"Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to Me.” (Matthew 25:40)

I'm going to pass on Andrew Sullivan's spat with K-Lo from the National Review. He presents a pretty compelling argument against social conservatives who want to ban same-sex marriage.

The Federal Marriage Amendment for which K-Lo campaigned would render my civil marriage null and void. It would also explicitly remove any legal protections even under the rubric of "civil unions" that would provide me and my husband security. It would give people other than my spouse legal claims on my property were I to die or be rendered in some way incompetent. It would effectively divorce us. This is not factually in dispute. And if K-Lo supports equal treatment for gay couples under the rubric of civil unions, I'd be happy to discover that. But that is the only way she can argue that she is not, in fact, insisting that gay couples be stripped of defensible rights and stigmatized under the law. K-Lo even supported Virginia's Marriage Amendment which claims to bar even private legal arrangement between gay spouses. The removal of all these rights and responsibilities, by the way, in no way "protects" marriage for straight people: their rights are guaranteed regardless,
and I am an enthusiast for those rights and for those families. I came from one, after all.

We're not in danger of losing it [the ability to create children] in any way - and never will. Such heterosexual unions will remain and should remain at the heart of civilization, and heterosexual desire is hardly likey to evaporate because society is inclusive of all people, and not just the overwhelming majority. Moreover civil marriage already allows people to commit to one another without reproducing and no one seems to believe that marriage needs to be protected from this. So why the double standard for infertile or non-reproducing straights and gays - unless the point is purely to stigmatize homosexuality?

We are not redefining it [marriage]. We are making it available for the tiny minority of human beings and citizens who otherwise have no secure legal or social protection for their relationships. I'm sure K-Lo doesn't mean to hurt gays and in her own mind doesn't believe that stripping me of basic rights in my relationship renders me second class. But it does, and her feelings about this are irrelevant compared with the facts. Under her vision of society, my husband and I are denied the basic rights granted to every heterosexual. Under my vision, we all have the same rights; and gay people can and should celebrate the families of straight people, do all they can to support parenting, while straight people can do the same for their gay siblings, offspring and friends. Her vision necessitates marginalization and second class citizenship. And
she and others on her side of the debate need to acknowledge it as such and own it.

No Need for Universal Healthcare

One of the more prevalent arguments in the debate about universal health insurance is that we need to make sure everyone is insured because insured folks are paying for the uninsured. The theory goes that an uninsured person visits the ER for a serious injury. Without insurance and being unable to pay his bills, the hospital gets stuck with the liability of the man's costs. From here, the hospital passes the cost over to insured patients and also by receiving tax funding from you and I. Therefore, as the argument goes, you and I are paying for the uninsured while they get a free ride.

As some of you may know, I have been persuaded by this argument in the past considering my stance on social issues is that people should be free to do whatever they want, as long as it does not harm others. I can admit that even though I'm not directly or physically harmed by someone else's choice to forgo health insurance, there is potential that I can be harmed financially by paying for the costs incurred by those who do not have health insurance.

However, thanks to recent research by CATO, it appears that we don't end up paying for the uninsured after all. Surprisingly, it seems that the uninsured themselves end up paying for the costs of themselves:

Many uninsured people show up at the hospital, get treated, and then don’t pay
their bills. Doctors and hospitals scream an awful lot about having to
deliver “uncompensated” care. But two recent studies — one on doctors services by Jonathan Gruber and David Rodriguez, the other on hospital services in California
by Glenn Melnick and Katya Fonkych – show that the uninsured who do pay
their bills more than make up for the uninsured who don’t. Why? The
uninsured pay the highest prices. Gruber and Rodriguez write, “Our best
estimate is that physicians provide negative uncompensated care to the
uninsured, earning more on uninsured patients than on insured patients with
comparable treatments.”

One more reason to oppose government imposed universal health care.

Most Xians Prefer...

Barack Obama.

In the past few decades, it was a given that the majority of born-again Christians were voting for the Republican Party. I've even heard some people say, "I would never vote for a Democrat because they don't have any morals." Even though that statement can be dismissed as ridiculous, most Xians in the past viewed the question of "which candidate is more Xian" through an extremely small lens - namely only looking at the issues of abortion and homosexuality.

Thankfully, in a new poll/study released by the Barna Group, it appears that the majority of those who consider themselves Christians support Sen. Obama. I am hopeful that Xians are tired of being taken advantage of by the Republican Party and also beginning to see that there are more relevant issues that should be of concern to Xian voters.

For the most part, the various faith communities of the U.S. currently
support Sen. Obama
for the presidency. Among the 19 faith segments that The Barna Group tracks,
evangelicals were the only segment to throw its support to Sen. McCain. Among
the larger faith niches to support Sen. Obama are non-evangelical born again Christians (43%
to 31%); notional Christians (44% to 28%); people aligned with faiths other than
Christianity (56% to 24%); atheists and agnostics (55% to 17%); Catholics (39%
vs. 29%); and Protestants (43% to 34%). In fact, if the current preferences
stand pat, this would mark the first time in more than two decades that the born
again vote has swung toward the Democratic candidate.

I'm reminded of a quote from the book Rapture Ready by Daniel Radosh - "The Bible has more than 2,000 verses about poverty and maybe five or ten that you can interpret as being about abortion, but we are all about abortion. What about those two thousand verses about Christian responsibility to widows and orphans and aliens and strangers and the poor? We manage to be blind to all of that, but we can find those five verses about abortion."

Hopefully this is a sign of more Christians becoming more Christ-like...

Anthrax Cover-up

By now, I'm sure many of you are aware that the person the Justice Dept. believes is responsible for the anthrax attacks that occurred in the wake of Sept. 11th has committed suicide. The deceased suspect - Bruce Ivins, was a scientist who worked for the U.S. government at Fort Detrick in Maryland. First of all, this leads to some credibility for those who believed the government was behind the anthrax attacks. Whether the government actually had knowledge of Ivins' criminal acts, we shall find out, but for now, we can just say that he was acting in an individual capacity. However, it is clear that Ivins (and perhaps the US govt) wanted to create a link between Islamist terror and the anthrax. On cue, the incompetent media ran with the story and pushed that narrative into the minds of US citizens.

Glenn Greenwald provides an astounding revelation on MSM giant ABC news' role in completely fabricating where the anthrax was from and who developed it. As we all remember, the anthrax scare occurred in the weeks after the Sept. 11th attacks, creating a distinct feeling of vulnerability felt by almost everyone in the country. At that time, ABC ran a story stating that they received information from 4 "highly credible sources" that the ingredients in the anthrax pointed to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. At the time, ABC did not mention the names of the sources. The sources claimed they found the chemical bentonite, which as ABC claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons." Incredibly, we now know that none of the tests performed on the anthrax came back positive for bentonite! None, it was completely fabricated and several tests were completed (ironically at Fort Detrick, the source of the anthrax).

With that being said, the 4 "highly credible sources" who leaked the bentonite info and link to Iraq were purposefully deceiving the country to believe there was a direct link between the anthrax terror attacks and the Iraqi regime.

Now, it becomes clear that ABC was being used (as usual) to peddle false information to the general public by certain agents. ABC is aware of this, but the most incomprehensible part of the story is that ABC will not release the names or agencies of the source they based their stories on. They know they were deceived into creating a link between the anthrax and Iraq by certain officials, but they will not report on who the perpetrators are! Instead of being an independent media outlet and uncovering the truth to another dead-end that led us to the war in Iraq, they are sitting on the information and deliberately covering up for those who told the lies and created the hysteria in the first place! The mind reels!

I'm hoping other media outlets and people make this a big story (look at the potential) but I'm not holding my breath. Instead of bringing people to justice and admitting mistakes, the media will be complacent in reporting on the perceived hubris of the presidential candidates or high gas prices. What more can I say?