[Vision2020] Compassion for All Life

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:

I always find it amusing (but sad) that conservatives are now asking 
the rest of us to join in the "collective  censure of an evolving 
society" with regard to discrimination against women and people of 
color.  These same people were the ones who condemned Martin Luther 
King as a lawless Commie and made fun of feminists (and still do).

When I began my section on "Women and Ethics," I always asked my 
students if they agreed with "the theory that women should have 
political, economic, and social rights equal to those of 
men."  Everyone in the class raised his or her hand.  I then told 
them that this was the definition of feminism in Webster's New World 
Dictionary.  I was happy to have a class full of feminists, some of 
them reluctant and some of them resentful that I'd tricked them, but 
there was not a Femo-Nazi or bra burner in sight.

I would rather join the consensus of the world community that death 
penalty is barbaric and that a woman has a right to choose what she 
does with her own body.  This right is even more secure with the 
knowledge that the early fetus is not a person according the science 
of fetal development and according to our religious, moral, and legal 
traditions.

The reason why we don't read anything about fetal rights in the 
writings of our founding thinkers is that it was not on their moral 
radar screen.  If they did not recognize the rights of women or 
slaves, and refused to see their hypocrisy, then I'm sure that their 
concern for unborn human beings was as absent as it was among even 
the most devout Protestants.

Our founding thinker's support for the inalienable right of all moral 
and legal persons is now being fulfilled, and there is a growing 
consensus that those rights should also extend to gays, lesbians, 
bisexuals, and the transgendered.  Until we meet the first ETs, this 
is, as far as I can see, the last frontier of a truly universal moral 
consensus on protecting the rights of all persons.

Finally, this call for joining a common moral consensus is especially 
ironic when one of these conservatives chooses to flirt shamelessly 
with his women critics, insists on typing people according to their 
headgear, and calls a person who supports a woman's right to choose a Nazi.

Yours for the growing moral consensus,

>Nick Gier

>I thanks Jennifer McFarlane for the following gem:

"Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to 
human affairs."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
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