Slavery and Tolerance

Thirty-three years ago this week, ABC aired a mini-series entitled Roots. I was a ten year old boy at the time, and I watched every night of the miniseries with my mother. The longing of the slaves to be free and the cruelty of the slave masters to deny freedom to those slaves made quite an impression on me. Even though I haven't watched Roots since that original 1977 airing, two scenes still stand out: a master brutally forcing Kunta Kinte to accept his slave name of Toby and a master chopping off half of Kunta Kinte's foot to end his repeated attempts at running away.

After seeing the multi-generational story on TV, I began taking an interest in my own "roots." I asked my mother about her grandparents and what she knew about them. Apparently, our genealogy includes southern slave owners. I asked her if they were anything like the cruel masters in the movie. She told me that they weren't cruel, that they were very good to the slaves they owned.

I've been thinking about that lately. The concept of slavery is, in and of itself, cruel. Why do we want to console ourselves (or our children) by saying that our ancestors were better to their slaves than other slave owners? The fact is that the slaves were denied their basic right to life and liberty. How is that not cruel? And given our wonderful Declaration of Independence and Constitution, why was slavery tolerated in this country during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

A lie was perpetuated throughout society during those times, and that lie was that black people had not achieved a certain level of advancement to have earned the right to be treated as human beings. And since they were not human beings, they were considered property, to be bought and sold like any common good. The cost to our country of debunking this lie was devastating.

Another lie is being perpetuated right now throughout our society, and it bears a striking resemblance to the lie used to justify slavery. This lie says that children in the womb have not achieved a certain level of advancement to have earned the right to be treated as human beings. And since they are not human beings, they are to be considered property of their mothers and can be killed at will by those mothers. This how abortion is justified. Many in the pro-abortion movement could not support their own position if it involved killing "babies," so they simply deny that they are babies. Just as slave owners justified their own action by claiming that the slaves were not "us," pro-abortionists claim that unborn children are not children at all (even though science repeatedly tells us that they are).

Another lie that was used to justify slavery was that the slaves would be better off under the "care" of their masters than they otherwise would be. What they did was deny these slaves their own basic rights under the pretense of taking care of them. The pro-abortion movement claims that the children killed by abortion would be better off dead than by being born as an unwanted child, perhaps in poverty and abuse. I have to ask in both instances, who are these people to judge what is best for another group of people?

The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is something with which we are all created. These rights are not granted by the government or by our founding documents. These documents do rightly state that these rights come from the Creator. Government only exists to ensure these rights. For many years in the early days of this country, our government failed in this most basic responsibility to ensure these rights to an entire class of people. It is still failing another class of people. It is time for us to rise up and demand that these God-given rights are absolute and that our government officials take steps to defend these rights for ALL of us. This is what the Personhood movement is all about.

37 years

It was 37 years ago today, on January 22, 1973, that the United States Supreme Court decided the Roe v. Wade case. Since then, over 50,000,000 babies have been murdered in the United States.

That decision, as horrendous as it was, also stated, in regards to the rights of the unborn, that: “If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment."

As of 2003, Texas law firmly established this suggestion of personhood by passing the Prenatal Protection Act, which amended the Texas Penal Code so that a “Person” “means an individual, corporation, or association." (Tex. Penal Code §1.07.38) An "individual" (the term used in the definition of "Person") "means a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth." (Tex. Penal Code §1.07.26)

Because this "suggestion of personhood" is now established by law,the Roe v. Wade decision stipulates that the right to life of unborn children MUST be guaranteed in accordance with the Fourteenth Amendment. In 2010, the people of Texas will be choosing a governor to guide the state through the next four years. I pray that the person we elect will have the courage to take this stand for life.

Race for Texas Governor

I had the opportunity to attend the Texas Republican Gubernatorial Debate this past Thursday evening. I have to admit to being biased in favor of one of the candidates, especially since my tickets into the debate were provided by that candidate, but it seemed obvious to me that Debra Medina did more good for her campaign than anyone could have imagined. If I had been a Kay Bailey Hutchison supporter, I would have been embarrassed by her non-answer on the question concerning Roe v. Wade. Is it really that difficult to just give a yes or no answer? And Rick Perry just seemed too arrogant and cocky to be taken seriously. Is this what nine-plus years in the Governor's Mansion have done to him, or is he just not hiding his arrogance as well as he used to?

The most telling moment of the debate occurred at around the 3:30 mark of the video below with a question about the Texas Futile Care Law. Hutchison didn't even know the law existed; Perry's answer didn't address why he hadn't done anything about the law in the years that he has been in office; and Medina's answer went straight to the heart of the matter.



You can watch the entire debate at www.TexasDebates.org

Houston Baby-Killing Super-Center

Planned Parenthood is getting ready to open a modern-day Auschitz in Houston this April. Life-loving patriots will be holding a prayer rally and march outside the cash-register-shaped building (how fitting is that?) on Monday, January 18th. Here is a clip about the the protest of the opening of this monstrosity, courtesy of Bound4Life:



Current Texas law defines a person as and individual and an individual as "a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth." (Tex. Penal Code §1.07.26) And yet, other provisions of the law tell abortionists that killing children is legal as long as those children are still inside their mothers' wombs. The law defines these unborn children as persons, which should give them the same legal status that any other person has. We, as citizens, must demand that our government protect the right to life of ALL persons, not just certain ones. If the law can say that killing persons is legal under certain conditions, then what is stopping it from expanding those conditions?

We must protest loudly and persistently the opening of this new murder super-center. We must demand that officials of our state legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government remove the unjust laws that fail to protect the most basic rights of the most vulnerable of persons. And if these office holders fail to do so, then we must vote them out of those offices and replace them with candidates who realize the truth that we are ALL created equal, that we ALL have God-given rights to life and liberty, and that government's ONLY responsibility is to ensure and protect those rights.

So everyone please keep contacting our state officials with our demands that unborn children receive the same protection under the law that we all already have. And while you are doing that, go out and find and campaign for candidates who will fight for those protections.

Pastor Stephen Broden

Last night, Pastor Stephen Broden addressed a meeting of the North Tarrant Republican Club. He spoke with passion and clarity on how conservatives and those who value life should respond to the current socialism that is in control of our government. He is the pastor of Fair Park Bible Fellowship in Dallas, TX, and he is running for United States Congress in the Texas 30th District (mainly southern Dallas County) against the very pro-baby-killing incumbent, Eddie Bernice Johnson.

His campaign website is http://www.brodenforcongress.com/

Here's a short clip of one of his speeches:

Choice?

I just read that NARAL, the pro-abortion group, named Personhood USA as a nominee to its Hall of Shame, even though the Personhood USA organization is only just one year old. Personhood USA linked to the NARAL announcement on their blog post about it, and I couldn't help but follow the link to the NARAL Prochoice America site and read some of the vile things that they have there. I am continually amazed at how the pro-abortion side has warped the English language to justify their position on baby-killing.

The pro-abortion side claims to be "pro-choice," thus labeling those of us who believe that murdering babies in the womb ought to be considered murder in our laws, "anti-choice." I normally like to refute the whole "pro-choice" label in the following manner...

A single woman gets pregnant. She can: 1) decide to keep the baby and raise it herself (perhaps with help from her family), 2) decide to carry the baby to term and give it up for adoption, or 3) decide to kill the baby via abortion. Another woman finds out that her husband is cheating on her with another woman. She can, 1) try to work things out with her husband, assuming that he wants to stay in the marriage and that he is genuinely sorry for his infidelity, 2) divorce her husband, no matter how much he apologizes or begs, or 3) kill her husband or hire someone to kill him for her.

What is the difference between option three in the first scenario and option three in the second scenario? Both of them involve the premeditated, intentional killing of a human being. Both of them would bring a great deal of shame and guilt upon the women initiating the killings. Both of them involve a dead victim. Why is one considered a crime worthy of prison time, while the other is perfectly legal (and, if the current healthcare bill passes, might even be paid for by the government)? Does the illegality of one somehow remove the "choice" from the woman involved? If it did, there would not be any instances of a woman killing her unfaithful husband (or vice-versa). Of course, we all know that isn't the case.

Those of us who want to protect the right to life of unborn children are not "anti-choice" any more than those who favor legalized abortion are "pro-choice." The choices will always remain. The question is, do we recognize and protect the right to life of all human beings? The pro-abortion people are always spouting off their "Against abortion? Then don't have one," slogan, which just demonstrates how little regard they have for human life. If they had been around in the 1850's, they might also have been saying, "Against slavery? Then don't own slaves."

The entire issue of abortion needs to revolve around those being victimized the most by abortion, the unborn children. Are children in the womb alive? And if they are alive, are they human beings? The answers to both of those questions are a resounding and unequivocal YES! That's what the personhood movement and Personhood USA (and by extenstion, this Texas Personhood blog) are all about.