Frances Bean Knows Everything

We have heard for years from the Religious Right, how sacred marriage is, and how its sanctity must be defended from homosexuals. This rhetoric has led to the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in the mid nineties, and more recently California’s Proposition 8.

After hearing the same line of bull for as long as we have, one would think that marriage was literally under attack, soon to be annihilated in the battle of the “great culture war” by the horrendous secular progressives.

In spite of this constant “protect family values” theme being played out in the public arena that is CNN and Fox News — the defenders of marriage’s sanctity do not actually practice what they preach .Shocked yet? I didn’t think so. Divorce is quite common among Christians and the religious right. The reality is that born again Christians are actually slightly more likely to divorce than their non believing counter parts. The fact that divorce rates are so high for Christians at all shows a marked hypocrisy in these groups defending the so called “sanctity of marriage”

It must also be noted that in general the divorce rate among American’s of any faith or non faith is an average of 33% (according to the Barna Group study), much lower than the oft quoted 50%. Some findings have shown that gay marriage might in fact lower the average divorce rate.

“Provisional data from 2008 indicates that the Massachusetts divorce rate has dropped from 2.3 per thousand in 2007 down to about 2.0 per thousand for 2008. What does that mean? To get a sense of perspective consider that the last time the US national divorce rate was 2.0 per thousand (people) was 1940. You read that correctly. The Massachusetts divorce rate is now at about where the US divorce rate was the year before the United States entered World War Two.”

With that, I will leave you with some food for thought.

I have a lot of sympathy for U.S. Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir.  He is feeling the heat of the animal rights nutcases, and has unfortunately been forced to kowtow to them, fearing that his Olympic dreams could be in jeopardy. Sadly this is another case of the intolerant PC bullies and their threats of violence trumping all.

Weir, who is known for his flamboyant costumes both on and off the ice, occasionally likes to wear fox fur on his costumes.  And PETA, along with other animal rights extremists have been causing a stir.  He is participating at his second Olympics, this time in Vancouver this month, and he’s worried, justifiably, that these activists will disrupt his performances, and cost him the gold.

And because of his legitimate fear, Weir has agreed not to wear fur at the Olympic Games. Here is an excerpt of his response, posted originally on icenetwork.com.

“I would like to announce that due to pressures and threats from a certain animal rights group [DS: he's referring to PETA] I will be changing the genuine fox fur on my free program costume that I will use in the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, B.C., to white faux fur. I made this decision after several threats were sent to me about disrupting my performance in the Olympic Games and my costume designer, Stephanie Handler, was repeatedly sent messages of hate and disgust. I do not want something as silly as my costume disrupting my second Olympic experience and my chance at a medal, a dream I have had since I was a kid.”

PETA and the rest of the animal rights extremists are certainly not acting ethically. They are in no way concerned with human rights or individual liberty. They, just like Islamic jihadists, want to dictate what we can say, what we can wear, whether or not we can have pets if we can use life-saving medicines derived from animal research and what we can eat – no beef, chicken, pork or seafood, etc. They are dangerous because they are fanatics who think their conviction gives the right to deny to other people freedom. It is not just Weir who has been diminished by their actions, it is everyone.

Weir closes his statement by saying that wearing fur is a personal choice and he understands the point of view of the activists, he just doesn’t agree with them. He feels that there are more important causes to be concerned with like homelessness and Haitian relief.

“I hope these activists can understand that my decision to change my costume is in no way a victory for them, but a draw,” Weir said in his statement. “I am not changing in order to appease them, but to protect my integrity and the integrity of the Olympic Games as well as my fellow competitors.”

Let’s hear it for Alice Shannon of Soldotna, Alaska, for her insight and wisdom. This letter to the editor was either the most moronic thing I have ever read, or it is a masterful piece of satire.

You’ll notice that she goes on to blame atheism for pretty much all of society’s ills.Now, we’ve heard it all in the past. Whether it’s atheism, patriotism, racism, sexism, ageism, fatism etc etc,  if there is a newspaper or magazine with a letters to the editor section, some crackpot has taken advantage of it.

This letter isn’t new. It appeared more than a year ago. From everything I have heard it is also a hoax, but a very convincing one.  It is resurfacing now due to the rise of anti-atheism in the US political arena.

Religion has once again become a concern for Americans, some of whom think Barack Obama is a Muslim terrorist, others who think Sarah Palin is a little bit too Christian. In a perfect world  it really shouldn’t matter. But we would be fooling ourselves to say that it doesn’t. It matters. It matters quite a bit.

In looking for the background on the “Alice Shannon” letter, there is a ton of conflicting information. The newspaper in which it appeared claims now that it was a spoof. Alice Shannon herself may or may not have said something along those lines. Like most other internet memes, it is the effect, not the origin, that we remember the most.

Letters pages are a pretty accurate reflection of how a society thinks. Or at least how a specific community thinks, where the correspondence isn’t so much about issues on the world stage as it is about small town politics, local concerns, and, as we saw above, extremists with a soap box in which to spew their agendas.

That particular letter might have been a hoax, but it was a realistic one.Who hasn’t seen similar ramblings, either as a letter to the editor, or in an editorial itself ( I’m looking at you New York Post). A small neighborhood newspaper I familiar with in NYC  printed a letter a couple of years ago criticizing Obama for “crying racism whenever someone disagrees with him.” That is not even remotely true. But, like “Alice Shannon”, this person found a way to spread his vitriol to hundreds of readers. As far as I know, that letter was very real.

Some newspapers censor these letters, or edit them in some way. But many run them in their entirety and allow the readers make up their own minds. Which I don’t disagree with. I think we are all tired of the attitude many have that the American public as a whole is somehow too stupid to make up their own minds. What I question is the reasoning behind printing the letter in the first place. Take out the word “atheist” and replace it with “Blacks” or”Jews”. Would that letter have made it past the editors? The fact that this letter ever saw the light of day, hoax or not, just goes to show how widespread and acceptable discrimination against atheists is in America.

This letter sounds like genuine intolerance, which is really all that matters in the long run .And that can be dangerous. Often it can ignite a flame in the same bigoted people it allegedly targeted in the first place.

College football hero and Heisman Trophy winner, Tim Tebow, won’t be in Sunday’s Super Bowl. But that doesn’t mean he won’t be seen. Focus on the Family, an interest group opposed to abortion, will air a 30-second commercial featuring Tebow and his mother, Pam. According to the group’s press release, the Tebows “will share a personal story centered on the theme of “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life “.

The “personal story” they are sharing is about Tim Tebow’s birth in 1987, when his parents worked as missionaries in the Philippines. According to Pam Tebow’s account in the Gainesville Sun, she contracted amoebic dysentery and fell into a coma shortly before the pregnancy. To facilitate her recovery, she was given strong drugs. Afterward, doctors told her the fetus was irreparably damaged. They diagnosed her with placental abruption, a premature separation of the placenta from the uterine wall, and predicted a stillbirth, and expressed concern for Mrs. Tebow’s life and health. The doctors recommended termination.

But the Tebow’s were against abortion, and she had faith in God. Today, her reward is a healthy, athletic football player son. “I’ve always been very [pro-life] because that’s the reason I’m here, because my mom was a very courageous woman,” Tim told reporters this month. That’s the prescribed moral of the story: Choose life. Dave Andrusko, the editor of National Right to Life News, puts it eloquently: “This amazing young man is able to share his many gifts because, and only because, Pam Tebow said no to abortion and yes to life.”

Pam Tebow’s story is definitely touching. But as a guide to making the decision on whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, it is misleading. Doctors are right to worry about continuing pregnancies similar to Tebow’s. Placental abruption has killed thousands of women and fetuses. No doubt many of those women trusted in God and said no to abortion. But they didn’t end up with Heisman-winning sons. They, or their babies, ended up dead.

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Dying is just the first problem in this scenario. Another is that the baby you were trying to save dies with you. A third is that your existing children lose their mother. A fourth problem is that if you had terminated the pregnancy, you might have gotten pregnant again and brought a new child into the world, but now you can’t. And now the Tebows have exposed a fifth problem: You can’t make a TV ad.

On Sunday, we won’t see all the women who chose life and instead found death. We’ll just see the Tebows, because they’re alive and had the best possible outcome. In the business world, this is known as survivor bias: Failed mutual funds disappear, leaving behind the successful ones, which creates the illusion that mutual funds tend to beat market averages. In the Tebows’ case, the survivor bias is quite literal. If you’re diagnosed with placental abruption, you have the right to choose life. But don’t be so sure that life is what you’ll get. In fact, it’s unlikely.

Placental abruption is rare. The detachment from the uterine wall can range from partial to complete. It occurs in fewer than 1% of all pregnancies. The more broadly it’s diagnosed, the less fatal it is on average, since the subtlest cases are also the least dangerous. Total placental abruption is always fatal if untreated.

In 2001, the American Journal of Epidemiology published an analysis of 7.5 million births that took place in the United States between 1995 and 1996. Abruption was documented in 46,731 of these pregnancies. Six percent of normal pregnancies produced babies with birth weights low enough to risk long-term health damage. Nearly half  of pregnancies in which placental abruption occurred produced such babies. Ten percent of normal pregnancies ended in premature births; the majority of “abrupted” pregnancies ended that way. In normal pregnancies, the perinatal death rate—the death of the fetus after 20 weeks gestation or in its first four weeks after birth—was less than 1 percent. In “abrupted’ pregnancies, the rate was roughly 12 percent. If the total number of “abrupted’ pregnancies in the United States between 1995 and 1996 was 46,731, then the number of fetuses and babies killed by placental abruption was 5,570.

And those are just the U.S. numbers. In third world countries, studies have found higher rates of perinatal death. In Thailand, for example, a 2006 review of 103 abrupted pregnancies showed a rate of 16 percent. In Sudan, an analysis of more than 1,000 cases from 1997-2003 yielded a rate of 20 percent. In Tunisia, a 2005 review of 45 cases indicated a rate of 38 percent.

If you see no moral difference between an early fetus and a late fetus or baby, you can argue that any perinatal death rate short of 100%  is better than preemptive abortion. But what about the women who carry “abrupted” pregnancies? For them, the potential complications include internal bleeding, hemorrhagic shock, kidney damage, embolisms, and heart failure. By some estimates, placental abruption causes 6 percent of all maternal deaths.

I can’t tell you what drugs Pam Tebow was given or how severe her abruption was. The Tebow’s aren’t answering questions about that. What we do know is she was doing missionary work in the Philippines. The perinatal and maternal death rates from abruption in her area were probably closer to the rates in Tunisia or Thailand than to the U.S. rate. She and her son are with us today not just because of courage but because of luck.

And don’t forget her age. Pam was 37 years old in 1987, when she developed her abruption. At that age, carrying a compromised pregnancy to term carries many an additional risks: that you’ll lose not just this baby but the ability to conceive another. That’s a further reason why a doctor might recommend termination—or why a woman might choose it.

Pro-life activists have always struggled with the invisibility of unborn life. In Tim Tebow, they see the invisible made visible: a child who has lived to tell his story because an abortion didn’t happen. “If his mother had followed her doctor’s advice,” notes LifeSiteNews, “he would be just another abortion statistic.”

But what’s true of abortion is also true of pregnancy complications. If Pam Tebow’s abruption had taken a different turn, her son would be just another perinatal mortality statistic, and she might be just another maternal mortality statistic. And you would know nothing of her story, just as you know nothing of the women who have died carrying pregnancies like hers.

And what do we know of the women who chose to abort in similar circumstances? Do we know their stories? Is Pam Tebow’s choice the only way to celebrate life and family?

Pam made a seemingly brave choice, and she has raised a fine son. Celebrate his life. But in celebrating his life, celebrate her luck. Many would consider the choice to risk her own life, when she had four other children selfish and cruel. If you say a prayer in thanks for Tim Tebow’s life, then you must in turn say a prayer for all the women and babies who weren’t quite so lucky.Because that is the main reason Tim Tebow is alive today. Sheer luck. Courage had nothing to do with it.

How could karaoke possibly be more annoying? Those salty bastards at MiJam Studios set to find out…and boy did they!

Impossible, you say?  Karaoke is already highly optimized for maximum annoyingness. But, what if the singers were children? Bwaaaaaaah!

It was obvious this simple adjustment was the key to frightening heights of painful annoyance in karaoke. With children at the mic, there would be no alcohol in the karaoke experience to provide anesthetic.Child karaoke singers can be counted on to make even more annoying song selections than adults. Even drunken adults!An adult karaoke bar might stoop to select “Total eclipse of the heart” or another one of these gems. But that’s merciful compared to the music in a kid’s arsenal. A child will belt out “It’s a small world” fifteen  times in a row without tiring, increasing the annoyance factor tenfold.

In this spirit, the MiJam Studio Mic was born—a microphone with a built-in speaker that connects to almost any music player with a 3.5mm stereo jack, allowing children, and basically any drunk fool, to sing along with their favorite songs on CD, mp3, etc.

A horror among horrors was unleashed on the world.