Re: Roberts, Alito, and Abortion
[quote=KinKyJ]Now that's a dangerous thing to say imo. You're acting like proposals of religious groups are per definition bad or connected to a hidden agenda. Take Belgium at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century for example. Working conditions in the factories were terrible and it was a priest called Daens who climbed the barricades to demand more rights and better conditions. Thanks to the movement he started, child labour was abolished and laws were voted that ended the exploiting of the working class.
For me, everyone has the right to voice his opinion just as long as it doesn't hurt other people. I don't want to wake up one fine morning and find out people will ignore my point of view just because I happen to be a catholic...
Apart from that, I remember a quote from one of my professors when I was studying Law: "Chasse le surnaturel et il revient au galop." (Chase the supernatural and it will return galloping) He meant that if you push religion out of society and fill the gaps with science and humanism, people will run back to spirituality faster than you can say "secular". People just need something to believe in, guidance of some sort, something that helps them to make sense of all the shit happening in their lives...
Btw, I'd like to know what Mike Rounds' next step would be if his daugther was raped got pregnant tomorrow... Call the exorcist? [/sarcasm]
(FYI, I might be a roman-catholic, but I'm not religious at all. Hell, it's been more than a year since the last time I went to church and that was only for the funeral of my grandmother)[/quote]
well there is a big difference between spirituality and religion. and if you reread what i said i was saying that groups who are religiously motivated shouldn't gain power. if you're religious but have opinions that are motivated by clear thinking and not hocus-pocus superstitions, then that's fine.
i cannot and will not abide groups which base social and political perspective on religious rhetoric.
fine we can have whatever religion we want in this country; that's all great and everything, but we can't create socio-political policy based on religious supposition, which is, really, baseless.
the actions of religious leaders in positions of power, like the one you described, are motivated by justice or compassion, not by religious ideology, like in the case of abortion. fundamentalist religious opposition to abortion is not out of compassion (where is the compassion for the mother??) but is merely ideology rearing its head in the form that "life is sacred and life begins at conception, therefore abortion is wrong."
again, i don't care if someone is religious. i do have a problem with religious groups gaining power because they happen to have a position (like right to life) that some portion of the public agrees with. if you are against abortion because you have come to the conclusion that the psychological repercussions are too much, that it can be done in cases where the baby is almost fully developed, etc. that's fine, because that's a reasonable argument. however, if it's rooted in, "well, the bible says...", uh uh. no. you just can't let groups with these opinions to take root.