A Eugenics Common Sense? - by Mark W. Leach

In Public Discourse

Calling fetuses defective if they are prenatally diagnosed with genetic conditions foreshadows a dangerous path toward eugenics. 

 

This year has seen a rash of medical studies reporting on developments in cell-free fetal DNA (cffDNA) prenatal testing. Not too long ago, one commentator cautioned that as prenatal genetic testing becomes more pervasive, our society risks developing a “eugenics common sense.” The reporting on the new cffDNA testing suggests that some have already developed this sensibility.

In October 2011, Sequenom, a publicly traded company, introduced its version of cffDNA prenatal testing. As the name suggests, floating in each expectant mother’s blood stream are bits of DNA from the child she is carrying. The new testing procedure tests this fetal DNA and can detect with the greatest reported sensitivity whether the fetus has Down syndrome. Because of false positives, cffDNA testing remains a screening-type test, providing a reassessment of the likelihood that the child has Down syndrome; it is not a diagnostic test, yet.

Sequenom’s competitors Verinata and Ariosa entered the market this year with their versions of cffDNA testing. Like Sequenom, they heralded their testing with medical journal articles and press releases. Reporting on these new tests has employed language with a notable eugenics lexicon.

In his recent column for Slate—headlined “Fetal Flaw”—Will Saletan praised the advances in prenatal testing for informing mothers if they are pregnant with a “defective fetus.” Saletan used the new tests as a wedge in abortion politics. Citing various polls, he argued that it will be difficult for pro-lifers to persuade a majority to be opposed to this new testing, even though Saletan rightly expects that the numbers of abortions will increase. Because it would be difficult to enforce any prohibition against aborting for specific reasons—such as the recent attempt by the House of Representatives to make sex-selective abortion illegal—Saletan almost gloats that the new tests will allow for even more eugenic abortions, i.e., abortions due to the fetus’s genetic make-up.

A month before Saletan’s article, Newsweek reported on the “epidemic of special needs kids.” As the charged word “epidemic” suggested, the article discussed the growing burden of caring for more children with autism and Down syndrome because of the costs of medical care. Almost lamentably, the article notes that these burdens have been somewhat compounded because, due to societal advances in medical care and inclusion in mainstream society, individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities are now enjoying longer—and therefore costlier—lives.

Burden. Defective. Epidemic. These were terms commonly used in the eugenics era at the turn of the last century to justify compulsory sterilizations and involuntary euthanasia. But raise concerns at the turn of this century over prenatal genetic testing, and, as Mr. Saletan shows, the critics will be dismissed for simply being Luddites, against the advances of technology in the information age. What Mr. Saletan and other proponents of prenatal genetic testing ignore is that while technology may be value-neutral, how it is administered is not.

The administration of prenatal genetic testing does not happen in a hermetically sealed vacuum. Counseling about prenatal testing is not cut off from the biases and prejudices of society. Rather, it is promoted and administered by an academic, scientific, and professional elite where such bias and prejudice are concentrated.

The medical profession is still largely trained to view humans in a bio-medical perspective: what’s wrong with the patient? And that wrongness is defined by what the professional performing the diagnosis views as normal or desirable. Therefore, it should not be surprising that a profession that exalts those with the highest academic performance would view those with more apparent cognitive challenges as having something wrong with them—as being “defective.”

Studies have found that medical professionals admit that they are poorly trained in both prenatal testing and the conditions currently tested for, the main one being Down syndrome. Moreover, the medical school deans in charge of training them admit that their future medical professionals are not competent to treat individuals with intellectual disabilities. Is it any wonder, given this training, or lack thereof, and the culture in which they strive to succeed, that medical professionals overwhelmingly admit that they would abort following a prenatal diagnosis for Down syndrome? Simultaneously, medical professionals have a financial incentive for their patients to accept testing, which provides more revenue for their practice.

It is into these hands that Saletan, and the rest of society, is entrusting the ethical administration of prenatal testing, justified as empowering a woman’s right to choose. This systemic bent toward providing prenatal testing despite the ethical concerns associated with it was demonstrated the week after Saletan’s article was published.

The International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis (ISPD) held its conference where the same testing Saletan writes about is all the rage. Speakers used terminology similar to Saletan’s with a similar perspective: who could be against testing that can identify what they consider a genetic “disease”?

In the very first session of the conference, Dr. Yuval Yaron, Director of the Prenatal Diagnosis Unit at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, argued that testing for Fragile X syndrome should be universally offered, even though he admitted it failed to meet one element of his cited criteria for such a recommendation. According to Yaron, and the World Health Organization, for a test to be acceptable as a screening test, it must be accurate, cost-effective, and identify conditions for which there is a treatment. Currently there is no treatment for prenatally genetically diagnosed conditions such as Down and Fragile X syndromes. Yaron even admitted this. But, echoing the arguments of last century’s proponents of eugenics, Yaron argued that the test should nevertheless be offered to every woman, because an economic analysis could demonstrate that the costs of women accepting the testing could be offset by the amount of public health-care money saved if those women aborted their “defective” fetuses with Fragile X.

Days after the ISPD conference, the TODAY Show on NBC featured a union of the medical profession and the media on developing a eugenics common sense.

Currently, cffDNA testing can only detect a few genetic conditions. Other researchers, however, have reported identifying 3,500 genetic conditions based solely on a sample of the mother’s blood and the father’s saliva. The TODAY Show carried a segment with their senior medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman commenting on these research results. The host asked, “Do you think it raises ethical issues? I mean at what point, if you have information that your child is going to have a genetic problem, and then you’re posed with the question of whether to go forward with the pregnancy?” Snyderman answered, “Well, I’m pro-science, so I believe that this is a great way to prevent diseases.”

In the wake of such statements, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wondered whether our society was on the verge of another era of eugenics. But Douthat states that governmental eugenic policies are “all but unimaginable in today’s political climate.” Put aside that the Obama administration has mandated no-cost prenatal genetic testing as a means of “preventive” medicine. The more fundamental question is: why is the existence of a governmental policy the critical element for raising moral concerns about the eugenic implications of prenatal genetic testing? Is the lesson of the previous eugenics atrocities that viewing others as burdensome defectives ripe for elimination is wrong only when a governmental policy says so? Or, is not the lesson that it is wrong to view another human life as defective, as a burden, regardless of whether there is a governmental policy or not?

But that is the other distinction. As the argument goes: The impact of prenatal testing for Down syndrome is not morally problematic not only because abortion is not governmentally mandated following a prenatal diagnosis, but testing deals with fetuses, not ex utero human beings. Because there is no consensus on the moral status of the fetus, then it is incorrect to talk of eugenics when it comes to aborting a fetus with a genetic condition.

What else, though, do the commentators and medical elite mean when they refer to defective fetuses? Of course, they mean the child that will be born if the pregnancy is allowed to continue. That child, who to them poses a burden or has a disease, is to be prevented through abortion. But defective is in the eye of the beholder.

Again, this, too, is the lesson from last century’s eugenics. While it began with individuals termed “feeble-minded,” it also included those with physical disabilities, homosexuals, and, ultimately, Jews. The progress in civilized society that followed the Holocaust was due in part to the lesson being learned that once a group of people can be labeled as defective, then, so, too, can any other group, depending on who has the power to do the labeling. As a result, civilized nations became more inclusive of all individuals, regardless of race, disability, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

Unfortunately, it seems we have an ingrained bent toward finding a reason to discriminate against others. As a result, continual education is required to tame that bent and provide for a civilized society. The recent comments on the advances in prenatal genetic testing demonstrate the continued need for these educational efforts. Earlier this summer, Massachusetts joined states such as Missouri and Virginia in requiring that accurate, up-to-date information be provided to expectant mothers receiving a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome and other diagnosable conditions. If there is a role for governmental policy concerning prenatal genetic testing, it is to require this balance in information. Otherwise, we will revert to developing a eugenics common sense and being doomed to repeat the atrocities of history.

Former Vatican ambassadors launch Catholics for Romney group - By Michelle Bauman

Washington D.C., Aug 2, 2012 / 12:05 am (CNA).- A bipartisan group of six former U.S. ambassadors to the Holy See has joined together to support presidential candidate Mitt Romney and is calling on other Catholics to do the same.

The ambassadors said on July 31 that despite their own political differences, they all believe that Mitt Romney “can be a great force for good in this nation.”

They explained that they are united in their support of Romney’s candidacy by the conviction that all Catholics are “called to advance the moral teachings of Christianity in the life of our country.”

Former ambassadors Frank Shakespeare, Tom Melady, Ray Flynn, Jim Nicholson, Francis Rooney and Mary Ann Glendon are the new national co-chairs of the Catholics for Romney coalition.

In a letter to fellow Catholics, the ambassadors said that while they are Democrats, Independents and Republicans, they are “united in faith and in action” with regards to the upcoming election.

“Where the stakes are highest – in the defense of life, liberty, and human dignity – we have a duty to act that is greater and more urgent than allegiance to any political party,” they explained.

The former diplomats – whose years of service range from 1986 to 2009 – said that no matter which issues become the focus of the presidential campaign in coming months, “our concerns lie with fundamental rights, beginning with religious liberty.”

The ambassadors observed that the Obama administration “has brought our first freedom under direct assault by imposing government mandates that completely disregard religious conscience.”

Primary among these threats is a new requirement that will force employers to offer health insurance that covers contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, even if doing so violates their religious convictions.

In contrast, the diplomats said, “Governor Romney believes that freedom to live one’s faith is essential to liberty and human fulfillment.” They noted that he has “pledged himself to removing those federal mandates immediately.”

Furthermore, they noted, “the current administration has now put its weight on the side of those who propose to redefine the meaning of marriage itself.” However, Romney “stood firm in defending this sacred institution” during his time as governor of Massachusetts.

The ambassadors also defended Romney’s pro-life stance, arguing that while “the current administration has shown its sympathy for the pro-abortion lobby, Mitt Romney will be a faithful defender of life in all its seasons.”

Critics of Romney remain skeptical about his claim to have had a conversion to a pro-life position in 2004, after confronting the issue of embryonic stem cell research and realizing that it was wrong to create a human life simply to destroy it.

However his supporters point to his consistent pro-life record as governor of Massachusetts to show that his pro-life convictions are sincere.

The ambassadors also cited Romney’s recent statement that “there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action.”

This statement recognizes the important role and “special duty” of faithful individuals and organizations, they argued.

“We urge our fellow Catholics, and indeed all people of good will, to join with us in this full-hearted effort to elect Governor Mitt Romney as the next President of the United States,” they said.

Expertise and Ethics - by Anthony Esolen

In CRISIS

One of the more puzzling things about contemporary arguments regarding what things a good or free society ought to allow and what things it ought to forbid is our turn toward the “expert,” the ethicist, the person who has made a professional career of teasing out deductions from moral premises. But what really qualifies such a person to be regarded as a beacon of wisdom? Aristotle famously said that the best way to learn about justice would be to observe a just man. The dictum is not tautological. In the life of a Mother Teresa, for example, we may learn literally countless—that is, not reducible to numbers—lessons in love and magnanimity, whence we may confirm true principles already held, and reveal others whose existence we had not suspected. We would be confronting the just life not as an academic exercise, but as an intensely personal challenge.

The same aridity and insubstantiality can be found in “professional” conclusions that a certain act is ethical or unethical. Such terms are pallid substitutes for older, harder words, like right and wrong, or good and evil, or straight and crooked, or upright and depraved. They relieve us of the necessity of existential analysis. It is as if one were playing a game, with moves that would either promote or hinder our objective, but would remain comfortably extrinsic to us. But those older words are ineluctably existential. An act that is wrong is, etymologically, twisted: cf. wry, wrinkle, writhe, the contortions of the face of a man seized by wrath, a mind warped by evil; also Latin perversus, turned inside out. It is what gave Dante the happy idea of portraying Purgatory as a corkscrew mountain, whose turnings would unwind the bends in those whom the world had made crooked.

Now the thing about crookedness is that it is inherently unstable. Hammer a crooked nail head-on and you will bend it all the more. A car that is out of alignment will grow worse with every jolt of a pothole. So too with the lived reality of evil. It is disintegrative. “Sin will pluck on sin,” says Macbeth, knowing that the evil of his murder of King Duncan is not “the be-all and end-all.”  “For he that once hath missed the right way,” says Spenser’s Despair to the Red Cross Knight, speaking truly, “the further he doth go, the further he doth stray.”  “While they adore me on the throne of Hell,” says Milton’s Satan, referring scornfully to his fellows in crime, “the lower still I fall.”

To recognize the disintegrative character of evil is not to commit the fallacy of the slippery slope. Granted, a step in one morally neutral direction does not imply a further step in the same direction. To raise taxes by 5 percent is not to raise taxes by 10 percent. Nor does the affirmation of a certain kind of action in certain circumstances imply an affirmation of a superficially similar kind of action in other circumstances. To spank a child for drawing with a crayon on the walls is not to whip him for painting them. But evil is like a progressive and deadly disease. To engage in an evil act, again and again, is more than the acquisition of a habit, which will make the same act easier and easier to commit, but which has no effect upon the person otherwise. If we accept the insight of the ancient Platonists—that evil as a thing-in-itself does not exist, but is instead a privation or a corruption of a good that should be there—then the turn toward evil is a turn toward non-being. To embrace evil at the core is, as it were, to riddle oneself with unreason, with nonexistence. It is to warp, to rot.

We should recall, then, that the ancients never equated wisdom with a great facility for ratiocination or calculation. To be in one’s wits, to be wise is, literally, to see (cf. Latin videre, Greek idea). But evil twists the mind. A bad man is worse than a bad dog, not just because he can put his evil to greater effect, but because the evil causes him to see things wrong-side-out, so that he will apply his reasoning powers to unreason. If he is possessed of great natural intelligence, he may become a genius in depravity.  Alfred Kinsey, the teenager, was not yet hiring pederasts to molest infant boys in his laboratory; he was not yet collecting warped data from prison populations, and stretching it to “reveal” things about ordinary people. But by the time he was corrupting a nation with lies, I doubt that the greatest topologist in the world could have mapped the tangles of his heart to distinguish what was left of the genuine Kinsey and what was the serpentine and all-eating cancer.

In this sense all murderers are suicides, all liars are dupes. When, in Milton’s Paradise Lost, the Father offers grace to fallen mankind, it is described in terms of vision:

And I will place within them as a guide My umpire Conscience, whom if they will hear, Light after light well used they shall attain, And to the end persisting, safe arrive.

But those who reject that grace will walk in darkness:

This my long suffering and my day of grace they who neglect and scorn, shall never taste, But hard be hardened, blind be blinded more, That they may stumble on, and deeper fall.

Quite aside from the theology, the view of what happens to evil men is correct and is ratified by history and experience—the rogues’ gallery of twentieth-century despots alone provides evidence enough. With all his prodigious intellect, and even by way of that intellect, Lenin was a blind man; and they who followed the cruel mastermind were blinded too.

Then the first question we might ask of an ethicist who tries to persuade us, with diagrams and statistics and syllogisms, that what we had thought was evil is actually all right, is not “What degrees do you have?” or “What articles have you published in peer-reviewed journals?” but “Who are you?” It isn’t an easy question, nor is it decisive. An otherwise decent person may be, for a long while, better than his evil philosophy, and then we may thank God for foolishness and inconsistency. But it ought to be asked.

Who are these medical ethicists who recently have concluded, with wonderful logic, that parents have a right to murder their infant children—and who call it, with telling duplicity, “after-birth abortion?”  We would not turn to Larry Flynt or Hugh Hefner for a definition of decency; why should we turn to these people to advise us on which children we may kill and when? Are they crooked? Why should we follow the crooked, when we want to walk straight?

I am not recommending ad hominem attacks, or the ignoring of rational (or irrational) arguments. I wish merely to assert that when an ethicist, or anyone else for that matter, recommends that an action previously considered wrong be permitted, the burden of proof is particularly heavy, and we are justified in examining the virtue of the recommender. A warped heart, a warped mind— the one will eventually follow upon the other. Similarly, when a person of acknowledged moral courage, a Mother Teresa, warns us that an action which we have permitted is evil, we would be wrong not to pause and reconsider. Yes, we may admit the confusion of motives in any human being, and the rarity of pure saints or pure demons. But the virtuous life is an art; and one learns art not from theorists but from the artists themselves.

Casi cuatro mil pastores negros advierten a Obama: no le votarán por el matrimonio gay

In Religión en Libertad

"Está ignorando a la gente que le puso en la Casa Blanca": más claro no lo pudo decir William Owens, presidente de la Coalición de Pastores Afroamericanos. Este grupo que ha advertido al presidente de que harán una campaña nacional para que los votantes negros se piensen el apoyo mayoritario que dieron hace cuatro años a Barack Obama.

"Es la hora de un ataque amplio contra los poderes que quieren cambiar nuestra cultura para un hombre pueda casarse con un hombre, y una mujer con una mujer. Me avergüenza que sea el primer presidente negro quien elija esa desgraciada vía", dijo este jueves durante un acto en el Club Nacional de Prensa.

Esta campaña, anunció, "es un esfuerzo para salvar la familia" de ese asalto. Le respaldaban en el estrado otros cinco pastores, en representación de los 3.742 pastores negros que se han unido a ella, y cuya influencia sobre sus respectivas comunidades puede ser decisiva ante unas elecciones presidenciales que se anuncian muy reñidas.

Obama se manifestó durante la campaña electoral de 2008 contra el matrimonio homosexual, pero el pasado mes de mayo hizo un viraje radical en su posición: "Las parejas del mismo sexo deberían poder casarse", dijo en ABC News.

Según recoge la CNN, Owens advirtió al actual inquilino de la Casa Blanca de que no dé por garantizado el voto negro, y de que no hay ninguna similitud entre la lucha por los derechos civiles y el movimiento en favor de la equiparación de las parejas homosexuales con el matrimonio.

Según una encuesta de abril del Pew Research Center, el 49% de los negros norteamericanos rechazan el matrimonio homosexual, diez puntos más que quienes lo aprueban. Un sondeo del Public Religion Research Institute apuntó también a que para un 18% de los negros este punto será "decisivo" a la hora de orientar su voto.

Truth and Lies, Nature and Convention: The Debate Over Same-Sex Marriage - by Matthew J. Franck

In Public Discourse 

The case for same-sex marriage, as articulated in a new book that debates the issue, still refuses to recognize that civil society needs real marriage, as it has always existed, to preserve itself. 

 

Why do the advocates of same-sex marriage want what they want? And why do defenders of traditional marriage, as uniting men with women to form families, resist such a change? One cannot do better for achieving clarity on such questions than by reading Debating Same-Sex Marriage, co-authored by John Corvino and Maggie Gallagher. Corvino, who teaches philosophy at Wayne State University in Michigan, and Gallagher, a co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage, have achieved something of real value in this book, confronting one another with (in general) an admirable degree of civility. Given the space to build arguments for their own views, and to respond to each other at length, Corvino and Gallagher provide what are probably the best and the most complete arguments on either side of this momentous debate.

And this is why Debating Same-Sex Marriage so admirably exposes the weakness of the case in its favor.

Gallagher sums up the aims of the two sides this way:

For gay marriage advocates, the ultimate end is equality: the recognition of gay unions as marriages in all fifty states and ultimately around the world as part of the process of creating a world in which sexual orientation is treated like race.

For opponents of gay marriage, stopping gay marriage is not victory, it is only a necessary step to the ultimate victory: the strengthening of a culture of marriage that successfully connects sex, love, children, and mothers and fathers.

Corvino no doubt agrees with Gallagher’s characterization of his side’s argument. What he gives no credence is her account of her own side. Indeed, he signally fails even to grasp the kinds of arguments Gallagher makes, and then concludes, from his own failure, that her arguments must be incoherent. But the shoe is on the other foot.

The trouble for Corvino begins with the tissue-thin brevity of the positive case he makes for “marriage equality,” as he calls it. In a mere eight pages or so—constituting just a tenth of his opening “case for same-sex marriage”—Corvino tells us that marriage, more than any other arrangement or institution in which two people can take part, “promotes mutual lifelong caregiving.” This, he would have us believe, is the core, the irreducible purpose of marriage, its true raison d’être. Some homosexual couples really want to enter into such an arrangement, and to have it called “marriage” under the law with all the attendant rights and recognition that accompany the label. For Corvino, their desire for this recognized arrangement supplies them with a presumptive right to it, in the name of equality. And so for the remainder of his main statement, and his reply to Gallagher’s statement, Corvino devotes all his space to attempted rebuttals of the opposing view.

That is, he proceeds as though the common understanding of marriage advanced by every known civilization must justify itself before the tribunal of a wholly new and unproven understanding. And this sets the pattern: Corvino alternates between ineffectual logic-chopping that evades the real issues regarding the nature and purpose of marriage, and making the argumentum ad misericordiam, the appeal to our sympathy for gay and lesbian couples. If only we understood how important it is to this or that couple to be able to marry, we would drop our objections. We would understand that “to deny marriage to a group of people” who want it very badly is to tell them that “you are less than a full citizen.”

But as Gallagher shows, the reason marriage exists in the first place is not to satisfy the longings of any two (or more) persons for social recognition of their desire to care for one another for the long haul, or to make anyone feel better about his place in society. The reason marriage exists is because (in the briefest version of her argument), “sex makes babies, society needs babies, children need mothers and fathers.” These are, she rightly notes, social problems for which marriage is the institutional solution. Our private relationships are generally none of the state’s proper business. But society’s manifest need to regulate procreation and the responsibility for children elevates marriage—and the legitimate family relations that flow from it—from the plane of private law to the plane of public law. As the family of mother, father, and children is more basic and natural than the state, so marriage, as the relationship that founds the family, needs and deserves all the status the state can bestow upon it.

What problem, by contrast, does same-sex marriage solve? No two persons of the same sex can, without the aid of others, generate children. Again, the best Corvino can offer is that “it’s good for people to have a special someone” and that “commitment matters.” True enough. But these are not, even remotely, social problems requiring an institutional solution. Marriage, for same-sex couples, is a solution in search of a problem.

Yet it is more than that, for, as Gallagher also demonstrates, same-sex marriage promises to create all sorts of new problems, and to exacerbate others we already know. Marriage in the modern age is a wounded institution, and the advent of same-sex marriage would injure it further. We already have trouble remembering that marriage is about procreation—and that procreation ought to take place within marriage. Same-sex marriage would make remembering this harder. We already have trouble honoring fidelity, exclusivity, and permanence in marriage; same-sex marriage would make this harder too. We already have trouble articulating why our society rejects polygamy, or even incest; same-sex marriage would render us speechless. We already have trouble recalling that marriage unites men and women so that children have both mothers and fathers, preferably the ones nature gave them; same-sex marriage means actively rejecting this idea. And this rejection begins with the necessity of telling ourselves a lie about what marriage is, a falsehood that is wrong in itself and that has terrible fallout.

To all of Gallagher’s deep reflections on the nature of fundamental human relationships, Corvino can only reply with shallow recourse to mere conventionalism. Marriage, he argues, is an evolving social institution, which has picked up new baggage and shed old baggage over the centuries. It is simply a name we give to our most highly prized relationships of mutual care and commitment. Therefore, if we decide to include same-sex unions among such relationships, all we are doing is changing the “established usage” of the word. Marriage is, for Corvino, like other entirely conventional institutions with meanings that utterly “depend on shared understanding across a community,” like “corporation” or “baseball.” In a world in which the word “mother” has as much connection to nature as the phrase “designated hitter,” the purblind philosopher is king. As Gallagher writes, “an institution with deep roots in human nature and human necessity becomes contingent and arbitrary, a product of will and politics, as the rational connections between its component parts are severed.”

There is much more coverage of the controversy over marriage in this book than a brief review can recapitulate, including a discussion of the social science on same-sex parenting that has been overtaken by the recent research of sociologist Mark Regnerus and the New Family Structures Study (about which, see recent Public Discourse articles here and here). But there is one respect in which Corvino’s contribution to Debating Same-Sex Marriage is truly hair-raising. When Gallagher argues that one of the essential meanings of same-sex marriage is that it will result in the privatization and stigmatization of beliefs about marriage that have prevailed in every age and culture, and the active suppression of such beliefs in the public square, Corvino concedes that this is so. He replies, with an honesty that is both commendable and chilling: “Whichever side prevails in this debate, the other’s views will be marginalized. There’s no getting around that.”

In other words, Corvino does indeed look forward to a future in which those who believe men can only marry women and women can only marry men will be treated as bigots, just as racists are treated today. In this future, already working itself out in states and countries with same-sex marriage (and even some that so far have only same-sex civil unions), these bigots will be denied advancement in their professions; their rights to conduct private businesses according to their view of the reality of marriage will be regulated out of existence; their children will be inculcated with a view of marriage that is anathema to them; and in general they can look forward to being told they are in the grip of an “irrational hatred” they must relinquish as an obsolete social pathology. The fact that considered moral views, and not animosity, are at the root of their beliefs, will matter not at all. The fact that, for most people believing what human civilizations have always believed about marriage, this belief is intimately bound up with religious faith and vouchsafed to them by revelation itself, will avail them nothing.

A future in which same-sex marriage is enshrined in the law is a future without meaningful religious liberty, freedom of speech, or economic freedom for millions of Americans. Yes, they can “privatize” their view, and go about their business incognito, as it were. But that is a surrender of their freedom, not a preservation of it. As Gallagher astutely notes:

Using the power of law and culture to suppress alternative conceptions of marriage and sex (because gay people find these ideas hurtful and insulting to the newly internalized equality norm) is not a bug in the gay marriage system, it’s a feature. It’s part of, if not the main point.

Corvino is right. One side or the other will have its view “marginalized.” Until just a few years ago, the notion that persons of the same sex could marry one another was the very definition of a “marginal” view. Practically no one took it seriously, even among gays and lesbians (who do not universally embrace it even now). The case in its favor is so undeniably weak, as Corvino’s contributions to this book demonstrate, that the progress the same-sex marriage “movement” has made is an amazing tale of the incantatory power of the word “equality.” When the incantation fades, and sense returns to those who have been bewitched by it, the idea of same-sex marriage will once again retreat to the margins of society. That will be a victory of justice over tyranny. The only question is, will we resist the disastrous error of an experiment with a lie, or will we try to live the lie and then have to recover from it? Human societies have experimented with lies before. It is better to avoid them in the first place.

‘Dehumanizing’ and ‘insulting’: Kenya Bishops slam Melinda Gates’ contraception plan for Africa - by Peter Baklinski

NAIROBI, Kenya, July 31, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Catholic Bishops of Kenya have collectively slammed a pro-contraception article that appeared in the country’s Africa Review earlier this month as “dangerous” saying that it could “lead to destruction of the human society and by extension the human race.”

“We cannot allow our country to be part of an international agenda, driven by foreign funds and by so doing, losing our independence and our African values of the family and society,” wrote John Cardinal Njue, chairman of the Kenya Episcopal Conference of Bishops in a letter titled Let us Uphold Human Dignity. 

The article that the Bishops wrote against, titled “Kenya joins global birth control push”,  mentioned that Kenya is among the countries that have “signed up to a new $4.2 billion (Sh356 billion) drive to promote family planning services”, adding that leaders of more than 20 developing countries made “bold commitments” to address “financing and delivery barriers” that women face who seek contraceptive services and supplies.

The article also mentioned that Planning minister Wycliffe Oparanya attended a summit in the U.K. as part of the World Population Day where the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, co-hosts of the event, “underscored the importance of access to contraceptives as both a right and a transformational health and development priority.”

But the country’s Catholic Bishops made it clear that they would have nothing to do with the “artificial family planning programme” by “foreign forces”.

“[T]he use of contraceptives […] is both dehumanizing and goes against the teaching of the church, especially in a country like Kenya where a majority of the people are Christians and God fearing. It already threatens the moral fabric of the society and is an insult to the dignity and integrity of the human person.”

The Catholic Bishops urged all Kenyans and the country’s government leaders that “any development which does not protect the human person is meaningless and in vain.”

The Bishops slammed the program for targeting millions of girls and women in Africa with contraception while “many women are dying daily due to lack of proper medical care, food and housing.”

The Bishops point out that there are other “efficient ways of proactive and Responsible Parenthood through the practice of Natural Family Planning” that do not contradict the “centrality of the human person”.

“This of course demands discipline through abstinence, which is a necessary value in married life. This should not be rubbished as impossible,” they wrote

“Nobody should be forced to abuse his/her dignity through contraceptives”, the Bishops conclude.

Melinda Gates’ recently-launched campaign to distribute contraceptives to African women has come under attack by critics who say that it is based on “an unfounded and second-rate understanding” of the issue.

Italian journalist Giulia Galeotti called (http://www.lifesitenews.com/resources/birth-control-and-disinformation-the-risks-of-philanthropy) the Gates’ plan “off-target” and suggested that the people running it were “confused by bad information and by the stereotypes that persist regarding this topic [of family planning].”

Galeotti suggested that Gates must be unaware of the reliability of existing family planning methods that are entirely natural, such as the Billings Ovulation Method, which is not only moral in the mind of the Catholic Church, but is also completely free in that in involves no plastics or costly drugs. 

“Using this method, women can know if they are fertile or not, and based on that, can choose their sexual behavior,” wrote Galeotti, adding that the communist government of Peking promoted the method of regulating births that “cost nothing and didn’t damage the health of the woman, a method considered 98% reliable.”

Vatican newspaper blasts Gates for ‘disinformation’ campaign on contraceptives - by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

July 31, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano newspaper has published an article attacking Melinda Gates’ recently-launched campaign to distribute contraceptives to African women, saying that it is based on “an unfounded and second-rate understanding” of the issue.

Click here for full translation of article.

The article, written by Italian journalist Giulia Galeotti, and titled “Birth control and disinformation: The risks of philanthropy,” notes that Melinda Gates has expressed “anguish” over her new initiative, due to the conflict it creates with the Catholic hierarchy. It adds that Gates is apparently unaware of the reliability of the Billings Ovulation Method (BOM) - a moral and completely free family planning method - for spacing births.

Unlike contraception, the Billings method allows women to avoid conception by abstaining from sexual intercourse during the more fertile part of the month, and has no adverse health effects. The method is endorsed by the Catholic Church when used to avoid children for serious reasons. Galeotti notes that the method is so reliable that the Chinese government is encouraging its citizens to use it.

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“An example, little known but striking, of the success of BOM has been its adoption in China,” writes Galeotti. “The communist government of Peking was very interested in a method of regulation that cost nothing and didn’t damage the health of the woman, a method considered 98% reliable.”

However, the “original and unpardonable sin,” of BOM is that ” it is completely free, an aspect that, evidently, makes it very unpopular with the pharmaceutical industry, which, through chemical contraceptives, obtains enormous profits, as will others thanks to the philanthropy of Mrs. Gates.”

Galeotti warns that if Gates persists in “disinformation, presenting things in a false manner,” she “runs the risk” of falling into the kind of corporate exploitation carried out by Nestlé, which distributes powdered milk to pregnant women free, then charges them for it once they cease to produce breast milk, and pressures them with advertising portraying breastfeeding as “barbaric.”