07-21-2007, 06:55 PM
Quote:I think that is outrageous baiting and you know it. Why do you think that all evangelical Christians are ignorant buffoons?
I don't think they are all ignorant buffoons. Some of them are quite intelligent and knowledgeable. They just happen to be, for whatever reason, in the grips of an irrational dogma. I could care less, if they kept it to themselves. Sadly, there is a powerful political movement, in both our countries, to move this dogma into politics.
Any attempt to mould educational life around evangelical values is detrimental to the children. Kids should be taught knowledge, and given the freedom to do with it what they may, not railroaded into one lifestyle or another by denying them the truth.
The abstinence-only programs exist to please social conservatives. The largest bloc of those in the US are Christian Evangelicals, so I lay it at their doorstep. Sure, not all of them. Sure, not everywhere. But most of them, most places. I'm not being bigoted here: if you're an atheist, Muslim, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Rastafarian, Pastafarian, Mars-Worshipper or Shaman, and you believe irrational things, I'll argue against you all the same. It just turns out that there aren't as many of those people in the US, combined, to match the evangelicals.
The stork is an exaggeration for comic effect. Baiting, if you like, and you can't tell me you've never done the same. What is not funny is that the actual teachings of abstinence-only sex ed aren't any better. These programs are innefective. These programs are dishonest. These programs skirt dangerously close to religious interference.
... and Mitt Romney is making an issue out of it to feed the base he desperately wishes he had, and badly needs to win the primary, and the election. So he jumps all over it. Pure political pandering.
He's not going to win California come hell or high water, so if even Evangelicals there have come to see sense on the issue of birth control, it doesn't matter one whit to Romney. His targets lie elsewhere.
-Jester