My God Wants You to Suffer
"Conservatives don't know shit from shinola, and they're trying to force us to shine our shoes with their polish!"
- The Viscount
They are trying to strike-down the Physician Assisted Suicide Law in Oregon, and guess who is leading the charge?
You are terminally ill, and in intractible pain. Your quality of life is gone, as is your diginity. Heroin, the only drug known to mankind that can kill 100% of the pain is illegal in the United States. In the worst cancer cases, Morphine in non-lethal doses is said to kill 50% of the pain, and renders the patient barely coherent. Shouldn't you have to option to ask for a shot that will allow you to escape the pain? To die with dignity? Shouldn't that decision be left up to you and your family?
If you believe in a sadistic, vindictive God who wants you to suffer right up until the bitter end, who I am to tell you that you can't? Conversely, if I do not believe in a sadistic, vindictive God who wants me to suffer right up until the bitter end, who the hell are you to tell me that I must?
Make no mistake, regardless of what they say, at the crux of their argument is religion.
As Hamish said yesterday, "There sure is a lot of talk from the right about 'moral issues.' I'm not sure where their getting their morality from, but it sure as Hell doesn't seem to be Jesus. "
posted by The Viscount LaCarte at 8:44 AM
6 Comments:
I think the argument is, you're supposed to suffer so you can get an idea of what Jesus went through. At least, that's what John Paul II said.
I wonder if he was thinking of the suffering of altar boys when he said that...
More evidence: the religious right (specifically Dobson, I think) opposes the use of any vaccine that would prevent the spread of the human papilloma virus (HPV), the cause of cervical cancer. By God, if girls and women are gonna fornicate, they deserve a painful slow death before roasting in hellfire for eternity!
Brain Teaser: If it were MEN who got the cancer, would their "thinking" be the same?
Think Decatur Dem is kidding? I know you don't, but here is the link.
I have a problem with the "trigger word" dignity because I've never completely understood what it was supposed to signify in this context.
I only know it implies someone's approval (not the necessarily the victim's / patient's) of how the patient or deceased have been treated and of how they will be disposed.
It connotes to me a review by others based on beliefs - from the church, the state or otherwise outside of the nexus of immediate family, doctors at the bedside, and actual concerned parties - as to the appropriate result of a given case.
There's no such thing as dignity - or lack thereof - if nobody's looking over the headboard of the sickbed. Things should be left only to the patient, the family and those they choose to involve.
Dignity
Well, it is one of those words that probably means different things to different people.
I understand the point about "outside the nexus of the immediate family" but there is at least the illusion of dignity within your inner circle.
I think for me it means the ability to maintain my composure and control of myself in front of my loved ones.
I don't want to make my children suffer more than they have to when it is my time to go. Watching me waste away with tubes sticking out of my orifices, waiting for the aid to change my diaper, babbling incoherently to the spectres of my morphine-induced delusions and sweating and moaning in pain signifies a loss of dignity in my eyes, a dignity that I do not wish to lose.
I should have the right to choose physician assisted suicide and / or addictive narcotic treatments based on my own parameters, my own definition of dignity. What makes matters worse is the fact that I may not have those options based on other people's religious beliefs. Religious beliefs that in my view are not only false, but harmful.
I am flattered you would quote me, but make no mistake--my God wants you to suffer.
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