Category Archives: rights

Religious Freedom

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Germany doesn’t appear to have the same strong belief in it that Americans (or most of us, anyway) do.  The Federal Labor Court has objected to a Catholic clinic terminating a doctor because he violated Church teachings, specifically, he both divorced and then remarried.

The doctor insisted—successfully, it turns out—that he was fired for being Catholic; colleagues of different faiths could divorce and remarry without consequence.

Never mind that the clinic was Catholic and the Catholic doctor violated the clinic’s Catholic requirements, requirements it could not impose on its non-Catholic employees without imposing on their religious freedom.  The situation illustrates the complexities of religious freedom in the work place, but if this ruling is allowed to stand, it will have serious implications for the employability of persons whose religious faith—or agnosticism or atheism—is different from the employer’s religious tenets—or agnosticism or atheism.

Argument by Non Sequitur

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Kentucky’s State House of Representatives passed, by a large margin (69-20) a bill that would outlaw most abortions, contingent on the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade.

If passed by the State’s Senate (expected) and signed by the Governor (also expected), it’ll have legal problems, though.  Major ones will be what constitutes “overturning,” how an actual overturn would be discriminated from serious modification of Roe‘s ruling, and since Roe is medical technology oriented, a restatement of the threshold for viability.

Still, though, the arguments for and against the bill are instructive.

State Congressman James Tipton (R), speaking for the bill, put the matter starkly:

Not one of us, man or woman, has the moral authority to take the life of an unborn.  There is no other medical procedure that I know of that the goal is to intentionally take the life of an unborn child.

On the other hand, State Congresswoman Mary Lou Marzian (D) insisted that this sort of bill (indeed, any bill that limits abortion) constitutes an unacceptable intrusion into the private medical decisions of women.  But she was unable to answer—or chose to avoid—questions about the unborn baby’s right to life or about the medical decisions, private or otherwise, of those representing the unborn baby’s interests.

And these objections by Marzian to Kentucky’s bill are just cynically irrelevant:

If you want to go have a colonoscopy, should we get ourselves involved in that? If you want to take Viagra, should we get ourselves involved in that?

No life is in the wind in those procedures, though.  Only one life even is involved in these utterly non-lethal procedures.  Marzian, et al., know this.

Truth and Truth

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A college basketball player at the University of Wisconsin has taken to sitting on the bench during the pregame national anthem playing.  Her rationalization is this:

I’m going to speak up about things that are harming my culture and my people.

She certainly should speak against iniquities, but she needs to understand that her culture is American, and her people are her fellow Americans.

Full stop.

Sexism Blocking Free Speech

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Now it’s Twitter that’s engaging in toxic (non)-speech, not the speech in the tweets themselves.

A Canadian blogger is having to sue Twitter over the latter’s blatant censorship of free speech because, apparently, she isn’t toeing the Twitter (or me also “movement”) sexual politics line.

Meghan Murphy, the founder of the blog Feminist Current, was locked out of her account last year when the company asked her to delete a tweet that said, “Men aren’t women,” CNET reported, citing the lawsuit. A second tweet said, “How are transwomen not men?” according to the suit.

This is evil?

Two Examples of Gun Control

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In January, a Houston homeowner successfully defended himself and his family against a large, violent home invasion—with a gun.

Authorities say the homeowner defended himself when the suspects entered the home. Following the shooting, the suspects fled from the scene.
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At another scene, a vehicle was found about two blocks from the shooting, where a man was found dead in the backseat.
Authorities say that out of five people shot, three of them died. All were suspects in the alleged home invasion.

In Florida this week, another homeowner successfully defended his property—with a gun.

The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said…a woman called 911 to report a stranger on her property.
When the woman’s husband walked outside [with his pistol] to check the situation out, he told deputies he found the man standing at the door to his garage with his hand on the doorknob.
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Once deputies got to the home located south of Daytona Beach they allegedly found a syringe, tools and gloves on Edwards.
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[The man] was charged with attempted burglary and possession of burglary tools, according to police.

No one was shot this time, either—it was only property at risk.

Imagine the mayhem that would have resulted in the first instance had the homeowner not been armed.  Imagine the theft, and the possible mayhem (because burglars really don’t like witnesses), in the second instance had the homeowner not been armed.

This is the gun control Progressive-Democrats and their accomplices of the Left want to take away from us.