Kite Jockey’s Weblog

Recently I posted about why I could not vote for Barack Hussein Obama and for a few days now I have been going back and forth with someone in the comment section of that post who goes by the user name Jay. Today Jay posted a comment that I felt I need to respond to in a new blog post that I hope will shed some more light on why I am taking such a firm stand against abortion by voting for John McCain (as I did on Friday) and against Barack Obama.

First let me get you up to speed by posting Jay’s comment today:

“I know enough to say that, as men, we have little if any business attempting to legislate that which we could never hope to understand.

One of the biggest concerns I have is the the passing of laws which are based on religious beliefs. I don’t believe it’s the role of the government to legislate such things, and that, at best, those beliefs should remain moral guidelines imposed by religious or spiritual organizations over their own members.

To take a different tack: what if our next president was a Catholic, and wanted to outlaw the consumption of meat on Fridays? Or if we elected a Jewish president, and by federal law, all stores had to remain closed on Saturdays?

What if our next president’s religious beliefs included the idea that women should be covered from head to toe and must be escorted by a male relative at all times in public? And what if that president pushed to take that belief from religious dogma and enforce it as a federal law?

Religious freedom is one of the most precious things we have as Americans. The last thing I could ever support would be giving the government power to enforce religious beliefs of it’s current leaders as laws.”

I do not intend to base many of my blog entry’s on someone else’s comments, but I was so intrigued by the polite manner in which Jay made his arguments that I felt that I should give his comment a proper reply. By the time I finished my reply I had written way more than what I wanted to cram into the comment section of my blog. So here is my response to Jay:

I understand where you are coming from; however, I disagree with your basic argument. First, we can understand these things. Bad things happen. But two wrongs do not equal a right. Just because a baby is conceived in a very bad situation it does not mean that that life no longer counts.

If you toss religious beliefs out of this discussion you still have to make a decision. Do you stand up for the innocent and for life itself or do you support death and the ending of a life. No matter what path you choose you should feel that you have made the right decision for the right reason and be willing to stand behind that decision no matter what.

If people were machines and could separate their hearts from their heads and make every decision based on logic and simply flip the switch and turn off an unwanted pregnancy like flipping off a light switch then this issue or any other issue in life would not be such a big deal. After all if we were machines we would just scrap that which we did not need and go on with our meaningless existence.

But because we are not machines but are human almost everything we do holds great consequences for each of us. Again even if you take religion or belief in some kind of god out of the picture we still have to deal with what we have done. When we abort a child we don’t simply hit the off switch, something that was once part of us is dead. Yes, after the pregnancy the child is gone and the pregnancy is over. However, because we are not machines our hard drive, our mind, will always contain the memory of what decision we have made. In our minds we will know that we had been pregnant with a child and choose to have that life ended.

Yes, there has been every attempt to help woman deal with this by telling them that if they end it soon enough it is just a tumor, or a collection of cell that can not feel anything and in no way is a human child yet. But rarely do the women that go though this ever really believe this. Oh they may say that they believe it and act like it is no big deal, but sooner or later they will come to terms with the fact that they killed their own child for their own convenience. This may not happen right away but sooner or later they will deal with it.

As for your comment that we should not legislation based on religious belief that is an interesting point, but unfortunately it is a moot point. Hang on don’t turn me off just yet. The reason I say it is a moot point is because for the last 200 plus years of this nation’s existence we have done just that. Despite what you might think or feel about religion it is, and was a huge part in this nation’s legal system right from the very beginning. From the beginning we have been governed by the basic set of laws that were drawn right from the Christian bible. By all accounts we were founded on Christian principals and I for one would put Christian principals up against any other religious belief system any day of the week.

It is true that today as a nation we are running away from basic Christian beliefs as fast as we can. In this era of political correctness we cannot take a stand based on religion with out being labeled by our critics as being radical or zealous. But for me this is no true deterrent. There have always been those who oppose religion in the rule of law. However, all law has a basis in something, whether it is on religion or humanistic beliefs someone somewhere will always try to force their morality or belief system on someone else. Knowing this, I have decided for myself that I will do my level best to make sure my voice and my beliefs are heard. If all things are equal and no one is right or wrong and if we should always be tolerant of others then I figure folks can tolerate me and the millions of others like me around the world that hold to the same narrow religious views. Yes, I will take every opportunity to make sure that my beliefs are represented. What that means for now is that when I cast my vote this past Friday I cast it as much in favor of John McCain as I did against Barak Obama. Even if McCain looses that will not be the end of this fight as far as I am concerned. Like I have said before I will fight for life no matter how anyone else feels, because it is part of who I am. I will not turn my back on the innocent for the comfort of the inconvenienced.