I guess it seemed like a good idea to whoever put it together. Unite all the hot causes under one umbrella feel-good mantra. Plus, anyone who disagrees with any of those statements is clearly an unsympathetic bigot (who wants to deny any of that?). But here's the thing: I don't believe you. I don't think you really believe those things. I think you believe the very surface level of what each of these catch phrases was trying to capture, but you don't really believe this at all.
Black Lives Matter
Obviously these are buzz words meant to conjure images of
cops shooting unarmed teens, and therefore blatant racism. Who doesn't want to eradicate racism? Ignoring how wild
that leap is, let’s just take the words at face value. Black lives matter. I
assume that means we want blacks to be able to live, and likely to have a
certain quality of life. So, what are the real threats to that? The number one
killer of blacks, by far, is abortion. According to the CDC’s latest data,
there are just over 300,000 black deaths a year. There are over 250,000 reported abortions performed on black
women a year (likely total numbers are at least 30-50% higher). If black lives
really matter, let’s protect the most vulnerable. But I don’t see that argument
going over well, because "it's not a human until it's born". So let’s set aside the abortions and go back to the 300,000
deaths of already-born blacks. The number one and two causes of death are heart
disease and cancer, accounting for 45% of black mortality. Homicide? Number 8. If you
really care about black lives, let’s focus on heart health, cancer screening,
and access to quality health care. And possibly educating black men and women about their sexuality, the meaning of the family, and available options if they do get pregnant. By the way, abortion, heart disease, and cancer are the leading killers of all races.
Women’s Rights are Human Rights
This one drives me crazy. It reduces all of my rights to the
“right” to abortion on demand and free contraception. Because those are my “rights”
as a woman? What about the right to worship, to work, to become a mother, to
serve, to be safe and free? The UN Declaration of Human Rights (granted, it was written a long time ago, but it seems pretty comprehensive and relevant--if not downright liberal--to me) says we are entitled
to life, liberty, security of person, freedom from slavery and torture,
recognition as a person before the law and equal protection under the law, a fair
trial, the presumption of innocence, privacy, travel, nationality, the
protection of marriage and family, property, religion, assembly, work, rest and
leisure, motherhood, and education. Do some of those surprise you? Do you think
some of those are possibly more important than access to free birth control? Do
you think if we eliminated these rights, that access to “reproductive choices”
would even matter much? By the way, those were nowhere on the list. The document also says that these rights are subject to
limitations “for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the
rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality,
public order, and the general welfare”. Food for thought.
No Human Is Illegal
This one is just false. There are laws that exist in order
to protect the rights listed above, and if you break those laws, you are, by
definition, acting illegally. It’s really a nice sentiment that is meant to
equate dignity with legality, but let’s be clear. No human should be denied their
basic rights, but if they are jeopardizing public order and the general
welfare, and have broken the law, there need to be consequences. What this is
really saying is rules don’t matter because we should all just get along. Good
luck with that.
Science is Real
Okay, I think you probably believe this one. I have no idea who disagrees with this. Science is just
making a hypothesis, testing it, and drawing a conclusion. Don’t leverage
science to try to prove the rest of your inane generalities true.
Love is Love
Again, this is a nice platitude that no one would want to
disagree with. What else, after all, would love be if not love? But what this
statement is really after, and where it falls grossly short, is assuming that
all “loves” are the same. I love pizza. I love Colorado. I love sleeping in. I love my
husband. What about when my husband needs me to get up early? Then I choose him
over sleeping in. Usually. The point is: real love is a choice. It’s a gift of
oneself, a choice for the good of the other person. And for that, you have to
know what the good is. Which requires what John Paul II called “an adequate
anthropology”. For nearly all of human history, “good” was virtue, not comfort.
That’s changed now in many ways, but that doesn’t make it right. If you want to
be correct rather than cliché, love is virtue. Still interested?
Kindness is Everything
Is it? What about Truth? Justice? Beauty? Goodness?
Holiness? Courage? What about something bigger than even the created world? It’s
called God. That’s everything. When you hyperbolize like that so that the
reader will agree with you, you’ve just lost all credibility.
So here’s what we believe in this house, and I bet is actually pretty close to what you believe as well:
All lives matter.
Human rights are endowed to everyone.
Rules exist for a reason.
Science is real.
Love is a virtue, and it's hard.
God is everything.
