Posted on 10/01/2005 6:32:54 AM PDT by topher
The only issue that David Gibbs can ever remember Jesse Jackson and Rush Limbaugh agreeing on was the fact that Terri Schiavo should remain alive.
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Gibbs called removing Schiavo's feeding tube "barbaric and uncivilized." Florida law does not allow the starvation of animals and the constitution does not allow the starvation of convicted murderers, he said.
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Felos said faith-based organizations, religious leaders, priests and rabbis distorted the facts in the Schiavo case.
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(Excerpt) Read more at palmbeachdailynews.com ...
I'd be willing to wager you have a "direct" line to FEMA!
We all benefit when people with disabilities are valued in our churches.
Imagine walking down the street and hearing a child say to his mother: "Mom, why does he walk that way?" Or, "Why is she in that wheelchair?" Or, "Why does he have that cane?" People with disabilities don't have to imagine such questions. They hear them regularlyat least those who can hear.
But it's not the queries of curious youngsters that bother those facing physical or mental challenges. It's the indifference, discrimination, or outright hostility that often comes from adults.
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Great image of Father!
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A beautiful and well-written article. Thanks for pointing it out!
It was an important part of our own lives.
We would wheel in our very handicapped son right into church as if it were the most normal thing one could do. For us, it was. We ignored and refused to be bothered by derisive comments, rare though they were, and gladly explained to the young kids.
What we were not was oversensitive, easily offended, and embarrassed. The effect tends to be contageous. His beaming smile melted all but the most hardened and he was quickly accepted just as the normal kids. We must say the effect on those who saw him regularly was indeed positive.
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Which is it? Temporary?
That's a good article. It reminds me of the church I was baptised in. Disabled people were just as much a part of the church as anyone else. I didn't see any difference, and was unaware that so many others view them in a negative light. It still amazes me when I'm exposed to the bigotry against them. And the bigots don't even recognize their own bigotry. They honestly believe disabled people are subhuman, and they can't understand why we don't see it. They claim that if someone is disabled, someone else (usually the next of kin) must decide whether or not to kill them for it. And they don't see anything wrong with that attitude. Nothing you say or do can make them recognize that hatred as wrong. All you can do is tell them the truth, pray for their souls, and hope for the best.
Six months after the controversial death of Terri Schiavo, the lead attorney who fought to keep her alive says the Florida woman suffered a "barbaric" death at the hands of a legal system that had abandoned the ideals of the nation's Founding Fathers.
David Gibbs III, who was hired by Schiavo's parents to fight a court order to remove a feeding tube from their brain-damaged daughter, said her death violated the American promise to protect Schiavo's inalienable rights, as declared by the authors of the Declaration of Independence. "How did we, under our constitution - with Founding Fathers who said we will defend 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' - how did we let her die in this barbaric death?" Gibbs asked during a news conference Tuesday in Evansville.
He spent the rest of the evening examining the question at a dinner sponsored by a local organization called "Restoring Our Heritage." Gibbs, a lawyer with the Christian Legal Association, spoke to several hundred people who paid $30 a person to attend the event. Gibbs believes Schiavo's death was an example of how the American legal system has distanced itself from the "Christian principles" which he and Restoring Our Heritage members believe guided the Founding Fathers. He said Schiavo's death from dehydration on March 31 - after 13 days with no food or fluids - was evidence that the legal system had abandoned America's commitment to "defend the weak, the voiceless, the defenseless." "We as a nation must re-evaluate our compassion and our commitment to the disabled," Gibbs said. "Do we believe that every person - regardless of physical condition - has a right to life? Or are they like old cell phones that we just discard when they're no longer useful? Are we just going to throw people away?"
Her case became the focus of a national "right to die"controversy that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gibbs became involved in the case in 2003 at the request of Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler. They'd spent nearly a decade fighting in various courts to keep their daughter on a feeding tube, while their son-in-law - Michael Schiavo - argued his wife was in an irreversible vegetative state and had a right to die. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy after her death concluded Schiavo had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind. But Gibbs said he witnessed the life in Terri Schiavo and disagreed with the medical examiner's report.
"I was in the room with Terri," said Gibbs. "I saw how alive she was. I watched her die with her mother and father literally begging for her life." Gibbs said he was angered that she had so few rights left at the end of her life. "It's a crime to starve an animal to death ..." said Gibbs. "If Terri Schiavo had been a convicted mass murderer, our constitution would have prohibited you from starving her to death. If she had been a prisoner of war, the Geneva Convention and other international laws would have protected her."
But, he said, she fell into kind of legal black hole. "She wasn't an animal, she was a woman. She wasn't a convicted mass murderer, she was an innocent woman. She wasn't a prisoner of war, she was a U.S. citizen," said Gibbs. About 40 judges in six courts were involved in the Schiavo case over a decade's time. Six times, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene. After the final removal of her feeding tube, Congress rushed through a bill to allow the federal courts to take up the case, and President Bush signed it March 21, but the federal courts refused to step in.
On Nov. 15, Terri Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler, will speak at The Victory in Downtown Evansville at an event sponsored by the Vanderburgh County Right to Life.
Who knows? In the meantime, this one's probably running back to her girlfriend in Alabama and feeling proud of being someone who thinks using false pretenses is good, rather than bad. And getting congratulated for it. Or sumpthin' like that... :)
Jimmy Lloyd Chambers
Jimmy Lloyd Chambers, 79, a former resident of Yuma, died Oct. 24, 2005, in North Augusta, S.C.
He was born Nov. 15, 1925, in Cotesfield, Neb., and was a retired dispatcher for Holland Motor Express.
Memorial services will be held at a later date.
Platt's Funeral Home in Evans, Ga., is handling arrangements.
http://sun.yumasun.com/artman/publish/articles/story_20007.php
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Hi, fv -- thanks for posting that info -- so sorry to read of Cheryl's loss. Take care yourself. Nice website!
Janice Sanford of The North Country Gazette reports.
When a reporter did an article in the St. Petersburg Times, Feb 17,1991. pg.3, about Terri's surgery in which Yoshio Hosobuchi of the University of California at San Francisco in December(1990) implanted a neurological thalamic stimulator in her brain, they reported:
"The brain stimulator implant was a success, said her husband, Mike. Mrs. Schiavo is slowly emerging from the coma at the Mediplex Medical Center, a neurological care center in Bradenton, he said. She will undergo at least a year of speech, occupational and physical therapy."
Schiavo Implant Potentially Dangerous
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Is Judeo-Christian Morality Unethical
Singer's ethics value quality of life, distinguishing between personhood and the human species. It is "characteristics like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness" that give a being value. Mohler and other evangelicals, including President George W. Bush, enjoy labeling their view the "Culture of Life," and Singer's view the "Culture of Death." The Culture of Life means sustaining life at all costs and in all states, whether a ball of cells in a uterus or individuals in Terri Schiavo's state of brain destruction. It would be far more appropriate to label the evangelical position the "Culture of Yogurt." Strikingly ignorant of the fact that "life" includes yeast, bacteria and mice fetuses as much as humans, evangelicals have staked their theology on a distinction in semantics, not in reality.
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Singer is creepy.
Good find. It is fascinating that so many times the left behavior actually mirrors its own cries. Hence gun control advocates packing heat and keeping armed bodyguards, enviros driving big SUV's.
I think it is a symptom of something more profound, that the left is almost driven to ape the very traits they condemn in others, to the point it is a pattern, not something unusual.
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