I certainly hope that many more people will find this site and read.  I'd like to hear your thoughts too.

I "do" videoconferencing.  We get used primarily for wide area meetings and for remote training / education.  You should also understand that outside of my work, I rarely watch TV and that began in the 1990s.  Recently, I had the dubious pleasure of sitting through an old Nova science program from the early 90s.  It was about a use of embryonic stem cells for a possible cure of people with the symptoms of Parkinson's diease.  They had taken some bad faux Heroin, containing a chemical called MPTP I believe.  

The most irritating thing about it was the complete lack of understanding of the morality that we espouse in our fight for the recognition of the humanity and personhood of every fetus and disabled or aged man or woman.  This was as true for the class and instructor as it was in the now 15+ year old show.  

Before I go on to list my objections, I should mention that it was the only television show that had a shot of the March for Life, other than EWTN that I have seen.  It was brief and was edited to be after a close shot of a small group of rowdy and intimidating pro-life protesters.  I seriously wonder how hard they had to look to find those yelling and screaming folks!  In my experience, that kind of thing is much more likely to come from pro-choice protesters.

 As I said in my previous blog posting, the March for Life has some of the best behaived and nice, considerate people that you could ever hope to meet!  I have been to other large gatherings of like minded people for other causes, but the atmosphere of the March is special.  People spontaneously help you - a tissue to blow your nose or an umbrella to ward off the rain.  I have never felt that I was in any sort of danger.  I keep my hands close to my pockets by old habit, but I don't think there's a pickpocket in all the thousands of people there!  Yes, some fightin' words get said by some of the speakers before the March, and some chants for Life go up from the younger groups as we pass Congressional buildings and the Supreme Court, but if they seriously make anyone feel threatened, I'll get a hat and eat it!  Any counter demonstrations you may hear of are tiny in comparison.  I think I saw one at the final corner one year only, but I don't make it down every year.  You may laugh, but I feel like I'm in a small, advance time piece of the Kingdom of God when I experience the March.

Back to the blind and misleading press, in this case a science telvision show.  One way that it was misleading was the above mentioned mischaracterization of Pro-Life protesters.  Another is that it didn't mention, let alone go into therapy by Adult stem cells.  Yes work with them was far less advanced then, but most stem cell cures come from the use of your own adult stem cells.  Secondly, there is what I must call the willful blindness to the simple reason for objecting to the use of aborted fetus stem cells for experimentation.  "After all, they've already been aborted!?"  Excuse me, if a fetus is a human being, he or she deserves the respect we give to our dead.  You don't want Igor to dig up Uncle George for parts to be used by Dr. Frankenstein?  Well, I'd like our aborted children to be buried or cremated or treated with similar respect!  That the users of these parts of children look so mild and everyday is actually more chilling than imaginary monsters!

To sum up, the focus of the show was directed solely at one of the few embryonic stem cell semi-successful experiments.  It did not give a balanced view of the moral issue involved and did not mention adult stem cell therapies. We know that pro-lifers have no objection at all to medical experimentation with adult stem cells, but a naive viewer certainly wouldn't.  He or she wouldn't even know that such a thing as an adult stem cell even exixts!!  That is out and out propaganda, not dispassionate reporting of the facts and the issues involved!  No wonder people such as the instructor and students are biased and don't understand the issue at all!

If you haven't, go to the March for Life in January, or a more local equivalent.  I think the people marching in San Francisco on that day in January are braver than us east coast residents!   Help your family, friends and neighbors to see the issue of stem cells from a broader perspective and keep the Faith folks!

Hello all fellow members of Pro-Life Singles.  As I write this, there are very few members, but I expect that won't last. 8-)  I'm going to put down my thoughts here, they are subject to change but heartfelt now.

I live in Vermont.  It's hard here on one of the front lines of the fight for Life.  Look up our statistics some time.  We are one of the "whitest" states, with the fewest church goers and a declining population.  We have Planned Parenthood deeply embedded in our schools, and politics - they are the only abortion providers instate and I believe the number of abortions has gone up since they got their monopoly.  

People here think that they want to help others and that they are in the vanguard of ("good") change.  We started the gay marriage business, and are constantly being pushed to make suicide, the Physician Assisted kind, legal.  As a state, yet one with a smaller population than some major cities, we can influence the whole country disproportionately.  I do what I can in the VRLC - google is your friend for acronyms - but there is much that you just can't say.  I come from a fairly liberal background and I can understand much of what motivates people here, even if I have moved away from that since I converted to Catholicism.  The biggest thing seems to be that we have a problem with our morals and understanding of our sexuality.  I keep hearing that people only object to abortion, to gay marriage and much more for "Religious reasons".  We also seem to think that there are waayyy too many of us on this earth.  I will grant to those who say such things - not believing that we are "in the womb" of a greater, eternal life - that pretty much everything goes if there is no eternity, no reckoning.  That said, there are arguments that can make some sense to all.

Strictly speaking, Gay Marriage is not a "Life Issue" but the argument against it should come out, and not surprisingly Does have to do with life.  To put it baldly (which I am anyway! 8-) we think of sex from an upside down perspective.  SEX IS FOR REPRODUCTION, FOR FAMILY!  Before you stop reading, No, I don't mean it isn't an expression of love between a man and a woman!  I DO mean that pregnancy and children are to be hopes in your minds, NOT FEARS!  Sex is for those who are willing, if God grants, to raise the children that they conceive!  Put it another way, both partners should be committed to raising offspring.   If you're thinking that means a child a year please Google "NFP" (Natural Family Planning).  We're talking self control and close spousal cooperation with NFP.  The fact that same sex couples could adopt children in my home state, made same sex unions possible.  The ability to do that was a simple extension of single people being able to adopt... 8-((  Back to the point though, conventional sexual morality comes directly from what I said above, with a few points that we have been forgetting.

Sex is not for those who aren't committed to raising possible offspring.  That means no sex outside of marriage.  No affairs, no living together, no accepting of, or seeking to have, sex when one party is clearly not committed.  Guess what?  Premarital sex correlates with increased risk of divorce!  Since you can't have children with partners of the same sex, that's out.   That means that homosexuality isn't a variation on normality, it is sadly, a currently incurable disease.  Don't get me wrong, most of the lesbians and gays that I know are good friends!  We are to love them, not hurt them, but not encourage them either.  Marriage when procreation isn't possible, due to age, I have to leave to those whose job it is to decide that.  I will learn the answer though, since the best match for me is probably a post menopausal woman.  

We have tried to deny that sex evolved for reproduction since contraception became common.  Thus we can't understand ourselves.  Why do men want attractive women?  It has to be an instinctive way of selecting a woman who is healthy and can bear their children.  Why do some women, conversely select abusers?  They are mistaking "uncaring" for confidence.  It's a huge over generalization sure, but please, tell your teen boys that girls want them to be confident and to have a plan for their life!  Fathers have to have the ability to support their wives and children when mothers are extremely busy with children, and NO, this doesn't let fathers off the hook for child or house care!!!

We have to realize a simple truth, that spousal love is more like parental love than we think.  We are supposed to care FOR each other!  Loving is self giving, not taking.  That fits in perfectly with hoping for children and NFP when you can't.  Raising children is probably the best "glue" for marriage, short of loving God.  I can't wait for the day when unloving parents will be rare!

The next step is to love all our brothers and sisters - all people around us.  That's another essay, but here is a hint:  I have never encountered stronger brotherly love than what I have experienced at the March for Life in Washington D.C. every year!