Over at First Things, Meghan Duke reports what should be (but, unfortunately, really isn't) a shocking story:
While visiting the National Gallery of Art this past Saturday, I ran
into a pair of errant security guards who have taken to interpreting
the Constitution in their spare time.
I decided to visit the
Gallery after attending the March for Life the day before. There was an
exhibit on processes of photography before the digital age that I hoped
would confirm me in my refusal to give up on film. After searching my
bag, the two guards at the Gallery told me, “You’re good to go in, but
first you need to remove that pro-life pin.” He was indicating the
small lime green pin with the message “impact73.org” and the silhouette
of a small hand inside that of a larger hand that I had attached to the
lapel of my coat. The pin, they informed me, was a “religious symbol”
and a symbol of a particular political cause and it could not be worn
inside a federal building. Why, I asked, can I not wear a
religious or political symbol inside a federal building? Bringing to
bear the full weight of the supreme law of the land, the guards
informed that it was a violation of the First Amendment of the United
States’ Constitution: The combination of me, wearing a pro-life pin, in
a federal building was a violation of the separation of church and
state.
This is ridiculous, of course, and on many levels. (I am smothering every impulse to say something snarky about the current administration's alleged dedication to common ground and respectful dialogue on the question of abortion . . . oops. Dang.) Perhaps most troubling, though, is the premise of the guard's mistaken First Amendment analysis, i.e., that a pro-life symbol (think of the little-feet lapel pins one sometimes sees) is a "religious" symbol. As Duke notes:
A pro-life pin is not necessarily a religious symbol because the
pro-life movement is not a specifically religious cause. We do not
argue that abortion should be outlawed on the basis of a divine
mandate; we argue that it should be outlawed because children in utero
are human beings with an inherent right to life, exercising the same
claim to our protection of that right as other human beings. Had I been
wearing a yellow bracelet that said Livestrong or a T-shirt that said Help Haiti
I am sure I would not have been stopped. I would be expressing the same
sort of belief—that we bear a responsibility to help a specific group
of people—but no one would suspect that my views were religiously
motivated, they would chalk them up to my sense of humanity. A sense of
humanity entirely comprehensible apart from religion.
On the other hand, as some of us (Michael Perry, most prominently) have argued, all serious moral claims sounding in human rights in dignity are probably, in the end, inescapably "religious". Duke again:
[T]he pro-life pin is not “entirely different” from the cross. My
understanding of the inherent worth of every human being is founded in
a Christian worldview. While almost anyone can vaguely intuit the
dignity of the human person, the Christian recognizes that it is rooted
in his being the image of God, a God who descended to become one of our
species and suffered and died that we might have life.
What do people think of this case:
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Samantha Burton wanted to leave the hospital.
Her doctor strongly disagreed, enough to go to court to keep her there.
She smoked cigarettes during the first six months of her pregnancy and
was admitted on a false alarm of premature labor. Her doctor argued she
was risking a miscarriage if she didn't quit smoking immediately and
stay on bed rest in the hospital, and a judge agreed.
Three days after the judge ordered her not to leave the hospital, Burton delivered a stillborn fetus by cesarian-section.
And six months after the pregnancy ended, the dispute over the legal
move to keep her in the hospital continues, raising questions about
where a mother's right to decide her own medical treatment ends and
where the priority of protecting a fetus begins.. . .
Any thoughts? Comments are open (and, of course, subject to monitoring).
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Hello again, All,
By way of a fellow at OpinionatedCatholic comes this added wrinkle to the Focus on the Family story: http://www.getreligion.org/?p=23909. Dr. Dobson will apparently be leaving the organization at the end of February, and the circumstances appear to be a bit less than amicable. Helas, such is our human frailty, it would seem, that even the most self-consciously and ideologically committed of 'families' sometimes finds difficulty in staying together. Here's to a return to the true Upper Room.
All best, and thanks for the link to OC,
Bob
Hello All,
I'm sympathetic to much of what Rob says in the post immediately below, but offer one mitigating consideration that might render the protest against CBS's decision a wee bit less depressing: It is possible that those protesting the planned ad are as concerned about the source of the ad as they are about its content. I used, in the early 1990s, to listen to Dr. Dobson's radio programs with some regularity, and was impressed at the time by their charitable tones and evident sincerity in proclaiming the aim to provide succour and healing to all who voluntarily sought it. But as that decade wore on, Dr. Dobson's messages and his involvement in American politics took on what in my view was a decidedly darker cast, filled with hard-hearted imprecations and paranoic likenings of Democratic political figures to servants of Satan. And this is not even to mention the tendency I began to notice, as the decade wore on, for Dr. Dobson's programs to cast women in subordinate, 'follower' roles in relation to men. I ceased listening altogether in disgust by the late 1990s. Dr. Dobson's role in our polity has, it seems to me, become only more distasteful and uncharitable since the late 1990s, and it might well be that shared impressions of this sort account at least in part for the current protests against CBS's decision. A helpful experiment would be presented us were Catholic Charities or, better yet, a group of women religious and/or the Catholic Worker movment to attempt to run a similar ad. Were the protests to be the same in such case, I'd be a bit more able to join Rob in his depression.
Keep heart!,
Bob
CBS is taking heat from women's groups for agreeing to run an ad from Focus on the Family featuring Tim Tebow, whose mother rejected her doctors' advice that he be aborted:
“An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year—an event designed to bring Americans together,” said Jemhu Greene, president of the New York-based Women’s Media Center.
This is depressing on several levels:
First, from what I understand, the ad will not advocate any particular legal response to abortion; it simply will celebrate life and the personal choices that make life possible. If a message like that is too "divisive" to be expressed on a grand cultural stage, then we have a serious problem. For those who insist that the concept of the common good has become so thin that a meaningful conversation on the subject is impossible, this might be Exhibit A.
Second, the logic underlying an argument that messages encouraging others to "choose life" are "demeaning" makes me want to poke myself in the eye with a sharp object. It is a message aimed at hearts and minds; it is not (as far as I know) aimed at persuading the state to criminalize abortion (I'm not saying that those messages have no place in the public square, just that those message are understandably more controversial.) But to insist that a mother telling her story of being blessed by her choice for life is "not being respectful of other people's lives" (according to Terry O'Neill, president of NOW) is to twist the concept of "respect" beyond recognition.
Third, the nature of the protest -- don't taint the sacred ground of the Super Bowl! -- speaks loudly about our society's rush to embrace events that give us a sense of community (and even transcendence), and how silly we sometimes look as a result. Perhaps at one time those events were religious, but now we're left with the Super Bowl (and maybe American Idol). As sports columnist Gregg Doyel wrote, “If you’re a sports fan, and I am, that’s the holiest day of the year. It’s not a day to discuss abortion."
I've opened comments.
