Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God. The principle itself — that human life is fundamentally distinct from other forms of life and cannot be taken intentionally without justification — has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man ‘in the image of God.
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The People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state.
“[Alabamians] have required us to treat every human being in accordance with the fear of a holy God who made them in His image.
— Alabama Chief Justice and Fundamentalist Christian Tom Parker
Forced birthers have spent the past 50 years chipping away at reproductive rights, finally overturning Roe v. Wade two years ago. And they are not finished, not in the least. The recent ruling on IVF in Alabama is yet another reminder that Christian theocrats will not rest until all of us are living under the iron rule of Jesus and the Bible — as interpreted by them, of course. Evangelicals, Mormons, and Roman Catholics now have birth control in their sights. Believing personhood begins when the sperm and egg unite, forced birthers demand that all forms of birth control that “murder” zygotes must be banned. Some of them want ALL birth control banned, saying that God alone opens and closes the womb, forgetting that God himself is responsible for countless abortions every year via ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages. The goal is to return women to the good old days of the 1950s.
Next up on the agenda will be same-sex marriage. Chief Justice Tom Parker had this to say about the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage:
I’ve written extensively about the judicial overreach in the Obergefell decision, and it is going to be writings like that that the new [U.S. Supreme Court] majority can use to restore what our Founding Fathers intended for America to be.
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The relationship of marriage was designed by the Creator; it both predates and transcends civil societies. No civil government was its originator, so none has power to define its essence. Rather, the nature and outer boundaries of marriage are defined only by its Supreme Architect, in His written word and in the natural order. That nature and those boundaries include the original creation of marriage as a covenant relationship by mutual consent between two human beings of the opposite sexes – i.e. one man and one woman.
Theocrats are now in seats of power, places from which they can cause catastrophic harm to our Republic and undermine a hundred years of social progress. They will not rest until all Americans bow their knees and say Allah Akbar, uh, I mean, Jesus Christ is King and Lord Over All!
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Chief Justice Parker says: “That nature and those boundaries include the original creation of marriage as a covenant relationship by mutual consent between two human beings of the opposite sexes.”
If “mutual consent” was truly part of God’s original design, he must have forgotten to have that part written into his Law which contained provisions requiring a woman to marry her rapist, and which permitted the conquering Israelites to take wives from among the virgins whose families they slaughtered.
It really does seem that Christian Nationalists know no bounds. They do not respect boundaries, other people’s beliefs, women, the LGBT community, or indeed anyone who is not a heterosexual white male.
So can a man who has donated sperm then claim tax relief for a dependent? I’ve always tended to the view that judges on the whole are a pretty sensible, independent group, much maligned unfairly. I’m staggered by the foolishness of Parker. He doesn’t entirely change my view of judges, but he’s certainly shown that it’s not universally true.
“[Alabamians] have required us to treat every human being in accordance with the fear of a holy God who made them in His image.”
My response to this nonsense is “which god”? Of course, I know the answer is “the one true God as Parker interprets it in his mind”. This is why our country was founded without a state religion, to keep decisions secular and fair to all. Yet these religious extremists have gotten into places of power and force their particular peculiar ideas onto the rest of us.
Bingo. And it’s not just whether Yahweh, or Vishnu, or Allah is the real deal. More like which of the ten bazillion Jesuses is the real deal? And make no mistake, if given the opportunity, most fundamental / orthodox church people would gladly mow down the other Christian denominations and send them to perdition.
That’s right, George, each Christian sect thinks they have the TRUTH about who Jesus was, and all other sects’ Jesus are faux Jesus!
Great post! You put your finger on the greatest division in America since the Democrat Party’s advocacy of slavery in the 19th century.
The US Supreme did the country a favor by returning the abortion issue to the states.
The “Democrat” party has more than atoned for any such history with it’s advocacy for civil rights and equal justice, most of which were resisted tooth and nail by the “Republic” party. Jasper contradicts himself by deploring the divisive institution of slavery but praising the divisive abolition of a Federal right to privacy. What is divisive is individual states defining inevitably inconsistent definitions of privacy. Reproductive control may be a private matter in one state dividing it from another state where crackpot Judges can decide reproduction is no way private but a matter of public concern.
One problem with the Roe vs. Wade decision is that it took this sort of thing out of democratic control for 50 years. It allowed pro-lifers to galavant around with some of their other foul dominionist policy coming along for the ride. Now that it is overturned some places are 50 years behind (and IVF itself is only about 45 years old). Alabama has already exempted IVF treatment, though a lot of nuttiness remains. This is a loser issue for Republicans, the old guard will remain for a while before it becomes nearly universally accepted.
I’m astonished that some can go through years of concentrated training in principles of ethics, logic, reasoning, social policy, equity. justice, etc. that is law school, and in the end, prove they learned something, and yet, cling somewhere in their minds to the sort of unmitigated irrational, superstitious nonsense spewed by Tom Parker. Rarely have I heard or read such tripe from any lawyer. That doesn’t mean few lawyers have those ideas but if they do, they retain enough sanity to keep it to themselves. Tom Parker conducts himself so that he does not SEEM to be a danger to himself or others, that being the legal test for whether a person needs confinement. However I submit that his position of power, enabling him to deprive others of their rights, does make him a danger to others. Unfortunately the rules of our society are not sophisticated enough yet to prevent some madmen from gaining positions of power as this demented person has done.