Interesting blog synergy

Oh yeah, I have a blog.

In just the past few days, there's been an interesting overlap in several of the blogs I read. It all started when Believe Out Loud, a Christian group that encourages churches to become "fully inclusive of all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity" tried to place an innocuous ad on the Sojourners website (a large network of progressive Christians) and was refused. Here's the ad:

This prompted two posts over at slactivist, "My hope is built on nothing less" and "Jim Wallis and Believe Out Loud, Part 2" and over at Obsidian Wings, "Authoritarianism and the Slut Who Walks", which sort of a follow up to "The Women Men Don't See", which was a really interesting response to the Jewish newspaper that edited out Hillary Clinton and another female White House staffer out of a photo because of their (Stalinesque?) "respect" for women. The slactivist posts are more about the intersection of homosexuality and Christian identity, while the OW posts are more about authoritarianism and strict gender roles. Good posts all.

I was just struct at the quality of the points raised by Fred at slactivist as well as the civility (and coherence) of the commenters. I think Fred's main points can be summed up as:

For now let me just reiterate what I’ve said above about evangelical identity in America’s evangelical subculture. It is marked, above all else, by the proper “stance” on homosexuality and abortion. Those who meet that test are regarded as insiders with a voice that will be listened to. Those who fail that test are regarded as outsiders..

The point here is that there are many, many people besides Jim Wallis who inhabit the terrain that Tony Jones describes as "conservative on issues of human sexuality" while "theologically thoughtful and progressive on other biblical and social issues." I think that Tony is right that such a position is, in the long run, untenable.

I find his first point more interesting. Abortion and anti-gay-rights are, as raised by both slactivist and OW, shibboleths for right-wing Christians. In other words, those two beliefs are almost mandatory and universal markers for inclusion in that community, which also largely defines the modern GOP.

I've often said that (and bored both readers of this blog by saying so often), current politics is driven by identity as much as it is policy. More so for the Right; there are virtually no pro-gay, or pro-choice Republicans, but plenty anti-gay-marriage Democrats. For example, Barack Obama.

I don't really have a point, but many of the commenters at slacitivst do. Many of them are excellent and it's sad that they're going not going to get attention because they're comments in some guy's blog. So I'd like to highlight a few here:

Jessica_R:

[T]his is why evangelicals are losing numbers in droves. They've made it a zero sum game where you can either be a Christian or you can love your neighbor as yourself.

Semperfiona, on whether Jim Wallis's decision not to run the ad was a choice between "the lesser of two evils:"

It's hard to be charitable toward a choice that paints "respecting my civil rights" as the greater evil... it sounds an awful lot like "I'm not a bigot but my customers are, so your kind are not welcome here" which is just a mealy-mouthed species of bigotry and reinforces the opinions of other bigots, comforting the comfortable.

Amaryllis, on gender roles:

What bothers [fundamentalists] the most about gay couples is not what they may be doing in bed; it's much more about "who wears the pants" when both wear pants. Or skirts and heels.

Because, in their view, the entire basis of social relationships, from the most private to the nation as a whole, is based on Authority. And trying to ignore the "natural" or "God-given" hierarchy is just asking for trouble, for individuals and for society as whole.

And not to bury the lede, but these are the best of the bunch:

Morgan Guyton: (emphasis mine)

[T]he reason why "conservative" views of sexuality don't have long-term viability for a Christian who's serious about the Biblical perspective on poverty is because the primary function of sexual "conservativism" is to excuse middle-class Christians from being concerned about poverty since we can label it a moral failing of welfare mamas who need to learn how to close their legs.

bad Jim, on why a conservative (wide) stance on sexuality is such a shibboleth for evangelicals:

[A] focus on sexuality doesn't threaten things that really matter, like wealth and power. Preaching that looks benignly upon getting and spending is more likely to prosper, and the ideal of self-control lends itself nicely to material pursuits. If a display of virtue and self-denial is required, what better than to condemn sins to which one is not attracted or of which one is incapable, which for most men would include homosexuality and abortion.

Can you be pro-life and an organ donor?

There's a thread over at IlliniPundit about the recent stem cell breakthrough. In it, one commenter spouts the usual pro-life and anti-stem-cell line "We must not take life to save life." It's the same mentality that you get from pro-lifers about abortion, namely the valuable part of a person is that he is "alive." They never seem to explain under what definition of "life" a zygote is alive but the sperm and ovum are not.

That kind of belief system, however, isn't consistent with permitting organ donations for organs like the heart. Such transplants can come from people that are brain-dead. But I'm not even sure that the position that a person can even be brain-dead is compatible with the extreme pro-life position.

A brain-dead person is still, at the cellular level, alive. With the exception of breathing, many of the normal bodily functions are going on. His heart still beats; his hair still grows; his body is still warm. A blastocyst is alive only in this sense.

I'm of the opinion that brain activity isn't just the most important thing about a person, it's the only thing that's valuable. It's what makes the difference between living tissue and a person. Cut my arm off, and no one will argue that I'm less of a person; pick up my severed arm and no one will argue that it is in any way a person. So there must be something other than being alive at the cellular level that defines the important part of a person's existence.

I just don't see how anyone who's thought it through can claim these two positions are anything other than logically inconsistent. I guess it's that "logically" part that's tripping me up. The pro-life, "an embryo is equivalent to a full grown human being" position isn't a logical argument; it's an emotional one. It has emotional resonance and it soundbites really well.

I'm sure many people will disagree with me and that's fine. Just give me a usable definition of "alive" that applies to a zygote but not a brain-dead person. For bonus points, give me a meaningful definition of "person" that applies to a zygote but not a puppy.

UPDATE: To respond to Glock21's question "At what point are we a human being or person?" I'd like to hand that one off to The Frontal Cortex:

Both political extremes are wrong. A zygote isn't a baby, and a third-trimester fetus isn't a zygote. If cellular biology knows anything, it's that life is a gradient. Our consciousness slowly accumulates. There is no magic spark when an egg starts dividing and differentiating. It's just DNA doing it's thing. Of course, let those cells divide for long enough, and you'll end up with something pretty miraculous. Deciding at what point the miracle begins - at what point that bundle of cells accumulates a "soul" or "mind" or "brain" - is, of course, the really difficult part. But other countries - like Britain, where abortion is an issue debated by doctors, not grandstanding Parliamentarians - show us that this question can be answered in a methodical and rational manner.

I have to say that the obsession and fascination with a fertilized egg because it's apparently "whole" or "complete" is odd. Really, the only difference between separated gametes and a zygote is that the DNA has come together. Big deal. You can have tons of unique DNA in a test tube and it's not a person. DNA isn't even alive. And looking closely at the biology just makes the soundbite even more invalid. From The Island of Doubt:

...there is no "moment of conception."

For starters, the process of fertilization take a measurable amount of time. First the living sperm and living egg membranes fuse, then the egg completes the second stage of meiotic division -- the process that produces a haploid gamete with only half the DNA of a non-sex cell. Then the sperm loses its tail and the energy factory known as the mitochondria. Then the nuclear material from egg and sperm fuse, a process that again takes time. DNA must be wrangled and manipulated until new diploid chromosomes are ready for the next steps. It doesn't happen all at once...

Furthermore, it's only going to get worse. The better the temporal and spatial resolution of our technology,which is improving with each passing day, the more detail and complexity emerges in the reproductive cycle.

So I ask again: when exactly does in this process does one become a "human being" whose destruction is tantamount to murder? Where precisely is this moral boundary of which Mr. Bush speaks?

I understand that to admit to the fact that there is no boundary, that life is continuum, opens a lot of uncomfortable doors for those who like their ethical architecture to be straight and narrow. Sorry, but that's ... life.

I think a lot of the arguing here happens because a segment of the population is very uncomfortable with greyness. Black or white. Good or evil. You're either with us or against us. By framing the discussion in these terms, there isn't any measured or critical analysis or discussion. But it does make things oh so morally uncomplicated.

UPDATE II: Fig pointed out that this post disappeared from the site. When I wrote the above update, I accidentally saved it as a draft, rather than publishing it to the site. Sorry.

Why can't conservatives at the DI ever tell the truth?

It looks like the Daily Illini has replaced John Bambenek with Paul Schmitt as one of their resident conservative wingnuts. In today's DI, Schmitt has a rant about Planned Parenthood and the evil they do against women. As usual for these sorts of things, it's full of half-truths and distortions.

Quick summary for the non-locals: Planned Parenthood is trying to open a clinic in Aurora, a Chicago suburb. Because of how anti-choice zealots behaved when PP opened a clinic in Austin, much of the paperwork was in the name of a PP subsidiary Gemini Office Development. The Aurora City Council knew that the permits were for a medical clinic and approved them. When it was revealed that this would be a PP clinic, the Jesus hit the fan, and the crazies came out of the woodwork. Aurora is now suing to stop the opening of the clinic.

Schmitt's column today reads:

In Texas, contractors that were building a new clinic for the organization refused to finish their work upon learning of what exactly they were constructing.

Well, that's not exactly what happened. Schmitt makes it sound like the contractors discovered what they were building and quit the project in a huff of moral outrage. Actually, anti-abortion activists started a campaign of intimidation and harassment, including following workers home and bothering the residents in their neighborhoods. This caused enough of the smaller contractors to drop out that the general contractor did as well. Hardly the implication that Schmitt's piece leaves.

Schmitt continues:

The facilities, which have faced repeated lawsuits by parents of its clients, pro-life groups and others, claim to offer necessary and important services to the communities where they are located. Looking at the situation in Aurora, however, one might easily draw a conclusion that Planned Parenthood advocates nothing more than an abdication of personal responsibility, honesty and self-respect.

You know, I went over to Planned Parenthood's website, and I couldn't find any information about abdicating personal responsibility. I did find information on birth control, avoiding STDs, and even how to care for yourself if you are or want to get pregnant. Nothing about dishonesty. So one also might easily draw the conclusion that Schmitt has no idea what he's talking about.

It's funny that Schmitt brings up the Austin Planned Parenthood clinic as an example of a success. One thing that Schmitt doesn't mention is that another woman's health clinic in Austin was bombed by anti-abortion activists this year. Suddenly, that crowd doesn't seem so "pro-life" after all.

What if they gave a terrorist attack and no one came?

Remember a couple of months ago, when an ill-advised marketing campaign left strange electrical devices around Boston, causing local authorities to think they could have been bombs? It made the news for days. This week's arrest of five men accused of planning to attack Fort Dix has similarly garnered a great deal of attention, even though the men had not even started planning any attack.

Would it come as a surprise to you if I'd told you there had been an actual terrorist attack in the US two weeks ago? Doesn't it seem odd that this has barely made a blip on the news? This wasn't an theoretical attack in the pre-planning stages, this was an actual bomb, placed where it would kill many civilians, with shrapnel added to maximize casualties. The bomb squad had to detonate it in place.

I suspect it was because the alleged bomber wasn't a swarthy Muslim immigrant, but a white Christian man. I certainly hope it was not because the target of his wrath was a family planning clinic and thus his near-victims were somehow less "innocent."

This isn't the only case. While the Fort Dix arrests have been plastered all over the news, this case of a group of men allegedly planning a machine gun attack also hasn't been widely publicized. They had fabricated about 200 explosive devices.

David Niewert over at Orcinus writes:

Of course, acknowledging that this is the case would require a major readjustment of the media's constructed narrative about the "war on terror." So it continues to turn a blind eye, and in the process it profoundly misinforms the public.

And yet Ann Coulter still gets to complain about terrorists being "ragheads."

More reading:

• http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/05/other-kind-of-terror.html
• http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10638.html
• http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/04/27/the-terrorism-that-dare-not-speak-its-name/

Finally, some data

After insulting the intelligence of anyone who dared question him, John Bambenek has updated his anti-feminist tirade at his blog to include the studies he used in his DI editorial. So lets take a look at what he's basing his opinions on.

His first point was that "99% percent of all abortions" are for "sexual convenience." Unfortunately, the link he posted is broken, so it's hard to judge that. But, he said that he used the Guttmacher Institute for his data. Instead, lets take a look at an article they list in their Abortion section: Lawrence Finer, et al. "Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives" Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. 2005, 37(3):110–118. The reasons that women have abortions are varied and complicated, but the largest reasons are that a child would interfere with the mother's education, job, or their ability to care for their current children. Seventy-three percent said they wouldn't be able to afford to care for a child. (Respondents could select more than one answer.)

Bambenek wraps all of these up in the petty-sounding description of "convenience," as this reason is not listed anywhere in the study. It's a term that he's invented, he's defined, and which he can use to over-simplify this complicated into a nice, tidy sound bite. I'm not sure how in anyone's mind "I can barely feed the children I have now, and I'll get fired if I have to take off time from work to have another baby" can reasonably be called a matter of "convenience." Obviously, Bambenek concern here is to trivialize the reasons women have abortions to make them sound petty and selfish.

The Guttmacher paper also says that 25% of women cited concerns with their health or the health of the fetus as a consideration. Bambenek casually disregards these concerns with:

Now I don’t regard "health" of the mother as particularly indicative of anything because pregnancy is, by definition, a HUGE factor for the health of the mother and comes with no small share of risk. It’s used flippantly in debates and I have no reason to see the same crowd doesn’t use it flippantly in research.

Wait, what? First he says that pregnancy is a "huge factor for the health of the mother" and then disregards these concerns as "flippant." In other words, there's this huge issue, which one in four women consider when having an abortion, and Bambenek is just going to ignore it because he finds it inconvenient.

Well, next time my cousin in lying in the hospital with pre-eclampsia, pumped full of steroids to where she looked like a balloon so that the baby's lungs would develop enough that he would be able to survive when they delivered him prematurely, I'll make sure to tell her to stop whining because she's being "flippant."

Actually, it looks like Bambenek's choice of the word "convenience" may be part of a tactic of the anti-choice movment as a whole. Quoting from the Guttmacher paper:

Yet some broad concepts emerged from the study. A crosscutting theme was women’s responsibility to children and other dependents, as well as considerations about children they may have in the future. Most women in every age, parity, relationship, racial, income and education category cited concern for or responsibility to other individuals as a factor in their decision to have an abortion. In contrast to the perception (voiced by politicians and laypeople across the ideological spectrum) that women who choose abortion for reasons other than rape, incest and life endangerment do so for "convenience," our data suggest that after carefully assessing their individual situations, women base their decisions largely on their ability to maintain economic stability and to care for the children they already have.

(I was also going to look at the studies he offers showing how women become emotionally "devastated" if they have sex, but I just don't have time tonight. More later.)