Captain Oblivious

1 - This page? What about the "Geek Bliss" entry and all of its talk of bums and buggery and greased monkey's asses? (Oops, that'll make the Googles here more interesting too, won't it?)

2 - Love the fact that it took them 'two and a half years to bring them sleves to fill out the papers' and they still came up with those criteria! Isn't time meant to help in allowing you the space to consider all the options, but no, we'll stick to our bigoted thoughts, after all who are we to fly in the face of 'society'

3 - I don't get the big deal. So, there's a program that allows you to donate embryos and specify the type of family you'd like them to be raised by? What's wrong with that?

These folks are conservative Christians and specify they want a traditional couple with the same beliefs to raise the donated embryos? Is that a surprize? What if someone specified that they wanted a gay couple to raise the resulting kids. Would that be discriminating against traditional couples? No, it would be a case of the donor specifying the criteria for "adoption" or whatever. Seems to me if a lesbian couple were going use this program, they wouldn't probably want these folks' embryos anyway.

Setting criteria for this program based on what he believes makes the guy a jack-ass? It's not like someone's out in the street shouting their prejudices from the top of a lamp post.

The whole murder thing is quite a stretch to me. Where does it say the guy believes the embryos to be fully human? Oh, that's right, ALL conservative Christians believe that, don't they?

Oh, yeah. And he's stupid too- we gotta check his IQ. Geez-

They're not all like that freak from Kansas that you blogged about. Most people don't go around with that kind of hate, even if they think that what someone else does in the bedroom is wrong. There's a big difference between believing something is wrong and hating those who don't believe the same.

And I'm sure, in spite of this couple's narrow approach to who they want to donate embryos to, lesbian couples would have no problem finding some that they want.

4 - @1: Stan, you are an evil, nasty man. By the way, oddly enough 90% of my inbound Googles in the past week are for the Karate Kid quotes - so maybe instead of being obsessed with various sexual arrangements, society is obsessed with bad 80's movies?!?

@2: Kitty, time is obviously not all they needed, hm?

@3: Mr Anonymous, for the record, I don't like it when people post without including their name or even an alias. It's not that I want to be able to track people down - I have no issue with aliases or made up names - I simply want to know which person I'm talking to at the moment. So in the future, please invent a name for yourself, and then use it consistently so you'll have an identity. I don't REQUIRE that people complete the name field, and I know it's possible you simply didn't know exactly how to fill out the comments form and missed the name section. You should know, though, that - as with most blogs - your IP was logged, and future anonymous posting from that IP address might force me to block it. Just FYI, in case this wasn't a 'drive by' and you plan on coming back.

To the point, though, you seem to think that these folks don't believe every embryo is a human being. That's an unusual position to take, since conservative Christian opposition to abortion, stem cell research, and even birth control pills (due to the potential abortifacient properties) is based on this premise and extremely well documented. Are you suggesting that these folks donated their embryos and appeared at a White House function designed to defeat stem cell research in spite of the fact that they *don't* consider every embryo to be a human life? Their opposition to stem cell research, then, would be based on what? Their horror at the idea of curing disease? Their fear of petri dishes?

Sarcasm aside, I'm quite comfortable defending my position that the people in question believe those embryos are already human lives. As I noted, the idea that they would oppose ANYONE who wanted to adopt them means they place their personal definition of morality higher on the scale than that human life.

This is a common problem with the so-called 'values' crowd, where they place a higher value on opposing 'sin' than on preserving the lives they claim to believe are sacred. For the classic example, see the opposition by the various conservative Christian denominations to distribution of condoms in third-world countries ravaged by AIDS. To these 'pro-lifers' who believe every embryo must be saved, adults (or teens or even children) don't qualify for the same priority if they have the misfortune to be sexually active. Particularly ironic, in a profoundly disturbing way, is the fact that these 'anti-sin' crusaders blame the victims of child abuse or sexual molestation for their inability to preserve their 'cleanliness'.

So yeah, I'm ok with mocking this guy's IQ, both in terms of traditional logic and in terms of weighing the importance of various positions of morality. People who don't understand that unnecessary death is worse than 'sin' have serious intellectual issues.

Oh, and: "It's not like someone's out in the street shouting their prejudices from the top of a lamp post." Nope, just parading their prejudices through the White House and spouting them off to national press with the explicit backing of the President of the US. Government approved bigotry is always so pleasant.

Finally, replace the word 'lesbians' in your questions with any of the following: Jews, Blacks, Asians, bald people, left-handed people, stupid people, liberals, Wiccans, Muslims, poor people, Southerners, lawyers, professional athletes, tone-deaf people, or straight people. Now tell me if you still think it's ok. I'll wager that for some of those entries in my list, you DO think it's ok, but for others you do not. Why is that? That's NOT a simple question, by the way...

5 - That post was me- Tom Nichols. I didn't realize that the name, etc. didn't pre-fill. It usually does. apologies.

I think that if a program allows for someone to develop criteria about who should participate with their donated items, whatever they might be, then it's fine. Black, white, jew, gentile, martian, blue person, whatever. It's like selecting where you want your money to go when you donate to the United Way. That's the way I see it. If I want my money to go to some shelter in my county, did I "discriminate" against other counties in the strictest sense of the word? Absolutely- but so what? Discrimination does not always stem from hate.

Why is it prejudice when they think that embryos are human? that's just an opinion as far as I'm concerned. BTW, I think stem cell research is just fine and dandy, I'm just willing to allow others to have their opinion without feeling the need to beat them up about it.

I believe that posts like this one and others equally intolerant all over (including the conservative outlets) are what has this huge divide in the country. People seem to have a need to publish very argumentative, sarcastic, rude and derisive articles that skew reality. What I see is a constant painting of conservatives as bigoted, stupid uncaring people who only consider themselves- all others be-damned.

The thing about " the values crowd," as you call them, that gets so many people mad is that they have very firm beliefs based on their interpretation of the bible and they feel that they're doing the world a favor by promoting them. Those beliefs happen to fly in the face of what other folks might find logical, but that doesn't matter. You see, to them, NOTHING is worse than sin. Death? What is death but a path to heaven? So when you challenge the intellect of someone who believes that way, I think you're missing the point. I can certainly see challenging the inflexible beliefs, but intellect? That's just taunting.

I'm not trying to dump all over your blog, Rob. I certainly don't want to try and tell you what you should write- your post just struck a nerve. That other one from Shakespeare's Sister did too (as an example). That's just unecessary in my opinion. Maybe I have too much Rodney King in me- "Can't we all just get along?" I think there's a place for good debate and airing differences of opinion, but when it's done so sarcastically and with such a derisive tone, I think it's more damaging than funny. Many things you've posted here have made me re-think my position on stuff as I am generally conservative and tend to lean that way on most issues. Your point of view often includes facts or considerations I hadn't thought about before. However, this type post, in my opinion, fosters alienation and anger in those who don't agree rather than thoughtful contemplation.

6 - Ohhhh, hey Tom. Didn't know it was you, and it was a brand new IP posting to the site so I thought it must be a newcomer.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. You raise some excellent points, and I want to respond in detail. I'm a bit stuck for time for the next day or so, though, so I won't have anything serious to say until tomorrow night. It's a great topic, though, so I may make a main post of it. I'm just throwing this quick response up so you'll know I'm not blowing you off in the meantime...

7 - Thanks, Cap'n (or is it "Cappy" now? heheheh). I look forward to the post- I've been wanting to talk about this for awhile myself, but I often have a hard time really nailing down how to express the way I feel about some of these issues. It's sometimes hard to get the point across in a way that I feel satisfied people are going to understand what I mean.

Anyway, I look forward to it-

Tom

8 - Side bar... the Karate Kid is not a bad 80's movie!!! It rocks!