Friday, January 30, 2009

Asshat of the Day - January 30th, 2009

Today's candidate - fellow blogger Big Blue Wave.

Now, granted, she's a staunch Conservative supporter, but we won't let that count against her - not when she does so well on her own. I know some otherwise quite sane Conservative supporters - but Suzanne here is emphatically not one of them.

Her primary cause is that of the anti-abortionist - but, as is the wont of those people involved in disputes of this nature, she categorizes her viewpoint as "pro-life", and that of her opponents on this field of battle as either "pro-abortion" or "non-pro-life" (making them, perhaps, pro-death?). She's also one of those who believes that a new human being is formed the moment a sperm and an egg kiss.

Well, I have some issues with that viewpoint. First, it means a lot of human beings are dying every day. A LOT. It means that instead of the six billion deaths we think occurred in human history, it's actually more like eighteen billion. Second, it means that a woman who is barren due to uterine scarring who then (having no reason to worry about pregnancy) engages in unprotected sex with her partner a murderer. Third - what then of twins? Are they forced to share the same human-beingness, as they came from the same union of sperm and egg? Or is that definition suddenly flexible enough to allow it to be assigned to two?

I also have issue with the propaganda photos on her site. Given her viewpoint, she should be more vociferous about IUDs and the Morning-After pill than the controversy of late-term abortions, given that the former, beyond a doubt, "kill" far more "pre-born human beings" than the latter. (250 000 Canadian women use IUDs, 8% of Canadian women use the morning-after pill annually; a vanishing 0.4% of all surgically/medically induced abortions in Canada are late-term (potentially viable fetuses), or about 200 annually.) Why then the focus on late-term abortion? Because it's photogenic. Show people pictures of cells dividing and then being washed away, and you're not going to get anyone to identify. Late-term fetuses look sufficiently like infants that abortions (particularly using the most popular method in the US, DX (Dilation and Extraction)) produce the kind of images shown on her site. (Here in Canada, late-term abortions are performed by inducing labour. Since the reason for a late-term abortion is almost always for the health of the mother or due to a critical birth defect in the child, the result is almost always a stillbirth. This is not a "partial birth" abortion, as the term has been coined in the States.

She also directs a lot of her ire towards "feminists". Apparently, "[g]irls are secretly dying for [gentlemanly behaviour]. I know. They might seem liberated. Most girls aren't." That's a pretty sweeping statement. Now, if you define "gentlemanly" behaviour as polite behaviour... well, you'll find a lot of guys dying for that too! Most (I'd almost go so far as to say "all") the girls I know are very much liberated. They don't need a guy to open doors for them, they don't need a man to make their life feel complete, they aren't eagerly awaiting the day they can be a mother. They have a healthy sense of their own sexuality and sex drive, and can communicate their desires to their partners, rather than slavishly kow-towing to their needs. They may want children, but it is not the acme of their existence. Once they have children, that will not be viewed as their final worthwhile accomplishment. Suzanne paints a picture suggesting that every abortion performed is a victory for the feminists, who celebrate in their conspiratorial black chambers and drink the blood of infants. Well... perhaps not quite that extreme. But pretty close.

Finally, we come to faith. Now, this clearly nails down where her "an embryo is a person from the moment of conception" malarkey comes from. Clearly, God waits eagerly for the moment an egg and a sperm meet, and *bam!* soulifies it then and there. But... what about the stuff I wrote earlier? Doesn't that mean for every soul that winds up in a human walking about on the earth, one (or more!) gets kicked back out of what might have one day been a body and sent to heaven or hell off the bat? (Hell, by the way, if you believe in Original Sin. No chance to get baptized or saved there. Straight to hell.) That would be... well, for one thing, incredibly wasteful, but for another, profoundly unfair, which is not really what one would expect from a "just and loving god". Mind you, the guy really is a jerk. He's the one who makes the rules, and yet heaven is barred to those who don't believe in him? Talk about insecure!

Now, that aside, she goes on to say that the word of the Pope on matters of morality and faith is infallible. I'm sorry, you're going to let someone else dictate to you what is moral and what is not? How you should worship? How you should pray? This despite Jesus, the guy who's sorta important to Christianity, saying "But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking." (Matthew 6:7). And you trust a man who looks like Emperor Palpatine in a funny hat to be this guiding light?

You know, come to it, Suzanne, I think I understand why you say the things you do. I just need to work on why you are the way you are. Someone failed you, at some point. It just must've been pretty early.

*sighs* Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the AotD.

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