NOW, THE NEWS:
SEATTLE PLANNED PARENTHOOD AFFILIATE FIRES CEO ON ACCUSATIONS OF RACISM
from: LiveAction News
(16 Dec.) Chris Charbonneau, the CEO of a Seattle-based Planned Parenthood affiliate spread across six states, has been fired following accusations of racism, after working for the abortion giant for almost 40 years.
According to the Seattle Times, a donor for Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky used a racist term for Black people, which Charbonneau then repeated while speaking to another staffer. Charbonneau allegedly did not correct the donor, board members Jeff Sprung and Colleen Foster said.
Two staff members also quit, allegedly due to Charbonneau's behavior. "I cannot in good conscience continue to be part of an organization that fails to seriously respond to this degree of racism," Erika Croxton, then the vice president of external affairs, wrote in a resignation letter. Chief Learning Officer Anna Kashner also resigned, saying Charbonneau’s behavior "is inexcusable and unforgivable."
According to Charbonneau, however, she was shocked and horrified at what the donor said. In her version of the story, she and a Planned Parenthood "major gifts officer" were thanking the donor and began discussing pro-life laws in Texas. The donor allegedly said, "They’re trying to make women the new [N-word]," which Charbonneau then repeated several days later in a conversation with Croxton. Charbonneau claimed she simply wanted to make sure it was clear what the donor said, though she now says she knows she shouldn’t have repeated the word.
"If I had to do it over again, I would not have used that actual term," she told KNKX Public Radio. "I was astonished at the sort of cavalier disregard with which my 40-year commitment was being treated."
However, this is not the first time a Planned Parenthood representative has failed to respond appropriately to racist remarks from donors. In 2015, a Live Action undercover investigation revealed a phone call between a Planned Parenthood rep and a potential donor, who made it clear that he wished to donate to ensure that there were fewer Black babies being born. The staffer responded with awkward laughter, calling his sentiment "understandable." Other staffers in the investigation stated that for whatever the reason, they would accept the donor's money: see the video.
Today, Black women account for approximately 38% of all abortions, despite the fact that the Black community makes up just 12% of the population. Hundreds of employees had previously said there was systemic racism and a culture of white supremacy at Planned Parenthood, which includes being founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger (openly revered by the organization until recently), who put Ku Klux Klan leaders on the board. Numerous affiliates have likewise admitted to both past and present racism. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: Planned Barrenhood is trying to hide from its past as a racist organization, so killing over three times as many Black babies per capita than white babies is OK, but using the N-word is now verboten. Which of these evils does more damage to the Afro-American population? Racism, like ableism and ageism, is very real even if unspoken, it lies deep in our subconsious national mentality: the feeling that Blacks, the disabled, and elderly people perceive that they should just "go away" or "disappear" because "normal" people simply ignore them if not openly shun them.
DUTCH DOCTORS GIVEN THUMBS-UP FOR EUTHANIZING DEMENTIA PATIENTS
from: BioEdge.org
(12 Dec.) The Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) has released guidelines for the euthanasia of patients with dementia who have made a written advance directive. It will no longer be necessary for the patient to agree at the moment of the euthanasia.
The new approach follows a court case in which a doctor was prosecuted for euthanizing a woman with dementia who was struggling to resist a lethal injection. The doctor was acquitted even though, strictly speaking, she [the doctor] had committed a criminal offence.
The Regional Review Committees for euthanasia cases recently clarified its position in the light of this case. Doctors are to be deemed the best judge of whether a dementia patient is "suffering unbearably" – one of the legal requirements for euthanasia – and they do not have to ask the patient.
"At all times, euthanasia for incapacitated patients with advanced dementia is only possible on the basis of a written request for euthanasia drawn up by the patient himself when he was still mentally competent," says the KNMG.
The KNMG seems to be giving doctors a lot of leeway in interpreting the patient's wishes. Its website states: "The doctor must try to determine the intentions of the patient from the written request for euthanasia. The doctor must pay attention to all circumstances and not only to the literal wording of the written request for euthanasia." [read more...]
COMMENTARY: Now Dutch doctors are advised to interpret what they think patients really meant when they wrote a request for euthanasia. So if a person writes – "I don't think I'd like to be euthanized if I have dementia" – the doctor may interpret it to mean – "Now that I have dementia, please euthanize me." This is reminiscent of the practice in the USSR of injecting dissidents with paycho-active drugs that turned them into zombies... or is the Dutch practice even worse?
KYRGYZSTAN: NEW RESTRICTIONS IN DRAFT NEW RELIGION LAW
from: Forum 18 News Service
(16 Dec.) A draft new Religion Law prepared by the State Commission for Religious Affairs (SCRA) would – if eventually adopted in its current form – make it more difficult to exercise freedom of religion or belief. Among new restrictions, registering small religious communities would be more difficult or impossible, and the draft might also make it impossible to register communities that do not own their own buildings.
The draft Law would continue to require 200 adults to found a religious community and apply for compulsory registration, but would now require them to live in one Region of the country. All 200 would be required to attend the founding meeting in person and have their full personal details recorded and notarised. "It is physically impossible to gather more than 200 people at one notary's office to certify the list of founders with a record of the passport details of these citizens, as well as the record of the founding meeting on one day," Bishkek lawyer Zhanara Askar kyzy insists. She also warned that such notarisation would be expensive.
The draft Law would also continue the current ban on meetings for worship and religious education without state permission. Another of the provisions violating human rights is that, for the first time, the draft Law would require individuals or religious communities to gain registration from the SCRA for places of worship that they use, whether owned or rented.
Compulsory state registration and the high membership threshold required to found a religious organisation are among the draft Law's provisions which violate legally-binding international human rights standards. These standards include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Kyrgyzstan acceded in 1994.
The SCRA prepared the draft text on 2 November, exactly a month after President Sadyr Japarov signed a Concept on State Policy in the Religious Sphere 2021-26. This called for laws "in the religious sphere" to be brought into line with "international human rights standards." [read more...]
COMMENTARY: The requirement of having all 200+ founding members in a notary's office to show their passports and certify they want to register a religious community is not only "physically impossible" – it is also logically impossible to gather 200 people together in their own building if they can't own a building because they aren't registered. This is a deliberate chicken-and-egg dilemma created by the Kyrgyzstan government to effectively ban all religious communities. Both in the East and the West, socialist and secular materialist states are making it "more difficult to exercise freedom of religion."
COURT WON'T RECONSIDER FDA BAN ON SHOCK DEVICES FOR THOSE WITH DISABILITIES
from: Disability Scoop
(10 Dec.) The Food and Drug Administration has once again been rebuffed by a federal appeals court in its yearslong push to ban devices used to administer electric shocks on people with developmental disabilities.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued an order late last month rejecting the FDA’s bid to rehear a case centering on a regulation finalized in 2020 barring what are known as electrical stimulation devices. The devices send electrical shocks through electrodes attached to the skin in order to condition people not to engage in self-injurious or aggressive behaviors.
Earlier this year, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the FDA rule after three of the panel's judges heard the case. The agency fought back, asking that the case come before all 11 of the court's judges, but now that effort has been denied.
At issue are devices believed to be used at only one facility in the U.S. – the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Mass., which serves children and adults with developmental disabilities as well as those with behavioral and emotional problems.
For years disability advocates have worked to halt use of the skin shock devices arguing that they are torturous. Backers of the Rotenberg Center, however, say that the electrical stimulation devices are a last resort for individuals with severe behaviors who have not responded to other treatments. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: Electric shock "treatment" is inhumane: it should only be used for animals. Do not torture people with disabilities. Period.
UGCC ARCHDIOCESE SIGNS AGREEMENT WITH UNIVERSITY ON ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES
from: Religious Information Service of Ukraine
(14 Dec.) An agreement was signed at the University of Oil and Gas during a solemn meeting of the rector's office on the occasion of a visit of the head of the UGCC, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, who is currently in Ivano-Frankivsk, to the university.
According to the first hierarch, this is an exclusive agreement that the church signs with an academic institution for the first time. The essence of the agreements is to establish cooperation between the church and the University on the use of alternative energy sources.
"We planned something similar at the Patriarchal Cathedral with His Beatitude Lubomyr Husar," Patriarch Sviatoslav said. "But the equipment that needed to be purchased abroad was too expensive."
Overall, as the Patriarch of the UGCC noted, energy sources are very expensive, and, in particular, gas is very expensive. Therefore, Ukraine must learn how to use other alternative energy sources.
The first pilot project, within the framework of the agreement between the University of Oil and Gas and the Archdiocese of Ivano-Frankivsk of the UGCC, will be the installation of heating systems using wastewater in the largest church in Ivano-Frankivsk, the Church of Sts. Volodymyr and Olga. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: What is left unsaid in this article is that Russia threatens to cut off natural gas supplies to Ukraine as soon as the Nordstream II pipeline from Russia through the North Sea to Germany is completed. Russia currently sends its natural gas to western Europe through Ukrainian pipelines and the Ukrainians siphon off "their share" of gas. More than supplying the energy to heat one church will be needed though: enough alternative energy for the whole country would be required. BTW, Saints Volodymyr (Vladimir) and his mother Olga are the ones who in the year 988 A.D. first accepted Christianity for ancient Rus' that was based in Kyiv, leading to the conversion of the entire country.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LIBRARIES OFFER GENDER IDENTITY BOOK FOR KIDS IN VIRGINIA
from: Daily Signal
(15 Dec.) Loudoun County Public Schools keep four copies of an ideological book on gender identity for little children in its elementary school libraries, the Virginia school system confirmed Wednesday to The Daily Signal.
Written by "One Bad Mother" podcaster Theresa Thorn, the book It Feels So Good to Be Yourself describes the terms "sex assigned at birth," "intersex," "gender identity," "gender expression," "cisgender," "transgender," and "non-binary" to readers. An Amazon description of the book says it is intended for children ages 4 to 8.
"It is my wish that this book help children to better understand themselves and others," writes Thorn in an author’s note. "This book is for trans kids, cis kids, non-binary kids, gender-fluid kids, gender-expansive kids, questioning kids, and all kids, everywhere."
The book’s royalties go to the LGBTQ organization Gender Spectrum, according to Thorn's husband, and it cites multiple radically liberal organizations as "helpful resources" for young readers, including the Human Rights Campaign, the Trans Youth Equality Foundation, and GLAAD, originally the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
Wayde Byard, public information officer for Loudoun County Public Schools, confirmed Wednesday to The Daily Signal that the school system has four copies of It Feels So Good to Be Yourself in elementary school libraries. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: Go to the above article and look closely at the images of people in the picture and what's written there: two girls riding a bike together, two men pushing a baby buggy, a girlish-looking "boy" playing a flute, a boyish-looking "girl" playing a horn, a woman in a Muslim headscarf holding an apple (think Eve's temptation), two women pushing a baby buggy, two women walking together holding hands, with the words – "There are so many different ways to be a boy or a girl – too many to fit in a book!", "But not everyone feels like either a boy or a girl", "NON-BINARY is a helpful word that can describe a kid who doesn't feel exactly like a boy or a girl."
All of this is pushing an LGBTQ agenda that is opposed to Christian morality. Scripture clearly teaches that cross-dressing, homosexual, and transgender behavior is an abomination and an offense to God. Accepting and loving all people does not include affirming all their behavior. Jesus didn't reject; rather, He accepted the woman caught in adultery, but He said – "Go and sin no more!" not "Go and sin some more."
NOW, OUR VIEWS:
In the Old Testament book of Micah 6:8-12 we read – "He has shown you, O man, what is good. What does the Lord require of you, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? The Lord's voice calls to the city, and wisdom sees your name: 'Listen to the rod, and he who appointed it. Are there yet treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and a short ephah that is accursed? Shall I be pure with dishonest scales, and with a bag of deceitful weights? Her rich men are full of violence, her inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their speech.'"
This "minor" prophet Micah is making a major point: the Lord requires that we "act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." But instead, His people acquired treasures by manipulating the economy: a short bushel of wheat, rigged scales that let the seller short the buyer, and weights that deceive the borrower. This resulted in the poor having to sell themselves as slaves to the rich: see my web page "Escaping Debt Slavery" on how to break this cycle of poverty. Then click on the link "Why do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?" there to explore this issue further. This is what we as Christians should do not only for ourselves, but teach others how to do the same.
On 7 December, just three days after sending our previous issue of ARC-News, my wife Cheryl had knee replacement surgery. She is only recovering slowly from the extreme pain of this very invasive surgery, so please remember to pray for her full recovery.
Please remember to pray for Christians in Secularized Countries, and for...
Your fellow-servants,
Bob & Cheryl
p.s. The measure of a man is not how much he has accumulated for himself, but how much he has done for others.
