So, in the doctrinaire mind of some religious groups, people dying of ALS have less value than clumps of cells. Noted. But I also reserve the right to reject this theology as fundamentally immoral.
I’ve made no secret of my being tired of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. It’s not that I don’t believe in the cause- I do; ALS is a truly terrible disease- we should ALL be behind wiping it out- but you can only witness so many people dumping buckets of ice water on themselves before it becomes yawn-inducing. So how ‘bout justing writing a damned check, feel good about making a difference, and call it a day? The multiple millions raised so far will hopefully be able to make a dent in the suffering caused to so many by ALS…much more so than being doused by ice water.
Then there are those Conservative Christians who’d piss on Christmas morning if they thought it would advance their joyless, mean-spirited agenda. The (If you’re having fun, God hates you) Christophiles are in a lather because they believe the money raised by the Ice Bucket Challenge will be used to underwrite stem cell research. This evidently undermines God’s plan that some humans are meant to die horrible, painful deaths…and who are we to question God’s will? Since stem cells are, to their way of thinking, potentially children-in-waiting, stem cell research is a mortal sin, and those advocating and/or engaging in it are on a bullet train to Hell.
Yes, a clump of cells has more rights than actual living, breathing people carrying an ALS death sentence. So much for Jesus’ teachings regarding Christian charity and compassion, eh?
Kevin McCullough of the American Family Association is urging his followers not to take “the ALS Challenge” because doing so will “kill” unborn children, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports…. [A]as McCullough pointed out, this money will be used to fund embryonic stem cell research, which “means that children are created and at their earliest stages of life they are destroyed so that the stem cells (from usually the base of the brain) can be harvested to perform tests with.”
Except that McCullough’s assertion is off-base, to say the least. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine states that “all the human embryonic stem cell lines currently in use come from four to five day old embryos left over from in vitro fertilization. After a couple has completed their family, they must decide what to do with any remaining embryos. In some states, couples can also choose to donate the frozen embryos for research. These donated embryos are the source of human embryonic stem cell lines.”
Never being one to let truth or reason have the final word, McCullough insists that “[t]here should be no forced taking of any innocent person’s life just so that another may live longer. That is in essence philosophical cannibalism and moral persons should have no part in it.” Of course, the fact that there’s no “forced taking” of anything (besides his compassion) involved in this equation matters not at all to McCullough, who has an agenda to flog, dammit. You can bet he’s not going to be stopped by a bunch wild-eyed Godless Liberals talking about “truth” or “facts.” Evidently, the phrase “couples can choose to donate (emphasis mine) the frozen embryos” doesn’t mean what we might think it to mean.
Of course not. When you can make facts as needed and imbue them with the imprimatur of (your flavor of) the Almighty…well, who needs empirical, provable truth when you have Jesus…who, amazingly enough, ALWAYS seems to have your back?
As if McCullough’s hyper-religious inhumanity wasn’t sufficient, the Catholic Church appears to jumping on the bandwagon. You can do that when you’re not the ones doing the suffering and dying, I suppose.
The Archdiocese of Cincinnati agreed with that statement, noting that Pope John Paul II specifically forbid Catholics from donating to ALS related charities. In 2003, he said that “any treatment which claims to save human lives, yet is based upon the destruction of human life in its embryonic state, is logically and morally contradictory, as is any production of human embryos for the direct or indirect purpose of experimentation or eventual destruction.”
It’s difficult to imagine that when Jesus preached his Gospel this was what he had in mind. The American Family Association and the Archdiocese of Cincinnati should be ashamed of their inhuman anti-Christian philosophy on this and so many other matters. Their flavor of joyless, male-dominated Christianity is not what I learned in Sunday School so many years ago. I learned that God is not a hateful, mean-spirited, kill-or-be-killed Deity. I learned that God is benevolent, caring, and compassionate Supreme Being who provided the tools for mankind to ease pain and suffering wherever and whenever possible. That some have chosen to travel the path of anger, self-righteousness, and condemnation makes the idea of a benevolent God no less valid. It does make them about as Christian as Fred Phelps and his merry band of inbreds at the Westboro Baptist Church…whom they could reasonably call soul mates.
This theology is about as fundamentally immoral and unChristian as it gets…and yet those thus infected tend to be drunk on their own self-professed piety. This is why we can’t have nice things.
I may not believe in God, but I can recognize a true Christian willing and desirous of living their faith when I see one. I’m here to tell you that if Kevin McCullough is a true Christian, I’m the Queen of England.
As odious, distasteful, and immorally unChristian as McCullough’s beliefs are, things could always be worse. You could have to wake up next to the tyrant every morning. Truly, that would seem to bethe definition of true misery.
