[Vision2020] Compassion for All Life

[david sarff]

Careful there Nick. Outside of excellent content, you nailed Godwin’s Law 
too.
Dave


>
>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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