As a new member, your deceitful twisting of my personal views on abortion (when I said flatly and boldly that because the love of Christ is a higher standard to which we, as born again Christians must adhere, it isn't acceptable at all for me and my family even in the most understandable circumstances such as rape or incest) is inexcusable.
How I could be any clearer on that is beyond me. Understanding the emotions of anger someone feels is not acceptance. Understanding their pain is not acceptance. Acknowledging that those are rational positions for the woman (and her husband and children) who was violated to feel in the hours and days after an attack, is not acceptance. I understand how a father murders the pedophile that violated his son. I don't accept it and I don't condone it. But I understand his pain and why, in the initial days, he believes he's doing the right thing, no matter how misguided. To some how say that I'm providing a moral stamp of approval for that murder is just a lie. There's no other way to categorize it.
Not cool, man. Not cool. If you disagree with something on principal, or believe that I've made a mistake in the facts, that's why these forums exist. To twist something I said and flat-out lie about something so important really, really ticks me off.
Welcome! You will find that FR offers sanctuary to a small colony of the most black-hearted Old Testament Retributionists to be found anywhere on the Internet. Don't take offense - it's a battle you can't win. Simply avoid them.
Your post #45 was right on. Two thumbs up. :)
I am not quite sure *what* to think, given what you wrote on your homepage, which is all I had to go on when I first wrote to you; and then your response to me in post #78, which I am replying back to right now.
I *may* have done a ready, FIRE!, aim; and I may have shot myself in the foot with my foot in my mouth.
Let's take my exact quote, and compare it to the exact quote from your own home page.
Then we can look at your reply to me in post #78 this thread.
Here's my quote:
"He is for limited abortions, and for some form of gay marriage, even predicting that they are inevitable (quoting the Boies / Olsen argument)."
Now here's your quotes from your Freeper homepage:
"pro-life, Christian" (3rd paragraph). So far, so good.
From the next paragraph:
"Above all I believe in individual freedom of choice and consistency (e.g., we can’t complain about abortions being funded by tax dollars if we are going to say it’s wrong for Catholic charities to close because they’ll lose their tax funding if they don’t support gay adoption; you believe either both, or neither, should get the funding - any other position is hypocrisy -"
I've never heard of anyone who is pro-life who also feels Catholic charities should hold their nose and allow gay adoption. Your mileage may vary: but it is a combination I haven't happened to run into before, and smells like a straw man.
This itself is merely confusing: and your call for thoroughgoing consistency is commendable.
Here's point #4 from your "quick list" on your homepage:
"4. I oppose in all cases abortion with one issue that I haven't resolved entirely: rape or incest. I understand that many people believe even those aren't acceptable but if my married sister is jogging through Central Park and is raped, I don't believe that the man who raped her has the right to carry on his bloodline through her. However, the love of Christ is a higher, and harder, standard. If we were in that position as a family, we could never actually go through with it no matter how hard that is. Still, I understand why some people feel that way on those two exceptions, even if I couldn't do it myself. Understanding is not accepting.
I see you quoted the sentence above in bold in replying to me. And I see the sentences after it, that "Understanding is not accepting." Those are both wonderful.
I see that you unilaterally choose life for yourself and your family. That's great!
However, what set off my alarms...is the sentence *before* the bold, which you didn't happen to quote when responding to me. It says:
"I understand that many people believe even those aren't acceptable but if my married sister is jogging through Central Park and is raped, I don't believe that the man who raped her has the right to carry on his bloodline through her."
It appears that you are making a clear distinction between the Christians and the non-Christians: in other words, that while you "personally oppose" abortion in the strongest terms, that you will not seek to oppose it in the case of rape and incest. And it is this statement which led me to state that "you support limited abortion".
But the most confusing thing about what you wrote is the end of it:
"...if my married sister is jogging through Central Park and is raped, I don't believe that the man who raped her has the right to carry on his bloodline through her."
Where did THIS come from?
The prohibition of abortion is, and never has been, about the rights of the rapist to carry on his bloodline. I have never heard anyone except a pro-abortionist mention such a thing. So your use of it struck me as unduly odd. Are you saying that within your family, a rapist has the right to pass on his bloodline (since you won't allow an abortion in your family), but within your married sister's family, he doesn't (since you would not oppose her getting an abortion)?
It was with these things in mind that I wrote that you support limited abortion: you would allow it in cases of rape and incest in general (as a matter of public policy), but not within your family.
This sounds suspiciously like the RINO (and some Dem) waffle, "While I am personally opposed to abortion, there are hard cases, and I cannot justify imposing my morality..."
Which sounds good, until you realize that by performing an abortion, a woman is imposing (on pain of death, BY painful death) her {im}morality upon her child. ("{im}" because the woman is not immoral for being raped, but *is* immoral for premarital sex willingly entered into.)
NOW, I have read your response. In light of this, it appears that what is on your home page is not in fact an endorsement of abortion in these circumstances, but an attempt to show that you are empathetic to the plight of a woman who is the victim of rape or incest, and not all-too-easily caricatured member of a group "forcing" women to endure anything at all, for the sake of a legalistic restriction (as pro-abortionists would cast it).
I can respect that: but I still don't think it is a good idea to talk about the "right of the rapist to spread his bloodline." That concedes too many of the pro-abortionists stereotypes, as did (in another light) George Bush's phrase "compassionate conservative".
Changing the subject slightly, I think that the issue of rape and incest was developed as a wedge issue by pro-abortionists: recall Norma McCovey and Roe v. Wade. A lot of the issue of "abortion" and "hard choices" would disappear IF the country as a whole would recover its moral grounding (less premarital sex: Whoopi Goldberg's line "it's not rape-rape" sets a dangerous precedent in these days of rohypnol and promiscuity); a culture of life (note that Sarah Palin's daughter chose life, as did Barack Obama's mother); and stigmatization of rape, and true punishment of rapists, supported by men instead of women (or sometimes by nobody, see also Bill Clinton).
I apologize for offending you: but my post was by no means "deceitful twisting" of your views. I said you allow some abortions, and it appears that you *are* willing to allow them for the larger society (as opposed to Christians)... there I disagree, and wish to restrict ALL abortions, ALL the time. The way to make this work is to change the larger behaviour of society so as to drive the occasion for abortions down to near zero.
I am relieved that you would disallow abortions within your family, and want to extend understanding to victims of rape. But the language in which you expressed this view is unlike any I have ever seen from a pro-life advocate.
I just now noticed your post #75 was also to me, and I will reply to that separately.
Bandaging my foot, but still wondering.
g_w