DISABLED NOBODY'S BLOG HITS NEW HEIGHTS

Puzzled  and curious media
at my home. Why? 

The HumanLifeMatters blog has hit  another milestone: 475,000 page-views! About two-thirds of visitors to the blog are American, followed by Canadian readers. It seems that a puzzled media just can't figure out why a disabled nobody's views out on the wind-swept prairies of western Canada would garner so much interest across North America, but there you have it.

I will continue to write and speak about the innate value of all human life under the lordship of Jesus Christ, whether anyone cares or not.

Mark

AMERICA'S STARK CHOICE

Abortion extremist Hillary Clinton

My previous blog post about abortion extremist presidential candidate Hillary Clinton brought a negative response from an American reader, implying that, as a Canadian, I should mind my own business.

What happens in America does impact Canada (as it does the rest of the world). Although Canadians like to think we are so very independent of America, we are, in actual fact, very dependent on our southern neighbors and are saturated with America culture. 


Most of my pro-Life and disability advocacy over the past 20 years

has been in America. I have a deep love and abiding respect for America and its people. Many of my posts are about America; they are motivated by that love and respect. 

I am very concerned about the dismal choice facing the good people of American this election. As the Presidential race sits at this moment, Americans have one of 

Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine

two bad candidates to choose from. Hillary Clinton will increase the prenatal bloodshed across America. She has an abortion supporter as a Vice presidential running mate. She is surrounded by Democratic abortion ideologues. She has vowed to appoint pro-abortion Supreme Court judges. 

If elected as President, Clinton will open wide the gates to killing unborn children. There is zero chance she will represent tens of millions of pro-Life Americans and the most vulnerable of the human family, whether they at the beginning of life or at the end of life.*  Not only will Clinton increase prenatal bloodshed at home, it is a safe bet her administration the evil of abortion internationally. 

Mike Pence and Donald Trump

If Americans choose Donald Trump, he will have a moderating influence in his conservative, pro-Life, Christian Vice President, Mike Pence. As President, Trump will have to make overtures to Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives (many of whom are pro-Life). The chances are better that conservative life-affirming judges would be appointed to the Supreme Court. Donald Trump is a bad choice for President, granted, but he may well be surrounded by good people who will have a moderating influence on him. 

That's more than can be said about Hillary Clinton. 

[There is also a third Libertarian Party represented by Gary Johnson. He also supports abortion and euthanasia.]

At this point in American history, the choice is not who will make the best President, rather who will do the least harm. Despite his bombast I think Trump should be the choice. Don't look at him, look at the people who will play supportive roles to his Presidency.

  
 God bless America. -- Mark

__________________

* Hillary Clinton is also in favour of euthanasia and assisted suicide. (See http://2016election.procon.org/view.answers.election.php?questionID=002054 )

BIGOTRY IN THE WHITE HOUSE?

People have accused me of being a one-issue voter, about abortion. Not true. I care deeply about the economy, the environment, national defense, health care and a host of other issues. 

There are, however disqualifying issues. For example I could not vote for a pedophile or racist no matter how good their economic policies. In the same way, I could not, in good conscience, ever vote for someone who supports abortion.

Hillary Clinton

For a candidate to deny any segment of the human family the right of full legal protection and care makes that person unfit for public office. Hillary Clinton is one such example. She said that "The unborn person doesn't have constitutional rights", ... and she believes should be that way. 

In my view that disqualifies Hillary Clinton from public office -- and certainly not the U.S. presidency -- regardless of the dismal alternative. To hold such an extreme position is bigotry or sophistry. Let me give an example to illustrate my point: Replace the word "unborn" with the word "Black", or "female", or "homosexual." See what I mean? Bigotry has no place in the White House. Universal human rights belong to everybody. 

Trump's running mate Mike Pence

If I was American I could not support Hillary Clinton no matter the dismal alternative. Perhaps Vice President nominee Mike Pence can have a moderating influence on Donald Trump. He is, after all, a devout pro-Life Christian.

I plead with American readers of this blog: Please do not put Hillary Clinton in the White House. See the following short video on Hillary Clinton's abortion extremism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Kk7m8LV_4

Mark

CBC'S ANTI-DISABILITY PREJUDICE SYMPTOMATIC OF LARGER EXCLUSION

Up until 1991, I worked for the Canadian federal Commission promoting employment equity in the workplace for Canadians with disabilities. One of the worst of offenders of disability employment discrimination was the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Every year the federal human rights commission filed its annual report in the Canadian parliament showing the CBC failed BOMBED in flying colours to meet expectations of federal corporations to hire and retain people with disabilities (or other target groups). 

I could not persuade senior management of the CBC Alberta/NWT region to consider qualified disabled workers for a broad spectrum of employment across the CBC -- and particularly not as broadcasters. They just could not imagine the possibility of including skilled disabled writers, researchers, producers, directors, editors, and particularly television reporters and anchors. 

Year after year, the federally funded CBC failed to meet expectations for an internal workforce that reflected the mosaic of Canadian society. This was particularly true with regard to disability. 

My training and experience prior to my disability included television and radio so I convinced my Commission to offer me on secondment to the CBC for a year to work with a program team for a radio show as a writer/researcher. Of course the CBC bit. It was free labour for them and an opportunity to look past disability. Even after the year's secondment, and glowing performance reviews of my work, senior management remain resistance to the point of defiance at employment equity for qualified disabled workers. 

At the end of the secondment, I met with CBC Alberta/NWT

senior management, for a debriefing. They admitted that I proved to be a valued employee who only required minor workplace accommodation. They admitted their dismal employment record for disability -- they could not deny the horrible statistics -- particularly television on-air reporters/anchors. One executive cynically mused about getting employees who wear glasses to self-identify as disabled to get their numbers up. At one point in the meeting I asked this: "Why wouldn't you consider a visibly disabled reporter or anchor?"

Silence. 

One manager said, "A reporter in a wheelchair would be distracting to viewers." I responded, "Initially, perhaps, but I think you under-estimate your viewers' ability to accept

difference. They simply want the news and quality programming." I reminded them there was a time in the 1960s when the same argument was said about women reporters and  anchors.

An uncomfortable program executive feigned openness to the idea and said, "Well, I suppose we could hide their wheelchair behind a desk or take waist-up shots."

I replied: "Why are you presuming a wheelchair, and secondly why would you hide a person's disability?"

Another producer erupted, "This is bull****!" He stood, threw his file on the conference table, and stormed out of the room. The meeting ended shortly after that. 

Patrick Watson
President of CBC
1989-1994

It was clear that I failed to break through a corporate culture that discriminated against considering qualified disabled workers across a full spectrum of employment opportunities. (What was ironic was that the national President of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was an amputee (Patrick Watson)).

In fairness to the CBC, a month or two after I returned to my regular position with the employment commission I received a call from a senior CBC executive in Toronto about a new show they were developing to explore issues of Canadians with disabilities. They  wanted me to consider hosting it. 

The CBC flew me to Ottawa to meet with the executive producer and discuss the idea of the 13 week trial on their newly established news channel. It was hardly attractive: They offered me half of my salary and I would have to uproot my young family and move to Ottawa for the tenuous prospect of hosting a show that could easily end after 13 weeks. I turned down the "offer".
  

Why was I persistent in my push for the CBC to consider disabled broadcasters? Young people with disabilities needed (and still do) positive employment role models in the broadcasting industry for them to aspire to (and other professions too). The broadcasting industry needed to be introduced to the prospect of employing skilled, talented people despite disabilities. They still do. Society needed to aspire to full inclusion of people with disabilities as indispensable citizens who have contributions to make to the greater good (society still does.) 

I hope things have changed, although I still do not see a visible disability presence on television. The CBC seems is so quick to point out the prejudices and failing of everyone else but loath to admit their own.

Why am I blogging about a 25 year old experience I had with

the CBC? I'm doing it precisely because so little seems to have changed in a quarter of a century. 

 The general employment prospects for workers with disabilities in Canada and abroad remain appalling. Such horrendous unemployment/under-employment rates that are experienced among the disabled would not be tolerated in the rest of the workforce.

You see, I used my experience with the CBC as a segue into the larger issue of disability discrimination. The cultural deck is stacked against disability inclusion. The disabled face discrimination in every meaningful aspect of life from employment to finding decent housing, transportation, recreation, proper education and supports, health care and home care that may be spotty, inconsistent or piece-meal. 

Many disabled Canadians feel marginalized and excluded

from mainstream society. The frustrations of living with serious disability can breed despair -- particularly with newly acquired adult disability.

It is into such an environment that Canada has introduced the legal option for medically assisted suicide for the disabled under the guise of supporting autonomous choice. Some autonomy! Some choice! We are not offered real equality in life, only contrived equality in death. 

That is the ultimate exclusion of the grave.

CHRISTIAN RESPONSES TO MEDICAL KILLING

A monstrous notion has become law. Assisting in the suicides of sick and disabled Canadians is legally permitted. It is now a new right … the right to death. The pied pipers of this new right use misleading euphemisms such as medical assistance in dying (MAID). A more accurate, precise and honest description of this new reality is medical killing.  

The new law does is not limited to hastening the deaths of the terminally ill.  No, it even sanctions killing people who are not dying. Medical aid in dying is called palliative care―helping dying people to die comfortably. There are a vast array of modern pain control medications and techniques to eliminate suffering without hastening death. That is not the intent of the new law. In fact, I assert the new law for assisted suicide will ultimately discourage advances in end-of-life care.

This is what happened in the Netherlands where assisted suicide has been practiced for decades. In their 2015 book It’s not That Simple: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Today, palliative care nurse Jean Echlin and Ian Gentles write about Holland’s virtual abandonment of palliative care: “That country [Holland] has now a total of only 70 palliative-care beds, in contrast to the many thousands of such beds in Britain, which has not legalized euthanasia.” It stands to reason that assisted suicide and euthanasia discourage proper end of life care.

Euthanasia is so much tidier than palliative care and so much less expensive. A lethal injection eliminates the messy process of a drawn out death and frees up much needed beds in hospitals and nursing homes. From an economic point of view euthanasia and assisted suicide makes sense; from a moral perspective it is abandonment from what is right in favour of what is expedient. Do not discount the gravity of what has happened: Canada crossed a centuries old taboo of medical killing of the most vulnerable in society.

What are faithful Christians to do? Christian doctors and health care institutions must not comply with the new regime for medical murder, even at the risk of legal, professional or financial punishment. We must not underestimate the risk of this. 

The Catholic nursing home, Huize Sint-Augustinus, in Diest, Belgium, was fined €6,000 (approx $6,600) for not allowing an elderly resident’s doctor to give her a lethal injection.  Closer to home, a Global News story on June 29^th reported that Quebec’s health minister, Gaétan Barrette, has chastised the McGill University Health Center palliative care unit for not euthanizing patients. 

Freedom of conscience and religious expression is under direct attack abroad and at home.  As I have stated before, Catholic hospitals and medical professionals have no choice but non-compliance with any aspect of medical killing. Our faith unequivocally prohibits it. There are dark days ahead but we must stand firm against this utterly corrupt law. Instead we must offer life-affirming alternatives to euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Christian social service agencies must give new priority to suicide prevention counselling and outreach to the disabled and incurably ill. Individual Christians must commit themselves at local church levels to help reduce requests for physician assisted suicide by creating inclusive local Christian communities to address and heal the loneliness of the human condition.  It is not easy but it is necessary if the fundamental belief in the sanctity of human life is to be an integral part of our Christian pilgrimage.  After all, our Lord told us we are to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22.39 & Mark 12.31)

This may involve making friends with the friendless or those racked by fear or defeat because of acquired disabilities or incurable illnesses.  I am aware this may take some people outside their comfort zone – particularly if they have had little exposure to people with disabilities.  It’s a new and foreign experience and it may make them afraid.  What if they get sucked into a vortex of neediness and loneliness?  Then there is a worse fear almost to frightening to contemplate because it has been suppressed since early childhood. What if the disabled person’s anguish awakens their own anguish! 

It is, perhaps, what lies at the primordial root of state sanctioned medical killing ― a deep internal fear of a wayward humanity that has driven them to kill the anguished to stop anguish in them and us too.

And yet it is this fear of anguish and death that Christians are called to overcome with Christ’s help. We are called to something higher. God’s love drives out fear in the human heart. Reach out to those gripped with fear and despair and have forgotten the warm magic of a hello and friendship.

MY GREAT BLESSING IN SUFFERING

"Lord, help us follow the example of your Son's patience and endurance. May we face all life's difficulties with confidence and faith." -- Christian Prayer, Liturgy of the Hours.

This is one of the great gifts of our Christian faith: To know that Christ is greater than even the worst of our difficulties. He is with us in the fire of suffering and will bring us through refined as gold. Like the fourth figure in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the presence of Jesus Christ has been with me throughout more than 32 fiery years of degenerative multiple sclerosis. His presence becomes more real with the passage of time. This has been my blessing in suffering. 

This understanding could not have been realized otherwise. 

The 17th Century poet and divine John Donne suffered an illness that nearly killed him. Later, he wrote: "Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it." (Devotions on Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII)

By surrendering ourselves to Christ, and placing our sufferings with Him, our tribulations can really become a treasure to spiritually transform us beyond ourselves and our anguish to become more like Him. Life is a journey. 

Suffering presents us with a fork in the road. We can choose one

path and give our suffering to Christ to mature us and make us more fit for heaven; or, we can take the other path which is self-centered autonomy. The first path leads to answers and consolation in Christ and ultimately, peace and joy. The second path leads to questions in self-centredness and ultimately, bitterness or despair. 

A day may come when you come to that fork in the road of your life journey. Which path will you take?  Remember, the first path may seem lonely because the culture in which we live treasures autonomy and the second path is taken by many. I chose the first path and found Christ walked with me and a great cloud of witnesses who went before me.

"Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and was sat down at  the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility, from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls." (Hebrews 12.1-3) 

  

WESTLOCK, ALBERTA: SUPPRESSING FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN A CANADIAN SMALL TOWN?

In my little corner of the world, it seems anti-life bigotry is alive and well. According to LifeSiteNews.com (LSN), the small farming town of Westlock, Alberta recently banned a pro-Life float from their annual community parade. Pro-Life views were not welcome. (Westlock is seventy miles north of my community of Beaumont, Alberta.)

The pro-life float was delightfully positive and life affirming. It had a cardboard birthday cake with three candles and a banner that said "Everyone deserves a birthday." Do you see something offensive in that? Me neither. 

It's an era when everyone is supposed to be so pluralistic and accepting. We're supposed to celebrate and accept alternate agendas. Homosexual PRIDE parades are celebrated in the largest cities across Canada -- with their in-your-face advocacy; Greenpeace -- saving baby seals and eagle eggs, and assorted other agendas. Why would a small Canadian prairie community ban a modest parade float advocating the affirmation, celebration and protection of all human life? 

I submit it is an example of how the culture of death has invaded and pervaded every level of Canadian society, down to the smallest town.

Initially, Westlock parade organizers said the pro-Life float was not in keeping with Westlock's 100th anniversary theme. The question arises: Did all the other floats have a 100th anniversary theme? Were any other floats banned and if so, why? The article below from LSN suggests the answer is no. If that is true, then we must conclude there was something parade organizers didn't like? Gee, I wonder what it was?

After hiding behind the not-in-keeping-with-the-anniversary-theme,

Westlock Alberta Mayor
Ralph Leringer

parade organizers finally admitted the real reason: "Pro-Life is not allowed." Calls and emails by LSN to Westlock Mayor Ralph Leringer were not returned. 

One former Westlock resident, Claudelle Key, stated, "The town had an agenda and clearly continued to ramp up its efforts, which included lying (you're not registered, you're not in theme, we're at capacity). 

She continued:

"In the end, these 'gatekeepers' used threats to keep this pro-life float out of the parade. If this had been another group that had been denied entry, this would be in front of the Alberta human rights commission right now." Although we need not identify which groups, Keys is absolutely right.

According to LSN, when Keys wrote a letter to the local newspaper to bring light to what happen, (I presume it was The Westlock News), they refused to publish it.

So what should we make of a community's apparent hostility to unfashionable yet legitimate and deeply held views of a significant minority of its citizens? If we embrace a spirit of pluralism and acceptance such behavior by community leaders must be decried. 

If the LSN article is correct, what happened in Westlock was nothing less than the suppression of its citizens' right to expression of conscience and religious beliefs, guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (s-2).

Someone may be thinking, "What's the big deal? It was small town parade in a remote community out in western Canada." Injustice is injustice no matter where it happens. The rights enshrined in Canada's Charter, and the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Articles 18 and 19) apply to everyone. The  universal human right of conscience and religious belief, and their expression, are universal -- no matter how small or where they are applied.

In 1948, while pondering the new UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Eleanor Roosevelt said this about the what and where of human rights:

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home -- so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. ... Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

It does not matter if suppression of conscience expression occurs on the streets of a dusty prairie town or Canada's largest city of Toronto; the violation is just as wrong and repugnant no matter where it happens. Banning or suppressing people's legitimate opinions from being expressed must be challenged anywhere it is found. According to LSN, it seems Westlock community organizers and local newspaper did that. Shame on them both!

The Pembina Pro-Life group deserves an apology from the Town and a solemn promise not to ban them in future. Westlock's municipal leaders may disagree with what Pembina Pro-Life espouses but they must protect their right to say it publicly. -- Mark

A link to the LSN article can be found here: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/alberta-town-bans-float-from-parade-over-pro-life-message-pro-lifers-say?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d32159e1a8-LifeSiteNews_com_Canada_Headlines_06_19_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0caba610ac-d32159e1a8-326171814