WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 /PRNewswire/ — “Planned Parenthood’s Big Sex industry is now exploiting children in the same way Big Tobacco did-with a cartoon,” said Ed Szymkowiak, national director of Stop Planned Parenthood International.
Szymkowiak was referring to Planned Parenthood’s latest affront – a walking, talking, sperm-like cartoon wearing sunglasses. On Sept. 16, children watching the Celebration Parade in Eugene, Oregon were exposed to Joe Sperm as he marched along with giant condoms and birth control pills-with a bevy of humans, dressed as sperm, chasing others dressed as eggs. Joe Sperm ads are now on Eugene city buses.
Planned Parenthood has created a cartoon character that will cause even very young children to become interested in sex,” Szymkowiak added. “Joe Sperm deserves the same negative response drawn by Camel cigarettes’ Joe Camel. Joe Camel led kids to think smoking is ‘cool.’ Joe Sperm will do the same for contraceptives and sex. Planned Parenthood’s so-called ‘safe sex’ can lead to sexually transmitted diseases, abortion and serious post-abortion problems. The citizens of Eugene should kick Joe Sperm and Planned Parenthood out of town.”
Bill Sheppard, executive director of Planned Parenthood in Southwestern Oregon, admitted recently that Joe Sperm is part of a birth control program aimed at the poor in the region. “The beauty of this program for Oregon,” he said, “is that the federal government will match our state funding on a 9-to-1 basis. Right now Oregon’s putting in $1.5 million, and the federal government is adding $13.5 million” (Eugene Register-Guard, Sept. 19, 2000).
“Obviously, Planned Parenthood is counting on the Joe Sperm ad campaign to help them get a huge chunk of this $15 million pot of taxpayer money, and they don’t care if they harm children in the process,” Szymkowiak said.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/stopp-international-planned-parenthoods-joe-sperm-is-a-bad-seed-73380157.html
I have followed with great interest the tactics of progressive politicians and progressive Christians. The semantic massage and the tortured parsing of words have resulted in a dearth of meaning. Richard Nixon famously quipped (during the Watergate scandal) “When you’re back is against the wall…redefine your terms.”
As I tracked the two greatest ‘in your face’ challenges to the Word of God in our day, The Abortion debate and the ‘Gay Marriage’ debate, I have paid close attention to how the wordsmiths and the political hacks have twisted the language and turned the meanings of words in on themselves to such an extent that most people have tired of even hearing about either issue.
I remember how often I heard words to this effect. “Perhaps it is time to have national conversation about, gay ‘rights’, or a woman’s ‘right’ to choose.’ In a chilling remark made just prior to his election, the then Senator from Illinois Barak Obama (after visiting his dying grandmother) said, “Perhaps it is time to have an national conversation on whether or not Grandma gets that hip replacement or just takes the pain meds.”
Conjuring up language usually found in law libraries, the earliest ‘abortion on demand’ advocates set out to show that linking the right to kill a baby is actually tucked away somewhere in the U.S. Constitution. The same is true about the gay marriage debate. All the pundits and all the lobbyists and paid ‘talking heads’ hit the Sunday News shows with language that intentionally linked the rights of people to have their particular sexual proclivities compared to the slavery issue and the civil rights movement.
A conversation by definition is linked to the notion of ‘converting’ someone over to your belief. To “change together…”
Listen to the etymology of the word
The verb verto, vertere, verti, versum has many meanings, taking up three columns in the Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary. The most basic meaning is to turn.
In Latin just as in English the verb to turn is often used to describe change, and so we have derivatives in English such as verse, versatile, and conversion. A simpler way to think about the root of conversation, however, is to keep the meaning to turn, i.e. to turn together, to turn to one another, to face one another.
The prefix con- means together. The root noun versatio, versationis means a turning or a changing. But the word conversation is really derived from a Latin verb, and that verb is complicated.
The compound verb converto, convertere, converti, conversum ranges in meaning from to turn about, to whirl around, to change direction, to alter. In Ecclesiastical Latin it meant to convert to Christianity.
Make no mistake. The use of the word conversation was a cleverly designed ploy to mask the fact that we are discussing things that in a civil society with even a modicum of decency, would never have taken pace, much less been justified by an appeal to law.
The Church dare not pull a Barak Obama and vote “present” instead of weighing in on these issues. It is fascinating that one of the very few votes on record for Senator Obama was his full throated support of so called partial birth abortion.
Since his election, he has failed to call the widows of servicemen killed by terrorists yet makes a photo-op out of his call to Sandra Fluke who demanded abortion drugs be available at no cost at of all places Georgetown (Jesuit) University!
I had the great privilege to study under Dr. John Warwick Montgomery. In an essay titled “Has anybody seen a trumpet?” He laid out a powerful argument in defense of the inerrancy of scripture. He said something in one lecture that I have never forgotten.
“The church will remain ineffective so long as she has as her principal spokesmen men falling all over themselves trying to be relevant. Ages of faith are marked by proclamation….not dialogue.”
It’s time for a clarion call to go forth. The very word clarion is derived from the same root for our word clarity. Paul told the Corinthian Church “If the trumpet makes an indistinct sound, how will the troops muster themselves for battle?”
The progressives are fond of chiding the narrow-minded, bigoted, unenlightened ones who can’t engage in a conversation (i.e. change their stance or be ‘converted’ to the politically correct talking points.)
Here is my contribution to the conversation about abortion and gay marriage. The conversation is over.
It’s time for proclamation. I am not going to engage in a dialogue with someone who attempts to justify an abortionist who takes scissors to the face of a baby to get at its brain….so the organ will be in pristine condition… and fetch a higher price! It’s time to call this what it is… it is a ghoulish, barbaric crime against humanity that makes Joseph Mengele look like Mr. Rogers by comparison.
I’m not going to take the scribe’s knife to the Bible and excise all the references in which the God of heaven has spoken concerning homosexual practices, no matter how many celebrities, pop culture icons or now, sadly, church leaders, use words like evolve, or pivot, to describe their abandonment of the Word of God.
To suffer these affronts to a Holy God and by saying nothing, we are complicit by our silence. It’s time for some soul searching….
I for one am willing to suffer reproach for calling this what it is. George Orwell wrote, “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”
Dr. J.