What is the unborn?

There is one question that makes or breaks the entire abortion issue for both sides. What kind of being is it? The answer one gives is pivotal, the deciding element that trumps all other considerations. All arguments are either made irrelevant (if it is not a human person) or insufficient (if it is a human person). All the arguments reduce to this issue and either find their grounding or their nullification here. This argument was brought to my attention through a podcast that I cannot recommend highly enough (link below).

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"Let me put the issue plainly. If the unborn is not a human person, no justification for abortion is necessary. However, if the unborn is a human person, no justification for abortion is adequate."
- Greg Koukl, founder of Stand To Reason Ministries

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This argument may seem too simplistic to some, but I would suggest that it seems this way because we have made the issue too complicated. Arguments are presented regarding the health of the fetus, the relationship between the parents (i.e. rape, incest) and the rights of the mother. However, while these arguments do have issues that must be dealt with, they are secondary if the fetus in question is a person.

Every person's response should be obvious. No matter what side of the argument you fall on, there seems to be a clear burden on every person to answer this question. Any one who votes, who has any impact on public policy, should feel obligated to research enough to know whether or not a fetus is a human being.

http://www.str.org/

Who's forcing their views on whom?

I write this blog with more than a little trepidation of being mistaken as a bigot. So let me instead address the Christian community first. We have shot ourselves in the foot when it comes to the gay and lesbian community. We have largely remained silent about the love and forgiveness and life change available through Christ. Instead, we've blown homosexuality out of proportion and consider it somehow worse than the other sexual sins of premarital sex, adultery and pornography (sins occurring within the church). When we pick on homosexuality and turn a blind eye to these other sexual sins in the church, we are hypocrites. Unfortunately, the most vocal ones are the extremists who do not represent the majority of Christianity but form much of the public's opinion of Christianity. They are decidedly unbiblical in their bigoted thought and hateful speech and give no evidence of the grace and life change that a genuine conversion brings. My suspicion is that they are not part of the true body of Christ at all.

However, the homosexual community is committing one of the same errors that we as Christians tend to make. We seem to expect them to live by the same set of morals and values that we do without accepting our source for those values. In other words, we expect them to live up to Christian community standards without accepting Christ. We are guilty of trying to force them to live as if they accept our beliefs.

Yet they are doing the same thing, and on a much greater scale. The homosexual political lobby has exerted all it's strength to force it's view on the rest of society. They seek to pass laws or have judgements made in courts to force other people who have conscience concerns to the contrary to live as if they thought that same sex unions are exactly the same (naturally, socially, morally) as heterosexual unions. The majority of the people in this country do not adhere to such a stance, so to enforce something like same sex marriage statutes is to enforce such that is contrary to the public will.

It is not the religious side forcing it's views on gay community in this conflict, the Christian response has been largely on the defensive. The religious right would not be reacting if the homosexual lobbyists were not pressing to change laws to force people to accept their beliefs. Notice, there are no laws against homosexual relationships or unions, but there are also no allowances or exemptions for it. No rights are being infringed, but neither are any provisions being made. It seems to me that it's not the Christians who are forcing their views on the homosexual community, but rather the opposite.