Paul Crouch says, "you're simply loaning to the Lord and He gives it right on back." According to the Los Angeles Times, the Crouches’s network generates more than $170 million a year in revenue. The Crouches are continually asking for money to keep their network on the air despite the fact that the network is fabulously rich and needs no money. Lower-income, rural Americans in the South are among TBN's most faithful donors. Their small gifts underwrite a lavish lifestyle for the Crouches. Paul and Jan collect combined salaries of over $750,000 per year. They travel the world in a $7.2-million, 19-seat Canadair Turbojet owned by TBN. They drive luxury cars. Thirty ministry-owned homes are at their disposal — including a pair of Newport Beach mansions, a mountain retreat near Lake Arrowhead, and a ranch in Texas.

One of the popular televangelists on the TBN network is Rod Parsley. As he bounds around the stage of his congregation, Parsley uses every trick in the rhetorical book to manipulate the emotions of his viewers. A bible school dropout, he is criticized by fellow ministers for unbiblical teaching and mispronunciation of biblical names. Nevertheless, he charges ahead, quoting scripture and calling for a spiritual army to “track down our adversary, defeat him valiantly, then stand upon his carcass.”

According to critics, Parsley preys on people of modest means, promising prosperity in return for putting money in his pocket. Ole Anthony, president of the Dallas-based Trinity Foundation, describes Parsley as a “power-hungry” man, living “an extravagant lifestyle that has become the hallmark of televangelists these days.” Parsley resides in a 7,500-square-foot house valued at more than $1 million on a 21-acre compound. Parsley also owns a half-million-dollar jet plane.

Parsley is up-front about his desire to get money out of his parishioners and television viewers. He says: “I just love to talk about money. Let me be very clear -- I want your money. I deserve it. This church deserves it.” Parsley teaches that the money sent-in by viewers, along with tithes and offerings, are “seeds.” By sowing the seeds, the givers can expect huge financial returns. God will not only double and triple the money given, but donors will get it back one hundredfold. And the money flows in. Parsley does not reveal the finances of the church, but says that the finances are audited by the “Board of Directors.” The board of directors is composed of Parsley and his family. The church is run like a family business.

Another staple of the Parsley ministry is the use of prayer cloths. Parsley cuts-up little pieces of cloth and sends them out to his followers who are asked to send them back with a donation. Parsley says: “I want to encourage every one of my Breakthrough Partners and friends to send a prayer cloth along with your prayer needs to be prayed over. When I return your prayer cloth to you, I believe the tangible transfer of God's creative power will flow into your life and birth your miracle! I believe God, Himself, will anoint you to reap a mighty harvest of your physical, spiritual, and financial needs.” This sounds like the outlandish fraud that was perpetrated by Robert Tilton.

Why do people support these televangelists? The answer is probably that they are all compelling and powerful speakers. Swaggert, Tilton, and Parsley can have people on their feet laughing, crying, or applauding in high emotion. Jan Crouch, in her enormous pink wigs and Tammy Faye makeup, accompanied by dolorous music, does a crying bit that brings her audience to tears. Benny Hinn arouses the pity of the audience for the people he is about to heal and then dramatically touches them with a bold flourish as they topple over backward. Millions of Americans confuse glibness with righteousness, theater with holiness. It’s not just that the people at home are simple-minded. They also exhibit a physical and mental laziness. They feel part of the work of God just by sending in small donations. They don’t have to go to church and don’t want to think about the wealth of the televangelists. It doesn’t bother them that the televangelists are rolling in dough. That’s what God wants.

The Tomb of Jesus and His Family

On Sunday March 4 at 9:00 p.m., the Discovery Channel showed a film about the archeological finding of a tomb in Jerusalem which, according to the producers, contained the remains of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Mary Magdalene, Matthew the brother of Jesus, and Judah, the son of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. My advice is to treat the whole thing with profound skepticism. The newspapers heralded the story as a major revolution in religious thought. Surely, if the remains in the tomb turned-out to be the bones of Jesus, and if Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had a son by her, the core of Christian belief would be undercut. But there is good reason to doubt that the boxes (“ossuaries”) found in the tomb really contained the bones of the Holy Family.

In the first place, this is not a new discovery. The tomb and the ossuaries were discovered in 1980. If they really were the remains of Jesus and his family, why haven’t we heard about them before now? If these archeological finds were authentic, it would have rocked the world of religion in 1980. Instead, nothing has been heard for 27 years.

Secondly, there is no basic agreement as to the inscriptions on the ossuaries. The people producing the film claim that they are the names of Jesus’ family, but others say that the inscriptions are not at all clear. Moreover, the names Jesus (Jeshua), Mary (Maria), Joseph (Yosef), and Matthew (Matia) were common names in first century Israel. The film’s producers claim that the odds of a convergence of so many names from the holy family in one tomb is over 600 to 1, but that is no argument for the authenticity of the ossuaries. Moreover, why would the tomb of Jesus’ “family” be in Jerusalem rather than Nazareth?

A large part of my skepticism is based on the claim that there is a missing ossuary from the tomb and that it is probably the “James Ossuary” that surfaced some years ago. Proponents of that ossuary claimed that it had contained the bones of James the brother of Jesus. Careful examination by experts revealed, however, that it was a fake. The fake had been created by a skilled Israeli dealer of antiquities. He was selling such forgeries for large amounts of money.

At one time it was widely believed that the Shroud of Turin was Jesus’ burial cloth which had miraculously retained his negative image. People believed this despite the fact that there was great conflict between the Gospels and the facts about the shroud. For example, the Gospel of John says that the body of Jesus was wrapped in “strips of linen,” not a single cloth. The Shroud is one large piece of cloth showing a whole body and head. Anyway, this was all made moot when carbon dating of the Shroud proved that it was created in the thirteenth century, not the first.

If such a spectacular find of Jesus’ tomb was authentic, one would expect the leading biblical scholars in the world to have written something about it. Yet I have spent a lifetime reading their works, and there is nothing. You can bet that if there were some validity to the archeological finds, scholars like Raymond E. Brown, John P. Meier, E.P. Sanders, Reginald H. Fuller, Bart D. Ehrman, James D.G. Dunn, Paula Fredriksen, and many others would have written about it. They obviously did not consider it worthy of comment. It is doubtful that these scholars would have wanted to cover up the truth. They have not hesitated to put the accuracy of the New Testament in question.

These and other scholars have pointed out the conflict in the different Gospel stories about the resurrection. For example, in the Gospel of Matthew, on Easter Sunday Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” went to the tomb. However, the Gospel of Mark says that the two Marys and Salome went. Luke writes that Mary Magdalene went with Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and other women. Matthew says that the stone was removed by an angel when the women arrived, but Mark and Luke say it had already been removed. Matthew says that when the women arrived, an angel was outside the tomb, but Mark says the angel was inside the tomb. Luke says there were two men inside the tomb. In Matthew and Luke the two women rush from the tomb to tell the disciples, but Mark says that they said nothing to anyone. Other post-resurrection stories are also in conflict.

The account of the resurrection by the first Gospel writer, Mark, originally ended in Mark 16:8 with the story of the women going to the tomb. There was nothing about Jesus appearances after that. Scholars agree that the parts of Mark about Jesus’ appearances after that (Mark 16:9-21) were inserted into the Gospel by Christian scribes long after the original Gospel was written. They are not contained in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospels. The portions in Matthew and Luke about the resurrection are based on the gospel of Mark and are therefore very suspect.

While a claim about Jesus’ tomb may be exciting to some, it should, like all such stories, be taken with a grain of salt. To me, the best position to take is skepticism about everything, especially archeological claims to authentic biblical finds.

Jesus, Judas, and the DaVinci Code

There has been much hullabaloo lately about the discovery of a document called the “Gospel of Judas” in which Jesus is said to have ordered Judas Iscariot to betray him in order to carry out the plan for man’s salvation. For those who believe the biblical version of Christ’s death, there is little to worry about. The “Gospel of Judas” has no more historical value than the documents on which Dan Brown based his historically shaky book, “The DaVinci Code.”

The “Gospel of Judas” is part of a group of documents discovered three decades ago in Egypt. It is similar some documents discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. The Nag Hammadi documents consisted of writings by early Christians and included “The Gospel of Thomas,” “The Gospel of Philip,” the “Gospel of Truth” and other gospels. Because those gospels’ were similar to the teachings of certain early Christians who are today called “Gnostics,” modern scholars call them the “Gnostic Gospels.”

Gnosticism is the name we give today to an ancient religious movement of people that rejected the world and the human body as corrupt, believed that the soul of man was a spark of divinity trapped in a human body, and relied upon secret knowledge of mystical facts to obtain release of the soul. The Gnostics did not believe that Jesus, as the Son of God, actually died on the cross or arose from the dead. They believed that the resurrection occurred only in people’s dreams.

The Gnostics had an elitist idea of Christianity in which only a very few of the cognoscente could actually achieve knowledge of the truth of Jesus. This is exemplified by the “Gospel of Judas” in which Jesus called Judas aside and entrusted him with special knowledge in order to arrange for Judas to betray him. The early church, especially leaders like Tertullian and Irenaeus, condemned the teaching of Gnostics, and declared their writings to be heretical. The early church fathers refused to include any of the Gnostic gospels in the official cannon of the Bible, with the possible exception of the Gospel of John which has some Gnostic-type sayings in it.

In “The DaVinci Code,” Dan Brown seems to rely on some of the Gnostic Gospels for the dubious proposition that Jesus married Mary Magdalen and had children by her. The Gnostic “Gospel of Philip” says that Christ loved Mary Magdalen more than the other disciples and used to kiss her often. It does not say he married her or had children by her. I believe that this Gospel had no historical basis and was a pipe dream of some writer who had no knowledge of the life of Jesus. The canonical Bible says very little about Mary Magdalen, and there is no basis for the claim that she was Jesus’ wife or, for that matter, that she was a harlot as the Church has sometimes maintained.

One reason to doubt the historical authenticity of the Gnostic Gospels is that they were written long after the death of Jesus. Scholars believe that they could not have been written earlier than 120 A.D. and were probably written much later than that. The “Gospel of Judas” appears to have been written in the second century. The recent translation that has now received so much publicity was a later copy written about 300 A.D. Although the Gnostic Gospels may have reflected some ancient oral traditions, they often seem quite fantastic.

The canonical Gospels adopted by the Church were written much closer in time to the life of Jesus. Many leading scholars maintain that the Gospels were not written by the disciples of Jesus and Paul. The Gospel of Mark was the first written Gospel, and the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were based upon the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel of Mark was composed somewhere between the late 60s and 70 A.D. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke were composed around 70-100 A.D. by authors who combined and edited Mark with other material, including a collection of Jesus’ sayings which are sometimes called “Q.” The Gospel of John was written separately from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (the “synoptic” Gospels) and is quite different in content, tone, and writing style. It was most likely composed after 85 AD by several authors who had not witnessed Jesus during his life.

All three synoptic Gospels discuss the resurrection of Jesus, but some scholars have questioned whether the early writers of those Gospels actually wrote the stories of the resurrection. Originally, the Gospel of Mark ended at Chapter16:8. That is the part where the women find the empty tomb and are told by a “young man” that Jesus has risen. Scholars assert that the part of the Gospel after that, in which Jesus appears to various people, was added by later writers who wanted to supply authenticity to the story of Jesus’ resurrection. The resurrection stories in Matthew and Luke are based on the story in Mark and were probably written much later than the gospels themselves.

Same Sex Marriage

What is at the base of the debate over same-sex marriage? In the June 19, 2005 issue of The New York Times Magazine, Russell Shorto described a period of time he spent with a group of anti-gay-marriage activists in Maryland. He came away with the conviction that the activists were motivated by their belief that homosexuality is evil rather than by the effects such marriages could have upon society. The activists were convinced that homosexuality is a disease and that it is spreading. Such beliefs are primarily religious, based upon biblical injunctions against homosexuality.

There seems to be a growing trend around the world to recognize the rights of gay people to enter into marriage. Canada recently passed a law allowing same-sex marriages. Such unions are also permitted in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain. Denmark Norway, Sweden, and Iceland give marital rights to gay couples under laws providing for “registered partnerships.” In the case of Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that laws forbidding same-sex marriage were contrary to the state’s constitution. Since then, gay couples have been getting married in Massachusetts. Other states are moving to allow such marriages, and some states are passing laws allowing “civil unions” for same-sex couples. Meanwhile, a number of states, including Ohio, have passed laws and constitutional amendments declaring that marriage can be only between a man and a woman.

Supporters of same-sex marriage argue that such marriages do not in any way harm or affect heterosexual marriage. They claim that many homosexuals form long-term loving unions just like married straight couples. The problem is that after many years in a monogamous relationship, a gay couple has acquired very few legal rights. Men and women who marry acquire certain rights including rights to inheritance, real property, joint income tax returns, social security benefits, medical benefits, homestead protection, support, alimony, and many others. Gay partners seek not only the property benefits of marriage but also the symbolic recognition of their relationship.

Although anti-gay-marriage activists are motivated primarily by religious convictions, they assert that marriage is the bedrock of a sound society and claim that same-sex marriage will make heterosexual marriage collapse. If the argument was valid the state would have a “compelling interest” in preventing same-sex marriage. In the case of Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the Massachusetts Supreme Court found that there was no evidence to support such an argument.

Anti-gay-marriage activists point to a study done by conservative pundit Stanley Kurtz in which he claimed that the laws permitting “registered partnerships” had brought about the collapse of marriage in Scandinavia. In fact, Kurtz was mistaken. In Denmark, the marriage rate had been declining for a half-century, but it turned around in the 1980s. After the “registered partnership” law was passed in 1989, the marriage rate continued to climb. Danish heterosexual marriage rates are now the highest they’ve been since the early 1970s. The marriage rates for Sweden, Norway, and Iceland are all higher than the rates for the years before the “registered partnership” laws were passed.

Opponents of gay marriage claim that such marriages cause harm to children. In the case of Baehr v. Miike, the Circuit Court of Hawaii found that there was no such harm and invalidated a law forbidding gay marriage. (The Baehr decision later became moot when the Hawaii legislature passed a constitutional amendment forbidding same-sex marriage, but the findings of the case are worth consideration.) Both sides in the case presented experts on the effect of same-sex marriage on children. Curiously, the experts for both sides testified that children raised in gay homes suffered no problems different from children of heterosexual parents. Moreover, the children raised by gay couples did not become gay as a result of their parents’ sexual identity. The psychological wellbeing of the children was far more dependent on the love, stability, protection, and support of their families than on the sex of the parents. Many studies have supported the findings of the Hawaii Court.

So we come to the real argument of the anti-gay-marriage activists. They say that homosexuality is a “perversion” and that it is forbidden by the Bible. They argue that homosexuality is a “choice” and that it is sinful. They maintain that homosexuality is a disease that can be passed on to others and that it is infecting our society. They oppose gay marriage because they oppose gays. It is a shame that anti-gay-marriage activists practice such cruelty in the name of religion. Homosexuality is not evil and is not a disease.

It would be insulting to gay people to get into a long discussion about the causes of sexual preference. Regardless of the causes, gays are American citizens entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizenship. If we were to follow Biblical injunctions, it would appear to be okay for the state to execute gays on account of their homosexuality. We live in a more civilized world than that. Homosexuality does not harm heterosexuals. Many of our leading Americans are gay. Gays do not choose their sexual preference any more than heterosexuals choose theirs. Intelligent people know, and many studies have confirmed, that sexual preference is something you are born with, not a choice. Why would somebody choose homosexuality over heterosexuality when we live in a world where gays are still objects of discrimination?

Prior to the 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, interracial marriage was forbidden in Virginia and fifteen other states. The opponents of mixed-race marriages raised many of the arguments that are made against same-sex marriage. They claimed that allowing such marriages would destroy the institution of marriage in America, would mongrelize and harm children, and that such marriages were immoral and forbidden by the Bible. The Supreme Court declared that laws against interracial marriage violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Thank God! Where would we be without Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter, Colin Powell, and the many other great Americans of mixed race? Perhaps we should take a close look at ourselves and see if we want to progress as a good, decent, and tolerant country or revert to the kind of bigotry that existed before Loving v. Virginia.

The HPV Vaccine and the Religious Right

Two drug companies, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, have developed vaccines that are totally effective in preventing the most dangerous strains of the human papilloma virus (HPV), the cause of almost all cervical cancers. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease (STD) in America. More than half of all Americans become infected by it at some point in their lives. Cervical cancer is the second most common type of cancer among women worldwide and the leading cause of cancer death among women in the developing world. In order to be effective, the vaccine must be administered to girls in their preteen or early teen years before they become sexually active. Research and clinical trials have found the vaccine to be safe.

Each year 10,000 American women contract cervical cancer and 4000 women die from it. Most of these deaths could be prevented by vaccination. Vaccinations for a number of diseases, including measles and mumps, are required before a child can enter school. In a recent article in The New Yorker magazine, Michael Specter reports that the likelihood that children will receive vaccinations against HPV in the near future is in doubt because of the opposition of the “Christian Right.” Specter quotes Leslee J. Unruh, the founder and president of the “Abstinence Clearinghouse,” as saying, “I personally object to vaccinating children when they don’t need vaccinations, particularly against a disease that is one hundred percent preventable with proper sexual behavior.” Religious conservatives fear that such a vaccine would lead to “disinhibition,” a medical term for absence of fear. "Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful," Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, "because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex."

Today there appears to be a concerted effort by the Christian Right to discourage state governments from mandating the vaccine for young girls. Articles are appearing everywhere claiming that the vaccine is not necessarily effective and that the long-term effects are unknown.
A number of state legislatures have voted to prevent mandatory vaccination with the vaccine.

In the past, the Bush Administration opposed any drug, vaccine, or initiative that could be interpreted as lessening the risks associated with premarital sex. This includes opposition to programs that advocate the distribution of condoms and opposition to Plan-B, commonly known as the “morning-after pill.” The Bush Administration prefers to rely on education programs that promote abstinence from sexual activity.

Premarital abstinence from sex is certainly the best way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. Young people who engage in premarital sex take serious risks with their lives. There are many diseases besides HPV which threaten those who engage in unprotected sex. But studies show that no matter what the danger, young people are going to engage in sex. This is apparently true even of those who take the so-called “virginity pledge.” In one recent study, researchers found that about 50% of young people who took the virginity pledge did not remain virgins past the age of 17. Although virginity pledge programs helped some participants delay sex, 88% of those who took such pledge and had sex before the end of the study did so before marriage. The study also found that students who promised to remain virgins were less likely to use contraception and were less likely to seek STD testing when they did have sex. The conclusion of the researchers was that the pledge did not reduce pregnancy or STD rates for adolescents.

The thinking behind the development of a vaccine for HPV was not to encourage young people to have premarital sex. It was to save lives. It was to lessen the danger to young women who would be having sex even if there were no such vaccine. People of the Christian Right, who have arrogated to themselves the title of “Right to Life,” would rather let young women die than have them enjoy the pleasure of making love outside of marriage. As Katha Pollitt said in The Nation, “What is it with these right-wing Christians? Faced with a choice between sex and death, they choose death every time.”

It almost seems that the Christian Right actually wants young women to suffer and die for having sex outside of marriage, just as they want gay people to die from AIDS. It is as if they consider cancer and death to be just retribution by an angry God against those who have violated his moral laws. They are like the people of Salem who burned the bodies of living women in the belief that they were witches. I am convinced that as a group they are sexually repressed, like the radical Muslims who bombed the World Trade Center on 9/11. When they pressure state governments to limit the availability of a life-saving vaccine, it is not moral; it is evil.

Stem Cell Research

When President George W. Bush was first elected with fewer votes than Al Gore, he announced that he wanted to bring this country together. We assumed that this meant that he was going to be a moderate president. Since his election, Bush has proven to be captive to the most benighted, right-wing elements of our society. As a result, we have more political antagonism in America right now than at any time since the Civil War.

Bush has vetoed a bill that would authorize governmental funding of stem cell research. Despite the fact that Congress has passed many bills filled with rotten pork and corrupt earmarks, this was Bush’s first veto. The bill would have gone a long way toward removing restrictions that have slowed progress, burdened laboratories with red tape, reduced American competitiveness, and discouraged young researchers from entering the field of stem cell research.

The bill was supported by large majorities of both houses of Congress and by over 70 percent of the public. This veto, like many of Bush’s actions, will not bring the country together. It will foster further divisiveness and anger. Moreover, it will hold back efforts to carry out some of the most promising medical research of our time.

Medical researchers believe stem cells have the potential to change the face of human disease. Stem cells might be used to repair damaged human tissues or to grow new organs. A stem cell is a primitive (undifferentiated) type of cell that has not yet become identified as a particular type of cell (e.g. a blood cell, heart cell, brain cell, etc). Scientists believe that it can be transformed into almost any of the 220 types of cells found in the human body. That means that it might be used to replace or repair the damaged nerve cells from spinal injury for people like Christopher Reeve or damaged brain neurons from Alzheimer’s disease for people like Ronald Reagan. Stem cells could possibly provide a cure for heart disease, cancer, diabetes and many other diseases.

Stem cells can be extracted from very young human embryos -- typically from surplus frozen embryos left-over from in-vitro fertilization procedures at fertility clinics. There are currently hundreds of thousands of surplus embryos in storage. Most of those embryos are not wanted by the couples who deposit them there. The clinics fertilize many more embryos than are needed by the people who use their services. The extra embryos will eventually die or be discarded by the operators of the clinics. With governmental funding and permission of the donors, those embryos could be used for research that carries the greatest hope of alleviating human suffering since the development of antibiotics.

Why did Bush veto the bill, and why do religious and conservative groups oppose stem cell research? Because in order to do the research, the inner cell mass of the embryo must be extracted. The embryo is killed in the process. To some people, this is the killing of a human being. They do not care that these “human beings” are being kept frozen in liquid nitrogen or are being discarded down the sink by the thousands every year. They just don’t want them used for research.

For some people, a human embryo is a human being with a divine soul. This is a strictly religious belief that cannot be proven by scientific means. In America, we believe in the separation of church and state, and the religious beliefs of one religion should not govern our public actions. If one religion can thwart the conduct of life-saving medical research, that religion has too much power and influence in our democracy.

Other people oppose stem cell research because they liken it to abortion, which they abhor. To my mind, their opposition is not so much ethical as political. Many of these opponents are right-wing extremists whose opposition has more to do with sexual politics than with the rights of embryos.

Bush’s veto will not stop stem cell research. It will only hold back governmental funding of such research. The research will continue to go on in private laboratories. Some states, such as California, have voted to provide state funding for such research. The research is also being funded by private foundations. However, because so much medical research relies on governmental funding, holding back government money will surely retard the research. Scientists say the federal government would be a larger and steadier source of money.
Opponents of stem cell research claim that they are defending the sanctity of human life. The lack of research money could mean the deaths of thousands of people who might have benefited from the research. What kind of morality is it that values the lives of microscopic frozen embryos over those of living, suffering, dying human beings? The President and opponents of stem cell research should have the deaths of those real people on their consciences.

Noah's Ark Found ?

ABC News recently did a story about some Christian archeologists from Texas who claim to have found the remnants of Noah’s Ark. They apparently found something that looked to them like the Ark on Mount Suleiman in Iran's Elburz mountain range rather than on Mount Ararat in Turkey, the site identified in Genesis 8:4. Nevertheless, they believe it is the Ark. The material they found is being tested. "I can't imagine what it could be if it is not the Ark," said Arch Bonnema of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration Institute, a Christian archeology organization dedicated to looking for biblical artifacts.

We have to wonder at the pathetic spectacle of “scientific” teams of grown men going out and climbing mountains to find the remains of Noah’s Ark. It is a little sad. Serious archeologists, geologists, historians, and theologians know that the story of Noah’s Ark is an ancient myth, a fairy tale, not history. It never really happened. Nevertheless, crackpots like Carl Baugh, director of the Creation Evidence Museum, have been claiming for years that the remains of the Ark are located on Mount Ararat. Now it is supposed to have been found on another mountain.

In the first place, there are two flood stories in Genesis. In one, God tells Noah that he is going to destroy sinful mankind with a flood and that Noah is to take his family and two of every kind of animal on board the Ark (Genesis 6:19). In the other, God directs Noah to take seven pairs of clean animals, of every type, and one pair of the unclean (Genesis 7:2). The reason that there are two stories is because there were different people who wrote different stories at different times which were later stitched together into what we now call Genesis. It was not written by Moses as is claimed in the Bible.

According to the Bible, the Ark was 300 cubits (about 450 feet) long. This is considerably longer than the largest wooden vessels ever built in historical times. Shipbuilders know that wooden ships over 300 feet long (the size of a football field) would not be able to float. The schooner Wyoming, launched in 1909, was the largest documented wooden-hulled cargo ship ever built. It measured only 350 feet and needed iron cross-bracing to counter warping and a steam pump to handle a serious leak problem.

Try to imagine fitting all those thousands of animals onto the Ark. There would be two (or seven) of every kind of elephant, rhinoceros, hippo, ox, cow, horse, lion, tiger, bear, giraffe, buffalo, etc. It would have been impossible for many of the animals to come from distant parts of the world. How could kangaroos and koalas get from Australia to the Middle East? How did Noah keep lions, tigers, bears, panthers, and hyenas from attacking deer, elk, antelope, sheep and other kinds of natural prey? How did Noah feed all those animals?

Anthropoligists and paleoanthropoligists have used fossils and DNA to trace the history of man. They know that our species originated in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. They have the bones of missing links from homo sapiens to more ancient species that preceded man. There has been no worldwide flood interfering with human history. Moreover, geologists are unable to find any physical evidence of the kind of worldwide flood spoken about in the Bible. There were, however, many local floods in the Mesopotamian valleys where the flood myths originated.

The story of Noah and the Flood did not originate with the writers of the Hebrew Bible. It was borrowed from ancient Mesopotamian myths that precede the writing of the Bible by thousands of years. The Mesopotamian myths were written about different gods and different people.

The Babylonian Epic of Atrahasis, written over a thousand years before the Bible, is an account of a pious hero who is warned by the god Enki to build a great ship and load it with family and selected animals in order to escape the coming deluge. The rains come, and everybody else in the world is drowned. The ship grounds on a mountain in Armenia and the hero releases three birds. The third bird does not return. A sacrifice pleases the god, and the god promises never to send another flood. Sound familiar? The Sumarian story of Ziusudra, and the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, both written thousands of years before the Bible, have similar stories. In the Babylonian flood myth, the central story is about a fight between the gods Marduk and Tiamat.

Fundamentalist Christians and Jews might argue that the building of the Ark was a miracle and that the whole story must be taken as miraculous. Why then do they expect to find the actual Ark? Surely it was a miraculous vessel that God created only for that one period of time, not a practical ship that would still survive today.

Perhaps I shouldn’t waste my time caring about these things. It is just that I have always felt that we are better off knowing the truth than believing in myths and fables.

Good Riddance to Jerry Falwell

de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est

I wish I believed in an afterlife, because if there was one Jerry Falwell would surely roast in Hell. Under the guise of a religious minister, he managed to spread more hate than any modern public figure in America. As a self-appointed representative of the prince of peace and love, he fostered a culture of festering intolerance. He leaves behind many other similar haters who infect the airwaves, including Pat Robertson, D. James Kennedy, and John Hagee, but none of them can equal the sheer venom and vitrol of the late lamented Falwell.

I’m sure that you have heard many of his quotes, but I include some of them just to remind you of what this miserable character stood for. After thousands of people died at the hands of Moslem terrorists on 9/11, Rev. Falwell, with the concurrence of Pat Robertson, said: “God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve….The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this… The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this happen."

In other words, it was not the fanaticism, religion, and hatred by a group of Moslem jihadists that caused the horror of 9/11, it was an angry God, punishing us for tolerating liberals, abortionists, the ACLU, and others. If this was an act of God, why would anybody want to proclaim himself one of his ministers? Such a God would not deserve worship. He would deserve our abhorrence and revulsion. Needless to say, Falwell’s remarks caused a storm of protest, and he later backed-down from them. In their original form of raw bigotry, however, they revealed the foul sediment in the soul of Jerry Falwell.

Falwell was famous for many other sayings including: “If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being.” “I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!” “AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.” “The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior.” “The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.” The sad thing is that this garbage was spoken to the ears of willing believers.

When Falwell died, newspapers around the country made the usual mealy-mouthed remarks, such as: “Whatever you may think of Rev. Fallwell, he stood-up for what he believed.” Well, so did Osama bin Laden. Standing up for what you believe is no virtue if what you believe is rooted in hatred and intolerance. Sometimes this “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” (say nothing but good about the dead) business gets carried too far.

Freedom of Religion

In recent years, as the so-called “Religious Right” has become more politically active and vocal, one hears calls for the return of prayer in the schools. Evangelicals, fundamentalists, and others have called for the teaching of “Creation Science” or “Intelligent Design” in the schools, the placing of the Ten Commandments in courthouses, the exhibition of crosses on government buildings, the display of nativity scenes on public property, and other measures reflecting belief in God. The proponents of these actions say that this country was founded as a “Christian Nation,” and that the only thing the Constitution forbids is the “Establishment of Religion.”

The First Amendment forbids the making of any law “respecting the establishment of religion.” The operative word in the amendment is not “establishment.” It is “respecting.” That word gives the prohibition a wider reach. It means not only that it is unlawful to establish a state religion but also that it is unconstitutional to enact a law which aids any religion, aids all religions, prefers one religion over another, or prefers religion over non-belief. Thomas Jefferson said that the First Amendment was intended to erect “a wall of separation between Church and State.”

Somehow, people of the Religious Right tend to dismiss the rights of non-believers. There are millions of atheists, agnostics, and others in America who are offended by governmental endorsement of religion. They have no problem with the private pursuit of religion and the display of religious symbols on private property, but they pay taxes too, and they feel that taxes should not be used to sanction other people’s religions. In the landmark case of Everson v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that “No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa.” The absence of prayer in the schools and of religious symbols on governmental property does not constitute a governmental endorsement of secular humanism, as some people claim. It constitutes governmental neutrality on the issue of religion.

In 1960 the State of New York required grade and high school students to start the school day by reciting a prayer that went, “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country.” I remember saying the prayer when I was a high-school student in New York. In the case of Engel v. Vitale, the Supreme Court ruled that the prayer was unconstitutional. The Religious Right is still incensed by this ruling. They claim that the prayer was denominationally neutral and could not be identified with any specific religion. The Supreme Court found that governmental bodies should not be in the business of writing prayers for public school students. It did not matter whether the prayer was neutral or not. It was a prayer, and many people who either did not believe in God or did not believe in public prayer objected. Atheists do not acknowledge any dependence on God. This may anger religious people, but atheists have a constitutional right to hold such views. They have a right to object to the payment of taxes to support schools where prayers are said. People who want to have their children say prayers in school have the right to send their children to parochial or private schools. There are thousands of parochial and private schools all over America, and it is to those schools that the promulgation of prayers and worship should be confined.

The people of Religious Right assert that their religion is under attack by organizations such as the ACLU. Such claims are dishonest. I would like to have somebody point to one instance of attack on Christians’ right to worship in their churches, homes, and private places. I would like to have somebody demonstrate a case where the ACLU or any other group challenged the right of Christians to display their crosses, nativity scenes, or other religious symbols on church or private property. Can anybody show that the right of children to say prayers in parochial and private schools is under attack? It seems that it is not enough for these people that they have total freedom to worship in America. They demand the right to thrust their beliefs into the faces of those other people whose beliefs or non-beliefs they resent. They demand the right to appropriate public property for the display of their religious symbols. They insist on the right to impose their beliefs on school children whether the children and their families share those beliefs or not.

It would be nice to say that these demands reflect deep piety, but in many cases they appear to be motivated by intolerance toward other forms of belief. For some reason, many adherents to the Religious Right resent people who choose Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Atheism, and other beliefs and ways of life. They seem to believe that people should have no right to hold other forms of belief. Such intolerance has no place in a democracy like America. In the middle ages the Church persecuted people who held heretical views. During the Inquisition people were burned alive for failing to adhere to orthodox Christianity. We have come a long way since then, but the embers of those fires continue to smolder in the hearts of people with backward views.

Abortion and Women's Rights

Five men at the Supreme Court have ruled that the Federal Government may ban a form of late-term abortion even where the woman’s health is in danger. Two of these men were appointed by George W. Bush and one of them by his father. They are all Catholics. The President, who is responsible for a war in Iraq which has killed over 3000 young, healthy, grown Americans—one hundred times more people than were killed by an insane gunman at Virginia Tech University-- issued a statement approving of the ruling.

The debate over abortion is not basically about the life of unborn infants. It is not about when life begins or whether abortion is an act of murder. It is not really about rape, or incest, or the dangers of illegal abortions. It is a conflict about the very forces of nature and the social order. That is why it is so fierce. Human beings are struggling at the demarcation where human culture departs from natural law.

Nature has declared that the female sex will bear children, and, because of that, women have been saddled with responsibility for nurturing the young. Women have for ages tended to the home and children while men have been free to walk away or go compete for the things the world has to offer. But human culture has declared that biology and anatomy are not destiny and that it is the mind of humankind, not the body, that determines status.

The struggle over abortion today is part of the struggle of women everywhere for sexual freedom and the right to participate fully in the society which humanity has created. As long as women could be kept pregnant, as long as they could not choose against pregnancy, they could be kept in an isolated and inferior position. Women believe that the right to control your own body is the most basic right. If pregnancy means that governments can control your body, that is more than an invasion of privacy; it is slavery.

Men have always attempted to exercise a sexual domination over women. Such domination can be observed in less civilized societies such as those in Africa and the Middle East. You can measure the extent to which a country has become civilized by the freedom of its women. In the Islamic view, female sexuality is thought of as being so powerful that it constitutes a real danger to society. Muslim nations generally forbid abortion.

Today’s Moslems try fiercely to prevent their women from doing anything that might attract the sexual attention of other men. In Afghanistan under the Taliban, as in today’s Saudi Arabia, women were required to wear the burkha, a tent-like garment that covers them from head to foot. Women were not allowed even to look at someone other than their immediate male relatives and were forbidden to hold jobs or attend school. Ritual sexual mutilation of females is still common in rural areas of the Middle East.

The history of tyrannical nations is one that includes the banning abortion. Although the liberal Weimar Republic in Germany loosened the laws against abortion between the two world wars, when the Nazis came to power they promptly enacted strict anti-abortion laws. After the Nazis overran France, the collaborationist Vichy government enacted harsh anti-abortion laws along with other laws aimed at limiting the freedom of women.

Although there are people who sincerely believe that abortion is the taking of human life, many of the most fanatic right-to-lifers, such as Randall Terry, violently oppose any kind of women’s rights or sexual freedom. These people not only oppose abortion but also birth control and laws against sexual discrimination. Randall Terry said: “We are facing a crisis of righteous, courageous, physically oriented, male leadership....God established patriarchy when he established the world.”

Some people claim that a soul is infused into the zygote at the moment of conception. Such persons have an honest concern for the lives of unborn infants. They believe that the embryo is a living human being. That, however, is a purely religious belief that cannot be proven by scientific means. In a nation governed by separation of church and state, we must not impose one church’s belief upon everybody.

For many anti-abortionists the real issue is not the life of the embryo. The real issue is keeping women from assuming their rights to equality and sexual freedom. Men have always had sexual freedom protected by a double standard. The real giveaway is the language used by right-to-lifers. They extol “family values” and call their organizations by terms such as “Focus on the Family.” In other words, it is not the sanctity of life that disturbs them. It is the change in family relationships. They do not want a world where the mother is a banker and the father stays at home taking care of the children.

Well, they are too late. Women in America already have sexual freedom. Women are already filling the halls of power and are going to continue to grow in power. The abortion debate is going to dissolve with the growth of pharmaceutical methods of terminating pregnancy. And I’m sorry to have to tell this to you men, but many of you are going to have to accept the fact that your wives make more money than you and that you are going to have to start taking care of the children.