Maybe This Will Be the Year

This past weekend was the annual March for Life in Washington, DC. There’s a different air this year. There’s hope, almost anticipation, that this might be the last year that the March goes on with Roe v. Wade as the law of the land.

March for Life 2022
Getty image found here

Marjorie Jackson, at the beginning of the prolifecon.org broadcast of the Family Research Council, done parallel to the March for Life, gave this introduction:

Today is the 17th Annual ProLifeCon Digital Action Summit here at Family Research Council. As well as the somber anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion on demand through nine months of pregnancy. Thank you for joining us as we fight for the unborn. This year the March for Life feels a little different. This could possibly be our last year under Roe v. Wade legalized. Hope is in the air.

Kirk Cameron, actor and Christian, was at the March for Life and gave an interview to Fox News,which was passed along by The Daily Wire.  He said, “I think that we’re at a tipping point. I think that the tide is turning, science is making it more and more difficult for us to pretend like it’s not a baby in the womb. We know that it is.” Cameron's wife was adopted. Their first four children were adopted. They’ve been on the side of life a long time. As he put it, his wife—and each of those first four children—were “one doctor appointment away from not existing.” He adds, about his wife, “She was not a mistake; she was a miracle.” His whole family exists because mothers chose life.

He also thinks there’s a sea change happening in the culture. He says, “Even in Hollywood, there are more and more people who are embracing the idea that life is a gift from God.”

Some of the optimism this particular year stems from the oral arguments before the Supreme Court in early December. We went through some of the details then. But as Mary Zach, co-host on the ProLifeCon broadcast, summed it up: “It is about changing hearts and minds as well.” Maybe the law is ready to change now, because the people are ready to change. Not all people, but a growing majority.

Katherine Beck Johnson, Fellow for Legal and Policy Studies at FRC, was given time on that broadcast to offer an overview of what Dobbs v. Jackson was all about.

Katherine Beck Johnson, ProLifeCon broadcast
screenshot from here

KBJ: Dobbs is an incredibly consequential case. It is the biggest abortion case of our generation, the biggest abortion case since Casey in 1992.

Mississippi passed a 15-week abortion ban. This is by no means a radical pro-life law. But it was struck down as it is unconstitutional under Roe, which prevents any sort of pre-viability ban on abortion. And this was struck down at the district court and the 5^th Circuit as unconstitutional. Mississippi then petitioned the Supreme Court to take the case.

Now, the Supreme Court could have just issued a statement saying, "This is clearly unconstitutional under Roe. We agree with the 5^th Circuit.” But they took the case, signaling they might be willing to do something to alter abortion jurisprudence in America.

It was then taken up another notch when Mississippi filed their briefs, and they didn’t just simply ask the Court to uphold their 15-week ban. They went after Roe. They called Roe out for what it is, a disgrace to our nation and to our constitutional law. And they requested that the Court overturn Roe. So, therefore, the case now really before the Supreme Court is whether or not Roe should be overturned and abortion should return to the states. So, like I said, this is a hugely consequential case, and we look forward to the decision that comes down in, hopefully, June.

Later in the discussion, she covered more details of the justices’ questions, and why we have reason to be so hopeful:

KBJ: While it’s hard to always read the tea leaves of what the justices will do from oral arguments, we took a lot of encouragement from the questions being asked, especially from Justice Roberts, who has become quite the swing vote. He really talked about and probed, well, isn’t America an outlier in our abortion jurisprudence? Why are we just in the camp of North Korea and China in our protections of the unborn?

Justice Kavanaugh, who’s also become another swing vote, said himself, "Well, shouldn’t this just be left up to the states?" He said that in response to a growing movement within the pro-life movement that the unborn are actually protected under the 14th Amendment, and that the Constitution forbids abortion, and this should not be left up to the states…. So, we really particularly look to the swing voters on the Court and what they were saying.

And then Justice Alito, who basically closed it out, talking to the United States Solicitor General, Elizabeth [Prelogar], who is of course advocating that the Mississippi law be struck down, and as she was continuously talking about the rights of the woman, he said boldly, “Well, doesn’t the fetus have an interest in living?” And I thought that was just so profound, that here we had a justice willing to say, “What about the rights of the unborn child?”

Another guest on that broadcast was pro-life activist Alyson Centofonte, who had MC-ed the event in front of the Supreme Court during oral arguments. She described some differences in the crowds:

Alyson Centofonte, ProLifeCon
broadcast, screenshot from here

No one [on the pro-abortion side] actually had a very empowering message of supporting women and moms and families. There were no children there that I saw. There were no dads that I saw.

On our rally we had female legislators with their husbands and babies in tow. It’s very empowering to see.

So, I think the shift that is taking place is that the pro-life movement has been so successful at having a consistent message that women and families should be supported in law and society. And that’s really refreshing to a young woman who’s in an unplanned pregnancy and scared. Because, we need to hear, we all need to hear that, “You can do this; we will be with you; we’ll stand with you.” That’s what the pro-life movement says: “We will stand with you.” The other side says, “You’re on your own. Take care of this, and get back to work, or get back to whatever you’re doing.” We want to walk women through pregnancy and motherhood. And you saw that. You saw that at the Court, and you’re seeing it in the pro-life movement now.

If Roe gets reversed, it doesn’t abolish abortion; it returns the jurisprudence surrounding abortion to the states. During the intervening years, the rationale for recognizing the fetus as a living human being has only grown. So in many states that will mean real progress for life.

In South Dakota on Friday, in concert with people gathering in Washington, DC, for the March for Life, Governor Kristi Noem announced two pro-life bills. One would ban abortions after the detection of a heartbeat (similar to the Texas law). The other would prohibit telemedicine abortions in the state. She said, 

We hope that this year’s March for Life will be the last and that the Supreme Court will finally protect every unborn life. But until that comes to pass, these bills will ensure that both unborn children and their mothers are protected in South Dakota.

Governor Kristi Noem's tweet on January 21, 2022
image found here

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, in a letter attached to their fundraising, describes much of the progress: 

FRC’s influence with state legislators this past year has been unprecedented. During the week of the Dobbs case hearing in early December, FRC leaders and experts hosted more than 120 state legislators from 39 states at our largest-ever summit designed to advance pro-life protections to the states.

Such mobilization is essential right now. In the event Mississippi’s pro-life law is upheld, it likely means states will have greater flexibility to set policies to protect pre-born lives.

Our experts are equipping frontline conservative legislators with scientific facts regarding life in the womb—along with moral and ethical reasoning that can inform every policy battle.

In recent months, our team launched an interactive tracking website titled “America’s Direct Deposit to Planned Parenthood,” revealing the outrageous amount of US Taxpayer dollars the abortion industry giant receives every year.

From our detailed policy research to our “friend of the court briefs”—including one we filed in support of Mississippi in the Dobbs case—these resources are informing policymakers at all levels.

He adds a request for prayer,

As this new year begins, I hope and trust you will commit to pray for our leaders—particularly those making life-or-death decisions on the Supreme Court….

God calls us to be intercessors in this hour. Intercession means to intervene on behalf of another, or to put it another way, to stand in the gap.

Will you commit to stand in the gap for our nation?

Let us never neglect to start and end the day on our knees, crying out to God for truth to prevail, for innocent lives to be saved, and for the Kingdom of God to advance.

Being an intercessor starts with prayer…but, in my experience, it doesn’t end there. That’s why our effective strategies including mobilizing Americans like you and informing policymakers—to shape the future of America and save lives in the womb.

That’s their organization’s goal. And it’s a good one. The call for the rest of us, besides prayer, is to inform, teach, help, support, and make it easier for individual women in distress to choose life in a world that has been trying to convince them not to.

I listened to a podcast the other night [Y Religion, episode 48, “The Complementary Nature of Mothers and Fathers” with Dr. Jenet Erickson], about research surrounding motherhood. Worth a listen. One detail was that, biologically, the growing baby and mother interact in ways we never knew. They share health support for one another. They exchange cells. They are forever part of one another. Once the baby is born he seeks his mother; he knows her voice and recognizes her. She is his preferred human for probably the first eighteen months, when he’s ready to turn outward toward father and others. It’s a profound honor to be so significant to another human being. If a woman truly knows that child within her, knows he is alive and interacting with her already, would she ever choose anything but life? The more we learn, the more life makes sense.

This year just might be the year we can more freely help all women choose life.

Days Reminding Us to Value Life

Can the good people of the earth agree that life matters? Can that be a value we agree on?

If we don’t, does that mean we can identify those who are not the good people of the earth and who are? Maybe so. Then the question is, is that a permanent designation?

We had both Holocaust Remembrance Day and the annual March for Life this past week. I’m looking at both today.

 

Tyranny Devalues Human Life

image from Sen. Ted Cruz, found here

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but whenever there’s a tyrannical power setting up a “utopia,” where they rule and you of course don’t, but where you’re nevertheless supposed to be grateful, because they’re promising free stuff and no worries, that regime favors depopulation.

China is a textbook example, with its Maoist cultural revolution, murdering the educated or troublesome. Then add to that their longtime one-child policy, to keep the population down. But Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and others also seem to have had no qualms about the death of their own citizens.

They act as if it is self-evident that taking care of fewer people makes more sense.

They fail to notice that wealth is created when people are free and civilized—and that “the earth is the Lord’s and fullness thereof,”[i] so wealth is essentially unlimited. Instead, they claim, “All resources are scarce, and more won’t be found or created, so we must decide who is most deserving.” And of course, those they deem to be deserving are those who are subservient to them and support their regime.

Central planners supposedly know everything—except what is best for individuals, and how to make society better for any other than the elites. They want workers to produce what they order, but not to cost them upkeep. Too much bother.

Since we disagree with them, and since we are not among the elites, we are slated for elimination. At first it’s ideological—silencing. Then it’s preventing the dissidents (us) from basic ways of self-sustaining: earning, buying, selling. Then it’s withholding life necessities: medical care, food, shelter.

If we die, all the better for those who remain. They’ll be more compliant, and there will be fewer of them to divide those limited resources among. All the better for the tyrants.

This is the playbook of every socialist/communist regime so far: murder their own people; overtake other nations to enslave them.

Hendrik Jakobs, executed in 1945 for hiding Jews in his home,
great-grandfather of wildlife artist Carel Brest van Kempen.
Image from here.

On January 27^th, for Holocaust Remembrance Day, a Facebook friend shared a photo of his great-grandfather, Hendrik Jakobs, who was executed in 1945, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, for hiding Jews in his home. My friend reminds us of:

The most important lesson of the Holocaust: that it was not perpetrated by monsters, but by normal people who loved their country and their families and believed that they were working in their interest. Never again!

In the 20^th Century, we said, “Never again.” But the socialists of the 21^st Century step up and say, “Hold my beer.”

They aren’t different. They aren’t better informed or more qualified than the controlling elites who caused the holocaust and the other atrocities of the past century; they are identical, but have added technology to their toolkit.

I’d really like to know why less human life is their goal, and yet people buy into that. It ought to be self-evident that more human life is something the human species ought to want. It was at our nation’s founding:

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men [all humans] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.—Declaration of Independence

Life is mentioned first. The others stem from life. If someone takes your liberty, that is depriving you of living your life as you choose. If they steal your property, that is depriving you of the fruits of your labors—which was how you spent your life, so it is theft of the portion of your life that it took to accrue that property.

 

Evil Devalues Unborn Life

I think it is a basic identifier between good and evil, to see whether someone values life, particularly innocent life.

If you don’t value human life, then you do not qualify as a good person.

However, among those on the wrong side are people who have been blinded and deceived, people who would choose to be on the side of good, if they knew where to find it. That’s why God is the ultimate judge, not us.

Stephanie Gray Connors, author of Love Unleashes Life
screenshot from ProlifeCon Digital Action Summit 2021

January 29^th was the annual (and this year virtual) March for Life. I was listening to the ProLifeCon Digital Action Summit 2021 online last weekend and heard a conversation with Stephanie Gray Connors, author of Love Unleashes Life. Connors says she noticed, while teaching the science behind the pro-life side, that a lot of students weren’t accepting it. She wondered why there was resistance to basic facts:

I started asking questions like, “How did you come to your viewpoint?” or “Where does your passion come from?” or “Do you know anyone who’s had an abortion?” And what I discovered is, these students started revealing to me their personal life experiences that involved profound pain, deep suffering, great woundedness. You know, living in poverty, growing up getting food on food stamps. Victims of abuse. Victims of rape and so on and so forth. And I started to see that often there was resistance to the logic of the pro-life perspective if there was an emotional wall up because of personal suffering or pain.

So that helped me see that, as logical as I needed to be, I also needed to have a heart for the person that I was encountering, and really needed to convey that I loved them as much as I loved pre-born children. And the viewpoint I held is not just for the good of the pre-born child, but is also for their good—that they will flourish in a world where all humans are respected.

And so, the more I focused on meeting that person in their pain, hearing their story, and really listening to their needs and concerns, that, if they sensed I truly cared for them, they became more receptive to embracing the pro-life perspective.

She offers a couple of examples, one of a single mom, struggling financially. Once Connors stopped to listen, the woman opened up, and once they connected, she was more receptive. Another was a young man raised by a single mother in poverty who admitted he supported abortion to keep others from suffering what he had gone through. Their use of abortion as the answer is wrong. But understanding where they’re coming from helps when you offer an alternative.

According to Emily Berning of the nonprofit Let Them Live, 73% of women have abortions because of financial reasons; they’re pregnant and unmarried and don’t have the resources to raise a child. This nonprofit takes donations to help women through the crisis so that they feel free to choose life. They’re trying to give the message, “Yes, we care about you every bit as much as we care about the life of that unborn child.”

On the other side, what is the message? As Obama said, you shouldn’t be “punished with a baby.” There’s so much wrong with that. What did the baby do to become a punishment? Nothing. What did the young woman do to cause the pregnancy? Outside the small number related to rape, she had sex voluntarily with someone who wasn’t permanently committed to her or to any resulting children. A mistake? Yes. But it’s not a little oops, like stepping on someone’s shoe or bumping an elbow. It doesn’t happen inadvertently. Why, then, do so many make that mistake? Because of another message from the non-life side, that sex is both a right and something you can’t or shouldn’t deny yourself, and therefore it should not come with consequences attached. This message denies both human biology and psychology.

What if the message was a very clear, “Sex is for after marriage, after the permanent commitment is already made, so that you and the father of any child can work together to take care of the child, and also help take care of you during pregnancy and the raising of the child”? What if a young girl understood that she was worth respecting? That using her for sex was not an expression of love unless the commitment was already given? Without commitment, it’s only selfish lust. She deserves better.

But to receive better, she has to understand her worth and protect her value. In a healthy society, she gets that understanding from her family, her church, her friends, and societal institutions—school, entertainment, businesses. But this is not a healthy society.

The world has been failing her by lying to her, making her feel she could never be loved if she didn’t give sex to a potential partner. She shouldn’t want what is natural and right for a woman to want—permanent partnership with a caring man who will be a good husband and father.

If she’s already in the crisis, helping her get through it so she can choose life is the first concern. Then, beyond that, it is recovering her sense of worth, so she can go ahead with life, making a new path in which she chooses only what will actually bring her permanent familial love.

It takes a shift in society’s way of thinking. There is no either/or between (a) getting rid of the consequences to get rid of the crisis, or (b) saying, “You should have known better,” and failing to help. The actual alternative is to offer real loving kindness and a better path forward.

 

Are the two parts of today’s post really separate? I think this approach to understanding those on the anti-life side—learning what is causing their emotional pain that is getting in the way of reason—is worth trying related to abortion. That is, if you can get the opportunity for a rational conversation.

But can it also work to understand the anti-life side who favor tyranny? I don’t know if it can work on those who seek the power for themselves—the actual tyrants. But it might work for those who are falling for the tyrants’ lies about life getting better if you just submit to them. Again, getting the opportunity for rational conversation is another challenge altogether.

What troubles me is the responsibility this approach seems to put on those on the side of civilization to be greater than we know how to be. The only way we can do that is daily religious practice, allowing God’s spirit to guide us with the right words and actions in the moments we need them.[ii] But, then, that’s how we do any good that we do. So let’s keep praying for some miraculous help.

 

Extra Reading

·       “’Unborn Lives Matter': N.C.'s 1st Black Lt. Gov. Compares Abortion to Slavery” by Michael Foust for Christian Headlines, Jan. 26, 2021. 

·       “Honduras Makes Its Abortion Ban Permanent: ‘All Human Beings Have a Right to Life’” by Micaiah Bilger for Life News, Feb. 1, 2021. 

 

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[i] Psalm 24:1 

[ii] Matthew 10:19-20. See also Luke 11:12, Doctrine & Covenants 84:85 and 100:6.   

The Long Bending Arc

Remember that quote Martin Luther King used: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” We may be watching that arc.

This past week marked 45 years since the badly botched Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. And there was another March for Life on Friday at the nation’s capital.

President Trump spoke at the rally. I remember when he casually leaned toward pro-abortion, back when he was a Democrat and not a politician, so even less inclined than today to think through issues. So it’s a little surprising to hear pro-life language from him now, but I’ll take it. Repentance is a good thing.

Pres. Trump speaks at March for Life 2018
Image from here

Here’s some of what he said:

The March for Life is a movement born out of love. You love your families, you love your neighbors, you love our nation and you love every child—born and unborn—because you believe every life is sacred, that every child is a precious gift from God.

He added, "Americans are more and more pro-life, you see that all the time,” which I’ll talk about more today. He also said,

Under my administration, we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to life.

Well done.

So about that bend in the right direction. I think he’s right. Science is with the right to life; the more we know about the baby in the womb, the more we verify each one is a human baby, growing, with a heartbeat, feeling pain, and experiencing other senses. That is so clearly not simply a clump of cells, like a tumor. Truth leads in the direction of life.

I came across a story at The Daily Signal, verifying that young, teenage pro-life activists are pretty formidable. Three reasons: 1) They’re surprisingly upbeat and joyful—not angry. 2) They’ve already “learned to deal with incessant opposition.” Because “Pro-life people of any demographic live in a world where everyone from their boss to their favorite Hollywood star blatantly abhors them and their beliefs.” And 3) Opposition makes them stronger. “Those displays of mean-spirited opposition only knit them closer together, harden their conviction that they are fighting against true evil, and give them a sense of heroism. (A little secret: Teenagers love to feel like heroes.)”

Another story, from last week, was good news out of Tennessee. Back in 2014, Tennessee voters, a 53% to 47% majority, added this amendment to their state constitution: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion.” It has been making its way through court challenges—since Planned Parenthood filed a challenge just days after the vote. The vote was upheld April 2016 in a Circuit Court, and went from there to federal appeals court. Then, on January 9, 2018, the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Planned Parenthood’s efforts to overturn the will of Tennessee voters.

Image from here

Senior Judge David McKeague (appointed in 2005 by George W. Bush) wrote,

Although the subject of abortion rights will continue to be controversial in Tennessee and across our nation, it is time for uncertainty surrounding the people’s 2014 approval and ratification of Amendment 1 to be put to rest.

I don’t know the full ramifications of the amendment, but it does mean one state has successfully defied the SCOTUS decision claiming the right to kill a baby in the womb is a fundamental right. Hurray!

Now, back to the evidence that public will is changing.

Michael Knowles, in today’s podcast, which he titled “Lying, Shrieking Harpies: Women’s March 2018,” discussed the second annual Women’s March, in various cities this weekend. I wrote about this confusing event last year. It’s those people with knitted vagina caps on their heads again. Knowles had gone to the official website, WomensMarch.com, to get their purpose—because women actually at the march were pretty unclear on what they were doing there: you know, women’s rights, and equality, and, and, you know, stuff.

marchers on a New York subway,
wearing those things on their heads,
image from here

So, I’ve transcribed the whole 5-minute segment (I think it’s about 17 minutes into the full podcast—he pulled out this segment on Facebook), which I’ve divided up by issue. The section on Reproductive Rights is what ties in directly with our topic today. But I’ve included the rest for your interest. The part on Equal Pay ties in with last Thursday’s topic. Anyway, here’s Michael Knowles sharing WomensMarch.com’s stated mission, and then comparing it to real life facts:

Here is the mission statement from Women’s March.com: “The mission of Women’s March is to harness the political power of diverse women in their communities to create transformative social change. Women’s March is a women-led movement providing intersectional education on a diverse range of issues and creating entry points for new grassroots activists and organizers to engage in their local communities through trainings, outreach programs and events. Women’s March is committed to dismantling systems of oppression through nonviolent resistance and building inclusive structures guided by self-determination, dignity, and respect.”

What? What? What does any of that mean? They get a bit more specific later on, but this shows you just how out of touch they are.

VIOLENCE

The first principle that they list is ending violence. They write: “Women deserve to live full and healthy lives free of all forms of violence against our bodies.” Just to correct the record here, women live significantly longer than men on average. By the end of the 20^th Century, male life expectancy was 73.4 years, compared to 80.1 years for women.

Unlike men, when women register to vote, they don’t simultaneously have to register for the military draft. Men are far more likely to be the victims of violent crime than women. 76.8% of murder victims are male. Boys and men are more likely than women to be victims of assault, and robbery as well. Additionally, according to the Gallup World Poll, women report being happier with their lives than their male counterparts.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

Women’sMarch.com goes on to the euphemistically titled “reproductive rights.” They say, “We believe in reproductive freedom. We do not accept any federal, state, or local rollback cuts or restrictions on our ability to access quality reproductive health care services—birth control, HIV/AIDS prevention, or medically accurate sexuality education. This means open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control for all people.” So it’s just about abortion. They put all that other stuff there, but it’s really about abortion.

And yet, according to a 2016 Marist poll, despite constant Democrat euphemisms, renaming abortion as “women’s issues” or “reproductive health,” nationally the vast majority of women—77%—support restricting abortion to at most the first trimester. Far fewer, just 71% of men, support restrictions on abortion. The women are clearer. The majority of women—59%—say abortion is morally wrong. 52% of women believe that abortion should at most—at MOST—be permitted in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. But, nevertheless, according to the Women’s March, women want abortion on demand, anytime, anyplace, and it just isn’t backed up by reality.

EQUAL PAY

On workers’ rights, Women’sMarch.com declares, “We believe in an economy powered by transparency, accountability, security, and equity. All women should be paid equitably.” And you hear this constantly, this popular disinformation that there’s a gender pay gap: women make 77 cents on the dollar; no equal pay for equal work. But that gender pay gap disappears once you control for factors like education, time in the industry, and hours worked.

Actually, single childless women in metropolitan areas—they don’t earn less than their male counterparts; they earn more than their male counterparts by 8% on average. Nationally, women also graduate from college at significantly higher rates than men. In 2015 39% of women 25-29 had earned a bachelor’s degree, compared to just 32% of men.

VOTING RIGHTS

On Civil Rights, Women’sMarch.com explains, “We believe civil rights are our birthright, including voting rights.” This is odd to pick a fight on voting rights, as, according to the Center for American Women and Politics, since 1980 women have voted at higher rates in every single presidential election than men. So, by 2016, that gap widened to 63.3% of women voting compared to just 59.3% of men. Additionally, the number of female voters has exceeded the number of male voters in every presidential election since 1964. Despite constituting a majority of the US population—50.2% to 49.8%—women also benefit from affirmative action policies on campus and in the workplace, that give them a competitive advantage over men.

DISABILITY RIGHTS

There’s a section on disability rights. Women’sMarch.com proclaims, “We believe that all women’s issues are issues faced by women with disabilities and deaf women.” I guess that one’s right. Deaf women are still women. I don’t know what the point of that is, but sure. That’s the one thing that the Women’s March got right: deaf women are women.

IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

On immigrant rights, Women’sMarch.com insists, “Rooted in the promise of America’s call for huddled masses yearning to breathe free, we believe in immigrant and refugee rights regardless of status or country of origin. We believe migration is a human right, and that no human being is illegal.”

So, putting aside for a moment the illogic of a national policy to do away with national borders, even on the numbers the Women’s March doesn’t seem to represent women. Even among illegal aliens brought to the United States as children and teenagers—even the Dreamers, the most sympathetic and relentlessly demagogued group of illegal aliens—a November survey from Morning Consult and Politico shows that fewer than 30% of Americans support amnesty. Even among Democrats, support for granting amnesty to the most sympathetic group of illegal aliens is just 44%.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Finally, last segment, on environmental justice, Women’sMarch.com observes, “We believe that every person and every community in our nation has the right to clean water, clean air, and access to and enjoyment of public lands.” Lucky for them, federal law has protected all of those things, to say nothing of state and local management, for at least the past five decades.

The Women’s March is the most frivolous protest in the history of the world.

Usually, people whose heads are filled with vapidity masquerading as thought either figure it out and change, or they get found out and ignored.

Anyway, there was one march last weekend that affirmed women and life, and the connection between sexuality and women and new life. There was a lot of love there, which clearly relates to and supports women.

I really think that long arc will keep bending toward justice, because love is more persuasive than hate, and truth is more persuasive than demagoguery. 

We'll Sing and We'll Shout

The phrase in the title comes from a hymn called “The Spirit of God Like a Fire Is Burning.” It is historic and well-loved in my Church. The chorus says,

We’ll sing and we’ll shout

                With the armies of heaven,

Hosanna, hosanna to God and the Lamb!

Unlike many hymns, this one is loud, even boisterous. I like that.

I’m not a person who loves demonstrations, or huge gatherings, or big symbolic gestures generally. But sometimes those have been worth doing. Like 4th of July fireworks. Or Thanksgiving Day parades.

There was a big gathering downtown Houston a year or two after 9/11, once the anti-America crowd dared speak up in the media after a time of only quiet muttering in deference to the dead. So in reaction to that we had a big patriotic gathering to support our troops and America in general.

I’ve been to the state capitol a time or two with rather large groups for specific purposes. But I tend to prefer quiet solitude.

But I saw a video of a singing and dancing demonstration—a nicely choreographed flash mob—that I’m glad happened, earlier this month. It was in Peru[i], possibly the most pro-life people in the world, celebrating their annual March for Life.

Young people sing and dance “por la vida”—for life. Briefly translated, “we take to the streets, together, in the march for life.” And then a lot of singing and dancing ensues. It’s just three minutes, worth watching.

They dance for life, with exuberance; they don’t mention being against abortion. I like the positive power of that message.

And I’m thinking that kind of positive would be helpful in the effort to defend civilization on a number of issues.

For example, yesterday’s Houston Chronicle had a front-page story about the bill in the Texas legislature that—as the Chronicle put it, “Texas Senate Oks measure limiting transgender rights.” The byline is Andrea Zelinski; I’m noting that because it isn’t a news story; it’s so slanted that disguising itself as a news story can only be called propaganda. So now I know Zelinski is an editorial writer masquerading as a reporter.

What does the bill have the audacity to do? Require people to use the public bathroom that correlates with the gender they are born with. It has to do with privacy and safety, rather than, as implied, discrimination and trampling someone’s rights.

Up until a couple of years ago, when Houston’s then-mayor Anise Parker went out of her way to force through a “transgenders have more rights than you” rule, and she illegally ignored the people’s will to repeal it, and she tried to oppress churches and pastors who might not agree with her—up until then, transgenders used whatever bathroom they wanted. If a male looked like a woman, he could go in a women’s restroom and use a stall like anyone else. But if he looked like a man, and/or he did something that made females uncomfortable, they could let their discomfort be known.

The new city law was to silence them. If they worried such a person might not be a harmless transgender, but might be a sexual predator, they would be breaking the law to say so. Their rights of privacy and security were overridden for the sake of transgenders who insist that reasonable accommodations aren’t good enough. Only total capitulation by all of society will do.

Houston’s mayor got overridden. The people spoke up about reasonable safety issues. The issue came up a few other places. And then suddenly president Obama made an executive order that every state and every school had to shut up about their discomfort with predator facilitation and kowtow to the LGBT juggernaut. He had no right as president to make such an edict, so states have an obligation to defy it. And Texas is codifying that with SB6.

So what I’m suggesting, for some creative person out there, is a joyous, exuberant, singing dancing flashmob to deliver the positive message, “Women are women, and men are men, and we’re really glad we have our own bathrooms and locker rooms. Hurray for differences! Hurray for common sense! Hurray that we can speak up for safety and privacy!” So, somebody out there, go for it.

There are probably some other things we ought to sing and shout about, instead of eggshell-walking so media doesn’t slam us.

·         We love a free market with government out of the way!

·         Our brilliant Constitution works every time it’s tried!

·         We celebrate our religious freedom by living it in our everyday lives!

·         How about that great right to assemble and talk about what we want—even things we disagree about!

·         We know how to rise above poverty in America—and we want you to know how too!

·         The person who earns the money decides how to spend it—and that’s great for everyone!

·      You get the picture. We conservatives aren’t a negative lot; it’s the other side who actually fits that description.

But we could use some practice at saying how great it is to be for freedom, prosperity, andcivilization. Those are things we ought to sing and shout about.

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[i] On March 15, Peru suffered severe rains and flooding. My prayers go out to them.