Poor Susan G. Komen

Poor Susan G. Komen. The foundation her sister created in her honor is now torn  between two sides. And its recent vacillation has alienated people on both sides.

And yet, there is hypocrisy on both sides.

__________

On the one hand, those who protested the SGK Foundation’s cutting ties with Planned Parenthood, tend to operate by the following logic:

We should not interfere with people’s freedom to choose their own morality.

I can see the value of this logic. Virtue is not virtue unless it is freely chosen. In Eden, both trees were set in the middle of the garden, both equally accessible and available to Adam and Eve. Their choice had to be a true one.

Yet there is hypocrisy from those who trumpet this logic. For example:

• Why is morality relative when it comes to Americans, but not relative when it comes to other nations? Why is OK to meddle with other nations and their notions of virtue?
• If morality is relative, on what ground do we stand when we cry out against the oppression of women or the trafficking of children?
• If the freedom is the ultimate value, then why do we not think people are free to hurt others? 
• And if people are not free to hurt others, why are they free to kill the unborn?

__________

On the other hand, those who were thrilled—albeit briefly—that the Susan G. Komen Foundation would no longer fund Planned Parenthood tend to operate by the following logic:

No amount of good done can make up for the amount of bad done.

Yes, the SGK foundation may provide free cancer screenings and save lives, but if they fund the possibility of taking innocent lives, then we cannot support it. As one who values the sanctity of life and believes that life begins at conception, I understand this logic.

What I don’t understand is how the people who hold this view do not often carry this same logic into other socio-political thought processes. Why is life-- all life-- not held as equally sacred? For example:

• Why do we defend unbridled capitalism that may do much good and yet do some harm? Why does the good outweigh the bad here but not with the SGK Foundation?
• Why is "freedom” the logic used to defend it and resist restraints that could curtail the greed that leads corporations to exploit workers and wages? Why is freedom not the logic used when opposing who the SGK Foundation donates money to?
• Why do we defend guns on the basis of the “good” they can do (protection, etc), but ignore the bad that they can do?
• Why does the bad not outweigh the good in war? Why does the “good” that our military efforts justify the bad that it does when innocent lives are killed as “collateral damage”? Aren’t lives being saved while others are being taken?
• Why is the life of the American unborn more sacred than the life of a living slave, or a Muslim extremist?
  

___________

Now, these issues-- abortion, war, guns, unbridled capitalism-- are very different. There is no universal template or logic for processing through them. I am not suggesting a universal logical template should be used. I am only raising the question of why people on both sides of this conversation use their "templates of logic" selectively. That is a kind of "logical hypocrisy." It may not be wrong to apply different logical templates to different issues, but we must at least admit it, and not pretend that there is one universal logic-- even a "Biblical" one!-- that can be applied to all issues. Things are often more nuanced than that.