Tennent: You can't make a sin a sacrament

Some good words from Timothy Tennent, President of Asbury Theological Seminary.

I occasionally hear someone make the case that evangelicals have invested far too much energy fighting against same sex marriage and the ordaining of homosexuals as pastors in the church. There are some who have become convinced by weak exegesis and, feeling the winds of culture blowing, have convinced themselves that the Bible doesn’t actually condemn homosexual behavior. Texts such as Genesis 19:1-11 and Lev. 18:22; 20:13 and Judges 19:11-24 and Romans 1:18-32 and I Corinthians 6:9-11 and I Timothy 1:8-10 and Jude 7, not to mention texts like Matthew 19:4-6 where Jesus himself clearly teaches that marriage is between a man and a woman, are all swept aside with some version of the question, “hath God truly said…?” This is, of course, the well trodden response which first appears in Genesis 3:1 and has been a favorite wedge of the enemy against God’s Word. I do believe that evangelicals must become more devoted readers of the Scriptures and less susceptible to specious arguments which erode thousands of years of faithful Jewish- Christian teaching. But, I will need to devote more time in some future blog to address this problem. In this blog I want to make a point of clarification about those who may agree that homosexual practice is wrong, but wonder why the church seems to be focused on this particular sin and not others.

Why, they argue, do we not seem to exhibit the same kind of righteous indignation against embezzlers or liars or landlords who oppress the poor, as we do against homosexual behavior? Why, they go on to insist, do we single out this one sin when there are so many others sins we could – and should – oppose? From this perspective, it seems like the church is doing the ecclesiastical equivalent of a “pile on.”

It is absolutely true that the church must take a stand against all manner of sin, whether it be shoplifting or rape. All sin is, at its root, an expression of rebellion against God. Therefore, the church must stand against anything which stands in opposition to His righteous rule and reign. I think that sexual brokenness runs so deep in our culture that every pastor should take time to regularly address a whole host of issues along the “sexual brokenness” continuum, including pre-marital sex, fornication, adultery, pornography viewing, misogyny, etc.

However, the reason the issue of homosexuality has been highlighted so much in recent years is not, as is often said, because this sin is being singled out from all the others. Rather, it is because this particular sin is seeking to be legitimized as normative in the life and experience of the church. I expect the wider secular culture to embrace homosexuality as normative and, indeed, to be regularly bewildered by the strangeness of Christian teaching. The point is, no one in the church has sought to promote the ordination of openly practicing adulterers or to legitimize the practice of usury. If there was a movement among us to ordain oppressive landlords or habitual shoplifters, then I suspect that these issues would be regularly discussed as well. No Christian is now saying that usury is a good thing, or that Christians should no longer consider it important to visit prisoners, or help widows in their distress. However, we do have bishops who are telling the church that it is now permissible for someone to sodomize their neighbor. The result is an attempt to legitimize homosexuality and same sex marriage, moving it from the “sin” category to the “sacrament” category.

So, to put in plainly, the church would rather not focus time and energy on homosexuality. We actually don’t believe that homosexual practice carries a heavier moral weight than a whole range of other sins. However, any attempt to relocate any sin from the New Testament “sin lists” to the celebrative, normative list must be addressed because it strikes at the heart of the gospel itself.

First Things and CMPL on being a "gay Christian"

Recently, First Things ran two articles by Joshua Gonnerman, a doctoral student at Catholic University of America (CUA), lamenting the struggles and extolling the virtues of being a "gay Christian." Gonnerman's commitment to living a chaste life while struggling with same sex attraction is commendable, but his arguments are not particularly convincing to Andrew Haines and Mattias Caro of the Center for Morality in Public Life. Haines, also a graduate student at CUA, is not persuaded by Gonnerman's "peculiar" language.

This basic theory of relational perspective and significance drives Gonnerman’s later explication of just why self-identifying as a “gay Christian” should make sense.

[T]here are many things I find valuable about my experience of being gay. Any number of studies indicate that there are real trends of difference between gay people and straight people, however difficult to define. Gay Christians are, perhaps, “called to otherness” as Elizabeth Scalia’s suggested on these pages in an article I consider one of the best things written on the subject. Her suggestion is that people with same-sex desire experience a kind of attraction that, when not concupiscent, is a gift to the Church—a sign of contradiction.

My otherness as a gay man is shared with other people, and we in our shared otherness make a community (community in otherness being an experience I learned to value in the churches of my youth, as we sang with gusto of being “a peculiar people”). Being a gay Christian does not mean one must be separated from one’s gay brothers and sisters or dissent from the teaching of the Church. The more people are willing to stand up and be counted, the more the rift between the church and gay people can be healed, and that’s a goal I, at least, feel the obligation to pursue.

I confess, that Gonnerman’s language, here, is excessively (to use his phrase) “peculiar.” What does it mean to say that “we in our shared otherness make a community”? What ever is “shared otherness”? And how on earth should we find it—presumably what he would call “a sign of contradiction”—to be a compelling reason for embracing something like homosexual attraction?

Indeed, poetic language shouldn’t be discouraged. But if Gonnerman’s argument holds up, it appears to be the differences that separate us—and not the common features that unite us—which “make a community.”

To be sure, the Christian gospel, and subsequently a Christian perspective on ethics and sexual morality, is founded upon the mystery of the Incarnation, and upon the seeming impossibility (or contradiction) of the Cross. But “signs of contradiction” (i.e., signs of the toll that sinfulness inflicts upon our nature) aren’t justifications for or the bases of authentic community. They’re instances of its breakdown; hardly the sort of thing we should be celebrating and seeking after to extoll.

Caro finds the current fascination with the "gay Christian" nomenclature disturbing because of its emphasis on the "acceptance" of a vague, and somewhat dubious, "identity" and a lack of appreciation for a very basic element of the Christian character.

It boggles me that in the discussion of the “Gay Christian,” various authors are largely ignoring the question of personal virtue and the community’s response to that, and instead attempting to focus the whole question on the acceptance of identity. (As opposed to Jones who seems to have little-to-no issues about an acceptance of her identity and instead yearns for a way to live out her ideals.) Of course, Christianity is all about identity, but it is about an identity in conformity with Christ, not one that is self-applied according to particular desires and interests. Virtue plays an integral role in this because in imitating Christ, we come to imitate His virtues, on both a human and supernatural level. It’s a theory of moral ecology baptized right out of Ancient Greece and Rome.

The basic disagreement between the authors may simply boil down to semantics. The term "gay Christian" is either acceptable or unacceptable depending on one's perspective and experience. The Apostle Paul, it must be noted, did speak of the Corinthian believers in terms which identified them with their past transgressions, homosexuality being one among many (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). Such identification, however, was only for the purpose of exalting "the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God" who had "washed," "sanctified," and "justified" them. In light of this, the term "gay Christian" indeed sounds inappropriate unless it is used in the "peculiar" context of the cross and the power of the Risen Christ to save, deliver, and heal.

"Moderate" Baptists discover the virtues of "covenant"

My alma mater, Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, has been in the news quite a bit lately--and not for anything that would make alumni beam with pride. Notoriety usually escaped this quiet Baptist college during my student days. The school's former president R. Kirby Godsey was a favorite punching bag for hardliners in the Georgia Baptist Convention but most of the controversies remained local. The fundamentalists tried on several occasions to take over the school, but the campus was hardly a bastion for left-wing activism. In a mock presidential election in 1984, Ronald Reagan beat Walter Mondale by a 3-to-1 margin. There were the standard issue campus radicals still beating the tired drums of 1960's hippiedom (complete with the obligatory Volkswagen Microbus), but they were viewed largely as a sideshow. There was also a full complement of professors with leftist sympathies, but they didn't transmit their disease to most of the students. If my old friend Chris Hall and myself are in any way indicative, the relative conservatism of the student body in those days has held up well over the last quarter century.

Times have changed, however and, with the addition of a graduate level school of theology, this once obscure institution of higher learning has taken center stage in the struggle of "moderates" to remain relevant in the conservative-dominated Southern Baptist Convention. A key player in Mercer's rise to prominence in this arena has been ethics professor David Gushee. At a recent conference on sexual ethics hosted by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Gushee deftly dodged the thorny issue of homosexuality by introducing a not so novel term.

Mercer University ethicist David Gushee, a key conference organizer, spoke passionately and forcefully about “covenant” in his address. Using his own parents as a model of covenantal faithfulness, Gushee noted, “I have thought from the beginning that the very important thing we could talk about would be the issue of covenant. I believe that covenant is a, if not the, single best way that has emerged in the Christian theological ethic-ecclesial tradition to talk about what we are supposed to with our sexuality, and for that matter, our relationality.”

Gushee soberly called for all churches to embrace “covenant” as an ethical norm. “I am firmly convinced that the greatest challenge facing the Christian/Baptist family at this time is nurturing more Christians who have the confidence, and the willingness, and the capacity, to make and keep such covenantal promises.” Later, Gushee said that “the Left-Right differences have not made much of a different in preventing the divorce culture. This must change.”

But Gushee stopped short of addressing who ought to be eligible for entry into such covenants. And he urged embracing the concept of “covenant” before it disappears. “I don’t think our main issue is the fierce and tedious fighting on the boundaries about which categories of people ought to be viewed as eligible to make covenants.”

“Focusing on covenant,” Gushee said, “gives some positive normative vision that has the potential for inviting everyone into the conversation. It speaks deeply to our ecclesial problems, as well as to our marital problems.”

Gushee is starting to sound a little like an Anglican, is he not? Wasn't a "covenant" supposed to be the solution to all the ecclesial disputes brought on by several provinces sliding into apostasy in the area of sexual ethics? Of course, the "Anglican Covenant" never really had a chance. Covenants must be based on mutual trust and commitment and the wayward provinces had no intention of abandoning their brave new world of sexual nihilism.

With regard to our "moderate" Baptist friends, their chief conservative critic sums up their plight accurately.

R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, criticized the conference as a catalyst for embracing progressive sexual ethics within the CBF.

“The CBF is in the death throes of denominational anguish over sexuality in general, and homosexuality in particular,” Mohler said. “They are making clear decisions to abandon biblical authority in pursuit of endless ‘conversations,’” he added.

According to Mohler, “The denominations that take a clear position on homosexuality have, in the least, the virtue of honesty. The CBF has decided not to take that approach.”

Culture of death advocates run for cover as dark agenda is exposed to the light

Despite the spirited defense of its contents by a morally depraved editor, the repugnant article advocating "after birth abortion" of infants has been removed from the Journal of Bioethics website. The authors of this vile essay, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, have issued an "Open Letter" in which they try to explain away the public backlash by claiming their work was intended for elite eyes only.

When we decided to write this article about after-birth abortion we had no idea that our paper would raise such a heated debate.

“Why not? You should have known!” people keep on repeating everywhere on the web. The answer is very simple: the article was supposed to be read by other fellow bioethicists who were already familiar with this topic and our arguments. Indeed, as Professor Savulescu explains in his editorial, this debate has been going on for 40 years.

We started from the definition of person introduced by Michael Tooley in 1975 and we tried to draw the logical conclusions deriving from this premise. It was meant to be a pure exercise of logic: if X, then Y. We expected that other bioethicists would challenge either the premise or the logical pattern we followed, because this is what happens in academic debates. And we believed we were going to read interesting responses to the argument, as we already read a few on this topic in religious websites.

However, we never meant to suggest that after-birth abortion should become legal. This was not made clear enough in the paper. Laws are not just about rational ethical arguments, because there are many practical, emotional, social aspects that are relevant in policy making (such as respecting the plurality of ethical views, people’s emotional reactions etc). But we are not policy makers, we are philosophers, and we deal with concepts, not with legal policy.

Moreover, we did not suggest that after birth abortion should be permissible for months or years as the media erroneously reported.

If we wanted to suggest something about policy, we would have written, for example, a comment related the Groningen Protocol (in the Netherlands), which is a guideline that permits killing newborns under certain circumstances (e.g. when the newborn is affected by serious diseases). But we do not discuss guidelines in the paper. Rather we acknowledged the fact that such a protocol exists and this is a good reason to discuss the topic (and probably also for publishing papers on this topic).

However, the content of (the abstract of) the paper started to be picked up by newspapers, radio and on the web. What people understood was that we were in favour of killing people. This, of course, is not what we suggested. This is easier to see when our thesis is read in the context of the history of the debate.

This explanation is, to say the least, disingenuous. As Wesley J. Smith points out, the authors state numerous unequivocal beliefs and presuppositions in their original article, none of which are recanted or clarified in their "Open Letter."

“In spite of the oxymoron in the expression, we propose to call this practice ‘after-birth’ abortion,’ rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than that of a child.”

“Therefore we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all circumstances where abortion would be.”

“If the death of a newborn is not wrongful to her on the grounds that she cannot have formed any aim that she is prevented from accomplishing, then it should also be permissible to practice after-birth abortion on a healthy newborn too.”

“Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life.”

“Why should we kill a healthy newborn when giving it up for adoption would not breach anyone’s right but possibly increase the happiness of the people involved? … On this perspective … we also need to consider the interests of the mother who might suffer psychological distress from giving up her child for adoption.”

Moreover, as Smith observes in his more detailed critique, the claim by the authors that they were merely speaking hypothetically does not hold up under the light of historically established patterns in "bioethics."

Here is the pattern: In the 1960s, the propriety of abortion was actively promoted in professional journals, leading directly to the great denouement of Roe v. Wade. Similarly, in the 1970s, bioethicists argued that it should be acceptable to withdraw feeding tubes from people with severe brain damage, an idea that was once beyond the pale. After a general bioethical consensus toward that end was achieved, the “concept” soon became public policy. Now, people who are unconscious and minimally conscious are dehydrated to death in all 50 states as a matter of medical routine. Terri Schiavo was only unusual in this regard because her blood family made such a stink.

If anything, the authors' attempt to allay public outrage makes their proposition all the more sinister. They are all but admitting that they wanted to pursue their sick agenda in total darkness, away from the light of public scrutiny (Smith uses the term, "above the radar"). They got caught this once, but that will not deter them. They will only be more careful, which means we must be ever more vigilant.

So, it has come to this: defending infanticide by accusing critics of "hate speech"

As if advocating infanticide were not morally repugnant enough, the editor of the journal which published a recent essay advocating "post-birth abortion" is defending its authors and accusing critics of "hate speech."

The editor of an ethics journal that recently published an article advocating infanticide (what the authors call “post-birth abortion”), has responded to widespread criticism by pointing out that promoting the killing of newborns is nothing new: in fact, in the Netherlands infant euthanasia is already legal and practiced. 

Julian Savulescu: Sick, depraved, amoral

Editor Julian Savulescu also criticizes what he calls the “hate speech” directed at the authors of the article, arguing that the public’s response to the piece shows that “proper academic discussion and freedom are under threat from fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society.”

In the journal article Alberto Giubilin, a philosopher from the University of Milan, and Francesca Minerva, an ethicist from the University of Melbourne, made the case that “after-birth abortion” should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is perfectly healthy. They base their argument on the premise that the unborn baby and the newborn do not have the moral status of actual persons and are consequently “morally irrelevant.”

In response to the backlash, Savulescu wrote that the arguments in the article “are largely not new and have been presented repeatedly in the academic literature and public fora by the most eminent philosophers and bioethicists in the world, including Peter Singer, Michael Tooley and John Harris.”

He also observes that the paper “draws attention to the fact that infanticide is practised in the Netherlands.”

The fact that The Netherlands already permits the killing of disabled newborns is not widely known, even by many in the pro-life movement. The practice is permitted under the so-called Groningen Protocol, which outlines the circumstances under which a physician may deliver a lethal injection to a newborn who suffers from a disability, at the request of the child’s parents.

An article published in 2008 in the prestigious Hastings Center Report about the Protocol similarly provoked outrage after the authors argued that disabled babies might be “better off dead.”

The authors of that article also linked infanticide to legalized abortion, arguing that infanticide may in fact be the morally superior alternative to abortion.

“The supposedly morally superior alternative [of abortion]…does not strike us as superior at all,” they wrote. Instead, they said, parents of a child with a poor prenatal diagnosis should wait until the child is born, when they can make a more informed decision about the chance that their child has of living a “satisfactory” life.

“We join disability activists who condemn the routine recommendation of abortions performed for no other reason than to prevent the birth of an affected baby,” they said.

In his response today, editor Savulescu observed that the authors of the recent paper simply took for granted the premises that undergird legal abortion, and followed them to their logical conclusion.

“The goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view,” he writes. “It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises.

“The authors provocatively argue that there is no moral difference between a fetus and a newborn,” he continues. “Their capacities are relevantly similar. If abortion is permissible, infanticide should be permissible. The authors proceed logically from premises which many people accept to a conclusion that many of those people would reject.”

The pro-infanticide article and the defense from Savulescu come only months after a Canadian judge employed similar arguments in the process of handing out a lenient sentence to a mother who strangled her newborn and threw him over a fence.

According to Justice Joanne Veit, Canada’s lack of an abortion law indicated that “while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support.”

“Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother,” she added.

Savulescu, the director of the Center for Practical Ethics at Oxford University, has made the news in the past for arguing that the requirement for organ donors to be dead at the time of organ harvesting should be removed, and that “mandatory” organ donation should be instituted. He has also argued that humanity has a “moral obligation” to use in vitro fertilization (IVF) to select the most intelligent embryos for the good of society.

Okay, let me see if I understand this correctly. Criticizing people who advocate the killing of newborn infants (not to mention, harvesting the organs of the terminally ill) is nothing but "hate speech" by "fanatics" who threaten "proper academic discussion and freedom" and are "opposed to the very values of a liberal society." However, referring to unborn and newborn infants as "morally irrelevant" and saying that disabled babies are "better off dead" are merely expressions of that "proper academic discussion and freedom" which is threatened by the "fanatics."

Yes, it all makes perfect sense if you are a sick, depraved, and amoral individual like Julian Savulescu. May God have mercy on his soul.

No comment department . . .

. . . because commentary would be superflous.

Two ethicists working with Australian universities argue in the latest online edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics that if abortion of a fetus is allowable, so to should be the termination of a newborn.

Alberto Giubilini with Monash University in Melbourne and Francesca Minerva at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne write that in “circumstances occur[ing] after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.”

The two are quick to note that they prefer the term “after-birth abortion“ as opposed to ”infanticide.” Why? Because it “[emphasizes] that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus (on which ‘abortions’ in the traditional sense are performed) rather than to that of a child.” The authors also do not agree with the term euthanasia for this practice as the best interest of the person who would be killed is not necessarily the primary reason his or her life is being terminated. In other words, it may be in the parents’ best interest to terminate the life, not the newborns.

The circumstances, the authors state, where after-birth abortion should be considered acceptable include instances where the newborn would be putting the well-being of the family at risk, even if it had the potential for an “acceptable” life. The authors cite Downs Syndrome as an example, stating that while the quality of life of individuals with Downs is often reported as happy, “such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.”

Read it if you have the stomach for it.

Welcome to the brave new world of 21st century "medicine"

If this doesn't disgust you, you have no heart and probably no soul.

If you want to see where our culture may next go off the rails, read professional journals. There, in often eye-crossing and passive arcane prose of the medical intelligentsia, you will discover an astonishing level of antipathy to the sanctity of human life — to the point now that some advocate killing the profoundly disabled for their organs.

Case in point: “What Makes Killing Wrong?” an article published in the January 19, 2012 edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics. The authors argue that death and total disability are morally indistinguishable, and therefore harvesting organs from living disabled patients is not morally wrong. Bioethicists Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, of Duke University, and Franklin G. Miller, from the National Institutes of Health’s Department of Bioethics (which should really get the alarm bells ringing!) arrive at their shocking (for most of us) conclusion by claiming that murdering the hypothetical “Betty” isn’t wrong because it kills her, but rather, because it “makes her unable to do anything, including walking, talking, and even thinking and feeling.”

How do they get from deconstructing the definition of death to harvesting the disabled? First, they change the scenario so that Betty is not killed but severely brain damaged to the point that she is “totally disabled.” But their definition of that term encompasses hundreds of thousands of living Americans who are our mothers, fathers, children, aunts and siblings, uncles, friends and cousins — people with profound disabilities like that experienced by Terri Schiavo and my late Uncle Bruno as he lived through the late stages of his Alzheimer’s disease:

Betty has mental states, at least intermittently and temporarily, so she is not dead by any standard or plausible criterion. Still, she is universally disabled because she has no control over anything that goes on in her body or mind.

Since Betty “is no worse off being dead than totally disabled,” they opine, it is no worse “to kill Betty than to totally disable her.” Not only that, but according to the authors, “there is nothing bad about death or killing other than disability or disabling,” and since she is already so debilitated, then nothing wrong is done by harvesting her organs and thus ending her biological existence. And thus, in the space of not quite five pages, killing the innocent ceases to be wrong and the intrinsic dignity of human life is thrown out the window, transforming vulnerable human beings into objectified and exploitable human resources

If you can stomach it, read the whole article by Wesley J. Smith, documented by links to six articles advocating this barbaric practice.

Moral intuitions and the "Yuck!" factor

Australian ethicist Zac Alstin articulates his disdain for contemporary ethical theories--such as Peter Singer's attempt to justify incest, bestiality, and other gross taboos--which reject the rationality of basic moral intuitions.

The father of modern astronomy, Galileo, did not win converts to his theories through their obvious truthfulness. Rather, the younger generation of astronomers were drawn to the new and exciting research possibilities that came with Galileo's telescopes. Older, more established astronomers doubted that the new technology could be trusted. We moderns take for granted that what we see through the end of a telescope is real. Yet some of Galileo's contemporaries refused to even look through one of his telescopes for themselves.

We are amused by such stubbornness today but we live with the advantage of a much greater body of evidence that reinforces the reliability of telescopes and microscopes. We have been to the moon, and confirmed with unaided vision the ruggedness of its surface. In a different context, “new and exciting” theories might prove to be nothing more than a fad.

It is my grave duty to inform you that the same is true of the discipline of ethics, where the most reasoned and convincing arguments nevertheless rest upon a set of basic assumptions which we simply must accept or deny. Those who best represent traditional ethics exist in a kind of parallel universe to most modern academic ethicists, and, it seems, never the twain shall meet.

Hence, such philosophers as the renowned and infamous Peter Singer can freely condemn the irrationality of moral intuition or “the yuck factor”, thereby defending in principle such remaining taboos as bestiality and incest.

“To explore the way in which people reach moral judgments, Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, asked people to respond to the following story: Julie and Mark are brother and sister. They are travelling together in France on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decided that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At the very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy making love but decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret between them, which makes them feel even closer to each other. What do you think about that, was it OK for them to make love?

"Haidt reports that most people are quick to say that what Julie and Mark did was wrong. They then try to give reasons for their answer. They may mention the dangers of inbreeding, but then recall Julie and Mark used two forms of birth control. Or they may suggest that the siblings could be hurt, even though it is clear from the story that they were not. Eventually, many people say something like: “I don’t know, I can’t explain it, I just know it’s wrong.”

"Evidently, it is the intuitive response that is responsible for the judgment these people reach, not the reasons they offer, for they stick to their immediate, intuitive judgment, even after they have withdrawn the reasons they initially offered for that judgment, and are unable to find better ones.”

Singer goes on to argue that our disgust at things such as incest is an emotional response, which we have evolved in order to protect the species from inbreeding. His broader claim is that our moral intuition is entirely composed of such evolved emotional responses, and is in fact morally irrelevant. If we cannot give a rational argument why incest is wrong, then our disgust is irrational.

Singer knows that the majority of ethicists take our moral intuitions seriously, and formulate moral theories to fit our intuitions. Singer rejects this view, arguing that:

“In everyday life, as Haidt points out, our reasoning is likely to be nothing more than a rationalization for our intuitive responses – as Haidt puts it, the emotional dog is wagging the rational tail.”

Singer's proposal is that:

“Alternatively, we might attempt the ambitious task of separating those moral judgments that we owe to our evolutionary and cultural history, from those that have a rational basis. This is a large and difficult task. Even to specify in what sense a moral judgment can have a rational basis is not easy. Nevertheless, it seems to me worth attempting, for it is the only way to avoid moral scepticism.”

True to his word, Singer has exhibited his moral theory in defence of abortion, infanticide, incest and bestiality, clearly seeking the advance of rational judgement against the false morality of our evolved emotional responses.

But this kind of appeal to evolutionary theories of morality is not new. Nor, fortunately, are sound rational refutations. In 1922, the great British writer G.K. Chesterton answered thus the speculations of his contemporary eugenicists, as they pondered the evolutionary demerits of incest:

“Dr S.R. Steinmetz, with that creepy simplicity of mind with which the Eugenists chill the blood, remarks that ‘we do not yet know quite certainly’ what were ‘the motives for the horror of’ that horrible thing which is the agony of Œdipus. With entirely amiable intention, I ask Dr S.R. Steinmetz to speak for himself. I know the motives for regarding a mother or sister as separate from other women; nor have I reached them by any curious researches. I found them where I found an analogous aversion to eating a baby for breakfast. I found them in a rooted detestation in the human soul to liking a thing in one way, when you already like it in another quite incompatible way.”

In the subsequent 89 years, we have achieved such progress that Professor Singer can now state with certitude the evolutionary rationale for our disgust at incest. In the same period, Western ethical formation has lapsed to the point that Chesterton's entirely rational elucidation of our moral intuition is now forgotten or ignored by the majority of modern ethicists.

To be fair to Singer, our moral intuitions are not an infallible guide. Traditional ethics indeed recognises that the human conscience must be informed and cultivated, for it to function accurately. Our “moral intuition” is really our emotional response to our intellectual perceptions; hence these emotional responses are only as informed as the intellect behind them.

But Singer's claim that moral intuition lacks a rational basis is simply false. As Chesterton demonstrates, our disgust is a function of our rational refusal to treat things in mutually incompatible ways. We cannot love babies and also eat them. The two actions are incompatible. Hence, when we hear of someone consuming human flesh, we immediately deduce the failure of human love implied in that action. We are rightly disgusted at the thought of someone abandoning their love of human beings to such an extent.

The same applies to incest. We understand with an immediacy or primacy that belies Singer's sophistication, the fact that siblings and parents cannot be loved as siblings and parents, while also being loved as sexual partners. But we need not even consider incest, to understand this principle: even Singer must understand that we cannot treat friends of the opposite sex as lovers without them actually becoming lovers and ceasing to be merely friends.

Our moral disgust at bestiality follows a similar principle: we recognise immediately that a person who engages in sexual activity with an animal has denigrated their own human sexual capacity. Our disgust in this instance is at the irrational behaviour of a person who treats something important and revered as though it were fit for animals.

Ultimately, I cannot help but feel a growing disdain (if not disgust) for an ethical theory that is so oblivious to the profound rationality of our moral intuitions. This emotional response is, contra Singer, entirely rational, and all the more intense when I consider the ethical tradition our civilisation has abandoned. As C.S. Lewis wrote:

“Those who know the Tao can hold that to call children delightful or old men venerable is not simply to record a psychological fact about our own parental or filial emotions at the moment, but to recognize a quality which demands a certain response from us whether we make it or not. I myself do not enjoy the society of small children: because I speak from within the Tao I recognize this as a defect in myself—just as a man may have to recognize that he is tone deaf or colour blind. And because our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order, therefore emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason (when we perceive that liking is due but cannot feel it). No emotion is, in itself, a judgement; in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. But they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it. ”

As the land down under debates euthanasia, patients denied palliative care treatment

This is what happens when you put the government in charge of healthcare.

Terminally ill patients are being left to die in Queensland hospitals because the Bligh Government is failing to adequately fund community palliative care, lobbyists say.

The state's leading palliative care advocate has revealed how the situation has reached breaking point, with the level of funding now so low it is unable to meet demand.

Despite two reports commissioned by Queensland Health last year recommending changes to the service, the Government has failed to act.

It means many Queenslanders are left suffering from preventable pain in the weeks before their death, with others forced to die in a general hospital ward instead of in the comfort of their own home.

John-Paul Kristensen, chief executive of Palliative Care Queensland, said Queensland Health funding had not increased for at least 10 years, while demand for services had soared by 25 per cent a year in some areas.

"When you get to people early enough and give them the care they need their pain and symptoms can be greatly reduced," he said.

"Often people want to die in the privacy of their own home, but without someone to support them that choice is removed and they have to go into hospital."

The worst-affected areas include Brisbane's northern suburbs, Logan and Hervey Bay. Queensland Health guidelines state patients are only entitled to palliative care funding in the last 12 weeks of life, but in some areas funding is so low patients have only been helped in their final six weeks.

In addition, just 11 out of the state's 27 major hospitals have palliative care wards.

Queensland Health currently allocates $5.5 million to provide community palliative care, and a further $8.11 million from the Federal Government.

Mr Kristensen said funding needed to be tripled.

A Queensland Health spokesman refused to comment when asked about shortfalls in funding, but said the Government was "committed to improving access" to palliative care.

In 2009, a government-funded report by Palliative Care Queensland recommended a need for more palliative beds as well as the removal of the 12-week time constraint.

Dorothy Murphy, co-ordinator of Palliative Aid for Logan Seniors, said Queensland Health had little respect for patients and their families.

"It's absolutely disgusting," she said.

Grandmother Joyce Mason, 72, of Beenleigh, near Logan, said the Government let her down when husband Charles, 70, was diagnosed with cancer and given just months to live.

Despite his wishes to die at home, Mrs Mason was unable to cope and eventually her husband was admitted to Logan Hospital.

"They refused to class him as palliative because they didn't think he fitted into the 12-week guideline, but he died two months later," she said.

Is this Australian nightmare a preview of coming attractions in America? Let's hope not. But, as Wesley J. Smith observes, the story itself fails to do due diligence in exposing a far more sinister agenda.

And yet, the state is debating legalizing assisted suicide! How could the story not point out that legalizing inexpensive doctor prescribed death could implicitly promote continuing to starve palliative medicine budgets? In fact, what better way to herd people into accepting euthanasia than by abandoning them to agonizing deaths?

Wesley Smith is right: Oregon hospices not facilitating assisted suicide

Wesley J. Smith, purveyor of Secondhand Smoke, has contended that assisted suicide advocates have been interfering with the proper medical treatment for terminally ill patients, particularly in states like Oregon where "physician assisted suicide" is legal. A new report suggests he is correct, as he reports:

We hear often from assisted suicide advocates that most who die by doctor prescribed death in Oregon were in hospice–as if that makes it okay. I have indicated here and elsewhere, that this merely means assisted suicide facilitators have interfered with proper medical treatment for these patients: One essential service provided by hospice is suicide prevention. Bragging that a patient who committed assisted suicide without providing prevention is like denying the patient pain control and then patting yourself on the back when they ask to die.

Now, a study shows that my analysis is right on the money: Most hospices do not participate actively in Oregon assisted suicide. From a Hastings Center Report study:

During 2009, in order to assess the extent to which Oregon hospice programs participate in physician-assisted death, we requested policy statements, program guidelines, and staff education materials that had been developed by sixty-four hospice programs affiliated with the Oregon Hospice Association to address patient inquiries about the Death with Dignity Act. We received forty documents representing fifty-six programs. Our examination of these documents suggests that individual hospice programs generally assume a minor role in the decision-making process of patients who exercise their rights to physician-assisted death—a role largely confined to providing information about the law in a “neutral” manner. Moreover, hospices claim they will not assist with providing the medications necessary to hasten a patient’s death. This limited role indicates that questions of legal compliance and moral complicity inhibit hospice collaboration with patients seeking physician-assisted death.

This is important. Hospice philosophy is completely at odds with doctor prescribed suicide philosophy. They cannot occupy the same space. I am very pleased that Oregon hospices are generally keeping assisted suicide there at arm’s length. It has no place in proper end of life care.