Strange Bedfellows

So online pornographers and the Family Research Council are now on the same side. Sometimes you just have to shake your head in wonderment.

The proposal was to create a new .xxx web extension. Pornographers opposed the idea, because they felt it would make it easy to confine their sites to a seedy area of the web which could be easily blocked off. Internet providers could then block or filter all sites with that extension. It would make it easier to control objectionable websites.

But the Family Research Council argued that creating such a domain extension would "legitimize" the adult entertainment industry. News flash: this industry already exists, and is legitimite. Not respectable, but legitimate. It's nice that the FRC favored this win-win situation.

A drug is being developed which could prevent a certain cancer in women which kills 5000 women a year. However, Christian groups have opposed it, because it would seemingly "legitimize" non-marital sex (which increases the risk of this cancer). So this life-saving drug faces a battle from right-wing Christians.

The same groups are apprehensive about potential vaccines for HIV/AIDS, because they contend it would only encourage sexual relations. Am I, as a Christian, supposed to oppose an HIV vaccine?

I remember in the 1980s, when religious groups blocked a bill which would have outlawed or restricted certain types of abortion. They argued that since the bill didn't prevent all abortions, then it was insufficient. So if there are four million abortions in a year (I don't know the real number), maybe it would have cut the number in half. But these right-wingers felt that it was all four million...or nothing. And so, it was nothing. Pragmatists said, "Let's save the two million now, and work on the other two million later." But that would seem like a compromise to the hard-liners. And so, the abortionists and anti-abortionists basically both argued against the bill. Strange.

Posted on May 11, 2006 05:20 PM|

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