Layla's Dark and Foreboding Weblog

There are actually two things that I'd like to touch on today. Both are very different subjects, but share some similar properties. Or, I should say, one similar property. God.

First, I have to talk about Terri Schiavo. It really kills me to see that the Christian right is using this poor shell of a woman as their soapbox here. If she were 80 years old, people wouldn't give a crap about removing her feeding tube. All of a sudden when someone utters those words "she has a RIGHT TO LIFE", you have every lunatic lifer running to her aid. Her doctors say there is nothing that can be done. Now, I'm hearing from these fringe crackpots that Michael Schiavo only wants to end her suffering because he really strangled her, so he's afraid she's going to wake up and finger him as her would-be-murderer. For the record, folks: Terri Schiavo had an eating disorder. Said disorder left her with a potassium deficiency, which caused her heart attack at 26 years old. She collapsed in her kitchen in 1990. She hasn't woken up since.

It's not easy to "pull the plug" on someone you love. I've done it. I had to give the go-ahead to remove my 30 year old husband from life support. And, if left up to his mother, she'd be sitting next to him still, years later, just to say her baby boy was still alive. It's not right. There comes a time when quality of the patient’s life HAS to come before the families. It's likely at this point that once Terri dies, her parents will implode. They have done nothing but this for 15 years. But, Schiavo's parents are using their daughter to fight their battle for something completely different. The fact is, her husband has every right to end his wife’s suffering. And, 15 years later, he has every right to start a new family. And how dare the Bush family step in on behalf of the parents. How dare they say "God wants her to live" when God clearly chose her to die. Science keeps her alive. Not God. To use God's name for your own benefit by saying something like "God chose my daughter to not die naturally from her affliction, but rather to be fed by a piece of plastic tubing in her stomach with us mopping up her drool" or "God told me I need to go to war" or "God doesn't like pre-marital sex, but if you do it, don't use unholy birth control so you can have an unholy abortion..." It's such crap.

This brings me to my next topic and a favorite for most, abstinence. It seems that the idea of waiting until marriage to pop your cherry is hot, but waiting to pop your chocolate is not.

Turns out that legions of adolescent kids who are part of the "Wait" trend that's sweeping our bible-thumping nation are partaking in "risky" sexual activities, such as anal sex, oral sex and heavy petting. Justifying their actions as "not real sex", kids are taking risks with these activities by being ill-prepared for some of the by-products of these fun, yet still risky activities. Since our illustrious leader has blessed our kids with ignorance not seen since McCarthyism, it seems that kids don't know that you can get STD's, including HIV, HPV, Herpes, The Clap, Crabs, and Syphilis, by engaging in oral and anal sex without a condom. Yes kids, it's true. While logic seems to fail most anyone who would believe this gibberish about abstinence to begin with, wouldn't you put two and two together: Gay men get STD's. Gay men have penises. Gay men don't have vaginas. Therefore, you must be able to get STD's without opposing sex organs. Right? George?