OPINION, PHILOSOPHY
Following The Path Of Ezekiel
by Kevin • • 6 Comments
Why would a pro-life party embrace a culture of death?
The normal course of action for a pandemic is to mobilize medical resources in order to learn, as quickly as possible, as much as can be learned about the disease, specifically including source of infection and method of transmission. Until this information is learned, the victims are sometimes isolated from the rest of society as a reliable way to contain the outbreak, until either a cure or vaccine is developed. Even if a cure or vaccine isn’t yet available, the knowledge regarding infection source and transmission is made public as soon as it’s known, and widely circulated, so that others who aren’t infected can take appropriate precautions.
But what happens when both the principal source of infection and the principal method of transmission for a global pandemic are known to be directly linked to a lifestyle choice that is a political hot-button issue? Does elected leadership still speak the truth, so that those at risk can know the facts and adjust their lifestyle accordingly, or do they put reelection concerns above all else, bury their heads in the sand, and publicly chastise any of their own who dare speak the truth in public on the record?
“Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade him from his ways, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the wicked man to turn from his ways and he does not do so, he will die for his sin, but you will have saved yourself.” (Ezekiel 33:7-9, NIV84)
Human Immunodeficiency Virus infection / Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a disease of the human immune system caused by infection transmitted through certain body fluids, for which there is no cure or vaccine, though antiretroviral treatments can reduce the risk of death and complications as well as slow the course of HIV progression overall. Once the infection progresses to AIDS, death is usually caused either by cancer or by opportunistic infections, the result of a severely compromised immune system. The problem with high active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) is that it’s very expensive (on the order of mid-six figures, and I think that’s an annual number), and carries its own nasty adverse side effects. Without treatment, the post-diagnosis life expectancy is rarely longer than 151 months (12 years and 7 months) and often much shorter (< 10 years).
Given that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first clinically observed the disease in 1981, and had identified the retrovirus connection by 1983, one would normally expect that the American public would by now be fully informed as to the source of infection and the method of transmission for a universally-fatal disease, so that they could take the appropriate precautions. And if this were any other disease, you’d probably be right.
However, back in the early 1980s, before the CDC developed an official name for the disease, the general press – including the New York Times – coined the term “Gay-Related Immune Deficiency” (GRID), and the streetspeak nickname in circulation at the time was “the gay cancer.” In both cases, the term identified not only what the disease did to the body (to a reasonable degree of accuracy), but also the then-publicly acknowledged principal source of infection. But the gay lobby – which even then had enough political clout to have successfully pressured the American Psychiatric Association to strike homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a psychiatric illness and abnormal behavior – would have none of it. For somewhere in the immediate vicinity of three decades, the LGBT crowd in America (approximately 3.8% of the national population, according to 2011 numbers) has actively squelched any honest discussion of the negative health impact of homosexual behavior.
This presents a problem, in that using a political agenda to trump an open and honest discussion of a global pandemic has consequences. Because if we’re to believe the contemporary entertainment media, homosexuality is just an alternative lifestyle choice with no attendant consequences unusual from any other lifestyle choice. But, according to CDC data from 2011, the reality is that approximately 65% of all new cases of HIV/AIDS in the U. S. that year were from male-to-male sexual activity; when only the male U. S. population is considered, that percentage jumps to 82%. As of year-end 2010, among males, approximately 74% of all current cases of HIV/AIDS in the U. S. are from male-to-male sexual activity, as well as approximately 75% of all current Stage 3 AIDS cases in the U. S.
Also, in February 2009, the Canadian Rainbow Health Coalition, in their complaint filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission (alleging homophobia in Canada’s healthcare system), actually supported their complaint by providing statistical evidence of the health issues which “disproportionately affect” the homosexual community. Both the Canadian Daily Extra and the Catholic Exchange reported the fact of the complaint and the basis of it, except that Thad Baklinski added a statistical summary into his article, which Julia Garro conspicuously left out. And if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice these are the same basic statistics as those that got Dave Agema vilified by the log cabin crowd last year when he cited them. I don’t recommend holding your breath waiting for Dennis Lennox to publish a retraction.
The gay lobby can use judicial fiat all they want, to impose gag orders on medical professionals and compel cultural affirmation against nature, conscience, and common sense, but they cannot change the truth.
AIDS is a horrible disease. It’s the Stage 3/Stage IV AIDS cases that are really gut-wrenching to see in person, but most people rarely do. This is because, by this point, very nearly all such patients have been abandoned by their family and friends (and even by their lovers). The medical staff, in essence, becomes the only family that they have.
One of the three candidates for this weekend’s state committee vote to fill the vacancy left by Terri Lynn Land’s resignation as Michigan’s Republican National Committeewoman is Mary Sears (the other two being Ronna Romney McDaniel and Sandra Kahn). Mary is a retired trauma and critical care nurse, and for over twenty years witnessed firsthand the devastation of the homosexual lifestyle. She’s not afraid of the people, but rather is deathly afraid of the consequence of following this path. What follows is a personal account that she related to me last weekend:
The men that I cared for during my years as a nurse in the inner city hospitals have left me with memories that still bring me to tears. They would come to us when there was no more hope, but they still wanted to remain a “full code” in case by some miracle they could overcome their fate. Being a night nurse I had more time than most to dedicate to their emotional well being. No family would come to visit, because they had broken off ties with them due to the life they chose to follow. No lovers or close friends. AIDS is a hard thing to watch over the long haul, especially if you are HIV positive and AIDS could be your fate as well.One man in particular stands out. He had been in the unit for almost two weeks and we had become friends. Brian had not spoken to his family in over ten years and did not want to contact them. Any friends he had had abandoned him over the years of his AIDS treatment. The doctors and nurses became his family. Each evening after I made rounds I would come and sit by his bedside and we would talk about all manner of things; God, politics, medicine, and the life he chose. His huge, black ringed, sunken eyes would cry as he related his regret over his choices in life and the distance from his family. He thought they never would forgive him. He thought God could not forgive him. God did forgive him though. Brian came to know Christ as Lord a few days before he died.I will never forget that day. He had made himself a “no code” after he made peace with God. He was afraid of death but no longer feared for his soul. It took little to no effort to lift his 68 pound frame, for there was nothing left but sagging skin over protruding bones. I would prop his feet and arms on pillows trying to give him some comfort. His breath fell in audible wheezing as an empty gaze seemingly looked on into somewhere beyond this world. I was the only one at his bedside that evening. I held his hand as God called him home. His parents never made it to see him; they were called by the hospital and informed of their son’s death.
It was personal experiences such as these that led Mary to write a personal note on her FaceBook page, that was subsequently copied-and-pasted to the Schoolcraft County Republican Party website about this time last year (by Paul Walker, so far as I know). Last weekend, a full week after she announced her intention to seek the Land vacancy, the post was then picked up on by, or perhaps purposely leaked to, the Macomb Daily, the Huffington Post, and Joe For America (the latter of which is actually run by a former Benishek staffer), all of whom made a point of cherry-picking one sentence – “We as a party should be purging this perversion and send them to a party with a much bigger tent.” – reading into it something that she didn’t say, and reporting it with headlines along the lines of, “Candidate for Land’s RNC Seat Says Gays Should Be Purged from GOP.”
And out of context, I can see where the pink triangle crowd could believe that that’s a legitimate headline. The low-information media, not one of whom has as yet bothered to contact Mary for comment or context, either is actively aiding and abetting a smear campaign, or they’re functioning as useful idiots. Quite frankly, in context, I read it as her suggesting that the pro-gay philosophyshould be purged from the Republican Party, not the people (and I actually called her up to verify this).
Yet this is no different than what that same rainbow flag crew did to Dave Agema, by selectively quoting from his address to the Berrien County Republican Party, which in its original context focused on urging party leadership to figure out how to get the various philosophical dispositions working together in order to survive as a political force going forward. A known gay-friendly reporter cherry-picked from that address Dave’s remarks describing his experience as an American Airlines pilot observing gays abusing the company’s healthcare policy, and morphed that into manufactured outragethat ultimately led to a whole host of party establishment demanding his resignation (not one of whom, with the exception of Justin Amash, had endorsed his candidacy in the first place, but that detail somehow escaped the media’s notice).
With planks such as Defending Marriage Against An Activist Judiciary, and A Sacred Contract: Defense of Marriage, and Preserving And Protecting Traditional Marriage in the 2012 Republican National Platform, one has to wonder why the Michigan Republican Party seems to insist on openly embracing a philosophy of perversion diametrically opposed to the party platform, and openly disenfranchising the convention delegation, for no apparent reason other than to appease a very noisy, but very small, minority. I can tell you truthfully that if the party establishment is trying to use affirmation-by-silence toward the homosexual culture as leverage to win the minority vote, then they’re barking up the wrong damn tree, and it will come back to bite them in the shorts.
Both Mary and Dave have seen firsthand the consequences of the homosexual lifestyle in America, and neither one can, in good conscience, support the culture of death inextricably connected to that lifestyle. Nor can they condone a counterculture that won’t honestly discuss its associated risks.
If the comments that followed the Schoolcraft article, the Macomb article, the Post article, or the Joe article are any indication, then Mary and Dave are correct about how a very tiny, but vocal minority are trying to abrogate the Republican Party’s platform regarding marriage. These hateful voices are trying to silence the views of traditional, constitutional conservatives like Mary and Dave who support our Republican beliefs, and are aggressively disenfranchising the state party’s convention delegations and precinct delegate network, which is overwhelmingly composed of platform republicans. Don’t let the strident views of a handful of liberals, both from within the party and from without, dictate who our next National Committeewoman should be, nor attempt to gag our National Committeeman.
Available at this link is a quick-reference guide to the State Central Committee of the Michigan Republican Party. If you’re feeling particularly energetic and inclined to be helpful, then please feel free to make a few phone calls (starting with the State Committee members in your congressional district), for which I have a few talking-point suggestions:
• Stay on the high road at all times. Be civil and professional, but resolute and persuasive; these are not mutually exclusive choices.
• If you happen to be a sitting or filed precinct delegate, then it might be useful to remind them that you’re keeping track of their conduct on the committee, that they’ll have to answer to you for their performance in about a year hence, and that you have a long memory (augmented by thorough note-taking).
• Politely suggest that they vote against any attempt to censure or otherwise sanction (directly or indirectly) Dave Agema, should anything come out of the Policy Committee in that regard.
• Since the Policy Committee is where any action against Agema will originate, feel free to provide an extra measure of attention to those persons who sit on that committee. (I’m of the understanding that, to her credit, Ms. McDaniel, who sits on the Policy Committee, opposes sanctions against Agema. crede sed proba)
• The vote on the question of whom is to replace Terri Land as National Committeewoman is going to be held at a special 8:00 a.m. session on Saturday, February 15th, two hours before the regularly-scheduled state committee meetings. Politely encourage these state committee members to get their fannies to Lansing early enough to be there for that special session.
• The committee members may attempt to dodge the questions by claiming to be sending a proxy to the meeting (which is allowed under the bylaws). Don’t be dissuaded; nail down who that proxy is and how that proxy has been instructed.
• Politely suggest that they vote in favor of Mary Sears as Michigan’s next National Committeewoman, and be prepared to give at least one solid reason why they should do so. I spoke with Eric Doster yesterday, and he informed me that the vote is supposed to be conducted by secret ballot, and is supposed to be run just like a convention vote, with a runoff ballot between the top two if no one gets an outright majority on the first ballot.
One of my colleagues suggested to me that I ought to use a gentler approach on this matter, reminding me that Jesus Christ showed compassion for sinners, not condemnation. My response to him was that Jesus was indeed compassionate and gentle with repentant sinners, but very much otherwise with the proudly unrepentant. Christ had some pretty harsh words for the political establishment of his day, and he didn’t “dial down” his message (refer to Matthew 23). Those who insist on asking “What would Jesus do?” should remember that public rebukes, overturning money tables, and chasing people with a whip are all within the range of acceptable options.
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