Updated: Dr. Reynolds on Terry Schiavo and Other Subjects

I was listening to Dr. John Mark Reynolds on the Hugh Hewitt show, today, and he was talking about a couple of issues at the same time.

He started out talking about Terry Schiavo and abortion and the beginning and end of life. I was mostly with him on issues of abortion and right to die/right to live but he threw in gay marriage and movie stars living off of organs harvested from people killed by the government.

Uh...

I'm not crazy about abortion, in general, and with the courts defining acceptable abortion practice rather than leaving it up to legislatures and public debate. I'm not comfortable with the courts deciding to end someone's life, especially someone who is not on extreme life support.

But I'm not sure what any of that has to do with gay marriage. The fact is there are gay people. The fact is that they often form couples and live together like heterosexual married couples. The fact is that unless they file a bunch of legal papers, they can find themselves without some fairly basic rights that married couples have, like the right to visit critically injured partners. Even with legal papers and contracts and powers of attorney, I would bet that parents could still find ways to interfere in the lives of gay couples. Allowing gay couples some of the same basic legal protections that heterosexual married couples have would hurt no one and would help them to live their lives the way they want to. Whether they can get "married" or form civil unions isn't all that important. In fact, the whole issue is relatively unimportant compared to the more general problem of courts legislating from the bench. Dr. Reynolds distracted me from his argument about the courts and defining life issues with his comment about gays.

The organ harvesting comment was kind of weird, too. I've read Larry Niven. I know what can happen when organ transplants become easy and safe. But we're a very long way from a society like Plateau with widespread organ transplants leading to a strong incentive to kill as many people as possible.

Anyway... I thought that Dr. Reynolds did a fine job standing in for Hugh and in general I agreed with his concerns about the courts and their abuse of power. I guess I'm just not quite as paranoid... I also firmly believe that fear of death and dying and desire for safety over liberty are not motivations limited to the Blue State Liberals. You'll find plenty of Red State Conservatives driven by the same motivations. It's a very human thing that we all must fight.

UPDATE: Dr. Reynolds postedabout this on his own blog. One thing to add, Terry Schiavo's husband has two children by another woman and has his own reasons for wanting her dead that have nothing to do with her well being or her wishes. He really shouldn't be her advocate anymore as he's obviously moved on.