Amy Sullivan, of the Washington Monthly, calls attention to this Pro-Choice America letter citing Senator Harry Reid's Prevention First Act - an act that would make it easier to get birth control and therefore cut down on unwanted pregnancies, unwanted pregnancies being something all people can agree are not good. Of course, the strictest pro-lifers will oppose this because they detest the idea of having sex and not making a baby. Fine.
But the following quote is found in the comments section:
I am a conservative Christian, and I believe birth control is wrong just as the Pope believes. To use birth control is a sin against Jesus, God, and the bible. Therefore, supporting your attempts at birth control is a sin. If God didn't want fornication to result in pregnancy, God would not have made woman as he did. Birth control is unnatural and violates the natural law.
What I find most outrageous about such religious conservatives of any religion is the fact I firmly believe in the right for them to live their lives as they want. If my neighbor is a fundamentalist of any religion and wants to live his/her life as an extreme conservative then I completely support his/her right to do so. But I am mystified when such people won't apply that same principle to me.
My philosophy (not very profound) regarding the seperation of Church and State goes like this: if the reasoning for a law can only be found in a religious text then it is automatically unconstitutional, if the reasoning can be found in a religious text but can also be completely articulated in another realm of knowledge (philosophy, science, precedent, etc.) then it is fully open to debate. In other words, I don't automatically discredit logic (for lack of a better word) derived from a religious text, I just want to be able to see a similar argument formed outside that religious realm.
It is amazing that people in the United States cringe when they hear that the Qur'an may influence the Iraqi constitution but yet, as the quote above indicates, there are so many that want to use the Bible as America's constitution.
So, to say birth control should be illegal because it offends Jesus and the Bible, well, no.
-- Steve Cieslewicz
