ShivaX
1845
But it’s only 21 of them, so it’s fine.
Keep voting for the Taliban, and guess what, you get ruled by the Taliban.
RichVR
1847
Wait. Wait. Wait. Kill the…
Pro life.
Kill?
How can people even think this way?
Speaking of killing…
Never mind.
ShivaX
1848
Well, you see two thousand years ago a guy said “love each other as I have loved you” and, well things went a little sideways…
Enidigm
1849
That’s the ultimate reason to keep religious morality seperated legally from government - it’s almost impossible to remain moderate, and be religious, and have the reigns of government, sustainably, over a long period of time. Periods of relative moderation will almost inevitably be followed by periods of extremism. This is basically the story of Islam since its inception (what happens when your culture has nothing but religious ideology, but barely to no political ideology).
Reason needs faith, and faith needs reason. Without the other, reason becomes truncated and hollow, and faith becomes inhumane. If your motivation for, say, opposing abortion doesn’t stem from a considered philosophical position, then you end up at conclusions like procuring an abortion should legally be treated like murder, or you put forward an extreme bill for the sake of raw power politics, or to turn your passion into a cannonade in the culture war. A lot of Christians have no tradition of reason to go with their tradition of faith. It’s at epidemic proportions among evangelicals, and it ends up infecting other Christians as well. Obviously, I’m biased, but this is the fruit of the Reformation and the Enlightenment that resulted from it. They built a wall between Athens and Jerusalem, made them resent each other, and the answer isn’t to eject either one from public life, but to let them temper each other.
Keep telling yourself whatever helps you get through the day man.
That’s a reasonable argument, but I think you are fighting a losing battle there. America has arrived at a consensus definition of christianity and it’s evangelic fundamentalism all the way down.
I’m not sure what it means to say “America has arrived at a consensus definition” of a religion. And anyway, most Christians in America are simply not fundamentalists. So I think we can agree that fundamentalists–or, more accurately, conservative evangelicals–have a distressingly powerful influence on the political culture today, but that doesn’t make all American Christians into something they’re not. It just means that particular minority is very influential, very visible, very extreme.
Perhaps those other Christians need to do more to repudiate them. But then that goes back to my first point: The nature of evangelical theology–personal interpretation of the bible, charismatic leadership, a dispensational of history–insulates them from repudiation. Catholicism has abundant problems stemming from its hierarchy, but at least it provides the tools to demand someone cut that shit out, if only those in authority have the courage to use them (a big if, obviously).
I think it’s simpler than this. If you decide to make something a crime, you’re making the decision that — ultimately — extreme, even deadly state force may be used to prevent or punish that something. That’s what crimes are, the things for which the state is willing to do violence to you to prevent or punish. Supporters of abortion rights have been telling that to opponents of abortion rights for decades — e.g. that you mean to force women to give birth at gunpoint, to imprison them, even to kill them — and you just kept blowing it off as ridiculous. But if you claim that abortion is murder, something like this is a perfectly obvious end point. Welcome to the party, pal.
I didn’t realize every crime, by dint of being a reason for the state to use force, is on a slippery slope to capital punishment! Helpful! Thanks!
Hah, I was once detained for jaywalking. At 1:30 am, on a Wednesday, in downtown Seattle, in October- i.e. the area was deserted. They called in four cars and seven cops total to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. They did not.
Timex
1859
In seattle, they MIGHT kill you for Jaywalking. They beat the shit out of that old man for carrying a golf club as a walking stick.
I don’t know where you live, but in my country, I see people being killed for trivial crimes nearly every day, alongside the highest incarceration rate in the free world. It makes me quite a bit more thoughtful about what ought to be considered a crime.
Also, the anti-abortion movement says abortion is murder. What is the normal treatment we accord to murderers in this country? How can we act surprised and outraged to discover they want it to apply to women who have illegal abortions?
It’s absolutely true that this is used in some pro-life rhetoric, and probably plenty of people believe this. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe a woman procuring an abortion is murder, and if you remember the backlash to Trump’s statement that women should be punished for abortions you’d know much or most of the mainstream pro-life movement agrees with me. My understanding is that most pre-Roe abortion restrictions did not treat the mothers as criminals, and sometimes considered them victims of the crime.
I’m not trying to make excuses for bad rhetoric, bad principles, or twisted ideology. The facts are more nuanced, though, and if there even is a hope in hell of a political compromise on the issue, then after the reasonable pro-life community (which I know to exist–I understand if not everyone believes it) drives out the monsters and exploiters from their midst, the other side must recognize and grapple with the nuance. That includes the fact that a significant segment of the anti-abortion movement sincerely wants to use welfare systems to make having a child easier, safer, and less financially burdensome, and do so because they believe that makes women and families more free to live their lives how they want to, not less.
Thrag
1862
Well I guess it’s up to the mainstream pro-life movement to reject those views and those people then isn’t it? Shouldn’t they be renouncing them loudy rather than electing them?
Christians and republicans are primarily interested in oppressive social control. Freedom is for people who conform to their narrow set of values and identities.
Women who refuse to be subservient baby makers? Punish them. Execute them!
It isn’t surprising in the least.
Yep, I agree, and that’s what I just said. The “after” was deliberate here:
There is an effort to do this, I promise there is. But as I stated before, the bad actors are also the more influential and more visible at the moment, even if they aren’t necessarily the most numerous.
KevinC
1865
Look, if some women get rounded up and imprisoned or even potentially executed, that’s just the price we have to be willing to pay to protect life and interfere in private medical decisions.
