A Less Desirable Point of View

I have deliberated whether or not to post about this for a couple of days...
I really do NOT want to turn my blog into a political soapbox or battlefield.

But as a Christian and historian, I just cannot keep quiet about such an egregious lapse in clarity and judgment!
I am referring to the recent interview of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg printed in the New York Times: The Place of Women On the Court

Whether you are pro-life (I am) or pro-choice is irrelevant to my point here.
The real issue is the disturbing implication in what she says regarding abortion. If you click on the above link and go to the end of page 3 & top of page 4, you will see what I mean. For the sake of posterity, I will reprint that portion of the article here:

Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.

Read that last line again.

Then, remember that this is being said by a woman of Jewish ancestry.

Do you see the problem?

She is referring (casually, at that) to EUGENICS.
This is not taken out of context and it is not being distorted.
I have read and re-read this statement several times trying to make some sense of it -- find some useful purpose for her saying it -- but there is none.
It is simply racist, classist, and downright ignorant.

As a student of history and a staunch egalitarian, I am offended by this remark on multiple levels.

First of all, she takes a paternalistic tone toward women of lower socioeconomic status as though she is fighting for their cause (opposing the ruling of no Medicaid funding for abortions). But implicit in her sympathetic overtures is a much uglier form of discrimination:
"and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of"

Beg pardon?
Which populations would those be, Justice Ginsburg?
Poor blacks? Poor whites? The homeless?
The mentally ill or mentally-challenged?
While we're at it, what about those born with grotesque deformities or missing limbs or who are born blind or deaf?
Where -- exactly -- do you draw the line?
How do YOU define populations you seek to limit?

And if this form of reasoning -- and the slippery slope it creates -- sounds vaguely familiar to you, it should.
It was used by NAZI GERMANY as an argument to exterminate the Jewish peoples!

Is that what we have come to?
Defending morally reprehensible choices by using arguments promoted by Hitler, himself?
In Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish peoples who were the "less desirable" population of people.

How can an intelligent woman like Ms. Ginsburg not see the sick irony in her statement?
I completely understand that she *thinks* she is being valiant, defending the unwed mothers of the inner city, but in her zeal to emerge as the "white knight" of abortion rights, she commits a far worse offense than the denial of Medicaid funding ever could.
She devalues the very existence of the people she is supposedly fighting for!
And in the process, she discredits herself with historians and civil rights proponents everywhere.

Oh, be careful little mouth, what you say...
"for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks." -- Luke 6:45b

HIS story In The Making

Ok, so you probably get the play on words in my title name (Her Story -- history -- get it?).

But I think that our lives should be all about adding to
HIS Story:
Making a difference in this world and showing Christ to those who think no one really cares...

Last night was another amazing night of MIDNIGHT OUTREACH.

We met at the church around 9:00 to pray and Alliece was telling some great stories to a couple of newcomers... then, when she prayed, she asked God to "give us more stories."
Did He ever!

Last night began with the realization that one of our "usual" strip club stops was shut down. There was a police raid a while back and apparently, there was some "not-so-legal stuff" going down in there, so they are closed for business.
We headed a short way down the road to another "usual" stop.

This club is an interesting story, in and of, itself.
You see, we've been informed by his bouncers that the owner is a practicing Satanist.
Um, yeah.
A Satanist, strip club owner who allows the Church to come in and give roses and chocolates to his employees.
Wait, it gets even better...
There is another strip club further down the road that we have been trying to get into for ages (no luck). Last night the Satanist dude comes out to greet us and fill us in on the closed strip club's details... then he asks us if we are going to _______?
Alliece tells him no, they won't let us in.
Get this: He CALLS the other strip club and tells them to LET US IN!
After a year of trying to get in, we finally got to go in to _______ and they seemed glad to see us! We gave the working girls roses and make-up kits and gave all the bouncers and managers chocolates and gum.

Then we headed to the inner city to look for prostitutes and to show love to the community.
We came upon a street where a man had JUST been stabbed in a fight. The fire truck and paramedics showed up right as we did and we ended up staying on that street for a good 45 minutes or so.
While there, we were able to hand out roses and chocolates to the good people sitting out on their front porches and in their yards (at midnight, no less) and gave them fliers inviting them to the Winbourne campus for church. There were kids running around everywhere so we invited them to Vacation Bible School and gave them free chocolate and gum as well.
The cool thing was that while we were there, we "found" a lady who used to come to Ladies' Thrive all the time, but whom we hadn't seen in a while, and Alliece "found" a young prostitute that she had lost track of a while back.

All in all, it was a great night and I think God more than honored our request for "more stories" to tell. All I could think about was how each of these people -- the strippers, the prostitutes, the pimps, the drug dealers, the homeless, and the poor -- each one of them are an integral part of the bigger picture, the bigger story:
HIS story.
And I feel honored to have been allowed to play some small part in that...
THANK YOU, Healing Place Church, for giving us the opportunity to participate in such an amazing outreach!

Democratic Primary: Anything BUT Black & White

Tuesday will probably be the decisive primary for the Democratic Party and as that day approaches, I find myself increasingly concerned for where we are headed.

If you read my blog regularly, you know that I am undecided on how I will vote in the upcoming Presidential election. A political moderate, I find this Presidential race to be particularly agonizing.

While McCain may not be the "obvious favorite" of most conservatives, he may be their only choice in the end. I fear that if this is the case, we are definitely looking at a Democrat as our next President. And while there are many things I, personally, like about Obama, the big question regarding our involvement in the Middle East may be more crucial than we realize.

I understand that the American people are sick and tired of the war in Iraq.
I understand that most people (Democrats and Republicans alike) believe that we went into Iraq under questionable circumstances. An increasing number of Americans are starting to admit that there seems to have been "ulterior motives" at play and a definite lack in long-term planning.
But does that mean we should just surrender?

Consider the aftermath when we pulled out of Vietnam.
If you are not well-read on that period of our history, I invite you to do a little research. Google it.
And in Iraq?
In Iraq, there is so much more at stake -- invaluable territory, oil, resources, -- than mere ideology.

Whether we like it or not, our actions up till now WILL have a consequence.
This area of the Middle East is rich with oil and other precious resources and is more than ripe for political and religious revolution.
While some will argue, convincingly, that we have created nothing but a quagmire in the Middle East, others will point out that deserting that quagmire might be far more detrimental.

Let's just put it all out there:
If WE leave, someone else WILL take our place.

I'm NO proponent of increasing our occupation there or even for maintaining the status quo,
BUT
If we think that Iraq will simply go back to being an independent, Democratic nation with a self-sufficient economy, we are seriously deluding ourselves. In some ways, the damage is irreparable -- at least, in the short term.
And for us to think that by leaving we are somehow doing the Iraqi people a "humanitarian favor" is almost laughable.
We will pat ourselves on the back and congratulate each other on our "noble actions;" meanwhile, we will have just thrown this "liberated" region to the proverbial wolves.

I agree that we don't need to be the "world's police," but don't we have an obligation to take care of the mess we made? If we don't, someone else will.

There are other countries out there who want that oil.
There are other nations who want that land.
There are other ideological and religious zealots who would love to step in and take power over the fragile morale of the Iraqi people.
If you think that us leaving IS the solution, you need to go back and study your history.
IRAN
TURKEY
CHINA
RUSSIA
and possibly more are sitting, waiting for us to leave and to leave the Iraqi people vulnerable.
They apparently know our history better than we do.