More and more hate crimes laws are being woven into the fabric of our legal structure and even our societal assumptions about what crimes are the really heinous ones. If two people are murdered alongside a road, one is a WASP and the other is a female Mexican immigrant, one murder is much worse than the other. Thankfully, Congress is ready to help us broaden our current myopic understanding of what counts as a hate crime. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

This month, Congress has an opportunity to deal with this challenge by adopting the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

A top priority of the Anti-Defamation League, this legislation would strengthen federal hate crimes laws by authorizing the Department of Justice to assist local authorities investigating and prosecuting certain bias-motivated crimes. The bill would also provide authority for the federal government to prosecute some bias-motivated crimes directed against individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Current law does not provide sufficient authority for involvement in these cases.

The “mark up” of this piece of legislation actually happens this Wednesday (April 22^nd) and will present to Congress, the Senate and President, legislation that explicitly includes speech against sexual orientation as a hate crime. According to one report, it includes all 30 (yes, there are 30!) sexual orientations recognized by the American Psychological Association. Ironically, many of the behaviors based on those orientations are currently against the law in most, if not all, states. Politicians have never let such ironies stop them before.

The ever clear-minded Huffington Post contained an opinion piece…wait for it…supporting it! The argument proffered is full of postmodern language about the maintenance of power structures and the evils of what children are taught in their homes about people who are different than them. And in case you thought that all people could be hateful, the article make it clear that, “Hate crime exists at one end on a continuum of privilege.”

It is incredibly convenient to support a piece of sweeping and horrific legislation like this one, and in one quick sentence exempt most people (including yourself) of the crime. Only “those guys” are guilty of hate, because we have simply defined hate as an attitude and act shown from the powerful to the disenfranchised.

Another inconvenient falsehood perpetrated by this kind of legislation is that things that are not crimes become crimes. Literally, it is not a crime to think something, and it is not a crime to say most things. The clear application sought by it supporters is that this kind of hate thought legislation will be applied to religious organizations and churches. It can become a crime to speak truths and beliefs taught by religion, thus making the State the arbiter of speech and acceptable belief.

Another crushing and obvious irony to all this is that hate crime and hate thought legislation is more often than not supported by those who espouse the virtue of “tolerance.” In reality, their agenda is the crushing of any thought and belief different than their own, and because they don’t have a leg to stand on in public debate and analysis, they force their views on everyone else through laws and the courts.

A fertility clinic, Fertility Institutes, is making headlines along with other IVF providers for a procedure called prenatal genetic screening (PGD). A process that has actually been around for a while, it allows families to take a peek into the genetics of their pre-born children to check for genetic diseases and other traits tied to genetics. The difference now is, Fertility Institutes and others are promising and providing screening procedures for gender and cosmetic traits. This means you can choose the embryo of your choice with all the right physical features, and not just all the right genetic tendencies.

From their website:

In addition to our renown infertility and in vitro fertilization services, we are the world's largest and most successful 100% gender selection program and offer very popular egg donor and surrogacy options.

From a news piece on the Fox website:

It isn't clear that Fertility Institutes can yet deliver on its claims of trait selection. But the growth of PGD, unfettered by any state or federal regulations in the U.S., has accelerated genetic knowledge swiftly enough that pre-selecting cosmetic traits in a baby is no longer the stuff of science fiction.

But Fertility Institutes disagrees. "This is cosmetic medicine," says Jeff Steinberg, director of the clinic that is advertising gender and physical trait selection on its Web site. "Others are frightened by the criticism but we have no problems with it."

At a certain level, this is already fairly commonplace in some contexts.

Embryo screening, for example, is sometimes used to create a genetically matched "savior sibling" — a younger sister or brother whose healthy cells can be harvested to treat an older sibling with a serious illness.

Trait selection in babies "is a service," says Dr. Steinberg. "We intend to offer it soon."

From the PHG Foundation website dedicated to this kind of news:

A US fertility clinic is reportedly offering patients undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) selection for or against cosmetic traits such as eye, hair and skin colour. The embryos produced by IVF are screened for chromosomal abnormalities prior to implantation (see previous news), with an option for sex selection, and now parents will also be offered additional screening for certain physical features (presumably for an additional fee) as well as for “potentially lethal diseases” and “cancer tendencies”

Hitherto, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) has been limited to determination of the presence or absence of a genetic variant associated with a serious form of disease; in the UK, this is the only permitted use of the technique, which is carefully regulated by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA)

In the US, services providing PGD are subject to voluntary regulation.

The growth of this technology and the growing acceptance of the uses of this technology requires ethical reflection, cultural and political action, and education. As presented on the website and in the news pieces concerning Fertility Institutes and other organizations of the like, these applications of technology need to stop. A few things require reflection.

First, the IVF procedure is the Pandora’s Box technology. It promises great things, but it opens the door to unethical technologies. In the typical IVF, several fertilized embryos are created which means the “leftovers” can be experimented on, frozen, or destroyed. When a fertility clinic speaks of choosing the best children for parents, what they mean is they destroy the unacceptable unborn children. IVF is eugenic abortion writ-large.

Second, this technology is available only to those who can afford it. This means designer children for the rich, and natural children for the not-so-rich. In addition, this presents questions about government control and regulation, and if it becomes seen as a “right,” does this mean taxpayer dollars will be used to destroy unacceptable embryos?

Third, this is generational slavery. When we choose the cosmetic traits for our children, we impose upon them our current standards of what looks good or healthy.

Fourth, there is no really good definition for the difference between therapy and enhancement. In other words, can you adequately define the difference between fixing what went wrong and purely “cosmetic” procedures? If we can replace or genetically aid a diseased or underperforming eye, for instance, we probably should. What happens if the genetic enhancement becomes stronger and more acute than the natural product? Should we genetically enhance embryos so their eyes will be better than nature intended? Should height be “fixed”? Skin color? Gender is being “fixed” right now – are you OK with that?

Fifth, the answers to all these questions and thousands more rely on a good definition of human nature. The predominant philosophies running our scientific and political organizations, however, don’t have one. And when there is no good, unmovable definition of human nature humanity becomes pliable and subject to the whims of technology, instead of the other way around.

Christian thinkers need to continue to stand up and say these technologies need to stop and be subject to sound ethical thinking before they are implemented. It is not the case that just because we can do it, we should.

Take for instance Minnesota. As of this writing, they are on the verge of electing a tax-evading troglodyte to the U.S. Senate over a man of integrity and thoughtfulness. Pennsylvania reelected Mertha, a man who called his own constituents racists. Then Pennsylvania did themselves one better by supporting a presidential candidate who is on record as calling them back-water “bitter-clingers.”

The heads of mining companies supported a presidential candidate who promised to cap-and-trade them out of existence. Christians, who claim a pro-life stance, trended toward supporting a president who has a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood and simultaneously believed he would reduce the number of abortions. The poor, who will suffer disproportionately under the president-elect’s taxing of oil companies, supported him in droves. Supporters of Israel supported a candidate whose actual record of association (it’s the only record he has) is anti-Israel. Pundits who complained about Bush’s experience and political pedigree glossed over a candidate’s complete lack of experience. People who crucified McCain by associating him with Bush cried foul when Obama was associated with anyone. Investigative journalists didn’t seem phased by known and uncovered systemic voter registration fraud. Individuals making over $200,000 a year voted in greater numbers than usual for a man and a party that wants to take more of their money and give it to people who won’t work.

The list could go on, and it all points to one direction—we lost our minds today.

Why? Well, that is the question conservatives have to answer over the next two years if they are going to bring our nation back to its senses. Bush’s last four years were no real help and McCain did not run a very good campaign. We suffered under a lack of brave and principled leadership in the House and Senate during a time when conservatives could have reclaimed fiscal and social policy from the cultural pressures of liberalism.

But we didn’t do it, and today we suffered the consequences. It is unlikely our populace has actually moved hard-left toward serious socialism, but they did react against the less-than-stellar showing by conservatives in just enough numbers for this to be a wake-up call.

Unfortunately, the result is the election of a man whose only known beliefs are hard-left. Let’s hope and work for a near future where conservatism finds its soul and its legs again and proposes some serious ideas to a nation that, if the numbers are to be believed, agrees with them anyway.