The hard truth when it comes to ‘woke’ ideology
It confers the right to shut down critics, and worse
Three incidents in recent days, out of many more that could have been chosen, are instructive for those in America who are guided by the doctrine of “live and let live”. That is, so long as what you are doing, however questionable, causes no harm to me, there is no problem. But it is precisely that generally praiseworthy doctrine that has gone by the boards thanks to the ascendancy of “woke ideology.”
Daily millions of us may take note of the multitude of offenses that a loud, well-organized minority imposes, meriting a headline in the media or online and nothing more. But not seeing what can be done about it, we turn our attention away and get on with our day. But that is a mistake, as I hope to show with three examples each “progressively” worse in this respect.
According to web site of the California Family Life Council, “Prolifers came out in force [on November 7] to oppose a San Diego Supervisor’s proposal to pursue litigation to shut down the county’s 16 pregnancy care centers she considered ‘fake and fraudulent.’ The opponents overwhelmed the supporters with over 60 people speaking in opposition and 975 sending in written comments. In contrast, no one spoke in support at the hearing, and only 60 people sent in supportive comments. In the end, the four-member board split the vote, stalling the recommendation, but only temporarily. The proposal will be voted on again on December 5, after a new supervisor fills a vacant spot on the board.
“Earlier in the week, San Diego County District 3 Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, held a press conference with a Planned Parenthood abortionist to promote her plan. ‘They are fake centers pretending to offer reproductive health care and advice to women; luring unsuspecting women into their doors with misleading information,’ Lawson-Remer said. However, the supervisor didn’t provide any evidence for these claims. She didn’t point to any bad actors in San Diego County, nor did she have any clients of a pregnancy care center to present testimony on how they were deceived.”
These two paragraphs succinctly sum up the controversy. In effect, pregnancy crisis centers are being accused of offering an alternative to abortion, regarded as a serious offense no doubt because abortion is legal in California. It is one thing, however, to state that obvious fact, but it is another to imply that alternatives are out of order, or worse. Most cancer treatments prescribe radiation and chemotherapy, but the organic alternatives are not proscribed by law or otherwise, however criticized they may be.
So, notice the thinking here, to which prolifers rightly call attention, which holds that because abortion is legal it possesses a superior status. But these pregnancy centers in many cases are run by doctors and nurses, the others readily providing access to those professionals. Clearly, this points out that the bottom line for abortion clinics is a steady stream of abortions which the access to alternatives necessarily impedes.
The week before, also according to California Family Life, “California Attorney General Rob Bonta, along with attorney generals from 15 other states, released an eight-page open letter recently denouncing pregnancy care centers, sometimes called crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). In this document, they accused CPCs, typically operated by pro-life Christians offering alternatives to abortion, of disseminating ‘misinformation and causing harm.’
“The AGs argued that CPCs harm patients by ‘[delaying] pregnant people from accessing critical reproductive healthcare—by dissuading pregnant people from seeking abortion care and by frequently holding themselves out as full spectrum healthcare providers when most of them are anything but.’ The authors of the letter also argued that CPCs use ‘deceptive tactics to lure in patients’ without providing the ‘full-scope of reproductive healthcare.’ They further condemned CPCs for not providing abortions and ‘actively aim[ing] to prevent people from accessing abortion care.’”
This ups the stakes considerably. Denunciation is not yet prosecution, but it is very close to it. Obviously, there is no legal authority to shut down crisis pregnancy centers, but AG Bonta, as he done with school districts in the state resisting the imposition of unscientific “transgenderism.” is proceeding as if he already has it. Echoing the San Diego County supervisor, Bonta believes that legal status of abortion implies none for any alternative to killing unborn babies.
The fact that Bonta enlisted the support of 15 other states makes clear that we are dealing here with a legal question but a political one. That is, if enough political clout is demonstrated by abortion defenders, the less defensible, they hope, is the opposition prolife movement among our citizens. But no one is “actively [aiming] to prevent people from accessing abortion care,” for there is nothing to prevent anyone from ignoring the non-violent alternatives.
Also reported last week in a different state and presenting a different issue, to some extent at least, was that three pages of the “manifesto” of the Nashville, Tennessee transgender school shooter was somehow leaked to the press, leaving us to wonder both what took so long for its appearance since the shooting last February and why only a portion of the “manifesto” was leaked. She killed three children and three adults there, remember.
This is may seem far away from “reproductive rights,” but it has in common with the California controversies cited above the conviction that there is no legitimate opposition to rejecting the natural sexuality of human beings but that those who do should die.
“Kill those kids!!!” wrote Audrey Hale, “those little crackers going to private fancy schools with their fancy kwakies (sp) and sports backpacks.” Twice she condemns them with the F word and makes it clear that she intends to shoot them. She also twice called them “little faggots,” with “white privilege,” strange since they surely are not “faggots”, and twice strange because she is white herself.
It would be easy to write this off as the ravings of a lunatic, but we know that this young woman once attended the school she attacked, and proclaimed her “transition” to maleness. But soon after the shooting, supporters in the state Capitol actually counted her as a “victim” rather a murderer. Victim status, like abortion legalization, confers full rights for whatever purposes those in the class declare. Her “manifesto” may be a rambling mess, but by the standards she draws upon she’s in the clear. It is those who oppose violation of “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” who are in the wrong and should pay for their sins.
We must not shrug off these alarming incidents for they are not occasional annoyances of our otherwise tranquil lives but a direct threat to them. The rule of law, as well as common decency, is stake, when the death of babies and the death of white people are upheld as candidates for public policy.