Author Archives: jtjim

Serious Death and Destruction

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

March 28, 2005

A News Watch is on.  An earthquake of 8.7 magnitude struck late Monday off the west coast of Indonesia.  Described as one of the four or five “greatest earthquakes of the past century,” Kerry Sieh, a seismologist with the United States Geological Survey, predicts, “…a Tsunami has a 100 percent chance of hitting.”

Officials in Indonesia are just now beginning to report damaged buildings and lives lost.  Reporters on Fox News read from their scripts.  As dawn breaks on the other side of the world, they tell us we could again be facing, “serious death and destruction.”

Meanwhile, a tsunami of a different kind has been unleashed in America this past week.  Born on the waves of the pain of one family, this tidal wave threatens destruction of proportions dwarfing the death toll from December’s Indonesian tsunami disaster when at least 273,000 people lost their lives.

The American Tsunami is due to take its first victim any time now.  Terri Schiavo’s life is washing out to sea, one small life sacrificed for lack of a justice system that will uphold her right to live.

Her case is a harbinger of things to come.  As Americans rush to call their attorneys and download living wills from the Internet, Terri’s case proves we live under the tyranny of a judicial system that has no need of advance directives.  Terri left no such set of instructions to guide her care, yet we pretend we know what she wants.

Seven years after she fell into her coma, her husband suddenly remembered that Terri didn’t want to live.  There is no written will, no signature, and no directive.  It is the word of one man who wants to get on with his life…against the silence of one woman whose life hangs in the balance.  The man will win.  The woman will die.

Brace yourself.  This Tsunami is building and gathering force.  It threatens to unleash widespread death and destruction on Americans who will be unable to justify their worth to a world demanding function and profit. This is not just about Terri.  Millions of human lives are at risk.

We will have years to unravel the details about Terri’s case that have gone largely unreported in the mainstream media.  We will learn how easy it is to hire two expert witnesses to say a life is worthless and to get one death-prone judge to agree.  We will find all sorts of soft words to describe the process of killing.  And we will build a cadre of physicians who are willing to assist in the administration of death.

And just to make sure that we can live with ourselves, we will paint pretty pictures of death by force.  It will be quiet.  It will be compassionate.  It will be merciful.  But mostly, it will be profitable.

The day is not too far off when some compassionate judge will set aside your written directive to live.  Some relative who wants to preserve his inheritance or some hospital administrator who wants to improve the bottom line will show up in court.  The judge will agree with a well-paid lawyer that you would really want to die if you had known what life would come to when you mistakenly signed your living will.  And you will die.

It’s happened before.  In 1942, just as German mental patients were being finished off, Dr. Foster Kennedy, wrote his recipe for death in the official publication of the American Psychiatric Association.  “Parents who have seen the difficult life of a crippled or feebleminded child must be convinced that though they have the moral obligation to care for the unfortunate creatures, the wider public should not be obliged…to assume the enormous costs that long-term institutionalization might entail.”

The News Watch is on.  In the coming days, we will witness the results of the potential Indonesia tsunami in an immediate wave of destruction.  Many may die.  We will mourn.  And we will rebuild.

In America, the coming week will pass quietly.  One American woman will die for lack of food and water…because one man said she would have said she wanted to die, if she could have said she wanted to die, even though she didn’t say she wanted to die.  And we won’t need to mourn, because we did it for her good.

Terri’s death will be the crashing force of an earthquake happening miles below the water’s surface.  And seismologist Kerry Sieh’s words spell out the pending disaster both for Indonesia…and for America.  “I would guess that this has produced significant tsunamis and that there will be significant damage.”

 Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live thoughtlessly and begins to devote himself to his life with reverence in order to give it true value.  To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will to live.  At the same time the man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give to every will to live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own.  He experiences that other life in his own.  He accepts as good preserving life, promoting life, developing all life that is capable of development to its highest possible value.  He considers as evil destroying life, injuring life, repressing life that is capable of development.  This is the absolute, fundamental principle of ethics, and it is a fundamental postulate of thought.  

-Albert Schweitzer

Does Abstinence Work?

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

March 14, 2005

“We’ve seen it sneaking up on us, we’ve known it’s a problem, and now it’s reaching epidemic proportions,” Anne Loudenslager told CNN.  She heads the Tioga County Partnership for Community Health. “We are using a good portion of our limited resources to stop this.”

Dr. Ellsworth, a director of research on the problem, said he hopes to have several hundred children in a new health program this year. He calls himself an optimist.  One has to wonder why.  Everything in the CNN health report proves that things are going from bad to worse.

In northeast Pennsylvania, one in 10 kindergartners were found to be obese in 2001-2002. That number doubled for eighth-graders.

These high numbers of obesity are predictors of future health problems.  During a recent health fair, Ellsworth found that 60 percent of adults tested had metabolic syndrome, a collection of unhealthy conditions that raise the risk for diabetes and heart disease.

Nevertheless, Ms. Loudenslager and Dr. Ellsworth talk tough.  The community is galvanized to solve this health crisis.  At the largest high school in the county, they plan to alter physical education next year.  Students will have more choices:  sports teams, wellness classes, and traditional gym classes.  The goal is to get kids involved, get them moving, and get them healthy.

Maybe they want to help the kids, but shouldn’t we be asking a few questions about their plan first?  After all, the community resources are limited.  And here they are devoting a good portion of those resources to unproven programs with no statistical evidence that new gym classes will make kids loose weight.

If this were a story on the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, reporters would be all over the health officials demanding proof positive that taxpayer money was not going to be wasted on failed programs.

If this were a story on teen sex, reporters would not give the good Dr. Ellsworth a pass at being an optimist.  They would feed him the statistics to prove how hopeless the future is for fat teens.

After all, Dr. Ellsworth said it himself.  “The numbers for obesity in children were nowhere near what they are today and you can just imagine what we’re going to be looking at 10 to 20 years from now if nothing is done,” he told reporters. “That 60 percent … that’s going to seem like a pretty low figure.”

If this were a story on abstinence, reporters would help him prove the hopelessness of the future.  They would pick a teen and show how impossible Dr. Ellsworth’s job will be.

“I’ve started trying to take it easy on the junk food,” sophomore Ray Crawford says.  At 240 pounds and 5 ft. 9 inches tall, he is already a promising lineman for the school’s football team.  And if he’s overweight, he’s not alone.  So are many of his classmates.

Sure Ray hopes to change his eating habits and exercise.  But a good reporter would go after such baseless optimism.  After all, Ray’s father died of heart disease at 45.  And, according to Dr. Jeff Holm of North Dakota, “…Habits are passed vertically from Grandma on down.”

If this were a story on abstinence, the reporter would search high and low for experts to quote on the inevitability of fat habits.  After all, eating is natural.  All kids are going to eat.  Do we want kids to feel bad about themselves, hurting their self-esteem by telling them they are fat?

If this were a story on abstinence, the reporter would serve up a research study to prove that nobody can really lose weight and keep it off.  We would read about yo-yo diets where kids lose weight one week, and put it back on the next.

If this were a story on abstinence, the reporter would find a student who had failed.  We would hear all about how temptation was just too hard to pass up.  Photos would trace the weight gain of the student from kindergarten to high school, and quotes would be plied from the student:  “I’ve tried, but I just can’t seem to control myself.”

And armed with data, quotes, and examples, the reporter would stick it to the good doctor.  “Aren’t you just wasting your time?  Wouldn’t taxpayer money be better spent on finding ways to make Styrofoam into tasty and nutritious food substitutes?”

Where are the tough journalists when you need them?  Where is the skepticism, the doubt, the challenge and resistance?

You can talk about exercise all day long.  You can have your fancy schmancy gyms, and you can serve vegetables in the school cafeteria.  But before we give you one thin dime of our precious limited resources, tell us what we want to know.

Do exercise and good eating habits work?

April 30, 2004:  Condoms: A Failure to Protect

September 10, 2004:  Duh

See Archives for past editorials.

Offended by Creation

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

March 7, 2005

Every once in a while, a rare moment of complete honesty is so refreshing that, even when it jars our sensibilities, we are glad of it.

An event at Harvard last week has much to teach us about where we are headed in a culture increasingly offended by creation.  The Harvard Crimson reports that the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance is up in arms.  Harvard, they protest, lacks “sensitivity towards issues of sexuality.”

So what happened?  Some brutal attack against a gay person?  Some poisoned insult?  Perhaps an instance of employment discrimination, a professor fired because of his sexual orientation?  Nope.  It’s worse than all of this…much worse.

Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of Will Smith, spoke at Harvard, and what she had to say has offended the BGLTSA community.  Darling of popular culture, married to Will, and black and beautiful on movie posters, Jada was selected as Artist of the Year.  If she had only been the quiet submissive type to accept her award and bat a few lashes at the camera, all would have been well.

But she couldn’t leave it at that.  Nope.  She had to offend the sensibilities of the Harvard intellectual elite by doing the unthinkable…embracing her creation as woman.  She told the audience, “Women, you can have it all – a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career.”

Whoa, Jada.  It’s all right for Hollywood to exploit woman, baring all and filming the union of man and woman from every possible camera angle.  It will even earn stars coveted awards and invitations to speak at Harvard.  But let’s not affirm Creation’s sexual design between man and woman as something to be desired.  Let’s not be “heteronormative!”

Can we appreciate the irony of Jada’s insults?  Our intellect has perfected the use of Creation’s gift of heterosexual love to offend families and children with unending pornography…at the same time that our intellect is offended by speaking of heterosexual love as a natural gift of Creation.

This particular irony is more than humorous.  It is an irony that brings clarity.

The current wars about what we should teach our children about sex are enflamed by the same debate burning around Jada’s comments at Harvard.  It’s just that few have been willing to speak boldly and honestly about the great offense of abstinence.

Several years ago, I asked a critic of abstinence education, “What is wrong with teaching children the value of abstaining from sex?”

She sputtered and shook her head from side to side.  “Have you seen what they are teaching?”  I had.  “It’s so homophobic!”

If one didn’t know better, you would think she meant it teaches children to hate gays.  But to those who lead the re-engineering of human sexuality, it’s all the same thing.  In their minds, affirming heterosexuality is equivalent to hating homosexuality.

Abstinence educators are actually charged with teaching that, “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity.”  As we ponder the offense of affirming heterosexuality and marriage, we have to wonder what the Harvard intelligentsia would recommend as the antidote to unwed teen pregnancy?  Abortion?  Contraception?  GLTB sex?

Abstinence education offends because it has the audacity to teach, “You can have it all – a loving man, a devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career.”  It offends when it teaches students that babies are a natural design of creation coming from sex between a man and a woman.  It is “heteronormative” when it suggests that our children can have it all…sex, pleasure, babies, and marriage…if they can succeed in abstaining from sex until marriage.

Sensitive Harvard Politico Correctos don’t want Jada, the darling of Hollywood to say it.  And they don’t want our teachers to say it.

Men and women were created for each other, but don’t dare say it out loud.

April 23, 2004:   m…m…m…Married?

September 24, 2004:   End of Life as a Fairly Normal Person

 See Archives for past editorials.

Sex Without Value

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

February 21, 2005

The large card still stands on my dresser, a sweet remembrance from the man who has shared over thirty years of life with me.  As February winds down, my mind is filled with the many pictures of love

renewed on this past Valentine’s Day.

At one luncheon, going around the table for introductions, we shared special thoughts about the husbands and wives who completed our lives.  From newlyweds to those married over forty years, it was refreshing to see the tenderness used to describe the object of each person’s affection.

Last Sunday, Andrew thanked those who organized this month’s Sweetheart Dinner.  As he talked, sounds of babies surrounded us, until one coo and babble turned more insistent.  Mom bundled up her hungry babe, and headed to the private room in the back.

Sex is at the center of so much loveliness.  It is the intensity of passion, the bond of reconciliation, the playful encounter and…the creator of life…building and sustaining relationships of love, promise and honor.

And then…we turn on the television and see sex purchased with a hundred dollar bill on prime time television during what used to be family hour.  Wives are traded, singles prowl the city in search of sex, and nearly naked ladies sell everything from potato chips to beer.

Computer filters must fight the ever-mutating attacks on family life by XXX fare.  Even public librarians defend the right to provide porn, resisting filters to protect the minds and hearts of children.

Cheap sex is not new.  Modern culture simply puts a new shine on the “world’s oldest profession” and magnifies the ways to profit from sex.  Yet, one sad result of our ability to reproduce sex on stage, television, music and film is the complete disconnect of sex from its greatest purpose and its best expression.

Promiscuity is a concept undone by American marketers and impotent judges.  Still defined by a dusty dictionary… aimless, designless, desultory, haphazard, hit-or-miss, indiscriminate, irregular, purposeless, unplanned…the word promiscuity carries no meaning today because all sex is permissible.

The director of a major metropolitan agency worked to explain the finer points of their sex education program to me.  They taught it all, she said.  They empowered kids to embrace their sexuality.  They reinforced that sex was just a normal part of life, complete with deprovera, cherry-flavored condoms, and “confidentiality,” the promise they will help kids evade the loving supervision of parents who know that sex is not meant for teens.

What about abstinence? I asked.

Sure, she said.

Sure, what?  I asked.

For some kids, abstinence is a choice…until they are ready for sex.  Responsible sex.

Responsible sex?  What would you tell a thirteen-year-old girl in your sex ed class who came to you for your advice about having “responsible sex” with her sixteen-year-old boyfriend?  Could you tell her, since she asked, that you advised her not to have sex of any kind with him…that sex at her age was unhealthy and out-of-order…and even just a teensy weensy irresponsible?

Without a pause big enough to blink, she fired back at me.  No.

No?

No.  We are values-neutral.  We don’t teach values.

Sex without values?

What kind of educator is reluctant to teach our children the immovable healthy boundaries of sex?  This means more than mentioning boundaries…saying that abstinence is a choice…something that some kids will choose…until they don’t choose abstinence.

Sex education is a matter of connecting sex with a nobler, finer purpose than recreating in the backseat of a car with a kid you just met.  And it is a matter of believing in that purpose with enough conviction to commit to it and promote it and counsel for it.

Everyone teaches the value of sex.  It’s just a matter of focus.  Either you link sex to the values that sustain healthy relationships and support the care of our next generation with mothers and fathers who love each other…or you don’t.

Our children learn what we teach.  If they are having sex that is aimless, designless, desultory, haphazard, hit-or-miss, indiscriminate, irregular, purposeless, unplanned…need we wonder why?  Aren’t they doing exactly what we are teaching them?

Sex without value IS a value.

May 14, 2004  Order in the Courtroom!

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All the Condoms in the World

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

February 14, 2005

How many condoms would it take to end the AIDS crisis?

In 1998, Sharon Stone urged parents worldwide to set out a basket of condoms for their children…as many as 200…encourage your children to play with them, take them, give them to their friends…condoms and more condoms for our children, she pleaded, because we love them.

You can’t really blame Ms. Stone.  After all, condoms had been the centerpiece of our response to AIDS since news stories in 1982 first announced the arrival of HIV in America.

Immediately, the deadly virus sent us into a panic.  School children wanted to know if they could get HIV from mosquitoes.  Mothers wanted to know if public pools were safe for their children.  Grown men quit going to the gym and bought weight machines for the garage.

Worst of all, liberated sex, once a promise of unrestrained pleasure born on the wings of the birth control pill and coed college dorms, became a risky adventure.  Scientists scrambled in their labs to put definition to the virus while health officials struggled to suggest ways to avoid contracting it.

Americans needed answers in a crisis where precious few answers were available.  And so we grasped at the closest thing we could find…the condom.

We could have ended coed dorms on college campuses.  Instead we enlightened students with the ten-step method of putting on a condom.

The Centers for Disease Control could have closed the gay bath houses so prominent in San Francisco and New York.  Instead, the CDC preached condoms.

We could have come together as a society to reject sexual promiscuity.  Instead we set out baskets of condoms in high school guidance offices.

A wake-up call arrived this week.  The New York Times reports, “A rare strain of HIV that is highly resistant to virtually all anti-retroviral drugs and appears to lead to the rapid onset of AIDS was detected in a New York City man last week.”  Health officials are said to be alarmed.  But they shouldn’t be surprised.

Four years earlier, The Arizona Republic reported, “People who catch HIV are increasingly likely to encounter mutant forms of the virus that are able to resist some of the drugs commonly used to treat the infection.  Drug-resistant strains have been a major problem since the start of treatment in the early years of the AIDS epidemic.”

Drug resistant strains of virus have long been known to scientists.  The CDC could have predicted this would happen.  Instead, they plowed ahead, with the help of science superstars like Sharon Stone, to put a basket of condoms in every home.

America didn’t stop with handing out condoms to our own kids.  From 1989 to 2000, over 232,000,000 condoms were sent annually to eleven African nations.  While that’s not even close to all the condoms in the world, that’s a heck of a lot of condoms.

In Zambabwe, their allowance provided the highest number of condoms per male for this group of nations.  Zimbabwe also had the highest HIV prevalence rate.  More condoms…and more AIDS.

It takes a courageous leader to set aside the popular mantra and evaluate the AIDS epidemic with a clear mind.  Ugandan President and Mrs. Museveni are just such leaders.  They were able to look past the mountains of condoms and see the obvious.  Lack of condoms doesn’t cause AIDS.  Sex with infected people causes AIDS.

Uganda chose a different path.  One of its governmental booklets published in 1989 stated with assurance, “The government does not recommend using condoms as a way to fight AIDS.”  Condoms gave users “a false impression that they were safe from AIDS.”

Choosing to support a return to their traditional cultural values, Ugandans educated and supported one another in saving sex for marriage and in honoring their marriage with fidelity.  Because they believed it could be done, they did it.  And today, experts from the world are traveling to Uganda to study their great sexual experiment…self-control.

Meanwhile, in the United States, as we contemplate how to face this latest AIDS scare, the old condom battle heats up once again.  This time, however, “a radical idea, born of desperation,” is taking hold in some quarters.  AIDS workers dismayed over a new battle against a stronger virus are considering a novel idea…novel that is, for Americans.  They are calling for an end to promiscuous sex.

How many condoms will it take to end the AIDS epidemic?  Zero.

Yes, that’s right.  Zero.

Confronting people with their personal responsibility for curbing sexual behavior is beginning to sound more reasonable all the time.  Even the CDC has turned the corner on its website, “The surest way to avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases is to abstain from sexual intercourse, or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who has been tested and you know is uninfected.”

And what do you know…that doesn’t take a single condom.  Not one.

April 30, 2004:  Condoms: A Failure to Protect

June 4, 2004:   AIDS: Importing the Cure

 See Archives for past editorials.