| Author | Message | ||
     Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
http://www.faithfulwordbaptist.org/page2.html Well, I can hope. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.205.17 |
Mmm. It's the vicious anti-Obama stuff linked to this page that I assume you're referring to, Ramsey. The hysteria over Obama's attempted healthcare reforms is a disturbing reminder of just how right-wing a lot of the US population are – far more so than the ruling class of any European nation. If any country deserves to be quarantined as a 'rogue nation'... Fortunately there's more sanity in the US Government at present, but clearly that's too much for large sections of the American ruling class to tolerate. We still have to regard the USA is very dangerous until it starts to prove that it has moved permanently away from the poison and violence of the last decade. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
It is, Joel. If you can bear to listen to his Obama sermon (or just trust me!) you'll find him hoping that Obama will "melt like a snail" for supporting abortion. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I hope I don't need to explain that Obama wasn't the person I hoped would melt... | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22 |
When faced with that kind of terrifying nonsense I thank heaven America also produced the high camp chicanery of Anton LaVey's Church of Satan lol. Is it just me or do all these pseudo-christian nutters look like pod people from 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers'? It's something about the eyes gives them away... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.248.209 |
Well, to be fair, Bush was the subject of many calls for "assassination" and death, those from the "churches" of the left. To be a leader, is to be despised, by someone - and when no one sane's left to do it, the kooks must fill the bill. | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 98.220.186.44 |
>>Fortunately there's more sanity in the US Government at present, but clearly that's too much for large sections of the American ruling class to tolerate. "Ruling class"? If by this you mean Bible-thumpin' anti-abortion Republicans, I guess you're right, but I'd hardly call them "ruling," especially now that Bush Jr is back at his ranch and Sarah Palin has resigned in disgrace. Right now these citizens don't even have a respectable candidate for the next election, and their polling numbers are poor indeed. Turns out our grand American experiment of electing a moron to the presidency didn't work out so well, and the Republicans have yet to find a way to face that fact. All they have left is grousing and complaining and whining. You'd think such manifest failure would cause some soul-searching, possibly a big ideological rethink, but you'd be wrong. >>We still have to regard the USA is very dangerous until it starts to prove that it has moved permanently away from the poison and violence of the last decade. Who is the "we" in that first sentence, Joel? Right now the US right-wing has virtually no power. All they are capable of, it seems, is spreading misinformation and blocking the speed of Obama's progress. American right-wingers currently have no means for causing violence outside the US. Inside the US, however, is another story. I'm sure the next Timothy McVeigh is planning his revenge on liberal American society as we speak. As for you UKers: relax. You can step things back down to DefCon 5. I don't think any of you have to worry about US missiles flying your way anytime soon. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.10.144 |
"Everyone [meaning in his sermon's context: those who perform and serve an abortion] who ends a pregnancy should be killed." Said after a rather disturbing screaming fit including "I'M SAYING THAT EVERY ABORTION DOCTOR IN THIS COUNTRY SHOULD BE LINED UP TOMORROW AND SHOT DEAD!" (A startled child seems to cry in the background, startled by the sheer venom that can only be described by actually hearing him.) He keeps talking about the "death penalty" needing to be applied to the doctors and nurses and such... so why doesn't he scream and call for the blood of the young girls going to get the abortions?... Preach whatever you want in your own church - but me? I can't stand the inconsistency that is hypocrisy. Demand the blood and death of the women, too - just don't offend God, Pastor Steven, by your pulling punches there.... | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22 |
I still stand by my pod people analogy. The venomous preaching/shouting is equivalent to him raising his arm and pointing at the "unchristian" world while uttering an unintelligible but terrifying howl. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.156.166 |
Chris – that's an optimistic perspective that I hope is substantially true. I get the impression that right-wing opposition to Obama's healthcare forms will force him to withdraw or water down key aspects of it – if so, certain vested interests are still having a powerful effect. As regards foreign policy, I meant dangerous to the world in general. I'm impressed by Obama's attempts to undo some of the harm done by the previous government, but it will take a long time. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.121.214.11 |
I've never understood people who threaten other people's lives over the abortion issue. Personally I'm firmly against abortion except in the most exceptional circumstances - where the mother's life is in danger. Disability and "The mother might have trouble coping" are not exceptional circumstances. An unborn child is a separate human being in the most delicate, fragile and dependant state it could possibly be in. To consider killing it is the equivalent of walking into a premature baby ward and killing the babies in the incubators on the basis that it's only the incubator keeping them alive. IMHO it's the worst possible betrayal of trust there is. My mother is disabled. If tests show that a child may be born with the same condition that my mother has, they can be legally killed up to the moment of birth almost. Is that not giving the message that disabled people have no right to be here and they should just all be killed before they can cause any of us any inconvenience? Abortion has become for many people a late form of contraception. When my sister became pregnant the first time, the first thing the doctor asked her was whether she wanted to keep the baby. the answer was yes and along came my neice, but it just shows how lax the rules on killing unborn children are. Having said that, it's because of the sanctity of life that threatening violence against the doctors is inconceivable as well. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.5.228 |
I agree again, Weber.... I think the problem is in the "legality" of the issue - the legalizing of it, makes it problematic, because it's the government taking one moral stance over another - and both sides have moral stances that cannot brook the other side, and it's simply because: both sides have starting points, that the other does not. Here in California, we have these new marijuana clinics: get yourself a "scrip," and you can go and buy all the pot you want now. It's essentially "legal," but not in the Federal government's eyes: it's still illegal according to U.S. law, and at any time they can sweep in, and close these clinics, and arrest these distributors/users... but they don't.... This is the unsteady compromise the U.S. should reach, imho, concerning abortion; or easier: whichever State wants to legalize it, can, but the government simply doesn't take a stance on it whatesoever. If it reaches the Federal level, the Supreme Court can say: individual States can reach their own conclusions, defer to States. Right now, if you're anti-abortion, there's nowhere you can move to expunge your passive moral complicity: it's legal in all 50 States. With the law changed, one can move to South Dakota even if that's the only State that outlaws it - too bad if there's no jobs there, it's difficult to, etc., because no one said one's morality had to be easy. But it at least has to have room to breathe, I would think.... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.229.215 |
pointing at the "unchristian" world while uttering an unintelligible but terrifying howl Put all these 'righteous' less-than-humans together on a deserted island and have fun watching them. Is it too far-fetched to think they'll probably end up destroying one another? We can but dream. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.3.154 |
Our buddy's back: http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-obama-preacher,0,6513505.story | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.47.88.46 |
I'm not getting far into this but no person on this planet will make decisions for me on abortion. The person who should decide on whether or not she can go through childbirth is the woman herself. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.3.154 |
Now, in the other story linked on the side, if Pastor Anderson prayed for the perpetrator here to melt like a snail.... http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-child-blinded,0,2981403.story ... I'd give him a hearty thumb's up, and get down on my knees alongside him. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.72.14.113 |
Why this man and others of his ilk aren't automatically lifted off the streets and locked up for inciting right-wing religious morons to murder I'll never know! I believe in freedom of speech but not in the right of "charismatic to the easily led religious sociopaths" to incite hatred against those deemed "different" and the bloodshed that inevitably follows. I'm thinking Ian Paisley as well here before he went senile and suddenly became forgiveable - like Ronnie Reagan before him. Has anyone here read one of my favourite Dickens novels 'Barnaby Rudge'? He nails this phenomenon quite frighteningly therein. The bloody Gordon Riots against innocent Catholics he describes actually happened in London at the end of the 18th C. and the madman behind them is no different from this fuckwit and what he is trying to instigate in America today. Who needs horror fiction with dickwads like this alive and weilding influence in the world today!! | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.244.8 |
Ally, I agree with you. I don't understand how men think their views on women's abortion rights are relevant or significant. Unless, of course, their real agenda is to maintain their power over women – which is obviously the case with religious 'authorities'. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.221.223 |
"I don't understand how men think their views on women's abortion rights are relevant or significant." Really? Hmm. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.191.247 |
Joel - the baby is half the man's. Men can feel closer to the baby in a woman's womb than the woman sometimes can. When a baby is born it's obvious it's made up of two people. If I were a woman it would take pretty extreme circumstances for me to abort it. Ok, let them do what they want, but I couldn't be made to like it. Also, I always felt that putting a doctor into the situation where he/she has to kill a kid for not much of a reason is pretty scuzzy. I wouldn't force women not to abort at all, but seriously, there are three people involved in having children. I'm fine with day after pills, though. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.191.247 |
Weber - your views are completely all mine. Now just lighten up on Jade Goody and you'll be just dandy.  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Tony – point taken. I don't actually think men are not entitled to have views on the subject, just that they have no right whatsoever to enforce those views. As for the father's stake in the child, not that many abortions are in a context where the parents have an ongoing relationship. Those that are quite often involve health risks to the mother. Where the father objects to the abortion and is willing to oppose the mother's stated intention, clearly the relationship between the two of them is in trouble. So I can't see any clear case in which the father's intention should override the mother's. I do find it odd that many people who are extremely vocal about the rights of the unborn child are pretty silent where the rights of the born child are concerned. kd lang's song about the effects of child-beating, 'Nowhere To Stand', was banned on radio in Tennessee and did her career as a C&W singer more harm than her coming out did. It was probably the main reason why she quit the C&W genre. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
" Where the father objects to the abortion and is willing to oppose the mother's stated intention, clearly the relationship between the two of them is in trouble." Then the rights of the child need to be considered as well. Just because the mother can't be arsed is no reason to murder the baby. There's a story in one of the links above about a woman who battered her 5 week old baby to death. Why is that horrific if abortion is fine? There's a time difference in development of the babies of only a month or two. The main difference is that one is still in the most precarious and dependant state it will ever be in. And without pressing medical concerns for the mother's health, killing the baby, especially with at least one committed parent is the ultimate betrayal. "I do find it odd that many people who are extremely vocal about the rights of the unborn child are pretty silent where the rights of the born child are concerned" Some might be. Most aren't that hypocritical. They don't get as much publicity for the rest of it. Most pro-life charities also fund support networks for parents. That tends not to get publicised because it's not as easy to demonise the pro life people when you point things like that out. The twat this thread started about is a clear exception to the usual pro-life campaigner. Although I'm not linked to a pro-life group, I do voluntary work with disabled children. I help where I can. there's only so much shouting you can do. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Kill 'em all, that's what I say.  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
One quite sensible approach, I think, is to say that abortion should not be carried out (unless for very good medical reasons) after the foetus has reached the stage where the nerves are functional. At that point the foetus (though still not viable) has sensations and is aware. There are ethical questions to be asked about late-stage abortion, certainly. But if the time difference in development between an abortion and the killing a five-week-old baby is 'only a month or two', you're talking about a very, very late-stage abortion. In most cases, the difference is more like nine months. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
If the child could be born disabled then abortion is allowed up to nine months. Somehow people find this acceptable. Lovely message to all the disabled people out there really isn't it. Just to clarify my point about the demonisation of pro life campaigners, just as the only Muslim clerics you'll see in the media are Abu hamza and the other hate preachers, the only pro life campaigners you see are the rabid fundamentalists who somehow believe that violence against the doctors and women is acceptable. They aren't the most representative group you could publicise. They just make for a better story and you can scare the populace more. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
"In most cases, the difference is more like nine months." That would mean at only 5 weeks into the pregnancy. Most take place later than that. "One quite sensible approach, I think, is to say that abortion should not be carried out (unless for very good medical reasons) after the foetus has reached the stage where the nerves are functional. At that point the foetus (though still not viable) has sensations and is aware" At which stage is that? Some research shows that as early as 16 weeks an unborn child feels pain. The time limit in this country to abort a healthy child is 24 weeks. I really don't like that word "Viable" when used in this debate. It really just means 100% dependant. All children are viable if given the chance. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.126 |
"I don't actually think men are not entitled to have views on the subject, just that they have no right whatsoever to enforce those views." Hi Joel, Obviously in a country where abortion is legal the choice must ultimately be left to the woman. But are you saying that men should have no say in whether abortion is legal or not? If, for example, a law repealing laws forbidding sex between men required a referendum, should women be denied a vote? Should women have less of a vote when it comes to going to war since it's mostly men's bodies that get blown to pieces? I don't think it's that clear cut (if it were, this wouldn't be a controversial issue). We're in a society and abortion affects men too -- not as strongly or directly, but it does affect the society in which they live. Maybe some sort of weighted voting system would be fairer -- a man's vote counting for 50% of a woman's vote in this case? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Yes, 16 weeks is roughly what I had in mind. But 24 weeks, though quite late, is a great deal earlier than 'a month or two' back from five weeks after birth. I think there's a pretty strong correlation in the USA between being anti-abortion and being in favour of the death penalty. This is not so much hypocritical as just totally incoherent. Thanks for keeping this discussion calm, folks. I don't think I have anything further to add. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Proto (our postings crossed), that's an interesting suggestion. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.47.88.46 |
'Tony – point taken. I don't actually think men are not entitled to have views on the subject, just that they have no right whatsoever to enforce those views. Exactly. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
My last words on the subject "Yes, 16 weeks is roughly what I had in mind. But 24 weeks, though quite late, is a great deal earlier than 'a month or two' back from five weeks after birth. " But abortion is legal up to 39 weeks for something as minor as a cleft lip or a club foot (both easily corrected with surgery) as there is no legal definition of "Serious disability". So a month or two back from 5 weeks old is not uncommon. you'll have to excuse me for finding facts like that entirely sickening. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Weber, I agree that there are valid objections to such late-stage abortion, especially on such grounds. I'm reminded of Harlan Ellison's comment: "I'm not anti-abortion but I am anti-waste, anti-pain, anti-suffering". His reaction to the experience of causing an accidental pregnancy that led to a termination was to have a vasectomy. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.47.88.46 |
Yes - Croatoan is a powerful story and even more so when you know where it came from as stated above. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.255.50 |
See the recent horror movie THE UNBORN for a cogent and thought-provoking argument for abortion. Indeed, the entire movie, in fact, and all its celluloid and digital transfers, should have been aborted. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
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| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 213.158.199.103 |
Robin Williams on the issue of abortion and pro-lifers said take the child of a crack addicted woman, the child themselves suffering withdrawal symptoms, knock on the door of any right-wing pro-lifer conservative and ask them to nurture, clothe and educate this baby. See how fast that door slams in your face, he concluded. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.47.88.46 |
Frank - brilliant. |