This is from the Bugs Bunny “He don’t know me very well, do he?” department…
I keep getting the Google Adsense ad you see below. I just now refreshed like four times, and it wouldn’t go away.
I guess it’s because some of y’all brought up birth control on the previous post. You’ll notice that I didn’t engage. That was mainly because I wasn’t interested in doing so, but now I have an additional reason not to — at some point, I’d like to stop seeing this ad…
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By not engaging in the most important issue of our day, birth control, you are tacitly agreeing with the proposition that birth control is somehow immoral or improper. To suggest birth control is wrong or that birth control is unnecessary is of course your opinion. But you should defend your opposition to birth control. You should state clearly why you oppose birth control. Give evidence that birth control is against biblical teachings or that birth control is conducive to some moral decline then share that opposition you have against birth control. (Planned Parenthood can use all the help it can get)
🙂 🙂
No, I shouldn’t. It’s way too complicated, and too intimate. To explain my views on something like that, I’d have to get into personal life experiences (and what I’ve learned from them) that in my personal code are unsuitable for public discussion.
But even if I believed gentlemen should speak of such things, I don’t think I could do it very well.
For one thing, my views — being an amalgam of so many things, some of them personal — don’t really fit into a neat box. They’re not exactly the same as the Church’s teachings (although I respect the reverence for life that lies at the heart of it), but it’s not “birth control’s A-OK,” either. And it’s most assuredly, definitely not the coldheartedness that I sense in the Margaret Sanger view of life, the universe and everything.
It has to do with my sense of the mysteries of human life, and it gets way mystical. Which means I lack the vocabulary to explain it. It’s something that ordinary reason and systems of thought just aren’t equal to grappling with. It’s deeper than that. It’s more important than that.
Maybe I could explain it effectively through fiction, if I ever get around to writing any serious fiction. Fiction is no-holds-barred, and can be very effective at expressing the mystical. It’s not something that I could really express properly in this sort of venue.
But thanks for the smiley faces… 🙂
I have great respect for you, Brad, even when I disagree with you. Likewise for Bryan, Doug, Bud, Lynn and all the other regulars here.
But I really find it hard to believe that someone with your command of the language cannot articulate your opposition to birth control…at least to a level that someone who disagrees with you can evaluate other positions on the issue to some degree. You’ve managed it (pretty much) on the Trump-as-worst-president-ever discussions. I don’t agree or disagree with all of your arguments there, either, but at least I have a handle on WHY you feel the way you do and I’m able to put them up against my own feelings and evaluate them in my own way. That’s why I’m here almost every day…even if I don’t post.
Please give it a whirl but if you feel you must turn a deaf ear to those who disagree and not engage them further, that is your prerogative (it IS your blog!).
Well, first, I don’t know that I’d call it anything so simple as “opposition.” I basically don’t have what I’d call a POLITICAL position on it — other than I don’t think the government should force people who DON’T believe in it, like the Little Sisters of the Poor, to provide it. But that’s not a position on birth control; that’s about freedom of conscience.
I really wouldn’t know where to begin. Anyway, it’s late, and I’m tired…
I’m certain of one thing about what I think, though… Bud’s belief that it’s “the most important issue of our day” seems to me rather disproportionate… I can’t imagine thinking that. But I guess you have to believe that to believe it’s worth endangering a whole system of healthcare for it, and overriding other people’s conscientious objections…
It seems that you are presuming that I speak only of abortion. While I personally DO support abortion, that is certainly not the whole of birth control (which IS what I speak of NOW). I’m not proposing to force the use pills, condoms, or IUDs by or on anyone but I certainly support making their availability widespread at no cost for anyone wanting to use them anywhere in the world. The proposal put forth by at least one poster on this blog to pay young women not to get pregnant also seems worth exploring. How is any ofthat “endangering a whole system of healthcare” and “overriding people’s conscientious objections”? As you say, I don’t follow…
I was referring to the fact that by INSISTING that birth control be covered (and I’m not talking abortion here at all), even by people with conscientious objections to it, the Obama administration threw away a lot of political support it could have had. I’m pretty sure the ACA would have gotten more support from American bishops if not for that. I mean, why can’t you just concentrate on providing medical care to the disadvantaged and rallying people around that rather than dragging the whole system into the Kulturkampf?
That was an unnecessary battle, creating unnecessary enemies. But I guess you just have to do it if you believe, as Bud does, that it’s the most important thing in the world.
The “conscientious objections” was about folks like the Little Sisters of the Poor being required to provide something they don’t believe in.
I’m sorry if I was unclear, or if I’m being unclear now….
Here’s a brief summary of why I think birth control (sans abortion) is the most important issue of our time. It is just plain cruel not to. With fertility rates in some parts of Africa around 6, triple the replacement figure, the strains on the resources of those nations is approaching critical levels. China faced this problem several decades ago and resorted to a desperate, but necessary, plan to limit family size by force. It was clear to the Chinese that it would be impossible to support high birth rates much longer. Why wait until this type of action is needed? The people of Africa are already suffering from wars and hunger on a large scale and without outside aid would already be at mass starvation levels. Millions of lives are at stake and I see no other problem even remotely comparable. We drone on and on about the North Koreans and their nukes or ISIS but those problems don’t even approach the potential for suffering that the extreme population explosion does. The situation in Africa will eventually spill over into other parts of the world and in fact may already have done so. But unlike the situation in North Korea the population problem in Africa has a straightforward solution. We simply help those nations provide their women effective birth control like patches. This in conjunction with education efforts aimed at showing how effective birth control can help bring a nation into the modern world. Unless we move and move quickly all manner of problems, including climate change, will become impossible to address. Living in denial will soon become a matter of not living at all.