March 15, 2004
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

Dang that slippery slope! You take the first few steps and everything seems OK. Then suddenly, you're flying down with no brakes.

Baby, we're flying!

And we're heading for a crash landing.

Sometimes cultural and social change is rapid; sometimes, it's so slow you hardly notice until it's too late. It usually starts with a first tentative step on the slippery slope.

Over the last 40 years, we've made dramatic changes in acceptable behavior and laws. We've seen changes in public demeanor, sexual mores and attitudes toward what once had been considered immoral or taboo – sometimes both.

Probably the most significant and positive change was the civil-rights movement, which eliminated legalized discrimination in this country. We're well rid of it and, overall. Americans are colorblind despite individual roadblocks, and laws exist to remedy those.

The basis for that movement is in its very name – civil rights. That's good. The bad part is the slippery slope. As soon as activists of every stripe saw how effective the civil-rights argument was, they used it for every demand they had.

We're at the point where just about everything is a civil right – obesity, smoking, abortion, disabilities, age, illness, sexual practices and religion – except if you're a Christian, or worse, a Roman Catholic.

What happened, and continues to occur, is that cultural changes are being instigated by minorities who force their will on the majority, using the rhetoric of ridicule and the law as a bludgeon.

Their battle plan centers on a few words which relate to each other, primarily because of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Equality. Non-discrimination. Religious freedom. Freedom of speech.

Each is good, but the devil is in the details. It all depends on the interpretation and, given our liberal judiciary, that interpretation frequently turns the original meaning on its head.

Somewhere, judges found that women had a right to abortion.

Remember when it was just a "mass of tissue"? Now, legislators are proposing anesthetic for fetuses during an abortion. They want laws to require pain relief for the fetus as the abortionist kills it.

On the other hand, legislators defend partial-birth abortion, claiming it's a woman's right to have her full-term baby killed at the point of birth.

Then there's the concept of "freedom of religion," which really means that the government will not establish a state religion. It's morphed into freedom from any religion that someone finds offensive. So, public Christmas is gone as well as any mention or celebration, or even mention, of such traditional religious holidays because someone might be offended.

It's ludicrous minority rule. Students, whose most bizarre and revealing clothing is acceptable on campus as their right to dress as they please, are forbidden to wear t-shirts favoring Jesus, pro-life sentiments or conservative beliefs.

The battle to remove the Ten Commandments from every public venue has, so far, been won – again, the rightof people not to be offended. That people only seem offended by Christian symbols, is generally ignored.

The Boy Scouts are punished for acknowledging God and adhering to traditional values, and the YMCA is pilloried for being a Christian organization. Courts in San Francisco tried to force the Salvation Army to change its Christian foundation claiming it accepts city money to provide AIDS and other charity services.

Score one for the good guys. They stopped taking the money, held to their beliefs and provided the services anyway!

Colleges, universities and military academies are coerced into eliminating chapel and grace before meals, decades-old traditions. If a teacher or student wearing a necklace with a Star of David or a crucifix offends anyone, the jewelry must go.

It's OK for a Sikh student to wear the traditional sword, a Muslim girl to wear a head scarf, a Hindu to wear a turban. Denying them would violate their rights.

Huh?

As an extension of women's sexual rights, it's become their right to have birth control – not just available for purchase, but now it's to be provided free in schools and clinics and to be forced into insurance plans. Planned Parenthood (which has a vested monetary interest) has sued to force the latter.

When this "right" collides with religious freedom, it's bye-bye religious rights.

The latest insult is the 6-to-1 ruling by the California Supreme Court on March 1, requiring Catholic Charities and other Church entities to include contraceptives in their insurance policies. This, even though contraception violates Church teaching – even though the law allows an exemption for religious organizations!

The court decided that Catholic Charities is not a "religious organization" because it offers help to everyone, regardless of their beliefs.

Let's see: Don't discriminate and get punished!

If this ruling stands, soon courts will require churches, hospitals, orphanages, service organizations and any other institution with religious beliefs to sacrifice them, by order of law. How about requiring abortions in Catholic hospitals? Requiring churches to perform homosexual marriage? Forcing the hiring of homosexual priests or woman priests?

It's entirely possible.

We've been sucked to the bottom of the slippery slope to the state religion of atheism. Unless, of course, Catholic Charities and other institutions have the guts to protect their constitutional rights and liberal judges be damned!


Barbara Simpson, "The Babe in the Bunker" as she's known to her KSFO 560 radio talk-show audience in San Francisco, has a 20-year radio, television and newspaper career in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

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