Saturday, January 08, 2005

Miscarriage at home------->Keep it private---->Jail!

In essence this is the formula proposed by Delegate John Cosgrove of Virginia in his new Bill HB1677. The bill reads:

When a fetal death occurs without medical attendance, it shall be the woman's responsibility to report the death to the law-enforcement agency in the jurisdiction of which the delivery occurs within 12 hours after the delivery. A violation of this section shall be punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor.

There is no law mandating that a woman must report a pregnancy to the Commonwealth, or even seek medical treatment for one. The Bill strictly proposes that a woman MUST report all miscarriages that do not occur under the guidance of a health-care professional (which is a common occurrence) to the State or else risk a misdemeanor violation that can carry up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine. Though elective terminations of pregnancy are reported already only a "patient number" is required to identify the individual whereas this particular legislation would require the woman's full name, her history of prenatal care, her marital status, her education history, her previous deliveries (if any), and a number of other very intrusive data items.

Threats of governmental intrusion upon reproductive health must be taken seriously as the State has no business compounding the pain of a loss of a pregnancy by demanding women submit to a system external to the health care infrastructure. The assumed intent of the Bill is to reduce illegal abortions that are either reported as miscarriages or evade the system all together. However, the need to reduce illegal abortions does not supercede the absolute right for individual privacy particularly pertaining to sensitive issues of health in general and reproductive health specifically.

The reduction of governmental infringement upon individual rights should be an issue championed by an alleged "small-government" Republican, however there are clear moral overtones to this particular situation. Due to the overreaction and mass discrimination by an uninformed public to individuals with AIDS in the 1980's we now have laws that universally protect the right to privacy of an individual living with HIV/AIDS (even to the point of exclusion of the individual's partner to any pertinent information). This is the reality of governmental non-intrusion and it must be applied to areas where even our religious and moral sensibilities are most challenged, in this case, reproductive privacy, moral pluralism, and the role of government (or lack thereof) in these issues.

They say the neon lights are bright.......

We've had to deal with plays inspired by the music of ABBA, Billy Joel, and now there is one about to open based upon the music of the Beach Boys?!!?!?!? Now I am aware that Musical-Broadway is not the exactly the summit of artistic creativity, but must we be subjected to shows with individuals frolicking and dancing to music that was last relevant when AM radio ruled the airwaves? I understand nostalgia, but there is also a gray are where nostalgia crosses over into campy self-indulgence and these shows tow that line quite precariously.

I've even had to deal with an American Idol reject, a former N'Sync member and a Spice Girl in my beloved Rent.

Someone please put a stop to this.

Friday, January 07, 2005

Stone, Fundamentalism, and the Myth of the Values Vote

Now that Oliver Stone's latest film Alexander has tanked at the US box office and has been universally panned by virtually all critics regardless of political affiliations, it appears that he is attempting to construct a new story to provide a reasonable explanation for his failure. Taking his cue from the NY Times editorial page (post Bush reelection) and quite a few pundits on the cable news networks, Stone has decided in a recent interview in London that his movie failed thanks to a growing surge in U.S. "moral fundamentalism." Stone continued:

"From day one audiences didn't show up," he said. "They didn't even read the reviews in the south because the Media was using the words, 'Alex the gay.' As a result you can bet that they thought, 'We're not going to see a film about a military leader that has got something wrong with him."


An interesting theory that seems to exonerate Stone for direct culpability in producing and directing an abysmal movie that the NY Times (hardly a bastion for moral fundamentalism) described as containing "puerile writing, confused plotting and shockingly off-note performances"

But if we examine for a moment the current cultural landscape I think it paints a different picture than Stone would have us believe. If we start with Television, the current #2 rated show (pulling in an average of 22.3 million individuals/week) is Desperate Housewives a show about adultery, murder, lying and cheating in the heart of red county suburbia. Howard Stern continues to have the #1 rated morning show in most of the country, and looks to revolutionize radio with his move to Sirius radio in 2006. In 2004 people spent as much money on pornography as they did going out to the moves to see Hollywood studio films. There has even been a significant move further into the mainstream by pornography with books appearing on Amazon and at your local Barnes and Nobles written by porn starlets.

So where does Stone derive his myth from (aside from the obvious selfish egotistical reasons that we can speculate about). Perhaps it is due to the misleading exit polls that the media over hyped as the key story of the 2004 election and the Bush victory. After the election was over and the press was still trying to figure out how Bush had managed to defeat Kerry and gain seats in the House and Senate, 2 divergent stories met to become the story of the 2004 election: Gay Marriage and Values. Gay Marriage had been voted down in 11 states and exit polls "revealed" that "values" had been more a important influence on the presidential election that the Iraq War and terrorism. Needless to say, the NY Times had a field day with this (here, here, and here). However, after the dust of the election had settled a cogent analysis could finally be undertaken.

David Brooks in his editorial "The Values-Vote Myth", debunks this issue nicely:


"As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center points out, there was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate this year as they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life. Sixteen percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily."


(That's right, Evangelicals made up the same proportion of the electorate as they had in 2000). Further:

"Much of the misinterpretation of this election derives from a poorly worded question in the exit polls. When asked about the issue that most influenced their vote, voters were given the option of saying "moral values." But that phrase can mean anything - or nothing. Who doesn't vote on moral values? If you ask an inept question, you get a misleading result."

In the same issue of The Times, Gary Langer, director of polling for ABC news writes on the nature of the poll that lead to the "values" conclusion:

"The news media has made much of the finding that a fifth of voters picked "moral values" as the most important issue in deciding their vote - as many as cited terrorism or the economy. The conclusion: moral values are ascendant as a political issue.........This distortion comes from a question in the exit poll, co-sponsored by the national television networks and The Associated Press, that asked voters what was the most important issue in their decision: taxes, education, Iraq, terrorism, economy/jobs, moral values or health care. Six of these are concrete, specific issues. The seventh, moral values, is not, and its presence on the list produced a misleading result.............Moral values, moreover, is a loaded phrase, something polls should avoid. (Imagine if "patriotism" were on the list.) It resonates among conservatives and religious Americans. While 22 percent of all voters marked moral values as their top issue, 64 percent of religious conservatives checked it. And among people who said they were mainly interested in a candidate with strong religious faith (just 8 percent, in a far more balanced list of candidate attributes), 61 percent checked moral values as their top issue. So did 42 percent of people who go to church more than once a week, 41 percent of evangelical white Christians and 37 percent of conservatives."

Finally we have a follow-up Gallup Poll that puts this myth to rest once and for all with an astutely constructed study design:


"Another Gallup poll also released today showed that, contrary to many press reports, “values” ranked well behind the war in Iraq, terrorism and the economy as a prime concern of Americans."

What then is the take-home lesson of all of this?

1) The media will give the most basic and succinct analysis of a given event regardless of objective truth. The "values" vote poll coinciding with the Gay Marriage defeats is such an occurrence. The 2 stories were easily spun into one sub-story and then superimposed upon the election to provide one cohesive narrative that became an easily palatable designer story line to sum up the events of November 2004.

2) True analysis with rational criticism is found months after the story has passed from news into the popular vernacular and attained a level of cultural mythology.

3) Oliver Stone is a director whose time has passed and now makes 3 hour self-indulgent sandal and sword biopics that most people (regardless of the sexual identity of the protagonist) do not care to see (though I think we can deduce that he does read the NY Times op-ed section----at least----the authors who tell the story he is looking to read).

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Theodicy

Thanks to the recent Tsunami with it's devastating aftermath, the problem of pain has found it's way out of the obscure philosophical circles it typically hides in and wound it's way (temporarily) into a small obscure section of the cultural-political vernacular. In a nutshell, the problem (in regards to the theologian) of theodicy can be crudely summarized as follows:
1) God is omnipotent
2) God is omnibenevolent
3) Evil exists
Conclusion:
1) God is impotent and unable to stop evil and therefore is not worthy of the label "God"
2) God is malevolent and undeserving of worship
The discussion recently was brought to the attention of the blogsphere by a New York Observer article by Ron Rosenbaum, in which he states:
" ............it is an underappreciated scandal that, philosophically, the "age old question" of theodicy has not been satisfactorily answered without resort to vague evasions ("It's all a mystery," "We just can't understand God's plan," "It will allow good to manifest itself in the hearts of the survivors," "We live in a fallen world," "The dead are better off in heaven"). A failure that asks us to just have faith that it's all for the best in the best of all possible worlds."
A curious assertion indeed, and one that does not take into account any of the work of a multitude of academic theologians. It has also drawn the attention of the folks at get religion and The American Scene. There are a multitude of ways in which the argument from evil has been dealt with by theologians throughout the evolution of modern theology (a few examples):
1) Free-Will Defense--classical proponent: G.W. Leibnitz ----modern proponents---Alvin Plantinga. In essence FWD is outlined here.
2) Natural Law---Defended by CS Lewis in The Problem Of Pain, in essence it states that "If matter and energy obey regular laws,events will occur that abruptly alter the environment, and organisms maybe unable to cope with the results. That God could have created a universe in which no clashes of this kind would occur is not imaginable. He could still the waters, but a continual procession of miracles would make natural law unreal. The choice is between a cosmos in which law is the norm and miracle the exception or one in which constant divine action imposes pain-free harmony."
3) Process Theology's Response--A movement started by A. North Whitehead and later expanded upon by Charles Hartshorne. The process theologians state that Process theology argues that the reality of God is not fixed and that God himself is still developing. From this point of view, God is "dipolar" - that is, has two "poles", one mental and one physical. The physical pole is the material world itself, which acts almost as God's "body". Because of this relationship, God is partly distinct and partly immersed in the world - just as we are in our bodies. As a result, any suffering in creation is also undergone by God, and creation itself is seen as a cooperation between God and all other beings. Whether this cooperation actually takes place is thus up to humanity - in other words, God cannot force humans to do His will, but can only influence them.
4) The scientific theologians---These include Rolston, Polkinghorne, Peacocke, and Barbour (to name a few). These individuals are both scientists in their respective fields (i.e. quantum physics---Polkinghorne, molecular biology---Peacocke) who have integrated their science with theology.
Polkinghorne's theodicy is here.
Peacocke's is summarized as follows:
"Pain and suffering are the inevitable consequence of possessing systems capable of information processing and storage. Death of the individual and the extinction of species are prerequisites for the creation of biological order. Complex living structures can only evolve in a finite time if they accumulate changes achieved in simpler forms, and are not assembled de novo. This includes both the predator-prey cycle, which involves eating pre-formed complex chemical structures, and the modification of existing structures via biological evolution. This, in turn, raises the problem of theodicy. Peacocke stresses that God suffers in and with the suffering of creatures, and cites support from current theologians who reject divine impassibility. God's purpose is to bring about the realm of persons in communion with God and with each other. Moreover, God's suffering with Christ on the cross extends to the whole of nature. Death as the "wages of sin" cannot possibly mean biological death; this requires us to reformulate the classical theology of redemption. The reality of sin must consist in our alienation from God, a falling short of what God intends us to be. It arises because, through evolution, we gain self-consciousness and freedom, and with them, egotism and the possibility of their misuse."




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