kellee's blog

I have been following all this for awhile through saveroe.com. And of course, Savage is phenomenal in his commentary.

I am voting tomorrow. We all should vote...I am very afraid of a world without the right to choose. My mother had a shady abortion while it was still illegal in Illinois. My parents were too poor and not married so they had to borrow money and a car and went to NY to have it done. It was very traumatizing and it was worse because it was a freak pregnancy: she was still a virgin.

So we're headed into a world of shady abortions where morals decide what is ethical to be legal. A very scary thing for a faux-secular society.

Emergency contraception protects women from the trauma of having to have an abortion in the first place. I have long been afraid of what would happen in a world where women lost the right to contraception altogether.

If controlling nature somewhat is any sign of the human's desire to triumph over the helplessness of the human condition, why are we approving penis medication over emergency contraception? What if a pharmacist decided that a person deserved to get diabetes because they ate too many sweets? Should rapists be entitled to get Viagra? Should people with alcohol poisoning be left to die because they wanted to get drunk?

And who the hell are we to make a judgement? Since I moved to this country I have never been more ashamed to be Christian than now. I read the scriptures very closely growing up and I remember a few words about throwing the first stone only if you are sin-free yourself...

Well to say people shouldn't make laws based on their morals is sort of a dead end. Any law is rooted in a sense of what a majority of people consider right and wrong.

As for Target employees, Target should really come up with a solid company policy (either YES, we sell this, or NO we don't) and then hire people based on whether or not they can uphold company policies. Target needs to be consistent so that a customer will not go to a store expecting to get something and then be denied it.

It is unfortunate to hear you say you are ashamed to be a Christian in the U.S. Since abortion is not directly mentioned in the Bible, there can be no ultimate "correct" position on the issue. Don't be ashamed of your faith because certain groups co-opt it for political gain.

(Btw, my last comment is specifically on Marientina's comment, not Kellee's post).

Morality and ethics are not synonymous. They sure mingle and the lines are blurry but we're supposed to make a conscious decision to separate them when legislating. I didn't say it was easy but we have gone the other way around in this country and we legislate straight from the heart or from moral or from religious views. That is what makes me ashamed to be Christian in this country. It is just as bad in Greece unfortunately these days. As Greece is becoming multi-national people are becoming more and more fundamentalist in fear of losing their tradition. I am not a nihilist, but progress needs sacrifice and religion needs an update. Otherwise women would still be locked inside their homes still and men would have to have long beards, etc, etc.

Progressive people cringe to the sight of religious people and I am afraid that radical christian fundamentalism is just as bad as anything else radically fundamentalist...

I am a skeptic. I believe in shades of gray and all this is making me crazy. And yes, maybe Target should take a clear position so that I can deicide if I ever want to shop there again. If you want to play moral, take a stand and let us know...The one thing Bush has going for him is that he has no hidden agenda: he is doing everything he set out to do even if nobody agrees with him...He is truly radical even if I disagree with him 100%.

Wouldn't be great if companies could just wear their agenda on their forehead so we could decide whether we want to fund a particular agenda by shopping at the Gap?

Based on equal opportunity laws btw, Target can't discriminate the hiring of employees based on their values. They can't just hire pro-choice or pro-life or pro-abstinence people etc just because those people will withhold their company policies. But if their policy was clear, perhaps one who disagreed wouldn't apply there and that is an excellent point but honesty and capitalism aren't compatible.

According to Merriam-Webster:

moral - of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior : ETHICAL

ethic - discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation

I say they're synonyms. I think perhaps some people try to say that morality is synonymous with the word "righteous" (acting in accord with divine or moral law : free from guilt or sin), while ethics need not involve religious thought.

I don't buy that notion. My faith guides how I function in society, and it should be no different if put in a position of public office. At the same time, someone with different beliefs has just as much right to use her beliefs to influence her decisions. That's democracy. Government represents the will of the people.

And to summarize my initial point, whether you believe in Jesus, Brahma, or Nietzsche, your core beliefs always determine your morals & personal ethics.

Thank you so much for posting this, Kellee. You actually got me to go do something politically active, which is a sad rarity for me.

Mike- You bring up two goo points. 1) Companies should be upfront with their policies regarding prescriptions, and hire employees that will uphold that policy, and 2)Should someone holding public office be asked to check their morals at the door?

Well, to address 2, I think morality and religion are separate things; that there are inherent rights and wrongs that lie outside of religious beliefs all together. For instance, many representatives are christians, and yet insist that women and men have a right to choose for themselves what to do with their bodies. And I believe that while a pharmacist might feel that EC is against God's law, they do not have the right to take away the woman's power to choose for herself what is right and wrong.

It's the difference between knowing what is right for you, and what is better for the people of a country as a whole. That is the line that we ask public office holders to draw when we elect them. In some countries, that has not been the case, and you can see the results of a politcal system run by the church.

It was the state of England when the US Constitution was drafted, and hence they were extra careful to separate church and state for that reason. But who has time to read history books? What could our past possibly teach us today?

And Marientina - I tried to get the person hold christiansagainstbush.com to hand it over so something interesting could be done with it, but no response. I hate how Christianity has been repurposed and misused, and I know there are many others like us.

Jess - that is awesome, and the best compiment I have received on a blog post ever.

How about a spiritualpeopleagainstbush.com?

There are plenty of jews, muslims and buddhists who check out their beliefs at the door for a better world.

For example, on I board a moderate for people with a genetic disorder (thalassemia) plenty of people would set their beliefs aside for a cure through stem cell research and for elective abortion to help eliminate the gene from the pool. And these people are from all over the world: hindi, muslims, catholics, etc...