Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Earned Media]

On Wednesday, August 27, police officers brutally arrested two teenage girls, ages 15 and 17, near Senator Obama’s Denver hotel. The young women, Julia Giacopuzzi and Jayne White, were writing messages in sidewalk chalk on the public sidewalk when the police officers rushed in and violently arrested the girls without warning or provocation. 

The girls are members of the pro-life youth organization Survivors, and were in Denver during the Democratic National Convention to call attention to Senator Barack Obama’s pro-abortion position as part of A Prayer for Change. 

Throughout the DNC, the youth of Survivors were using sidewalk chalk throughout the city of Denver with the permission of City Attorney David Fine and Denver Deputy Chief of Police John Lamb. It was understood by the young women that sidewalk chalk was an accepted medium, and they were given no warning by the police before being cuffed and dragged away.

Jayne White, age 17, was rushed from behind by a police officer and pushed face-down on the ground. He slammed his knee into the back of the young woman’s neck as she lay on the concrete without resisting. The officer forcefully pulled her arms behind her back and cuffed her. 

Miss White states, “I was peacefully sidewalk chalking when I was forcefully pushed to ground by a police officer from behind. As I was being cuffed on the ground, the police officer pushed his knee into the back of my neck. I was pulled roughly off the ground and taken away. I was given no warning to stop and was completely shocked when I was arrested. My back was throbbing from his knee.”

Julia Giacopuzzi, age 15, was surprised by a police officer twisting her arms behind her back and using them to lift her off the ground to be handcuffed.

Miss Giacopuzzi comments, “As I was sidewalk chalking, I was rushed by a police officer without warning and lifted up off the ground and was cuffed. I was then dragged by the police into the Westin Hotel.”

Read more here.

[From me]

I’m very pro-life but I’ve been critical of many of the protests I’ve seen.  But I don’t get how you can be arrested when you got permission for writing on a sidewalk with chalk.  My daughter writes on our driveway all of the time.  When you have wackos out to assassinate Obama, why are the police concerned about a couple of girls writing in chalk?  They look like real threats to national safety.

Also, why hasn’t the national media picked up on this?  Where is the ACLU?

What do you think?

[BP]

The Spanish Parliament’s move to grant rights previously reserved for human beings to chimpanzees and other apes is a victory for those seeking to minimize the uniqueness of humanity, a bioethics specialist says.

An environmental committee in Spain’s legislature approved a resolution June 25 calling for the government to abide by the Great Apes Project, a 15-year-old campaign to grant the right to life, freedom and no torture to chimps, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos. The measure has the support of a majority of members of Parliament and is expected to become law, according to Reuters News Service.

The declaration, developed in 1993 by a group of primatologists, ethicists, and psychologists known as the Great Ape Project, demands “the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes.” According to the declaration, apes may not be killed except under “strictly defined circumstances,” such as self-defense. They may not be imprisoned without due legal process, and they may not be subjected to the “deliberate infliction of severe pain,” even if doing so is said to benefit others.

The Great Apes Project (GAP) is the brainchild of philosophers Peter Singer, a controversial ethics professor at Princeton University, and Paola Cavalieri, who founded it in 1993, Reuters reported.

GAP’s goal is not just to improve conditions for apes but “to demote human beings from the uniquely valuable species and into merely another animal in the forest,” Wesley Smith wrote on his weblog. Smith is a bioethicist, author and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.

“Once people accept that premise, Judeo/Christian philosophy goes to the guillotine allowing the utilitarian agenda to proceed unhindered, leading in turn to the moral value of the weak and vulnerable among us becoming archaic, resulting in their loss of the right to life and being used instrumentally for those deemed more valuable.

“In the world being born out of the ashes of the sanctity/equality of human life ethic, value will be subjective and rights temporary — depending on one’s individual capacities rather than humanity,” Smith wrote. “And we will see apes … being viewed as more important than some humans.”

Read more here.

[From the Bible]

Genesis 1:26

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

[From me]

I guess they waited for Charlton Heston to die before they tried this.  I’m not for any kind of torture.  But Animals are not equal with humans.  Did Apes create vaccines to cure diseases?  Can they participate in diplomacy?  Do they talk?  What’s next?  Roaches?  Ants?  Fleas?  When will it end?

What do you think?