WIP

Thanks for taking us back to the issue that inspired me to start this thread. The primary reason doctors don't want to get involved in abortions goes beyond whatever religious or philosophical reasons they may have, and straight to the campaign of domestic terrorism that uses confrontation, assaults, vandalism, death threats and the occasional murder to intimidate doctors and clinic workers (nurses and even security guards at clinics have been murdered) to instill a sense of fear to make the safe operation of an abortion clinic next to impossible. This is the strategy of terrorism afterall. All this time, you rightwing fanatics have tried to steer our attention outward at Muslim terrorist threats, when the gravest terrorist threats come from your friends in the white supremacist, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, anti-semetic movements. Who would have thunk it!......except for the fact that the biggest terrorist attack on U.S. soil prior to 9/11 was carried out by a couple of guys spawned in the right wing militia movement. And you demonstrate that the right wing has no actual respect for the law, and is willing to impose their will by any means necessary!

But the reason why this issue that should have been settled 35 years ago, keeps rearing its ugly head, is largely because the pro-choice side has bought into the rhetoric of the anti-abortion movement. Starting with the Clintons, Bill Clinton tried to straddle the fence on this issue in the 90's with his "safe, legal and rare" theme. They implicitly bought the argument that abortion is killing a fetus or embryo, but argued for a pragmatic position calling for cooperation to reduce the number of abortions performed -- this is BTW, the same theme that President Obama strikes when he talks on the subject of abortion. A clear position should have been adopted that you can't "kill" something that hasn't even started higher brain function, and even after 28 or 32 weeks, there are still valid reasons for making abortion available. Sorry to say, but the Feminist Movement and the multitudes of women who have had abortions quietly, and are reluctant to defend their choice, have made it possible for the anti-abortion movements to turn the issue from women's rights (as it was in the 70's) to right to life (as it is now).

Exactly! Dr. Tiller was not charged with any crimes, so his murder was no act of vigilante justice, as some anti-abortionists want to frame the story. He could have remained safe, and stuck to his day job as an obstetrician/gynecologist, but instead he was performing a service that is getting more and more difficult to obtain for women who have complications late in pregnancy......and the anti-abortion crusaders who constantly called him a "murderer," especially those with public platforms like Bill O'Reilly, should be considered accomplices to murder! I should have asked for the source of this story about Paul McHugh, that you and Shady were taking quotes from, because I should have known that there would be important details that you guys were leaving out, and I found this at Operation Rescue: A Pschiatrist who has examined over thirty medical records subpoenaed from abortionist George R. Tiller, says...... well, we've already heard what he said -- but if he examined about 30 records, that means he only was given access to a small fraction of the records if we are to believe the claims that Dr. Tiller performed thousands of abortions. It says further down: He was asked to review the abortion records by former Attorney General Phill Kline to determine if the mental health diagnoses were psychiatrically justified. That's Phill Kline (Republican), former Kansas Attorney General. Did this public official who had a deliberate strategy of trying to bring criminal charges against Dr. Tiller show those records to any other experts? And I should note that McHugh's credentials as a psychiatrist does not necessarily make him a credible spokesman on bioethics -- for that, he would also need to prove his mettle as a philosopher who understands all of the contentious issues involving defining personhood, and the problem of competing interests between a woman and a growing embryo or fetus. On other issues that Paul McHugh has expressed more opinions on, such as Dissociative Personality Disorders, transexuals and sex-change operations, who stopped Johns Hopkins from performing sexual reassignment surgeries -- he reveals himself to be straightjacketed by Catholic Dogma, and even promotes Reparative therapies -- something that very few in his profession believe are useful and are more likely to cause greater harm. http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/paul-mchugh.html http://crystalgaze2.blogspot.com/2009/02/d...aul-mchugh.html http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/...nssexualism.htm No cure yet for terminal birth defects, like Anencephaly, but anti-abortion fanatics are still insisting that pregnant women have to bring them to full term anyway! Many of those defects you listed may have medical breakthroughs, but they are still debilitating disorders that shorten life, require lifelong expensive medical treatment, and it should be up to the pregnant woman to decide after consulting her own trusted advisers, on whether to carry a fetus with birth defects to term. And, I would include Down's Syndrome on the list of defects that a woman should have an option to terminate pregnancy. Not just because of the demands of a lifelong commitment to a disabled child, but also because that genetic disorder dooms the child to a drastically shortened life of poor health. Some may wish to bring the child into this world, some may not -- the final decision should be that of the prospective mother to make -- not the state, not her husband, and not a bunch of men running around with bibles!

It's up to the guy who claims that some of Dr. Tiller's abortions were performed for "frivolous" reasons to make his case. And since the anti-abortion lobby was unable to get a conviction in a state with restrictive rules on third trimester abortions, McHugh's arguments did not carry much weight in court. There is only a small percentage of abortions which are performed in the third trimester in the first place. Do you have anything to back up your claims that all heath risks can be discovered at earlier stages of pregnancy -- but why should that matter anyway, if you really believe that life begins at "conception?"

Abortion clinics on every corner! Get real! The problem is declining access to abortion, even where it is legally available. There should at least be reasonable access, instead of the steady erosion of services that require many women to travel long distances for this procedure. Remember the last time we discussed this -- the lack of reasonable access was cited as a key reason why the U.S. has a higher percentage of late term abortions than Canada and European countries. An excellent article about the gradual erosion of abortion rights in your country is found at Prochoice.org But access to abortion has been severely eroded. The most recent survey found that 88% of all U.S. counties have no identifiable abortion provider. In non-metropolitan areas, the figure rises to 97%. As a result, many women must travel long distances to reach the nearest abortion provider. The article identifies five major categories of growing obstacles causing a decline in available access: Shortage of Abortion Providers Restrictive Legislation: such as parental notification laws, mandatory waiting periods and biased counseling laws Clinic Violence and Disruption Decreased funding for abortion services Declining Number of Hospitals Providing Abortion Services Spare us the hyperbole! You've admitted yourself a number of times that you have no interest in the ethical or moral dilemmas involved in this issue. For you, it's just a political issue, and only matters for scoring political points.

Where are the other experts who share McHugh's opinions? Any experts who reviewed the same cases and did not have objections would not have made the news!

How is a hospital going to be sued for procedures they are not able to perform? Directives from John Cardinal O'Connor don't allow anything considered "a direct abortion" to be performed, and this statement informs us that Catholic rules apply even at hospitals that have been merged with other institutions:Local bishops have the power to go even further than the Directives require. For example, John Cardinal O'Connor of New York proclaimed in 1995 that even collaboration with non-Catholic institutions would be prohibited unless those non-Catholic institutions "...are committed to comply with Catholic medical, moral and ethical principles." This would prevent collaborative efforts on community health services, health education, and more with any hospital and any institution which does not adhere to Vatican dogma. Another directive also impacts this abortion question: #48 In case of extrauterine pregnancy, no intervention is morally licit which constitutes a direct abortion. An "extrauterine pregnancy" includes ectopic pregnancies, where the fetus has implanted in the fallopian tubes, and pregnancies where the fertilized egg has implanted at the ovary or even outside the reproductive organs and in the abdomen. Extrauterine pregnancies can never proceed to viability. This condition absolutely does threaten the life of the mother, but Catholic hospitals do not permit abortions which would possibly save her life and, hopefully, allow her to have future pregnancies. The lives of non-Catholic women are thus supposed to be sacrificed on the altar of Catholic doctrines. The upshot of this is that in small communities where a Catholic hospital has merged with the only other (secular, nonsectarian) hospital, there can exist absolutely no hospital-based family planning services and birth regulation outside of the "rhythm method." And this has been decided for people - Catholics and non-Catholics alike - by the Vatican in Rome. http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/chri...ealth_abort.htm

Except the most obvious one: The Right is trying to load the blame for debt and deficits on the new administration. A cynic could conclude that the eight year Bush strategy was to bankrupt the country so badly that no future administration could address domestic needs in health care and other social issues. I don't know whether Obama can turn things around; preliminary evidence suggests that he is too timid and centrist to take on the big monied interests that don't want a national health care plan, and REAL banking reform that would reign in the casino gambling otherwise known as derivatives trading. What I can't stomach, is the conservative right trying to blame problems on government oversight, when the lack of regulation and ridiculously low taxes led to the market bubble in the first place. The Republican plan is to blame any future economic malaise on "socialism" so they can go back to screwing us over under a new Republican administration that will reward the filthy rich at everyone else's expense.

There are no guarantees that "any hospital" is going to have a doctor and staff willing and able to perform third trimester abortions. In New York, Catholic hospitals have even refused to operate on women with ectopic pregnancies, fearing running afoul of Church rules that demand such procedures cannot be performed until they pass the Church's "Rule of Double Effects" ethical mumbo jumbo. Instead, they have to be rushed off to non-catholic hospitals. Final result is that so-called "pro life" is putting real lives in danger!

Don't you ever get tired of being a slave to the opinions of your authority figures? There are lots of psychiatrists with just as impressive credentials as McHugh, with very different opinions. The reason why the conservative Christian Right goes to him as the oracle of psychiatric wisdom is because he is the shrink who frames his writings and opinions to conform with Catholic dogma. This is no different than supernaturalists quoting neurologist Michael Egnor, because he is one of the few people in that field who adamantly believes in a soul; global warming deniers quoting from the minority of climatologists who see no need to slow down fossil fuel use; believers in cosmological fine tuning quote Frank Tipler; and creationists......well, creationists have the biggest hurdle, since there don't seem to be any creationists in the fields of natural sciences - biology, paleontology, geology. Anyway, when complex, technical issues become the subject of court cases, the judges and juries generally have to evaluate the arguments of competing groups of experts, despite not having any technical expertise in the subject areas. All they need is critical thinking skills and an ability to make informed, reason-based judgments.....and going full circle, that's why you can't just quote someone with credentials as the final word on the subject! Now, doing a little searching around, it appears that Dr. McHugh has very little to say about the subject of abortion, but a lot to say about homosexuality and transgender issues, since these subjects are the most prominent....at least on the first two search pages: He is foremost in the Vatican's PR campaign to reframe the Church's pedophile priest scandal as a gay priest problem: The Gay PurgeBy scapegoating homosexual priests, the Catholic Church seeks to avoid a tougher look at its secret history of abuse. Vatican recommends some use of psychological testing in seminaries How Paul McHugh will save the Catholic Church Tuesday, February 10, 2009Debunking Dr. Paul McHugh The short comment here is that in McHugh's view, transsexuals didn't measure up to his idea of beauty. For a supposed professional, working in mental health, McHugh should have long ago discarded such idiotic believes from his practice. First, they spent an unusual amount of time thinking and talking about sex and their sexual experiences; their sexual hungers and adventures seemed to preoccupy them. Second, discussion of babies or children provoked little interest from them; indeed, they seemed indifferent to children. But third, and most remarkable, many of these men-who-claimed-to-be-women reported that they found women sexually attractive and that they saw themselves as “lesbians.” Ummm...wow. There's more assumptions in that one paragraph than a pharmacy has pills. Starting off with the idea that transsexuals are sex-obsessed. In reality it doesn't work that way. Transsexuals have varying levels of interest in sex - and it's all over the map. Perhaps McHugh only remembers the conversations about sex because they piqued his curiousity. As for children, not everybody is cut out to be a parent; and some, are so distressed by their situation that the idea of creating the emotional space to care for a child isn't even a point of discussion. (I know several ladies who have no desire whatsoever to raise a family - period) As for his astonishment that someone might transition and identify as a lesbian, it only goes to underscore Dr. McHugh's limited understanding of the diversity of human sexuality. ..............so just having expert credentials should not be a reason for average people not to bother to try to reach informed opinions of their own! Religion and conservative philosophy both lead their adherents to shut off their own reasoning skills and blindly adopt the opinions of trusted authority figures.....and that makes the combination of the two a lethal blend taking us down the road to authoritarianism. Great! But shouldn't that be a good reason to examine the opinions of other experts who have read these records? Rather than blindly trusting the pro life expert! No, an MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine would never tell a lie! What were the ages of those "young ladies" BTW? And there is evidence that girls coming from conservative Christian backgrounds, which preach abstinence, are more likely to need abortion services than typical teenage girls, and they are more likely to delay seeking help until they are in later stages of pregnancy, and unable to hide the fact: Religious school grads likelier to have abortions New study examines faith’s role in deciding to terminate a pregnancy In these cases where you think a young, teenage (or even pre-teen) girl should be forced to have the baby, are factors such as the girl's age or her mindset play any role in the decision? Or should young girls be forced to have babies as punishment for sin? Who's talking about the bible?

Never let the facts get in the way of a good argument! Flipping through Rush and some other rightwing demagogues on the radio, you would think that everything was going fine until Barack Obama driving the U.S. government into bankruptcy. The tragedy is that many people have attention deficit disorder these days, they've probably already erased the memories of George Dubya Bush, and the damage he did by cutting taxes, starting wars financed by increasing debt, and adding to entitlement spending. So, how did projected budget surpluses turn into massive deficits? When Bill Clinton left office, the CBO projected $800 billion surpluses for 2009-2012. Now that same office is predicting - with rather more certainty, one would think - $1.2 trillion deficits for the same years. The above-linked article attempts to figure out why. Here's the key points: * The biggest chunk of the projected deficit is from what the article calls "the business cycle." Certainly there was a recession earlier in the decade, and we're now in the Great Recession or whatever it's being called. This accounts for 37%. * Coming in at a close second is George W. Bush's signature domestic policies, like his tax cuts and Medicare Part D. These account for 33% of the projected deficit. Let's remember this. * 20% of the projected deficit is due to Obama continuing various Bush programs and policies. The Iraq War continues to be a huge drain on our nation's finances. The tax cut for people making under $250,000 and the Wall Street bailout are in this category. * The stimulus bill accounts for 7% of the projected deficit. * Obama's proposed plans for health care, education and energy reform account for 3% of the projected deficit. According to the article, "If the analysis is extended further into the future, well beyond 2012, the Obama agenda accounts for only a slightly higher share of the projected deficits" Funny how all of these fiscal conservatives were so quiet when Bush created his prescription drug benefit plan, to buy the votes of senior citizens. Most of massive deficit was already set in place by the Bush Administration.....they just figured the wheels wouldn't fall off the economic wagon until they were safely out of office, and able to foist all of the blame on the incoming administration. Now, the Obama Administration has some hard choices to make; and they should start by increasing the top tier income tax rates, and make some deep cuts on military spending to cover needed reforms on health care, improvements to infrastructure and the environment.

You wouldn't know evidence if it fell on your face! What evidence? This McHugh only offered an opinion -- presumably a biased opinion, since he has served as a Vatican consultant. So, revealing a few more details about his background to show that he is not an unbiased observer, somehow constitutes "character assassination." And now that his family is permanently closing the clinic, there may be only two remaining facilities left in the United States performing third trimester abortions; so the odds are greater than ever that some of those necessary cases will not be to travel to an out-of-state clinic, endangering the lives of women who develop complications late in pregnancy.....so much for pro life! Can you cite any examples of women having third trimester abortions because they wanted to go to a concert, or play sports? And you're the crybaby whining about character assassination! Leave it to you to imply that a man who refused to give in to the intimidation and harassment of anti-abortion fanatics -- even suffering two gunshot wounds on a previous occasion -- was only in it for the money! Why? Could you expand on that point. So far, all the right wing anti-abortion nuts, including Operation Rescue and Bill O'Reilley -- who repeated the "Tiller, the baby killer" slogan many times on his show, are all decrying the murder of Dr. Tiller. Well, that's kind of odd, to be showing either real or fake concern over the "murder" of someone who has been labeled a mass-murderer by your movement! Does the far right ever call the execution of criminal "murder." So, is it really about protecting the lives of the unborn, or is it more about controlling women's sexual behaviour and forcing a dramatic increase in birth rates? Nervous laughter I presume -- coming from the anti-abortion movement who fear having a little light shining on their connections with other rightwing extremist groups. The respectable front of the anti-abortion movement has provided idealogical justification and in many cases, money and logistical support for the terrorist groups like "Army of God" to do the dirty work that the church front groups don't want to get their hands dirty with! And why would a doctor want to subject him or herself to a constant campaign of harassment, vandalism, threats of violence, death threats, and actual cases of assault and murder?

Scott Roeder, charged with abortion doctor George Tiller's murder, says more violence is coming "I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal," Scott Roeder said in one of two phone calls to the Associated Press from prison. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/06 So, when is Dick Cheney going to send in his goons to waterboard this guy? Or use some of those other methods of "enhanced interrogation" that he claims are so effective! Whether this guy legitimately knows of other pro life terrorist sleeper cells, or is just bluffing, we do know that he is closely tied with Operation Rescue and the Army of God right wing extremist groups.

And in the interest of full disclosure, Paul McHugh is also an extreme Catholic ideologue who has in the past, served as the Vatican's adviser on sexual matters. That said, his statement: "I didn't think that those records supported the idea that these women were likely to suffer a substantial and irreversible impairment," has any legitimacy when you consider that some of the third trimester abortions performed by Dr. Tiller, were on girls as young as nine years old. Think about that for a moment and recall how just a little while back, the Catholic Church in Brazil tried to force a nine year old girl down there to deliver twins....which would have led to her death and made her a martyr for the pro life cause. The Church excommunicated her mother and the doctors who saved the girl's life. Other cases where a pregnancy goes bad and threatens the life of the mother, or the fetus has developed severe abnormalities, are similarly ignored by the anti-abortion extremists who claim to protect the sanctity of life. Sure they did! We've already established the fact that third trimester abortions are difficult operations that cannot be performed in most abortion clinics. The women who seek this procedure are doing so for very serious reasons. Besides severe health concerns for either the mother or the fetus, there were many cases of young girls who were victims of incest, or were trying to hide the fact that they were sexually active from their parents -- and tried to hide their pregnancies until it became obvious to others. There are many serious reasons why the option of a late term abortion must not be closed off by some arbitrary laws that give rights to a fetus.

At the time we last visited this topic, the wikipedia article on abortion in Canada, stated that Quebec was seeking a doctor to perform third trimester abortions. A major part of the problem in getting doctors and medical staff to perform abortions at any stage, let alone third trimester, where they will face a constant barrage of death threats, is that steady multi-level campaign of harassment and intimidation. Not many medical students want to go in the business of becoming martyrs.....so, once again, terrorism works where legal and lawful tactics do not.

The campaign of harassment is applied at all stages of abortion, and it's one of the reasons why women in many regions of the U.S. have great difficulties getting pregnancy terminated -- we've been over this before. The FLQ in Quebec was small potatoes compared to what your rightwing extremist friends are brewing up -- just take a look at the Homeland Security report; the greatest terrorist threat is coming from within, not from the Arab World.

It's all part of a broader right wing movement of creeping fascism: « Domestic terrorist kills Wichita gynecologist | "The most dangerous domestic terrorism threat" Department of Homeland Security report on Rightwing Extremism, issued April 7, 2009: § Revisiting the 1990s: Paralleling the current national climate, rightwing extremists during the 1990s exploited a variety of social issues and political themes to increase group visibility and recruit new members. Prominent among these themes were the militia movement’s opposition to gun control efforts, criticism of free trade agreements (particularly those with Mexico), and highlighting perceived government infringement on civil liberties as well as white supremacists’ longstanding exploitation of social issues such as abortion, inter-racial crimes, and same-sex marriage. During the 1990s, these issues contributed to the growth in the number of domestic rightwing terrorist and extremist groups and an increase in violent acts targeting government facilities, law enforcement officers, banks, and infrastructure sectors. http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2009/05/the_mo...domestic_te.php

On the foreign policy front, the number one reason for maintaining the status quo in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, is that "cutting and running" is giving in to terrorism! Well, now the U.S. has provided us with an example of successful use of terrorist tactics right at home, in Kansas. The family of slain abortion doctor George Tiller has announced today that they are closing his Kansas City clinic permanently. http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_ne...ry/1241739.html The so-called "Pro Life" movement has now put the lives of women with abnormal pregnancies, or girls as young as nine years old (and would not have survived delivery) in grave danger. http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/featur...tion/index.html Now that this example of rightwing terrorism that capped decades of violence, vandalism, death threats, and harassment of women seeking the clinic's services has been rewarded, it's time for sane, rational thinking people to push back at the religious right wing extremists who use the abortion issue to serve their larger goals of re-establishing patriarchal society and ramping up birth rates. The lie that abortions are "murdering babies" should have been more vigorously challenged by supporters of abortion rights, instead of just schlepping the subject off as a "woman's right to choose." The simple fact is that human tissue is not enough to gain legal rights of personhood -- especially rights that supercede the woman is supporting this life. Simple fact is that if it is not defined as a person, it cannot be murdered! So, allowing rightwing nutcases like Bill O'Reilley to repeatedly bait George Tiller with the slogan "Tiller, the baby killer" should have been kicked down right from the start. The right wing, which claims to represent freedom and individual rights, wants to redefine personhood as beginning at some magical, nonexistent state they call "conception;" what this entails is that not only could a woman not have an abortion at any stage of pregnancy, but she would also not be allowed any chemical or mechanical methods of contraception, because of their abortifacient potential. Fetal rights also means that a woman who engages in anything deemed to be risky behaviour during pregnancy, which could include smoking, drinking alcohol, or taking drugs, or less easily defined risks such as exercise, or working during later stages of pregnancy. One state, South Carolina, by judicial fiat has declared that viable fetuses are legal persons and that pregnant women who use illegal drugs or engage in any other behavior that jeopardizes the fetus can be prosecuted as a child abusers or murders. Indeed, the arrest of pregnant women is not limited to those using illegal drugs. In Utah, a woman was charged with murder based on the claim that she caused a stillbirth by refusing to have a c-section earlier in her pregnancy. These arrests are taking place in spite of the lack of authorizing legislation and in spite of overwhelming opposition from medical, public health and child welfare organizations. http://www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.org/i...pregnant_women/ Welcome to the brave new world of "sanctity of life!"

NO, the problem is there are too many people like you who think they should just be allowed to shoot off their mouths without backing up their opinions with any evidence. If you have contrary evidence, put it up or shut up; no one cares for your empty-headed opinions based on your personal likes and dislikes. You are declaring gay to be not normal 35 years after the American Psychological Society declared that homosexuality was not a mental illness or a pathology. Scientific evidence on the subject of human sexual behaviour gathered since then finds a number of physiological links to sexual orientation and behaviour -- the evidence is pretty clear that people don't choose to their sexual orientation, and therefore, disparaging gays for their sexual orientation is no different than labeling people of other races as inferior. Conservatives need scapegoats to revile and ridicule, so I guess rightwing xenophobes are afraid of losing another convenient target for righteous indignation.

By that standard I could call BS on virtually everything you post here, if I had the time -- since you don't bother fact-checking your opinions before posting them! I thought I made it clear that I was not arguing that homosexuality has to be accepted because it is in nature, but rather that its existence takes away that "unnatural" argument used by the religious to claim that there are no natural biological factors behind homosexual behaviour. The claim made by your Bible and the inerrantists you get your beliefs from, is the ridiculous, unsupported with evidence claim, that they are "choosing" to do what is unnatural -- "leaving the natural use of the woman"...yadayadayada.... this strange notion of choosing to be a homosexual for lustful reasons leads many Bible critics to assume that St. Paul or Apostle Paul was a closeted homosexual, torn by his own homosexual inclinations, and writes insane comments in Romans ch.! and I Corinthians 7 of going gay because of lack of self-control and being tempted into such sin by Satan. This sort of narrative makes no sense when applied to the majority of men who are not sexually aroused by same-sex behaviour; only if the writer is a self-hating homosexual, a 2000 year old Ted Haggard, do these points about giving in to unnatural lusts make any sense at all! The real world evidence for the causes of homosexual and bisexual behaviour are connected to genetic, hormonal and even differences in brain development One, or all of these triggers have to be present before someone is going to have the necessary same-sex attractions to become bisexual or homosexual. As for murder -- sure, commandment #6 says "thou shalt not kill," but there are exceptions to that law given from on high -- for example: it's okay to kill witches, homosexuals, fortune-tellers, fornicators, adulterers, entire races of people (the sons of Amalek), blasphemers, violators of the sabbath, other tribes living in the Promised Land, and murderers of course -- which by this standard, only applies to unlawful killing of members of society. The Bible provides lots of loopholes to commit divine-sanctioned murder, and that doesn't even include all of the murder committed by this bloodthirsty god who drowns entire worlds when his creation displeases him. There are likely many species of animals that are more moral than the majority of humans!

Then get on your google bike and prove it asshole, or shut up! It doesn't take rocket science to notice that the promises of free trade creating prosperity for all, have been a fraud. And it doesn't escape notice of anyone who's kept track of election cycles over the last 30 years that powerful interest groups get their policies enacted regardless of the political party in power; and once they get approved, they don't get removed, regardless of the promises of the opposition while out of office. The swinging pendulum only makes cosmetic changes!

And it's another factor that doesn't fit in with your straight-jacketed version of what is and is not normal! Since homosexuality occurs in nature, it shows that a natural occurrence of homosexuality in humans cannot be regarded as abnormal. The "sin against nature" arguments of Aquinas and other theologians have no basis in an actual study of the natural world.

Spoken like a true authoritarian conservative fascist. I'm left handed - is that okay? After all, 90% of the population is right handed; but I prefer to write lefthanded, throw a ball, and even kick with my left foot -- like most lefthanders, it is actually a complete side preference, not merely hand preference. That should give you an indication that not everyone likes or dislikes the same things...but the idea of letting people pursue their own personal choices escapes you....like it does for other authoritarians, who want us all believing the exact same things. I don't know if this has already been posted, but I just can't resist: Gay penguin couple adopts abandoned egg in German zoo and that should explain why same-sex coupling, which has been observed occurring in virtually every animal, bird, and even a few reptiles, is not "abnormal." Those two gay penguins have just shown us how this sort of behaviour sometimes provides an evolutionary advantage, and why it has never been removed by the process of natural selection in all of these millions of years. Live and let live!

I have to question whether they are actually reading their own creationist propaganda! If they were, they should be better informed, and able to expand on creationist and biblical literalist arguments. I've learned most of what I know about the creationist/ID movement from proponents such as a retired chemical engineer who used to post frequently on another forum, and would answer challenges to Behe's Irreducible Complexity, and Dembski's information theory that he claims can detect "intelligent design" from normal evolutionary change. Not that it makes the case for ID any more likely, but it's at least worth discussing it with someone who understands creationism, rather than someone who is just cutting and pasting from creationist sites, and doesn't appear to have even bothered to read the articles. Thanks for that one. I heard the story on the "Skeptics Guide to the Universe" podcast, and show host - Stephen Novella, mentioned that he posted the blog entry on his Neurologica blog. At the time, I couldn't find anything else about the story, except for the published research report that I don't have access to.

I've been all across the political spectrum during my life, and I'm not sure exactly where I am now! I am sure that Conservatives and conservative philosophy that has also permeated the Liberal Party (and the Democratic Party in the U.S.) is a dangerous social movement that is taking us down the road to fascism -- where we have militaristic patriarchal values, authoritarian government, shrinking personal freedoms, blending of religion and politics, and the deliberate dismantling of the Middle Class by means of unbridled free trade, corporate tax breaks, and supporting union-busting tactics of mega-corporations like Walmart. The conservative thinkers saw what happened with the growth of a middle class after the Depression and WWII and didn't like what they saw. The new middle class was a threat to both the authority of business leaders, and the authority of the Catholic and Protestant religious leaders on personal, moral issues. They were more politically active than earlier generations, but now that we are back to an era where most people are working 50 - 60 hours a week, if possible, to make ends meet, the shrinking middle class is too busy struggling to pay the bills, to be able to devote much time to questioning government policy. The grand Conservative strategy is to impoverish the middle class at the expense of the top 1 to 5% -- the old privileged aristocracy by any other name! But, to keep the conservative foot soldiers supporting their corporate paymasters, their anger and dissatisfaction is diverted and unleashed on minority groups that are accused of defiling the Christian nation: whether they be racial minorities, immigrants or homosexuals; rage must be diverted to scapegoats so the devout followers don't start asking why the CEO's of their corporations are the only ones gaining in good times and bad, with none of their entrepreneurial know-how "trickling down" to the rest of society. The fact that the Liberal Party runs a slightly more moderate version of conservative, supply-side philosophy makes the question of whether "Liberals are worse than Conservatives" a meaningless argument! As in the States, both parties are beholden to the same interests who always have politicians working in their interests no matter who wins the election. So the Liberal (or Democratic) Party may make noises about cheap imports from China and elsewhere, but once in power, they have no wiggle room to make any substantive changes to a strategy that strengthens the economic grip of multinational corporations at everyone else's expense. There are some minor improvements when straight 100 proof conservatives are dumped out on their ass, but if you ignore the shrill, ridiculous right wing rhetoric State-side, and observe how closely Obama is following the economic and military strategies of the Bush Administration (which no doubt will be mirrored by an Ignatieff win here), it's worth asking whether it is an actual benefit to put a slightly more moderate group of corporate toadies in power -- which will only be replaced by another round of conservative fanaticism calling for more business tax cuts and privatization of health, education and public services. Have a nice day!