#1287 (7/14) "Is the Civil War Over?"

"IS THE CIVIL WAR OVER?" - Thomas Sowell | Jul 14, 2015;
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2015/07/14/is-the-civil-war-over-n2024855/page/full

In the wake of the recent murders in a South Carolina church, the killer's hope of igniting a race war produced the opposite effect. Blacks and whites in South Carolina came together to condemn his act and the race hate behind it. Some saw in the decision to remove the Confederate flag from in front of the state house a symbolic repudiation of the old South's racial past -- and the end of the Civil War. But, unfortunately, wars do not end until both sides decide that it is over.

Professional race hustlers have no incentive to see our current civil war end. They see in this shooting only an opportunity to escalate their demands. Now there are rumblings of demands that statues of Robert E. Lee and other Southern leaders be destroyed -- and if that is done, it will only lead to new demands, perhaps to destroy the Jefferson Memorial because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. And if that is done, no doubt there will be demands that the city of Washington be renamed, for the same reason.

In short, there is no stopping point, just unending strife as far out as the eye can see. And just what will that accomplish? It could ultimately accomplish the killer's dream of racial polarization and violence. Neither blacks nor whites will be better off if that happens. With all the very real problems in this society, can we really spare the time and the wasted energy of trying to refight a Civil War that ended before our great-grandparents were born?

The past is irrevocable. We cannot change the smallest detail of what some people did to other people after both have gone to their graves.

Meanwhile, the old South has already changed. There is no way that the South of the mid-twentieth century would have elected a woman of Indian ancestry to be governor of South Carolina or a man of Indian ancestry to be governor of Louisiana, much less have Southern states that voted for a black President of the United States.Perhaps the strongest evidence of the changes is that the black migrations out of the South a hundred years ago have now reversed -- with younger and better educated blacks leading the new migrations from the North to the South. When people vote with their feet, that tells us a lot more than any polls.

If the past is out of our hands, what is in our hands today are the present and the future -- and both have big challenges. Whatever policies or practices we consider need to be judged by their actual consequences, not by their rhetoric.

"Hate crime" laws are on some people's agenda. But what will such laws actually accomplish? A murderer deserves the death penalty, whether he killed someone of a different race or killed his own twin brother. All that "hate crime" laws can do is provide the murderer's lawyer with another ground on which to appeal the conviction or the sentence.

Trying to make up for the past with present-day benefits has a track record that shows many counterproductive consequences. The federal government's pressures against schools to not discipline so many black males is another "benefit" for blacks that is far from beneficial. It means that a handful of hoodlums in a classroom can prevent all the other black children from getting a decent education, which may be their only chance for a decent life.

Another "benefit" for blacks that turns out not to be beneficial is giving the police orders to back off during ghetto riots. Whether in Baltimore recently or in Detroit back in the 1960s, the net result has been more people killed, most of them black, and a whole community put on the downward path of physical and social deterioration.

We need a lot more serious thinking about the present and the future, and a lot less time and energy spent on the past.

[bold and italics emphasis mine]

   
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
Creators Syndicate

"The Fight Over the Confederate Flag Has Turned Into a Hateful Smear Campaign Against Millions of Southerners" - John Hawkins | Jul 14, 2015;
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2015/07/14/draft-n2024805/page/full

"...Instead of saying, “We wish you’d have taken the Confederate flag down a long time ago, but it is nice that you’ve done it now,” a vicious hate campaign has been waged against millions of Southerners."

"The Dukes of Hazzard, which was a family-friendly show about some “good ol' boys, never meanin' no harm” has been yanked off the air because the car in the series has a Rebel flag on it. People are demanding that Gone With The Wind no longer be shown. Wal-Mart is refusing to make class rings for high schools that have a Rebel flag as part of their insignia. Apple pulled a Civil War game because it had a Confederate flag in it representing the Confederacy. Confederate flags have been pulled down from Confederate war memorials like Fort Sumter. Liberals are demanding that statues of Confederate soldiers be pulled down. Some dirtbags have even gotten a jump on that by vandalizing those statues. Other liberals have started comparing the Confederacy to the Nazis and are demanding that waving a Confederate flag be classified as a hate crime. In Memphis, city leaders are planning to literally dig up the corpse of a Civil War general and his wife. In Congress, we now even have some Republicans agreeing with Democrats who want to dishonor dead Southern soldiers by refusing to allow outside groups to put Confederate flags on their graves once a year..."

# 1286 (7/13) Churches, Christian Colleges Open to Litigation

CHURCHES, CHRISTIAN COLLEGES OPEN TO LITIGATION -  "On Freedom, Democrats or Democritics?" - by Tony Perkins, Washington Update, July 9, 2015, http://www.frc.org/updatearticle/20150709/on-freedom-democrats

The same party that kicked God out of their platform wants to kick Him out of U.S. insurance policies too. Everyone from Barry Lynn to Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) is deploying their troops to a new battlefield: the church. Already, congregations are trying to prepare themselves for the storms ahead -- with many, National Review points out, frantically calling insurance companies to see what kind of coverage they have if they're sued for not performing same-sex "weddings."

The answer is: not much. "Churches, like virtually every functioning corporation, protect against liability risks and the potentially ruinous costs of litigation through liability insurance. With same-sex marriage now recognized as a constitutional right -- and with news of [the Kleins' $135,000 punishment - http://www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/20150709/lien-on-me]... pastors are reaching out to insurance companies to make sure they're covered." Unfortunately for them, David French writes, they aren't. "In other words: churches, you're on your own." [http://www.nationalreview.com/node/420928/print]

On one hand, the Left is trying to cripple churches' ability to fight back, and on the other, they're trying to strip away protections for the everyday believer. Like most liberals, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz isn't hiding the fact that religious liberty is next on her kill list, especially for individual Americans. "I think [our country] made the distinction between protecting the First Amendment rights for religious organizations or religiously-affiliated organizations and being able to discriminate, broadly, simply because of one individual who owns a business and their own values and their being able to impose those values on either their employers or their customers," she told CBN's David Brody.

Once again, liberals are setting up the faulty argument that religious exercise must be confined to institutions -- not individuals. As any constitutional scholar would tell you, that's a deliberate distortion of the First Amendment! It's like saying the Second Amendment only applies in gun clubs. The reality is, and the Founders understood, religious liberty is a fundamental human freedom. In fact, it was Eleanor Roosevelt -- from Wasserman-Schultz's own party -- who chaired the drafting committee of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. And it could not be more clear: "[E]veryone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."

What's happened to the Democratic Party? After 70 years, there's nothing "democratic" about it!

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]
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"Libs Kick off Tour de Rants" - by Tony Perkins, Washington Update, July 08, 2015;http://www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/20150708/libs-tour-rants

     "In the 12 days since the Supreme Court's marriage ruling, the Left's army is already marching on its next target: the First Amendment. At least two movements are finding more common ground in the wake of the decision -- secular and LGBT activists. The pair are becoming fast allies against what they view as a common enemy: religious freedom."

     "Since June 26, that bond has only strengthened, as both sides converge on the church in the first wave of post-ruling attacks. Like us, they heard Solicitor General Donald Verrilli's threat to strip religious schools' tax exemptions and are moving quickly to turn that possibility into reality. Barry Lynn, a longtime thorn in the First Amendment's side, is the first to capitalize on this new foothold for religious crackdown, announcing yesterday that his Americans United for the Separation of Church and State would be launching an initiative to destroy the tax relief for faith-based schools. Starting with Christian colleges, Lynn's "Protect Thy Neighbor" project promises to use the IRS as a weapon to force same-sex "married" housing on universities with natural marriage views...." [bold and italics emphasis mine]

# 1285 (7/12) SUNDAY SPECIAL: "Love, Rights, and Marriage - TALKING TO YOUR YOUNG ADULTS"

"Love, Rights, and Marriage - TALKING TO YOUR YOUNG ADULTS" - By: John Stonestreet| Breakpoint.org: July 8, 2015; http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/27758 [AS I SEE IT: This article doesn't attempt to answer ALL that can come up in a discussion with young adults about the recent SC decision redefining marriage. For more info, please check out the resources noted afterwards. The main point is to not be afraid to engage in a conversation because you can be sure others are already having a discussion with those who are not presenting a Biblical view of the issue. Also, you are bound to run into a question that you aren't sure how to answer. When that happens, simply say honestly, "I don't know but let me get back to you on that." Too often we think we need to have all the answers when truly very few have. As the expression goes, "honesty is always the best policy" no matter what the discussion. - Stan] 

So when your teen tells you marriage is all about love and rights, and asks who are we to discriminate, what do you say?

[In previous post #1281], we discussed talking with younger kids about the Supreme Court decision on marriage: How Jesus Himself referred back to the beginning when talking about marriage; about God’s beautiful a plan for men and women, for marriage, and for families. And that sometimes, governments make bad laws. I should also add that we need to make sure our young ones know they can always come to us when they encounter something they don’t understand or that makes them feel uncomfortable. We want our kids asking us the questions—even the hard ones. Better that than them getting all their answers from the culture.

Today, we’ll talk about a more difficult assignment: Talking to teens and young adults about same-sex marriage. It’s more difficult because young adults today are much more likely than us older folks to support same-sex marriage, or to be confused by it. But more difficult is not the same as impossible—that’s because, no matter what the media is telling you, young evangelicals are still much less likely to support same-sex marriage than their non-evangelical peers.

I think a great starting point for young adults is exactly what I said [previous]—but at a deeper level. Just as Jesus did with the Pharisees who questioned Him about marriage and divorce, we should refer our young adults back to the Garden of Eden, to God’s created intent. Marriage is not something that human beings invented—so it is not an institution that we are free to re-invent. As Christians, we believe marriage was given to us by God for the benefit of man (that is, Adam) and woman (Eve). That plan is written into the moral fabric of the universe, which is why marriage between man and woman is known in every human society throughout history. That is certainly what Jesus Himself thought. And as followers of Christ, we have to care about what He said about marriage.

Now, don’t be surprised if your teen or young adult then asks, “Well, how is it right for heterosexuals to be married, but not for those who are same-sex attracted? What about their rights?”

And here is where we have to help them understand the source of human rights. As atheist Friedrich Nietzsche and the postmodern philosopher Richard Rorty admitted, we owe the concept of human rights to Christianity. It was Christianity that taught the world that every human being is made in the image of God and that, therefore, humans have innate dignity and certain rights just because they are human. Therefore, governments do not create or grant human rights. God does. Government can at most recognize those rights, and of course, should defend them. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote about this brilliantly in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

So we can make this point: It’s inconsistent to say, well, we want to give same-sex couple the “right to marriage,” but we don’t care about what the God who made those rights says about marriage.

Another problem you may encounter with teens or young adults is that they are very good at repeating the slogans and hashtags they see every day. When they tell you that holding to traditional marriage is discrimination, take a lesson from Jesus. Respond with a question. You might ask, “What do you mean by discrimination?” Help them go deeper. If they’re convinced that “love is love” and that “love won” thanks to the Supreme Court, ask them what they mean by love? Is it possible that some kinds of “love” should be excluded from marriage? Should a brother and sister or a group of people be able to marry? In other words, do we just green light incest and polyamory?

Yes, these kinds of discussions are really uncomfortable, but our kids are already having them. It’s time we joined in.

If you’re ready to sit down with your teens or young adults, I have one more suggestion for you. I’ve created, along with my friends at Axis, a brief video series on marriage, gender, sexuality and the Bible. I tackle a lot of the questions young people come up with—and I think it will help you discuss these matters with your children. [See "Resources" below.]

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

RESOURCES
"Gender, Marriage, and the Bible: Understanding God's Plan" - John Stonestreet | Axis | July 2015;https://vimeo.com/ondemand/gendermarriagebible
"The Supreme Court Ruling: 3 Ways Parents Can Respond" - Generations of Virtue | June 27,2015;https://generationsofvirtue.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/the-supreme-court-ruling-3-ways-parents-can-respond/

#1284 (7/11) "...Why Did We Mourn Robin Williams But Celebrate Brittany Maynard?

"Suicide and Assisted Suicide: WHY DID WE MOURN ROBIN WILLIAMS BUT CELEBRATE BRITTANY MAYNARD?" -  Jessica Rodgers, Jul. 7, 2015  |http://www.lifenews.com/2015/07/07/suicide-and-assisted-suicide-why-did-we-mourn-robin-williams-but-celebrate-brittany-maynard/ [NOTE: Here is a very personal story to consider in the debate re: what's called "assisted suicide."]

I don’t remember what I wished for as I was turning 12, though if I had to guess I would wager power ranger action figures were on the top of the list. It’s quite possible I even received them, and if life went on as normal for a 12 year old girl, that would be the end of the memory. But life doesn’t usually follow the path we anticipate, so on the occasion of my twelfth birthday, my mother was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer and told she had six months to live.

I lived in Oregon until I was 18, which meant that my mother, my beautiful, intelligent, kind, caring, and, now incredibly sick, mother, had the option to have her doctor prescribe her suicide pills instead of healing medication. Her healer could legally become her executioner.

Something strange happens when you grow up in an atmosphere where killing oneself can, in some circumstances, be celebrated, even encouraged as a positive option. How does the child navigate a society that on one hand grieves suicide victims and cries that it gets better, while on the other hand silently agreeing that some lives aren’t worth living and that suicide would be the best option available. How does one learn which lives are worth saving and which aren’t?

Perhaps the most telling of all: We ask that question as though we have any right to determine the answer. At the heart of the assisted suicide debate is a very simple question: who decides who we mourn?
     We mourn the 18 year old girl, who, grief-stricken with loss and heartbreak and feeling a thousand pinpricks of pain each time she thinks of the boy who broke her,  chooses to take her own life to stop the pain.
    We don’t mourn the 51 year old woman who is diagnosed with cancer and sees her days ahead dwindling down.

There are two suicide hotlines now: One for the suicides society deems frivolous, intended to calm the scared person on the other end, and one for the suicides society deems allowable, connecting a scared patient to a physician who has revoked his most sacred duty to heal.

Whom do we mourn?

Consider for a moment that you’re walking across a bridge. As you do, you see a person getting ready to jump with a sign next to them with their reason for ending their life. Do you read the sign? Should the sign matter? Or do you allow instinct to kick in and reach for them with loving and compassionate arms, holding them back from the eternal decision they are about to make. When we stop to read the sign, stop to consider that their reasons might be “good enough,” we fancy ourselves judge and jury, wise and knowing. We start to believe we have a right to make a value judgement about someone else’s life, even when not invited to do so.

So what should our response be to suffering? As a culture do we reach a helping hand to our neighbor on the bridge? Or do we redefine “helping” as pushing them off? Do we even pretend to ourselves that pushing them is the “compassionate” thing to do?

Our laws reflect the society we want to be; when legislation is introduced that would radically change the roles of our doctors, and egregiously redefine compassion in our culture, we must be willing to stand up and talk about the things that pain us the most.

My mother could have killed herself in a manner that was legally sanctioned. But she did not.She could have believed her six month diagnosis and succumbed to the fear of future pain, or the fear of being a burden on her family. She could have felt that the best option was to not rack up medical debt for the sake of maybe only a few months.

But she knew what we all know deep down: We don’t know the hour or minute of our death. She knew that it was possible to be killed by a bus on the way to pick up the suicide pills. Unlikely, sure, but possible. Would society have mourned her then?

But she chose to face her last days with grace and dignity. She knew that dignity was not to be found in ending her own life, or asking her doctor to be complicit in her death. She did not live for just six months. Despite the prognosis, she lived on for nearly four more years.

For much of that time she was very ill. Death isn’t pretty, and it would be ludicrous to put a happy face on the pain of seeing someone you love with your whole heart wasting away.

But she wasn’t just ill, and she wasn’t defined by her cancer. I remember the moments of her death. But I also remember seeing her hold her grandson who was only a few months old when she passed away. I remember her being at my 8th grade graduation. I remember taking day trips with her exploring our beautiful state. I remember laughter and joy. And I remember her laying on the couch with her head in my lap as I rubbed her forehead, hoping the headaches would go away.

We care for each other through the dark times- we don’t pretend the dark times don’t exist. How do we measure our society if not by the way in which we treat our most vulnerable?

I would give anything I have for just another five minutes; the idea of having lost a single second due to deadly drugs is beyond my comprehension.

So whom do we mourn? Why do we mourn Robin Williams but celebrate Brittany Maynard? And why do we think we have a right to decide who is worth saving? Supporters of legalized doctor-prescribed suicide have bastardized what dignity truly means. By attempting to redefine suicide as dignity they mock the deaths of those who have met their end without seeking to hasten it through deadly pills.

Assisted suicide laws target the most vulnerable population among us. The sick and dying need our support, not killing repackaged as compassion. Killing will never be healthcare.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

LifeNews Note: Jessica Rogers is a life-long pro-life activist, writer, and speaker, blogging at inthepursuitoflife.com

# 1283 (7/10) "A Legacy of Cliches"

"A LEGACY OF CLICHES" - Thomas Sowell | Jul 07, 2015;
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2015/07/07/a-legacy-of-cliches-n2021930/page/full
[AS I SEE IT: There is a lot of celebration today about a Confederate flag being lowered in South Carolina (and removed elsewhere) because it represented slavery or the "hate" of the past. If only people were more focused on removing the REAL causes of repression of people rather than merely the symbols whose removal do nothing to help one African-American family made fatherless because of the misguided policies of the past 50 years. It's worth reflecting on what's shared in this article. - Stan]
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Discussions of racial problems almost invariably bring out the cliche of "a legacy of slavery." But anyone who is being serious, as distinguished from being political, would surely want to know if whatever he is talking about -- whether fatherless children, crime or whatever -- is in fact a legacy of slavery or of some of the many other things that have been done in the century and a half since slavery ended.

Another cliche that has come into vogue is that slavery is "America's original sin." The great Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catch phrase could stop thinking for fifty years. Catch phrases about slavery have stopped people from thinking, even longer than that.

Today the moral horror of slavery is so widely condemned that it is hard to realize that there were thousands of years when slavery was practiced around the world by people of virtually every race. Even the leading moral and religious thinkers in different societies accepted slavery as just a fact of life. No one wanted to be a slave. But their rejection of slavery as a fate for themselves in no way meant that they were unwilling to enslave others. It was just not an issue -- until the 18th century, and then it became an issue only in Western civilization.

Neither Africans, Asians, Polynesians nor the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere saw anything wrong with slavery, even after small segments of British and American societies began to condemn slavery as morally wrong in the 18th century.

What was special about America was not that it had slavery, which existed all over the world, but that Americans were among the very few peoples who began to question the morality of holding human beings in bondage. That was not yet a majority view among Americans in the 18th century, but it was not even a serious minority view in non-Western societies at that time.

Then how did slavery end? We know how it ended in the United States -- at a cost of one life lost in the Civil War for every six slaves freed. But that is not how it ended elsewhere.

What happened in the rest of the world was that all of Western civilization eventually turned against slavery in the 19th century. This meant the end of slavery in European empires around the world, usually over the bitter opposition of non-Western peoples. But the West happened to be militarily dominant at the time.

Turning back to the "legacy of slavery" as an explanation of social problems in black American communities today, anyone who was serious about the truth -- as distinguished from talking points -- would want to check out the facts.

Were children raised with only one parent as common at any time during the first 100 years after slavery as in the first 30 years after the great expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s?
     As of 1960, 22 percent of black children were raised with only one parent, usually the mother. Thirty years later, two-thirds of black children were being raised without a father present.

What about ghetto riots, crimes in general and murder in particular? What about low levels of labor force participation and high levels of welfare dependency? 
     None of those things was as bad in the first 100 years after slavery as they became in the wake of the policies and notions of the 1960s.

To many on the left, the 1960s were the glory days of their movements, and for some the days of their youth as well. They have a heavy emotional investment and ego investment in the ideas, aspirations and policies of the 1960s. It might never occur to many of them to check their beliefs against some hard facts about what actually happened after their ideas and policies were put into effect. It certainly would not be pleasant to admit, even to yourself, that after promising progress toward "social justice," what you actually delivered was a retrogression toward barbarism.

The principal victims of these retrogressions are the decent, law-abiding members of black communities across the country who are prey to hoodlums and criminals.

Back in the 19th century Frederick Douglass saw the dangers from well-meaning whites. He said: "Everybody has asked the question, 'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us." Amen.

[ bold and italics emphasis mine]


Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of "The Housing Boom and Bust". Creators Syndicate.

# 1282 (7/9) "Disability Advocates Fight Assisted Suicide Measures"

"DISABILITY ADVOCATES FIGHT ASSISTED SUICIDE MEASURES" - Anna Gorman / @KHNews / July 05, 2015 /http://dailysignal.com/2015/07/05/disability-advocates-fight-assisted-suicide-measures/[AS I SEE IT: Praise God that the horrendous bill discussed in this article died (ironic term?) in the CA House! [See: "California Assisted Suicide Bill Dies..";  JUL 7, 2015; 
http://www.lifenews.com/2015/07/07/california-assisted-suicide-bill-dies-democrats-cant-find-enough-votes-in-assembly/] But be sure that the efforts of euthanasia advocates will not end here... or elsewhere. In these times when a person's "rights" will too often overrule doing what is RIGHT, we need to stand strong against those who would propose such dangerous laws such as was proposed. One need only see how it is continually abused where its been put in place elsewhere. [from the above noted article - "... Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez spoke out fervently against the bill last week. Archbishop Gomez said, “The compassion that doctor-assisted suicide offers is hollow. And this legislation has dangerous implications for our state, especially for the poor and vulnerable.” He added: “There is no denying that in California and nationwide we face a public health crisis in the way we treat patients who are terminally ill and at the end of life. But the answer to fear and a broken system is to fix the system and address the fears. It is not to kill the one who is afraid and suffering." - Stan]

Disability rights advocates worry that depression and incorrect prognoses may lead people with serious disabilities to end their lives prematurely. (Photo: iStock)

When he was 19, Anthony Orefice hit a telephone pole on his motorcycle going 100 miles per hour. Doctors told his family he wouldn’t survive. He did, but the accident left him paralyzed from the chest down, unable to do what he loved — surf, snowboard or ride dirt bikes. “All you are thinking is the worst, worst, worst – everything you can’t do,” said Orefice, who lives in Valencia, Calif. “I wanted to be dead.”

More than two decades after breaking his back, Orefice, 40, is married, has a 7-year-old son and owns a medical supply business. He also counsels patients newly disabled from spinal cord injuries. “Depression,” he often tells them, “is part of the healing process.”

As California legislators consider a bill that would allow terminally ill patients to get prescriptions to end their lives, disability rights advocates are speaking up in opposition. They worry that if it becomes law, depression and incorrect prognoses may lead people with serious disabilities to end their lives prematurely.

The bill poses “considerable dangers” to people with new disabilities who may have suicidal thoughts, said Marilyn Golden, senior policy analyst at Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund. “It would almost be too easy to make an irrevocable choice,” she said. “It could lead to people giving up on treatment and losing good years of their lives.”

Golden added that the many people who initially received terminal diagnoses have “lived full lives [for] years or even decades” longer than expected.

Disability rights advocates have fought against bills and referendums in Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut and elsewhere that would have allowed doctors to prescribe lethal medication. They have met with legislators, participated in forums, conducted letter-writing campaigns and submitted newspaper opinion pieces.

“We have had success after success in stopping these bills,” said John Kelly with Not Dead Yet, a grassroots group of advocates opposed to physician-assisted suicide. The coalition was less organized when laws passed in Washington, Oregon and Vermont, Kelly said. Now, he said they are determined to defeat any bill, including the one in California.

Allowing doctors to prescribe such medication would “open the floodgates” to people taking their lives under the mistaken impression that they are imminently dying or because they think they are a burden on their families, he said.

Anthony R. Orefice and his family in their home in Valencia, Calif. (Photo: Heidi de Marco/KHN)

The proposed California legislation, Senate Bill 128, was prompted by the highly publicized death of Brittany Maynard, a young Bay Area woman with terminal brain cancer who moved to Oregon so she could get a lethal prescription. She took the medication and died in November. The End of Life Option Act, introduced by Democratic state Sens. Lois Wolk and Bill Monning, would allow patients to get fatal prescriptions if they are mentally competent and have six months or less to live. Patients would have to make one written and two oral requests 15 days apart.

Disability rights advocates say there aren’t enough safeguards in the bill. In a letter to Wolk late last month, Deborah Doctor, a legislative advocate for Disability Rights California, wrote that disabled people are vulnerable to abuse and could be coerced by family members not acting in the patients’ best interests. Relatives, she said, could put pressure on people to take life-ending medication. “Everyone is not Brittany Maynard,” Doctor said in an interview, noting that the young woman’s family supported what she wanted. “Our responsibility is to think of people who are the most vulnerable to coercion, abuse and pressure.”

Doctor also worries that in other cases, physicians may simply be wrong about how long someone has to live. Insurance companies also might overrule treatment for people with disabilities because of the cost of care.

Supporters of the bill say it has many protections built in. For example, they say, people wouldn’t qualify based solely on having a disability. The bill also wouldn’t allow medication to be prescribed if the person were suffering from a mental disorder that impaired judgment.In addition, physicians would have to attest that the patient’s request didn’t result from undue influence from someone else. And patients would have the final say — they must administer the medications to themselves.

“We don’t want to see this law abused, and we certainly don’t want to see it used against people with disabilities who have enough problems with the health care system,” said Toni Broaddus, California campaign director for Compassion & Choices, a nonprofit organization that supports the bill. In any event, Broaddus said the vast majority of disabled people wouldn’t meet the criteria for life-ending prescriptions. “Most people with disabilities don’t immediately have terminal illnesses and most disabilities are not terminal,” she said.

Previous efforts to pass similar bills in California have failed under opposition from doctors, religious groups and disability advocates. But the new bill recently passed in the state Senate, and its chances may be buoyed by Maynard’s case and by the California Medical Association’s historic decision to declare a neutral position.

Laurie Hoirup, 59, strongly opposes the bill based on her own long experience. She has had spinal muscular atrophy since she was a toddler. With a curved spine and rods in her back, she cannot eat, bathe or go to the bathroom on her own. She has trouble breathing.Physicians told her family that she wouldn’t live past 10 years old. “Anyone could be given the wrong diagnoses,” she said. “I am certainly the perfect example of that.” Hoirup, who is now a grandmother, spent many years working in government and other positions on behalf of people with disabilities. She said she is particularly concerned about people being coerced into ending their lives so they aren’t a burden on others.

Orefice, who wished for death when he was 19, said he is now glad for what he calls the years of “bonus time.” He still struggles with physical problems, including bladder infections and pressure sores. And three years ago, he had another unrelated health scare – colon cancer. He is now in remission. But Orefice said he doesn’t dwell on his disability or think much about death. Instead, he focuses on his family and thinks what he’s been able to accomplish and what he still hopes to. He paddle boards, plays wheelchair hockey and races specially equipped off-road vehicles.

“I have affected more lives than I would have if I was walking,” he said. “When you are in the trenches, you don’t see that.” (Originally published by Kaiser Health News)

[bold and italics emphasis mine]

# 1281 (7/8) "Talking Obergefell with Your Kids..."

"TALKING OBERGEFELL WITH YOUR KIDS - FOCUS ON GOD'S PLAN" - By: John Stonestreet| Breakpoinnt.org: July 7, 2015;
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/12/27752?spMailingID=11817223&spUserID=MTMyMjM2ODE5OQS2&spJobID=580467665&spReportId=NTgwNDY3NjY1S0 [P.S. - Be sure to visit this site THIS SUNDAY for a follow-up article on how to discuss the subject with your teen and college-aged . You want to be sure to know how you or any parent can share God's truth on the subject with those in that important age group. - Stan]

Do we have to talk to our kids about the Supreme Court decision on marriage? Yeah, we do. For some ideas on how to do that...

Well, we did it. On Sunday night my wife and I decided to sit down with our daughters, who are 10, 8, and 6, and talk with them about the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage. I’m guessing there are a lot of other parents out there who did too, and perhaps even more who are still wondering whether or not they should. It’s an uncomfortable subject to say the least, and you may feel your kids aren’t old enough for it.

As Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission says, though, we don’t always get to choose what topics we talk about. Sometimes events force our hands - just like 9/11 forced discussions on things like terrorism and war. And now, with this ruling on marriage, we find ourselves in the ongoing war of ideas. Which means that our kids are seeing and hearing things about same sex marriage and homosexuality. If not from us first, then they are in their schools, and certainly on TV. Think of the Wells Fargo ad just recently. In other words, the culture is having the conversation with them. We need to as well, and we need to do it first.  Silence is no longer an option.

One thing my wife I focused on with our younger kids is God’s design for marriage from the beginning. This is such an important topic—and not just in the context of the Supreme Court ruling. We need to help our children understand why God created families and marriage in the first place. And we need to be prepared when they start to notice the difference between boys and girls and start asking questions like “Where do babies come from?”

So when we talked with our kids Sunday night, we started with Matthew 19—when the Pharisees came to Jesus, and asked Him whether it were lawful for a man to divorce his wife. Jesus responded by pointing them back not to the Law, but to the creation—long before the Law was given. “Have you not read” He asked, “that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female” and “that for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?”

So Jesus takes the Pharisees back to the book of Genesis. And that’s where we picked up the story from there, reminding our girls that God said it was not good for Adam to be alone, and that Adam needed a helper. 

Animals were not a suitable helper, the text says. And actually, another man wouldn’t have been a suitable helper either, because what Adam needed help with had to do with having a family. And a family comes when moms and dads get married and get together, and so on. So we discussed the brilliance of God’s plan for man and woman, the brilliance of His design for the family.

And what about the Supreme Court decision? Well, we talked about how in this fallen world, governments sometimes make bad decisions. I reminded them of court decisions that reinforced Jim Crow laws—which they had learned about when they studied the Civil Rights movement. We talked about the disastrous consequences of no-fault divorce laws. What happened on Friday was another example of a bad decision.  And as soon as I described Friday’s decision, my middle daughter spouted out, “Well, that’s just ridiculous!”

Now, I didn’t want to downplay the fact that there are obviously significant differences of opinion on this. But I did want to reinforce what Nancy Pearcey calls our kids’ “bologna detectors.” Our children naturally understand the importance of family. Of moms and dads. It’s built into them. The only way they stop believing in the family is if they have had a traumatic experience, or if they are talked out of it—which is exactly what our culture is doing.

So, as much as we’d rather not, now is a great time to discuss the Supreme Court’s decision. If you need a primer, I recently partnered with my friends at Axis to produce a four-part teaching series on gender, marriage, and the Bible. [Note resources below]

And [THIS SUNDAY], we’ll discuss an even trickier subject: How do we talk teens and college-age kids about the Supreme Court’s decision? 

[bold and italics emphasis mine]

RESOURCES
"Gender, Marriage, and the Bible: Understanding God's Plan" - John Stonestreet | Axis | July 2015;https://vimeo.com/ondemand/gendermarriagebible
"The Supreme Court Ruling: 3 Ways Parents Can Respond" - Generations of Virtue | June 27,2015;https://generationsofvirtue.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/the-supreme-court-ruling-3-ways-parents-can-respond/