A few years ago I heard with amusement the NZ media report that Jerry Falwell had condemned Tinky Winky from the teletubbies as Gay. A little while latter I came across an article in First Things pointing out that the sources of these reports were mistaken. I was not a fan of Falwell but whatever his religious and political views surely the media have a duty to report accurately. Predictably, when Falwell died the NZ media repeated the story again despite the fact that it was false.

I was reminded of this whole incident recently and the following thought struck me. If Falwell’s making comments about Teletubbies was newsworthy. Surely stupid comments by Liberal organisations must be newsworthy as well. Suppose the staff of Planned Parenthood, one of the biggest providers of Abortion in the US, a multimillion dollar industry endorsed and promoted by numerous Hollywood actors, and a major donator to the Democratic party, were to make outrageously racist comments. Would that be newsworthy? Suppose they accepted donations for the specific purpose of furthering genocide? Suppose they also stated that racist views were understandable and they were excited to get such donations? Surely that would be newsworthy? Especially given that the New Zealand Family Planning Association proudly claims to be a member of The Planned Parenthood Federation

Well apparently No.

Here is what has come to light: For years critics of Planned Parenthood have been arguing that it was founded for racist and eugenic reasons. According to these critics its founder Margaret Sanger was a racist eugenicist and the organisation was founded by her to further these ends.

Enter Student Journalists. The Advocate a UCLA student newspaper decided to test whether Planned Parenthood had turned from what the percieved to be Sanger's ideas. They hired the services of an actor. The actor rang several Planned Parenthood companies around the country and offered to donate money to planned parenthood provided the money was used only to abort black babies. The actor made comments to the effect that he wanted to reduce the number of blacks in the state in question, that he wanted to protect his own son from affirmative action and the less blacks there are the better etc. He was overtly racist in his comments. Apparently despite ringing several Planned Parenthoods around the US none rejected the donatation, none called into question or criticised the person’s view and in some instances they even laughed and appeared supportive of the views calling them “exciting” and “understandable”. An expose of just a couple of the conversations he taped can be found here.

For those who find youtube tiresome I reproduce a transcript of one conversation are below.

Autumn Kersey of Planned Parenthood in Boise: Good afternoon, this is Autumn.
Donor: Hello, Autumn, I'm interested in making a donation today.
Kersey: Fantastic!
Donor: What about abortions for the underprivileged minority groups?
Kersey: Oh, absolutely. We have, um, in fact, uh wonderful, fantastic news. We just received a very generous donation to our women in need fund.
Donor: Wonderful. I want to specify that abortion to help a minority group - would that be possible?
Kersey: Absolutely.
Donor: Like the black community for example?
Kersey: Certainly.
Donor: OK, so the abortion I can give money specifically for a black baby, that would be the
purpose.
Kersey: Absolutely. If you wanted to designate that you wanted your
gift to be used to help (an) African-American woman in need, then we would
certainly make sure that that gift was earmarked specifically for that purpose.
Donor: Great. Because I really face trouble with affirmative action, and I
don't want my kids being disadvantaged, you know, against black kids. I just had
a baby; I want to put it in his name, you know.
Kersey: Mmhmm, absolutely.
Donor: So that's definitely possible.
Kersey: Oh, always, always.
Donor: So I just wanna - can I put this in the name of my son?
Kersey: Absolutely.
Donor: Yeah, he's trying to get into colleges, and he's going to be applying, you know, he's justwe're just really bighe's really faced troubles with affirmative action.
Kersey: Mmhmm.
Donor: And we don't, you know,
we just think, you know, the less black kids out there the better.
Kersey: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable. ... Um David, let me, if I may, just get some sort of specific general information so we can set this up the right way. You said you wanted to put it in your son's name, and you would like this designated specifically to assist (an) African-American woman who's looking to terminate a pregnancy.
Donor: Exactly, and yeah, I wanna protect my son, so he can get into college.
Kersey: All right. Excuse my hesitation, um, um, this is the first time I've had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I'm excited, and I wanna make sure I don't leave anything out.

After accepting the money and suggesting the donor’s desire to have "the less black kids out their the better" was “understandable” and receiving a donation ear marked solely for this purpose made her fell "excited". The you tube video records a second conversation Autumn has with a women claiming to be a donor concerned that planned parenthood would accept donations ear marked precisely for this purpose . Autumn outright tells lies. She states they would not accept donations for this purpose and also that views like that make her so uncomfortable she shakes. The Advocate claims they have plenty more examples of this sort of thing from Planned Parenthood staff on tape.

But I am still left wondering, why this has not been reported in NZ media? Perhaps it will be soon. I wait with abated breath.

I guess it is considered more in the public's interest to hear lies about fundamentalists than to hear documented claims about major liberal abortion providers taking money to further genocide. Or the fact that some of their fundraisers claim to find the concept of genocide "understandable" or even "exciting".

In my previous post I mediated on the morality of lying. I suggested that a divine command theorist: a person who believes that the property of moral wrongness is the property of being contrary to God’s commands does not need to affirm that lying is wrong in any and all circumstances. In updating the post to which I was replying PC writes.

PC here conflates two separate issues. He is not alone in this, something like it often comes up amongst people I dialogue with for this reason its worth clarifying the issues here. There is a distinction between [1] Questioning a command one believes to be from God and [2] questioning the claim that a particular action is commanded by God. One can do [2] without doing [1] and doing [1] does not commit one t do doing [2].

Contrary to PC I don’t support doing [1]. I accept that if God commands an action then one should obey it without question. Note this is a conditional statement, it states “if God commands an action” one does not need to accept that God has commanded an action, or even that God exists to accept this statement. In fact advocates of an ideal observer theory can (and do) hold to this conditional without accepting that God exists at all.

The reason I accept this conditional is that it seems impossible for a person to coherently and rationally accept that God commanded and action and also to believe the action should not be done. The concept of God is that he is (i) rational, (ii) perfectly good and (iii) omniscient. Hence if God commands something then a rational fully informed perfectly good person commands the action. Under what circumstances then could it be rational to question the command of a fully rational perfectly good fully informed person. Is it that the commander is mistaken.? No, the commander is omniscient ( see (iii) . Is that he informed but is malicious? No it’s stipulated that the person is good (see (ii). Is that he has made a mistaken inference of some sort No, its stipulated that the commander is rational (see (i)) Is it that ones own judgement about what rules need to be inacted are just as good or better that God’s? Unless one is omniscient never ever irrational and morally perfect this will also be false. Hence I simply cannot see any sense in [1]. In fact I find the snarky insinuation that “accepting Gods commands without question” is obviously irrational simply puzzling. How could it be irrational to accept a command which is required by a perfectly rational being? Doesn’t the fact that a perfectly rational, good, fully informed being endorse this rule show that accepting it is compatible with being rational good and informed.

Nor does denying that [1] is a viable option involve an uncritical, unreflective dogmatic, blind acquiescence to authority. Even if one rejects [1] it does not follow that one reject [2]. The fact that if God commands X we should obey it, does not mean we uncritically accept every claim that God has commanded X. Nor does it mean one does not utilise reason, facts, critical judgement etc in determining what God does command.

Consider the issue of lying, which PC and I were discussing, it is not that I accept that God commands us to never lie under any circumstances but I have sometimes decide God is mistaken and so adopt a different rule. It is rather that I do not think that a perfectly good, rational being, does command us to never lie. If, as PC contends, its irrational or contrary to human flourishing to accept a rule forbidding lying to the Gestapo, then this entails that a rational being , informed of the facts who cared about our flourishing would not endorse such a rule. If then one is to maintain that God does endorse such a rule one needs to address the kind of arguments PC provides.

I don’t think this is necessary because I don’t think God issues such a rule. I think that a careful exegesis of scripture provides evidence that they do not teach a non-contextual absolute prohibition on lying. That’s a critical judgement; reading and interpretation requires thinking, sometimes hard thinking. Moreover I think a reflection on the logic of rules suggests there is a kind of implicit exception of this sort, seeing I think that moral rules are divine commands that means I think God has made this exception.

A final comment worth noting PC seems to insinuate that because Lucyna and I disagree on this issue, religionists ( by which I assume he means theists) are in some kind of trouble. It somehow calls into question theism or “religion” (whatever the term religion means). I often hear this line of argument but have never understood why any one would endorse it. After all don’t atheists sometimes disagree over specific moral issues. In fact don’t Libertarians and Randian’s sometimes disagree amongst themselves. But then why does not this disagreement call atheism and libertarianism into question?

Today scientists agree that nature exists, they agree over the basic structure of nature and types of laws that govern its behaviour. However despite this they do disagree over numerous issues of how nature behaves, exactly what laws operate or how they operate in a given context. The same is true of Theology, one can accept that God exist and one can even agree on the basics of what God commands and yet still have disagreements over how these commands apply in specific circumstances. This no more provides a reason to denigrate theology and deny the existence of God than scientific reasoning provides reason for denying the existence of the natural world and denigrating science.

Moral Theology does not involve people blindly accepting authority never reasoning or thinking that is a gross caricature, one who holds it has never read Aquinas, or Augustine, or Calvin, or Locke or Kant, or Berkeley or numerous other contributors to this enterprise. Why people who clearly have so little understanding of the subject pontificate on it in the name of critical informed reason, is frankly, beyond me.