The slippery slope! Facts and consequences.

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1John2_26
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The slippery slope! Facts and consequences.

Post #1

Post by 1John2_26 »

Can Christians stop the death of society that will not embrace sexual restraint and decent morality and willingly embraces anti-Christian laws and pro-lascivious licentiousness and pro-pornography and pro-chaos ends?

Does destruction of society and the rise in selfish individualism always follow when society chooses to hate Christianity?

Why does sexual promiscuity and perversion always fill the void left when Christianty is driven out?

In Rome, children are celebrated and blessed and in Prague they are filmed performing sex acts.

Is this always the secular ends?

Europe in decline:
Is God dead in Europe?
By James P. Gannon

Two snapshots from a recent tourist trip to Europe:

We are in Prague, the lovely and lively capital of the Czech Republic, where the bars and cafes are full, the glitzy crystal and art shops are busy, and the dozens of historic cathedrals and churches are largely empty — except for gawking tourists snapping photos. In The Prague Post, an English-language weekly newspaper, a front-page article reports, in titillating detail, how the city has become Europe's new capital for pornographic filmmaking, while an op-ed examines why only 19% of the people in this once-religious country believe that God exists.

Change the scene to Rome. We are at the Vatican, swimming in a sea of 150,000 people waiting in St. Peter's Square for Pope Benedict XVI to appear at a special celebration for Catholic children who have made their first communion in the past year. Rock bands and kids' choirs entertain the faithful until a roar sweeps through the crowd at the first sighting of the "Popemobile," carrying the waving, white-robed Benedict down barricaded lanes through the throng. The crowd goes wild.

FOCUS ON FAITH
Faith. Religion. Spirituality. Increasingly those words are part of public life — a controversial part. Every Monday, writers of varying perspectives seek to illuminate the issues. For a look at all stories, click here

For an American Catholic visitor, Europe is a puzzling and sometimes discouraging place these days. Is God dead here? Many signs suggest that Europeans think so.

Decline in attendance

"Common wisdom has it that alcoholics outnumber practicing Christians and that more Czechs believe in UFOs than believe in God

— and common wisdom may be correct," wrote Nate and Leah Seppanen Anderson in a Prague Post commentary; he's a freelance writer, and she's a political science professor at Wheaton College in Illinois and a specialist in Czech politics and society. Surveys show a sharp decline in church attendance and religious practice in most European countries. A series of Eurobarometer surveys since 1970 in five key countries (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy) shows that regular church attendance fell from about 40% of the population to about half that figure. Declines were sharpest in predominantly Catholic nations.

Even so, how do we account for the extraordinary outpouring of grief at Pope John Paul II's death in April and the enthusiasm that his successor seems to evoke? Are these mere public spectacles, signifying nothing about Europe's drift from its religious roots, or are they signs of yearning for something more than peace, prosperity and la dolce vita?

As only an occasional visitor to Europe, I claim no expertise in these matters. But some who do see the emergence of a post-Christian era in Europe that has profound consequences for the continent and perhaps is an ominous portend for the United States. Where Europe has gone, America could be going — and that is a prospect that is frightening Christians and sharpening the religious divide in this country.

Western Europe, the cradle of modern Christianity, has become a "post-Christian society" in which the ruling class and cultural leaders are anti-religious or "Christophobic," writes George Weigel, a Catholic columnist and U.S. biographer of Pope John Paul II. In his new book, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God, he argues that religious differences help explain the policy tensions between Europe and the United States.

"It would be too simple to say that the reason Americans and Europeans see the world so differently is that the former go to church on Sundays and the latter don't," Weigel writes. "But it would also be a grave mistake to think that the dramatic differences in religious belief and practice in the United States and Europe don't have something important to do with those different perceptions of the world — and the different policies to which those perceptions eventually lead."

A fierce controversy over any mention of Europe's Christian heritage erupted in 2004 when officials were drafting a constitution for the European Union, Weigel notes.

Any mention of the continent's religious past or contributions of Christian culture — in a preface citing the sources of Europe's distinct civilization — would be exclusionary and offensive to non-Christians, many argued. Former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who presided over the process, summed up the dominant view: "Europeans live in a purely secular political system, where religion does not play an important role."

'Demographic suicide'

Among the consequences of Europe's abandonment of its religious roots and the moral code that derives therefrom is a plunge in its birth rates to below the replacement level. Abortion, birth control, acceptance of gay marriage and casual sex are driving the trend.[/b] Europe is "committing demographic suicide, systematically depopulating itself," according to Weigel.

United Nations population statistics back him up.

Not a single Western European country has a fertility rate sufficient to replace the current population, which demographers say requires 2.1 children per family. Germany, Russia, Spain, Poland and Italy all have rates of about 1.3 children, according to the U.N. The Czech Republic's is less than 1.2, and even Roman Catholic Ireland is at 1.9 children. (The U.S. rate, which has remained stable, is slightly more than 2 children per woman.)

Fifteen countries, "mostly located in Southern and Eastern Europe, have reached levels of fertility unprecedented in human history," according to the U.N.'s World Population Prospects 2004 revision.

As children grow scarce and longevity increases in Europe, the continent is becoming one vast Leisure World. By 2050, the U.N. projects, more than 40% of the people in Italy will be 60 or older. By mid-century, populations in 25 European nations will be lower than they are now; Russia will lose 31 million people, Italy 7.2 million, Poland 6.6 million and Germany 3.9 million. So Europe is abandoning religion, growing older, shrinking and slowly killing itself. These are signs of a society in eclipse — the Roman Empire writ large. Is this any model for America?

In his 2001 book, The Death of the West, conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan argues that a European-style "de-Christianization of America" is the goal of many liberals — and they are succeeding.

Court decisions that have banned school-sponsored prayer, removed many Nativity scenes from public squares, and legalized gay marriage are part of that pattern, as is the legal effort to erase "In God We Trust" from U.S. currency and "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.

Europe is showing us where this path leads. It is not the right path for America.

James P. Gannon is a retired journalist and author ofA Life in Print: Selections from the Work of a Reporter, Columnist and Editor.

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Post #2

Post by 1John2_26 »

Wow! Such silence is deafening.

Another reason that the slippery slope is being put up in every town.
'Brokeback Mountain':

Rape of the Marlboro Man

Editor's note: Recently, WND Managing Editor David Kupelian, author of the best-selling book, "The Marketing of Evil," was widely quoted in the news media for his criticism of the new film "Brokeback Mountain." Here, Kupelian explains how and why the controversial movie is one of the most powerful homosexual propaganda films of our time.
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com


"Brokeback Mountain," the controversial "gay cowboy" film that has garnered seven Golden Globe nominations and breathless media reviews – and has now emerged as a front-runner for the Oscars – is a brilliant propaganda film, reportedly causing viewers to change the way they feel about homosexual relationships and same-sex marriage.

And how do the movie-makers pull off such a dazzling feat? Simple. They do it by raping the "Marlboro Man," that revered American symbol of rugged individualism and masculinity.

We all know the Marlboro Man. In "The Marketing of Evil," I show how the Philip Morris Company made marketing history by taking one of the most positive American images of all time – the cowboy – and attaching it to a negative, death-oriented product – cigarettes.

Hit the pause button for a moment so this idea can completely sink in: Cigarette marketers cleverly attached, in the public's mind, two utterly unrelated things: 1) the American cowboy, with all of the powerful feelings that image evokes in us, of independence, self-confidence, wide-open spaces and authentic Americanism, and 2) cigarettes, a stinky, health-destroying waste of money. This legendary advertising campaign targeting men succeeded in transforming market underdog Marlboro (up until then, sold as a women's cigarette with the slogan "Mild as May") into the world's best-selling cigarette.


It was all part of the modern marketing revolution, which meant that, instead of touting a product's actual benefits, marketers instead would psychologically manipulate the public by associating their product with the fulfillment of people's deepest, unconscious needs and desires. (Want to sell liquor? Put a seductive woman in the ad.) Obviously, the marketers could never actually deliver on that promise – but emotional manipulation sure is an effective way to sell a lot of products.

The "Marlboro Man" campaign launched 50 years ago. Today, the powerful cowboy image is being used to sell us on another self-destructive product: homosexual sex and "gay" marriage.

'People's minds have been changed'

In "Brokeback Mountain," a film adaptation of the 1997 New Yorker short story by Annie Proulx, two 19-year-old ranchers named Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) have been hired to guard sheep on a rugged mountain in 1963 Wyoming. One night, the bitter cold drives Ennis into Jack's tent so they can keep each other warm. As they lie there, suddenly and almost without warning, these two young men – both of whom later insist they're not "queer" – jump out of the sack and awkwardly and violently engage in anal sex.

Too embarrassed the next morning even to talk about it, Ennis and Jack dismiss their sexual encounter as a "one-shot deal" and part company at the end of the sheepherding job. Ennis marries his fiancée Alma (Michelle Williams, Ledger's real-life girlfriend) while Jack marries female rodeo rider and prom queenEach family has children.[/b] Lureen (Anne Hathaway).

Four years later, Jack sends Ennis a postcard saying he's coming to town for a visit. When the moment finally arrives, Ennis, barely able to contain his anticipation, rushes outside to meet Jack and the two men passionately embrace and kiss. Ennis's wife sadly witnesses everything through the screen door. (Since this is one of the film's sadder moments, I wasn't quite sure why the audience in the Portland, Oregon, theater burst out in laughter at Alma's heartbreaking realization.)

From that point on, over the next two decades Ennis and Jack take off together on periodic "fishing trips" at Brokeback Mountain, where no fishing actually takes place. During these adulterous homosexual affairs, Jack suggests they buy a ranch where the two can live happily ever after, presumably abandoning their wives and children. Ennis, however, is afraid, haunted by a traumatic childhood memory: It seems his father had tried to inoculate him against homosexuality by taking him to see the brutalized, castrated, dead body of a rancher who had lived together with another man – until murderous, bigoted neighbors committed the gruesome hate crime.

Eventually, life with Ennis becomes intolerable and Alma divorces him, while Lureen, absorbed with the family business, only suspects Jack's secret as they drift further and further apart. When, toward the end of the story, Jack dies in a freak accident (his wife tells Ennis a tire blew up while Jack was changing it, propelling the hubcap into his face and killing him), Ennis wonders whether Jack actually met the same brutal fate as the castrated "gay" cowboy of his youth.

Ultimately, Ennis ends up alone, with nothing, living in a small, secluded trailer, having lost both his family and his homosexual partner. He's comforted only by his most precious possession – Jack's shirt – which he pitifully embraces, almost in a slow dance, his aching loneliness masterfully projected into the audience via the film's artistry.

Yes, the talents of Hollywood's finest are brought together in a successful attempt at making us experience Ennis's suffering, supposedly inflicted by a homophobic society. Heath Ledger's performance is brilliant and devastating. We do indeed leave the theater feeling Ennis's pain. Mission accomplished.

Lost in all of this, however, are towering, life-and-death realities concerning sex and morality and the sanctity of marriage and the preciousness of children and the direction of our civilization itself.

So please, you moviemakers, how about easing off that tight camera shot of Ennis's suffering and doing a slow pan over the massive wreckage all around him? What about the years of silent anguish and loneliness Alma stoically endures for the sake of keeping her family together, or the terrible betrayal, suffering and tears of the children, bereft of a father?

None of this merits more than a brief acknowledgment in "Brokeback Mountain."

What is important to the moviemakers, rather, is that the viewer be made to feel, and feel, and feel again as deeply as possible the exquisitely painful loneliness and heartache of the homosexual cowboys – denied their truest happiness because of an ignorant and homophobic society.

Thus are the Judeo-Christian moral values that formed the very foundation and substance of Western culture for the past three millennia all swept away on a delicious tide of manufactured emotion. And believe me, skilled directors and actors can manufacture emotion by the truckload. It's what they do for a living.

Co-star Jake Gyllenhaal realized the movie's power to transform audiences in Toronto, where, according to Entertainment magazine, "he was approached by festival-goers proclaiming that their preconceptions had been shattered by the film's insistence on humanizing gay love."

"Brokeback Mountain," said Gyllenhaal, "is that pure place you take someone that's free of judgment. These guys were scared. What they feared was not each other but what was outside of each other. What was so sad was that it didn't have to happen like that." But then, said the article, Gyllenhaal jumped to his feel and exclaimed triumphantly: "I mean, people's minds have been changed. That's amazing."

Changed indeed. And that's the goal. Film is, by its very nature, highly propagandistic. That is, when you read a book, if you detect you're being lied to or manipulated, you can always stop reading, close the book momentarily and say, "Wait just a minute, there's something wrong here!" You can't do that in a film: You're bombarded with sound and images, all expertly crafted to give you selected information and to stimulate certain feelings, and you can't stop the barrage, not in a theater anyway. The visuals and sound and music – and along with them, the underlying agenda of the filmmakers – pursue you relentlessly, overwhelming your emotions and senses.

And when you leave the theater, unless you're really objective to what you've experienced, you've been changed – even if just a little bit.

Want to know how easily your feelings can be manipulated? Let's take the smallest, most seemingly insignificant example and see. Sit down at a piano and play a song, any song – even "Mary Had a Little Lamb" – as long as it's in a major key. Then, play the same song, but change from a major to a minor key; just lower the third step of the scale by a half-step so the melody and harmony become minor. If you watch carefully, you'll note this one tiny change makes the minor-key version sound a bit melancholy and sad, while the normal, major-key version sounds bright and happy. (As the expression goes, "Major glad, minor sad.")

Now take this principle and apply it to a feature film by expanding it a million-fold. A movie's musical score has one overriding function – to make the viewer feel a certain way at strategic points during the story. And music is just one of dozens of factors and techniques used to influence audiences in the deepest way possible. Everything from the script to the directing to the camera work to the acting, which in "Brokeback Mountain" is brilliant, serve the purpose of making the movie-makers' vision seem like reality – even if it's twisted and perverse.

Do we understand that Hollywood could easily produce a similar movie to "Brokeback Mountain," only this time glorifying an incest relationship, or even an adult-child sexual relationship? Like "Brokeback," it too would serve to desensitize us to the immoral and destructive reality of what we're seeing, while fervently coaxing us into embracing that which we once rightly shunned.

All the filmmakers would need to do is skillfully make viewers experience the actors' powerful emotions of loneliness and emptiness – juxtaposed with feelings of joy and fulfillment when the two "lovers" are together – to bring us to a new level of "understanding" for any forbidden "love."

Alongside this, of course, they would necessarily portray those opposed to this unorthodox "love" as Nazis or thugs. Thus, many of us would let go of our "old-fashioned" biblical ideas of morality in light of what seems like the more imminent and undeniable reality of human love in all its diverse forms.

A "Brokeback"-type movie could easily be made, for instance, to portray a female school teacher's affair with a 14-year-old student as "a magnificent love story." And I'm not talking about the 2000 made-for-TV potboiler, "All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story," about the Seattle school teacher who seduced a sixth-grade student, went to prison for statutory rape, and later married the boy having had two children by him. I'm talking about a big-budget, big-name Hollywood masterpiece aimed at transforming America through film, just as Hitler relied on master filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to make propaganda films to manipulate the emotions of an entire nation.

In place of "Brokeback Mountain's" scene with the castrated homosexual, the "adult-child love story" could have a similar scene in which, as a young girl, the future teacher's mother took her to see the body of a woman who had fallen in consensual "love" with a 14-year-old boy, only to be brutalized, her breasts cut off, and bludgeoned to death – all by Nazi-like bigoted neighbors. (So that's why she couldn't be honest and open about her later relationship with her student.)

Inevitably, such a film would make us doubt our former condemnation of adult-child sex, or at least reduce our outrage as we gained more "understanding" and sympathy for the participants.

It would cause us to ask the same question one reviewer asked after seeing "Brokeback Mountain": "In an age when the fight over gay marriage still rages, 'Brokeback Mountain,' the tale of two men who are scarcely even allowed to imagine being together, asks, through the very purity with which it touches us: When it comes to love, what sort of world do we really want?"

OK, I'll bite. Let's talk about love. The critics call "Brokeback Mountain" a "pure" and "magnificent" love story. Do we really want to call such an obsession – especially one that destroys marriages and is based on constant lies, deceit and neglect of one's children – "love"?

What if I were a heroin addict and told you I loved my drug dealer? What if I told you he always makes me feel good, and that I have a hard time living without him, and that I think about him all the time with warm feelings of anticipation and inner completion? And that whenever we get together, it's the only time I feel truly happy and at peace with myself?

Oh, you don't approve of my "love"? You dare to criticize it, telling me my relationship with my drug dealer is not real love, but just an unhealthy addiction? What if I respond to you by saying, "Oh shut up, you hater. How dare you impose your sick, narrow-minded, oppressive values on me? Who are you, you pinch-faced, moralistic hypocrite, to define for me what real love is?"

Don't laugh. I guarantee Hollywood could make a movie about a man and his drug dealer, or an adult-child sexual relationship, that would pull on our emotions and create some level of sympathy for the characters. Furthermore, in at least some cases, it would make us doubt our conscience – a gift directly from God, the perception of right and wrong that he puts in each one of us – our inner knowing that this was a totally unhealthy and self-destructive relationship.

Ultimately, propaganda works because it washes over us, overwhelming our senses, confusing us, upsetting or emotionalizing us, and thereby making us doubt what we once knew. Listen to what actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Jack, told the reporter for Entertainment magazine about doing the "love" scenes with Heath Ledger:

"I was super uncomfortable … [but] what made me most courageous was that I realized I had to try to let go of that stereotype I had in my mind, that bit of homophobia, and try for a second to be vulnerable and sensitive. It was f---in' hard, man. I succeeded only for milliseconds."

Gyllenhaal thinks he was "super uncomfortable" while being filmed having simulated homosexual sex because of his own "homophobia." Could it be, rather, that his conflict resulted from putting himself in a position, having agreed to do the film, where he was required to violate his own conscience? As so often happens, he was tricked into pushing past invisible internal barriers – crossing a line he wasn't meant to cross. It's called seduction.

This is how the "marketers of evil" work on all of us.

They transform our attitudes by making us feel as though our "super uncomfortable" feelings toward embracing unnatural or corrupt behavior of whatever sort – a discomfort literally put into us by a loving God, for our protection – somehow represent ignorance or bigotry or weakness.

I wrote "The Marketing of Evil" to expose these people, and especially to reveal the hidden techniques they've been using for decades to confuse us, to manipulate our feelings and get us to doubt and turn our backs on the truth we once knew and loved. Indeed, whether they're outright lying to us, or ridiculing us for our traditional beliefs, or trying to make us feel guilty over some supposed bigotry on our part, the "marketers of evil" can prevail simply by intimidating or emotionally stirring us up in one way or another. Once that happens, we can easily become confused and lose the inborn understanding God gave us. We all need that inner understanding or common sense, because it's our primary protection from all the evil influences in this world.

As I said at the outset, Hollywood has now raped the Marlboro Man. It has taken a revered symbol of America – the cowboy – with all the powerful emotions and associations that are rooted deep down in the pioneering American soul, and grafted onto it a self-destructive lifestyle it wants to force down Americans' throats.

The result is a brazen propaganda vehicle designed to replace the reservations most Americans still have toward homosexuality with powerful feelings of sympathy, guilt over past "homophobia" – and ultimately the complete and utter acceptance of homosexuality as equivalent in every way to heterosexuality.

If and when that day comes, America will have totally abandoned its core biblical principles – as well as the Author of those principles. The radical secularists will have gotten their wish, and this nation – like the traditional cowboy characters corrupted in "Brokeback Mountain" – will have stumbled down a sad, self-destructive and ultimately disastrous road.
Last edited by 1John2_26 on Thu Jan 19, 2006 11:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post #3

Post by 1John2_26 »

So many posts questioning the validity of Christian beliefs and not one response to this thread by "agnostics?" Nothing from "secularists?"

No "skeptic" out there anymore?

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Post #4

Post by juliod »

I think in this thread, where your postings can best be described as a "spew", no one has anything to say. We don't care about your homophobia, nor your sexual fixations, and in general your posts aren't making any impression.

DanZ

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Post #5

Post by Nyril »

The only thing I really had an issue with was your first post about Europe not having enough younger folks. As far as I know, it tends to be public policy to increase the number of people they let move into the country as the population declines. On another note, why do we need more people? I was thinking we might shoot for about 4 billion people alive rather then our present 6.7 billion.

As for the rest of your post, I (as well as everyone else it seems) am uninclined to work out a lengthy response that would serve no purpose. Did you have a particular topic you wanted to discuss?

Right now I see:

Europe is bad
Movies about the homosexual cowboys are bad
Its the atheist's fault

Nothing really that lends itself to productive discussion.
"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air...we need believing people."
[Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933]

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Post #6

Post by MagusYanam »

James P. Gannon wrote:Among the consequences of Europe's abandonment of its religious roots and the moral code that derives therefrom is a plunge in its birth rates to below the replacement level. Abortion, birth control, acceptance of gay marriage and casual sex are driving the trend.
Then why is it that teen pregnancy (9.8 per hundred teens) and abortion (4.4 per hundred teens) rates are twice as high in the U.S. than in any of the Western European countries (the highest among them Norway with 4.0 pregnancies and 2.1 abortions per hundred teens), and that the U.S. has the highest percentage of single-parent families (at 8.0%) of any Western society? Also, kids in Europe seem to be staying abstinent longer - in the Netherlands (that's right: liberal central), 60% of sexually mature teens abstain until age 20 (compare that to less than 15% here). If anything, the U.S. seems to be in a more dire state of decline in terms of our social morals than Europe is.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/8Comparison.htm

Gannon has even less of a case when you consider that he goes on to state that Europe is practising ZPG:
James P. Gannon wrote:Not a single Western European country has a fertility rate sufficient to replace the current population, which demographers say requires 2.1 children per family. Germany, Russia, Spain, Poland and Italy all have rates of about 1.3 children, according to the U.N. The Czech Republic's is less than 1.2, and even Roman Catholic Ireland is at 1.9 children. (The U.S. rate, which has remained stable, is slightly more than 2 children per woman.)
Doesn't sound like a social system that encourages casual sex to me. Considering our track-record and given that conservatives have been setting such poor examples and exacerbating the social inequalities in this country for the past thirty-five years, decline of social morality doesn't seem so far-fetched.

Give me the U.K. over the U.S. any day of the week. Except Blair - once the Lib Dems are at the helm everything will be ship-shape.

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Post #7

Post by 1John2_26 »

I think in this thread, where your postings can best be described as a "spew", no one has anything to say. We don't care about your homophobia, nor your sexual fixations, and in general your posts aren't making any impression.
Elijah had the same experience with Jezebel and Ahab. It's tough to open minds so thoroughly closed by permissive secularism. I like the odds he was left with.
The only thing I really had an issue with was your first post about Europe not having enough younger folks. As far as I know, it tends to be public policy to increase the number of people they let move into the country as the population declines.
And that will be the death of Europe. Immigrants will replace the beauty of europe with whatever they replace it with. Hardly a refutation of facts.
On another note, why do we need more people? I was thinking we might shoot for about 4 billion people alive rather then our present 6.7 billion.


And whose hands are on the machine guns?
As for the rest of your post, I (as well as everyone else it seems) am uninclined to work out a lengthy response that would serve no purpose. Did you have a particular topic you wanted to discuss?

Right now I see:
Europe is bad
That would be correct.
Movies about the homosexual cowboys are bad


Movies glorifying adultery are bad. How interesting that that was unseen.
Its the atheist's fault
You are correct again.
Nothing really that lends itself to productive discussion.
Closed minds?

How interesting.

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Post #8

Post by 1John2_26 »

James P. Gannon wrote:
Among the consequences of Europe's abandonment of its religious roots and the moral code that derives therefrom is a plunge in its birth rates to below the replacement level. Abortion, birth control, acceptance of gay marriage and casual sex are driving the trend.
Then why is it that teen pregnancy (9.8 per hundred teens) and abortion (4.4 per hundred teens) rates are twice as high in the U.S. than in any of the Western European countries (the highest among them Norway with 4.0 pregnancies and 2.1 abortions per hundred teens), and that the U.S. has the highest percentage of single-parent families (at 8.0%) of any Western society?


Ru-486 eliminates abortions and the need for the immense numbers of unwanted pregnacies to even need reporting. How many promiscuous women report their "morning after" activities?
Overview:
The medication "mifepristone" was developed in France by Dr. Etienne-Emile Baulieu in 1980. He found a method of preventing a woman's body from producing a hormone that sustains early pregnancy. The pill is widely know as "RU-486" throughout North America. The letters is taken from the initials of the pharmaceutical company Roussel-Uclaf. The "486" is an arbitrary lab serial number. 1 It was first introduced in France, where it is called Mifegyne®. It has been used, in combination with prostaglandin medication, to induce abortions in about 500,000 women over the last two decades.

Over the last fifteen years, dozens of clinical studies on RU-486 have been conducted with thousands of women in over 20 countries, including France, Britain, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the U.S., Scandinavia, and the former Soviet Union. 2 By 1999, mifespristone was approved for marketing and sale in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Israel, the Netherlands and Spain. 3 Danco Laboratories, the U.S. distributor had expected to be selling the pill in that country by the end of 1999. 2 That did not happen. The FDA finally approved the pill for U.S. distribution on 2000-SEP-28. It first became available in 2000-DEC. The Alan Guttmacher Institute estimates that during the first six months of 2001, more than 37,000 abortions were induced using RU-486 and similar medication. This represented approximately six percent of all abortions performed. 4

As of 2002-MAY, initial indications are that about 29% of women who are eligible to use RU-486, and to whom it was offered, have chosen it in preference to a surgical abortion. 5
Also, kids in Europe seem to be staying abstinent longer - in the Netherlands (that's right: liberal central), 60% of sexually mature teens abstain until age 20 (compare that to less than 15% here). If anything, the U.S. seems to be in a more dire state of decline in terms of our social morals than Europe is.


Thank you MTV and Snoop Dog. While I do have the right to question your proof texts.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/8Comparison.htm

Gannon has even less of a case when you consider that he goes on to state that Europe is practising ZPG:
James P. Gannon wrote:
Not a single Western European country has a fertility rate sufficient to replace the current population, which demographers say requires 2.1 children per family. Germany, Russia, Spain, Poland and Italy all have rates of about 1.3 children, according to the U.N. The Czech Republic's is less than 1.2, and even Roman Catholic Ireland is at 1.9 children. (The U.S. rate, which has remained stable, is slightly more than 2 children per woman.)
Doesn't sound like a social system that encourages casual sex to me.
Huh? Ru-486 and deviant promiscuity take away the pregnancy rate.
Considering our track-record and given that conservatives have been setting such poor examples and exacerbating the social inequalities in this country for the past thirty-five years, decline of social morality doesn't seem so far-fetched.


Social inequalities? Where? Certainly Section Eight housing is rampant and easiliy accessible in any inner-city now. The only social inequalities I see first hand is from a populace embracing the "booty-call." Certainly led by the Democrats in Hollywood USA.
Give me the U.K. over the U.S. any day of the week.


They got better beer that's for sure. Morality? That's another thing altogether.
Except Blair - once the Lib Dems are at the helm everything will be ship-shape.
And "greased" for the take over to replace morality with permissive chaos, paid for of course by the morally sound hiding behind closed doors.

I can't wait to see liberals leading us to the end times. Interesting that one of my oldest and closet friend, a homosexual "Christian" sees it this way too.

"Woe to the man who brings these offenses."

Something he says also.

1John2_26
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Post #9

Post by 1John2_26 »

Onward Christian soldiers huh? Not in europe anymore.

And here is what the new european abortion looks like. Notice the use of the discredited recapitulation ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"), nonsense (lie) about embryonic developement. It's easier to flush away a little tadpole . . . than your child.
THE RU-486 ABORTION PILL
How it works;
What the expelled embryo looks like

How it Works:
In the U.S. the FDA specifies that RU-486 is to be taken within than 49 days (7 weeks) after the start of the last menstrual period. It is an antiprogestin. It binds itself to progesterone receptors on the wall of the uterus thus blocking the effect of the woman's natural progesterone. This triggers the shedding of the uterine wall, much like a normal period. RU-486 also opens the cervix, and causes mild contractions which help expel the embryo. The initial dose often causes some nausea, headache, weakness, diarrhea and/or fatigue. It is sometimes taken at home; other times it is taken at a clinic.

One or two days later, the woman takes a prostaglandin pill, typically misoprostol. This causes her cervix to soften and dilate. Contractions of her uterus begin. French studies showed that in 54% of the time, the embryo is expelled within 4 hours. In another 22% of cases, it is expelled within 24 hours. She is observed in a clinic for 4 to 6 hours. The medication causes bleeding and deep cramps. Some days later, she returns again for an examination to confirm that the abortion was complete.

There was general agreement by the year 2000 that the treatment works about 95% of the time. However, after nine months of usage by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), its "success rate" has been found to be in excess of 99%. 1 It is most effective if taken during the first 7 weeks of pregnancy. After 9 weeks, it is less effective and the side-effects are more severe. Bleeding can last up to 9 days (compared with about 5 days for a surgical abortion). Approximately 1% of women will have heavy bleeding which requires additional treatment. The medication totally fails to cause an abortion in about 1% of the women; about 2 to 3% of women experience an incomplete abortion. They require a follow-up surgical abortion. About 0.1 to 0.2% of the women experience excessive bleeding and require a blood transfusion. 2 Four women of the 2,100 who took part in the initial trials lost sufficient blood to require a transfusion. 3

It is not a simple procedure; it has unpleasant side effects. But many women find it more acceptable than an a conventional early-pregnancy elective abortion which involves surgical intervention and perhaps a one day recovery period. In mid-1998-JUL, the Population Council in New York NY released the results of a survey of 2,121 women who had taken RU-486. Half of the women had previously had a surgical abortion. 77% of those women rated RU-486 "more satisfactory." 90% would prefer the pill if they had another abortion and would recommend it to others.

Author S. Boyd cited a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Women's Association. The report listed a number of reasons why many women interviewed from "various races, ethnicities, education levels and socioeconomic backgrounds" preferred RU-486 over a surgical abortion:

It seemed more like a natural miscarriage.
It was helpful to have a partner or friend with them during the abortion; this is not allowed at most abortion clinics.
Medical abortion counselors spend twice as much time with women as do the counselors for surgical abortion, giving women more time to ask questions and further solidify their abortion decision.
One study participant said: "The fact that you insert [misoprostol] yourself is a feeling like ... this is my choice ... my decision. There's so much more power in it." 4



What does the expelled embryo look like?
Part of the RU-486 induced abortion process is the expelling of the developing embryo from the woman's body. This typically happens at home.

As expected, pro-lifers and pro-choicers take different views on how upsetting this is to a woman:

Linda Dean, executive director of the pro-life Women's Resource Center of Southern Nevada, said: "...women can actually pass a part of a fetus at home, when they're not in a clinic or directly under a doctor's care at that time. And psychologically, that can be very disturbing for women." 5
Vicki Saporta, president and CEO of the pro-choice National Abortion Federation, said that women who take RU-486 receive counseling and know what to expect. "When they are prepared for it, most of them say it's like having a heavy period." 5

In an ideal situation, the woman will realize that she may be pregnant when the expected start of her period is delayed by a week or so. She might take a home pregnancy test at that time, find that she is pregnant, visit her doctor or clinic, and take the first RU486 pill. This would terminate the pregnancy, about three weeks after conception. The embryo would be about 1/12" long, the size of a pencil point. It most closely resembles a worm -- long and thin and with a segmented end.

If she delayed the procedure by an extra week, the embryo would have grown to a length of about 1/5", and would resemble a tiny tadpole. The structure that will develop into a head is visible, as is a noticeable tail. The embryo has structures that resemble the gills of a fish in the area that will later develop into a throat.

If she delayed the procedure by two weeks, the embryo would be about 5 weeks from conception. That is approaching the limit beyond which RU-486 is not usually taken. Tiny arm and leg buds have formed. Hands with webs between the fingers have formed at the end of the arm buds. The face "has a distinctly reptilian aspect."

Another week later, about 6 weeks from conception, It is typically about 1/2" long. The face has two eyes on the side of its head; the front of the face has "connected slits where the mouth and nose eventually will be."

At 7 weeks, the embryo has almost lost its tail. "The face is mammalian but somewhat pig-like." 6 That is the time limit beyond which RU486 is not generally used. A surgical abortion would normally be indicated at this stage of gestation.



References:
The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.

"Planned Parenthood reports widespread satisfaction among patients and providers," Yahoo! Politics, 2001-SEP-24, at: http://politics.yahoo.com/politics/features/
Tom Carney, "'Abortion pill' test goes awry for one patient," Des Moines Register, 1995-SEP-21. Online at: http://www.ru486.org/ru3.htm
"FDA approves abortion pill in United States," MSNBC, 2000-SEP-28, at: http://www.msnbc.com/news/467301.asp
S. Boyd, "Give us liberty: The approval of RU-486 isn't about morals, it's about optons," Salon.com at: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/
Kate Silver , "Abortion pill slips under radar," Las Vegas Weekly, 2002-MAY-16, at: http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/
Carl Sagan, "Billions and Billions", Random House, New York NY (1997), Pages 163-179.

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MagusYanam
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Post #10

Post by MagusYanam »

Some further destruction of falsity:
1John2_26 wrote:Ru-486 eliminates abortions and the need for the immense numbers of unwanted pregnacies to even need reporting. How many promiscuous women report their "morning after" activities?
When teens are abstaining from sex, there's no need for the 'morning-after' pill. And that's what teens in Europe (unlike here) seem to be doing more. Or do you just bury your head in the sand when the facts disagree with you?
1John2_26 wrote:Huh? Ru-486 and deviant promiscuity take away the pregnancy rate.
The 'morning-after pill' is just as available here as it is in Europe, and the statistics seem to show that women in Europe are using it far less than they are here.
1John2_26 wrote:They got better beer that's for sure. Morality? That's another thing altogether.

And "greased" for the take over to replace morality with permissive chaos, paid for of course by the morally sound hiding behind closed doors.

I can't wait to see liberals leading us to the end times.
Take that log out of your eye and look around you. Guess what? We are the morally sound. You're talking to an abstinent, law-abiding, honest and liberal youth here, and you refuse to see the truth? You tell the weather by regarding the clouds, and yet you do not realise the meaning of this very hour. How sad.

And 'better morality' is exactly what the Brits have. Societally, they're in far better shape than we are. As for chaos, it is one thing the U.K. never had in more abundance than we. They remain far more centrist and moderate in their social politics than the violent swings the U.S. tend to take in either direction.

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