Nasty Andy: This Isn't Just About Gays...

This isn't just about gays, although we've felt the sting of the movement more acutely than most. It's about science, stem cell research, the teaching of evolution, free access to medical prescriptions, the legality of living wills, abortion rights, censorship of cable and network television, and so on. The Schiavo case woke a lot of people up. I was already an insomniac on these issues.

It's not just about gays/gay "marriage"?

Oh, it's about stem cell research, too?

Funny, before Sullivan "evolved" and felt the scales fall from his eyes regarding the perfidity of "theoconservatism" -- coincidentally, over the same period his dream of gay "marriage" was thwarted by a majority of the American public -- he was against stem-cell research on moral grounds:

Consider these analogies. Federal law makes it a crime to kill or injure a bald eagle. It is also a crime to kill or injure a bald eagle's egg. We recognize that to kill one is the same as to kill the other. Similarly, I cannot remember the last time an apple farmer responded to an early frost by saying, "Never mind, we lost the fertilized blossom, but the apples will be fine." Of course, the apples won't be fine. Once the blossom is dead, the apples will never arrive. And once a blastocyst is killed, the human being coiled inexorably inside is no more. If that isn't killing, what is? And why are we more coherent when it comes to eagles than when it comes to humans?

...

Such evil cannot be morally counterbalanced by any good that medical breakthroughs might bring. This is especially true when it's possible to cultivate stem cells from other sources. Perhaps those sources are not as fecund as embryos--but that means we are confronted not by a trade-off between any research into stem cells and preserving human life, but between better, faster stem-cell research and human life. Under those conditions, it's not that close a call. After all, are we currently beset by the problem of scientific breakthroughs that aren't fast enough? Surely the opposite is true (or at least also true): We are beset by scientific breakthroughs that are occurring far faster than we have the moral language or the experience to deal with. Is a slight deceleration in that research too high a price to pay for removing even the chance that we may be taking human life?

It seems Sullivan is reversing a lot of previously-held positions lately... and all since that little decision in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Question for Nasty Andy:

Back when you were against stem-cell research, were you, too, a proponent of "theocracy"? When did you realize theocracy was "bad"?

Thanks to Slublog, who really ought to stop casting these pearls before swine and blog them on his own blog, rather than in my comments.

Give him a hit, anyway. He's got interesting stuff there, too.

posted by Ace at 04:04 PM

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