|
Letter to the Catholic Standard and Times This letter to the Catholic Standard is just one of many of Frank’s letters to the print media. Dear Ms. Brinkmann, This letter follows my phone messages to you about the May 10 news article that a coalition of so-called “pro-family” groups is suing the FDA to prevent the sale of the morning-after-pill. I am troubled by your total reliance on quotes from controversial sources like the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and Chris Gacek on Plan B rather than printing statements on the subject from our own theologians and bishops. I have been reading the recent book, American Fascists--The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges. He says that Tony Perkins has had troubling associations with white supremacist groups. During the 1996 Louisiana Senate campaign of Woody Jenkins, Tony Perkins, who was Jenkins’ campaign manager, signed a $82,000 check to the head of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, to acquire Duke’s phone bank list. In 2001 Perkins spoke at a fund-raiser for the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white nationalist group that has called blacks “a retrograde species of humanity” on its web site. When I clicked “Concerned Women for America” (CWA) on Google, I found that it was founded in 1997 by a Christian conservative, Beverly LaHaye, the wife of the evangelical pastor, Tim LaHaye, who incidentally is a co-author of the Rapture novels of pseudo-religiosity, which have sold 60 million copies and have led many Christians to support the Israeli occupation of the Holy Land. CWA actively supports creationism and the “intelligent design” theory in science classes. The LaHayes gave Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University $4.5 million, and Beverly LaHaye is a trustee of Liberty University. She has lobbied to defeat funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and vehemently opposed the ratification of the UN Convention on Elimination of Discrimination against Women, ratified in 2005 with 71 countries in agreement while the U.S. was in opposition. The third group in the coalition is the Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), founded by many former members of the John Birch Society. From Google I learned that it supports principles of the free market in medical practice; it opposes mandatory vaccination, universal health care and government intervention in health care. The AAPS has characterized the effects of the Social Security Act of 1965 which established Medicare and Medicaid as “evil” and “immoral.” Of course, it also opposes abortion and emergency contraception--hence its involvement in the law- suit. I am not attempting to find you guilty by association, but on the other hand, we should not give credibility to these groups by a too close association with them and by calling them “pro-family” when scrutiny in the light of our full Catholic social teaching finds them sadly lacking. Beyond that, if allied with such groups, we cast our nets into their rancid waters we run the risk of being ranked with them among the religiously righteous. I trust you will respond to this serious concern either in print or in private. Sincerely,
|