By Judie Brown
Please, no emails! I know that “in-betweeny” is not a word, but it was fun to write and now explain why I made the word up! You see, in its most ridiculous state, the evil in our midst is designed by mindless people to suggest to the rest of us that they are experts and just have to take whatever they tell us as fact.
The examples of this could undoubtedly fill an encyclopedia, but here we present some of the most egregious!
In a recent column, Phil Lawler pointed out that Katherine Maher, the new CEO and president of National Public Radio, said, “We all have different truths.” In fact, Maher told a TED talk audience that there are “many different truths.” Lawler explained, “She is not worried by the fact that, as she sees it, NPR reporters ‘are not focused on the truth.’”
It is here that the in-betweeny comments parading as credible teaching moments begin. There is but one objective Truth: Jesus Christ. It is from Him that truth flows unerringly. But folks like Maher choose, consciously or not, to be deceivers because worldly comfort and popularity have become the golden rings on the in-betweeny carousel.
For folks like them, facts seem to get in the way. For example, while we know that there are two genders, male and female, current ideologues pose the idea that gender identity is a smorgasbord from which each person can make a selection, including government programs that have succumbed to such foolishness.
Moving down the line, we know that assisted reproductive technology is part of the reproductive rights toolkit, though many unsuspecting folks don’t see what could possibly be problematic about it. Such people do not see a problem with science replacing the creative power that nature instills in human beings, choosing to believe instead that mechanizing child bearing is a good thing.
In-betweeny people see nothing wrong with taking such practices unto themselves, be it the creation of or the destruction of a child prior to birth. Among these people we find United States Senator Tina Smith (D-Minnesota), who apparently does not understand basic human embryology. If she did, she would not have said, “We have to pay attention to this and make sure that we are doing everything that we can to protect people’s rights to make their own decisions about their own bodies and their own lives.” To that we respond: Senator, we must respectfully point out that a decision to end the life of someone else should never be condoned, even when the second person is living and developing within the person contemplating such an act. This is why the act of abortion should be defined as a crime, even though people like Smith may not be aware of the simple truth.
Floridians are falling into that same category, given that they are set to vote on whether or not an alleged right to abort a baby should be contained in the state constitution. Some people, including the state’s Catholic bishops, describe the abortion proposal as extreme, which we presume is a misnomer since every single abortion is extreme, as each results in the death of a child, no matter when in that child’s life it occurs.
And then there is Arizona senator Mark Kelly who suggests that the Arizona debate on whether or not to repeal an 1864 state law on abortion is somehow “because of Donald Trump”! That makes no sense at all since Trump is hardly a genuine pro-life advocate but is himself an in-betweeny.
This is the single reason why we focus so much attention on the inanities of elected officials and others who refuse to see the facts as they are. I have always marveled at these in-betweeny people because either they do not understand biology 101 or they have allowed political ideology to replace common sense.
Either way, we are here to say that in matters of life and death and good and evil, there is no in-betweeny.