Saturday, July 17, 2010

Sin #4: Hampering The Use Of Birth Control Worldwide

Man, I started this series February 6 and here it is July 17 -- must be as boring to me as it is to you. Regardless, we have made it to the final installment.

It used to be mostly the catholic church, with its third world "breed, baby, breed" strategy for keeping its numbers up, that was the primary opponent of birth control.

But, the American neo-puritan/conservatives decided to get in on the act too. And, shocker, the Bush administration's decision to quit distributing condoms worldwide and instead distributing information on abstinence-based birth control (oxymoron?) has led to a resurgence of AIDS in Africa.

I also find the posters "We'll wait until we're married" that you see in Tennessee a hoot. Horny youngsters get married too young so they can have sex, greatly increasing their chances of divorce. Family values, my ass.

I've always found it interesting that the "Right to Breed" is so fundamental that it is nowhere in the constitution or law that I know of. The Chinese, with their one child per family policy of the last few decades, are the only case I know of a government limiting that right. We should probably make "Idiocracy" required viewing for all DINK yuppies. Actually, I think that there are enough genes for smartness spread throughout the gene pool that smart people will come from every economic strata, racial group, etc -- so I really don't worry about "Idiocracy". But, we all need to slow down before we pass the carrying capacity of the earth, if we haven't already (says the guy with 4 kids).

A couple of weeks ago I was at the catholic funeral mass for my mother's sister, the last of her generation. The priest was not a good speaker, and, increasingly, I find the religious blather dished out to be completely incomprehensible:

When she was alive, Ann loved you as a mother and as a wife. Now in heaven, she loves you as god loves you, with divine love. This is a much greater love than any earthly love. So she now loves you much more than she did when she was living.
????? Where the fuck do they get this stuff? Do they just completely pull it out of their ass? They take something real, human and wonderful -- motherly and wifely love, both probably based at least in part on the hormone oxytocin -- and render it meaningless by throwing in non sequitur assertions based on nonsense.

It is hard to lose loved ones. But we all die, and that's the end of it. They live on in us in our genes and/or in the lessons (memes) that they passed to us in their lives.

5 comments:

suzieq said...

I would have had a really hard time listening to that priest and not getting up and walking out. It's just bizarre that they keep making this stuff up and selling it. Grrr...

Chris Heinz said...

At our mother's funeral, I almost did walk out.

I subscribed to your blog. I would have commented had I known. Some astute observations there I thought.

suzieq said...

How did you find it? I had some things to get off my chest, but I didn't know anyone else had seen it.

suzieq said...

Yeah, I have a hard time with religious funerals. Thank goodness I don't have to go to many! Visiting hours are usually a better fit for the non-religious, but it's not always possible to attend those or to NOT attend the funeral service.

Chris Heinz said...

I found it by clicking on suzieq and then clicking on Last But Not Least -- not so hard.

Mark has a blog on the Courier Journal site. I enjoyed all 3 posts.

feed://sitelife.courier-journal.com/ver1.0/PersonaBlog/BlogRss?plckBlogId=Blog:32e2c26d07aa40759f79d1ae77526a28