It’s About Making Babies!

I wrote Senator Coburn, MD, of Oklahoma today.

Senator Coburn,

I confess I am a bit confused. NBC is taking a poll, and there has been much brouhaha about “In God We Trust” on US currency, coins, and other expressions of Christian faith in and around US Government and local government property.

I thought the US Constitution forbids intermingling church and stae. I hadn’t realized that church, faith, and religion are all the same thing.

I had thought that faith was a person’s understanding and beliefs about matters of the spirit. I had thought that religion was the general practice of worship and expression reverence for a chosen spiritual guide, God. And I had thought that a church was a secular organization of people expressing a communal faith.

How, then can the US Constitution have anything to say about faith, or religion? It is only the organizations we call “church” that is barred from participation in our government.

If a state or official wants the ten commandments posted in a courthouse, that is mere ornamentation for the public, even if an expression of faith for the individual. If that same posting of the Ten Commandments were commissions – or imposed – by the Roman Catholic Church in America, by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (The Mormons), the Southern Conference of the Baptist Church – that would be an illegal conflict, since churches are barred from interfering with Government.

NBC is running a poll, asking if “In God We Trust” should be removed from currency. Since there is no church affiliated with our currency, I can see no conflict. Consider the phrase traditional or religious, as you will. Without the context of church, the phrase is a choice – one bound in history and tradition, and to many, a guide for the future.

Unless POTUS Barack Hussein Obama believes that America demands the statement on their currency as a back-handed slap, an expression of *dis*trust in government. Then I would think the challenge would be to restore trust, not ban the criticism.

The phrase on currency, “In God We Trust” actually implements the Constitutional ban on state religion. By stating that the trust is *not* in organizations of men, the message is clear: Personal faith is honored and encouraged. Government, currency, will not be bound to any church, i.e. organized religion.

theotherryan on Total Survivalist Libertarian Rantfest posted a thougtful piece on abortion.

I posted a comment – that irishdutchuncle took exception to.

My response to irishdutchuncle somewhat widens the topic, so I post my reply here.

The problem is not abortion. The problem is unwanted pregnancy. And abortion is one way to address the problem. Not a good way, but mostly effective for an individual. Whether abortion, adoption, or other answer is best or just better for society, for the faithful, and legally – that is unclear.

There are two kinds of arguments here, spiritual and secular.

Spiritually, your “Before I formed you in the womb” reference seems, to me, to refer either to an eternal soul – present since the first life – or reincarnation. I see nothing that refers to the moment or concept of conception of life in that reference, or any other in the Bible. “Adam went in unto Eve and she conceived” might have – maybe – referred to fertilizing an egg. It might also have referred to marriage, or exerting male dominance over the female (recall that the Judeo-Christian church is aggressively patriarchal in substance, and vigorously opposed competing religions – including matriarchal faiths).

Maybe the passages you cite mean what you think they do. Those passages don’t convince me.

Socially and legally, since the US is not a theocracy yet, the economic impact of an unwanted birth weighs just as heavily on society as an abortion does on a woman carrying an unwanted pregnancy.

I contend that if the legal system, the government, and *the people of the US* cared about unwanted pregnancies, then you would still see laws against bigamy, adultery, and fornication enforced as vigorously as laws against child molestation. Instead we pick and choose, we decide that cheating on a marriage, “living in sin” – how long since I heard that phrase? – are considered personal choices, and have nothing to do with solemn vows, legally established unions, and laws on the books that have been removed in the last 50 years – or are just ignored.

What is beside the point is worrying about the morality of abortion – and closing school programs for unwed mothers below eighth (8th) grade, because there isn’t enough room in the program – without someone going to jail for molestation or statutory rape for each and every one of those too-young, sexually active mothers-to-be.

The problem of unwanted pregnancies isn’t being fixed. For many people, that are only involved in the intellectual concept of an unwanted pregnancy, whether or not to condone or abhor abortion – or deny it to others – is an interesting exercise in faith or morality. In the legal and secular worlds, though, for those living with the consequences, and the society that pays and deals with the aftermath of an unwanted birth, the questions don’t have such easy answers.