Polygamy and the slippery slope - FB conversation

FB friend R.W. posted this:

Polygamy Advocate: Gay Marriage Blazing Trail for Us

Read more: http://bit.ly/17otI4H

Thumb up if you agree-- This SLIPPERY SLOPE is something the LIBERAL media won't be able to deny for very much longer.

A.G.: Ugh Rick, really? I'm normally very good at seeing the other side of things, but this one is just awful. Do you really not know any gay people? Yesterday, a gay friend of mine posted "Yay, now I can marry my dog!" to mock this 'liberal slippery slope' craziness. But posts like this show her mockery is bittersweet, because people still subscribe to that kind of nonsense. And in all truth, 'straight' marriage is doing just fine messing up the institution all on it's own.

R.W.:  Those on the supreme Court have argued the same question. If the gay community can say to the straight one, "Who are YOU to define Marriage?" Then the Polygamists can say the same thing. If government backs away from defining it, as they should, then the definition of Marriage is up to the beholder. What people fail to realize is that this issue is not about LOVE. People have been free to love pretty much who ever and what ever they wish. But there are monetary issues at stake and THAT'S why it is an issue at all. The recent supreme court case was brought because of a gay couple in New York. One had passed and left her estate to her partner, but since their marriage was not recognized, the survivor was facing a $300,000 tax bill. Gays were more concerned about financial benefits of being married. Well, if we remove those benefits, which is the only reason the government is involved, consenting adults will be able to "Marry" who ever, and how ever many people they want. It comes back to the question, "Who are YOU to define what love is?"

A.G.: Under your logic here, there should be NO government benefits for ANYONE in getting married. Which is a different debate. As it stands, gays are second class citizens. You are saying that is the way is should be, and that is disgusting. They are HUMANS. Just like blacks were HUMANS, yet second class citizens just 50 years ago. This issue has nothing to do with love. Plenty of straights get married for dumb reasons or no reasons or good reasons, etc. Their motives are not called into question. They don't have to take a love test. Gays should NOT be second class citizens, even if you fear that promoting them will lead to legalizing bestiality or cat weddings or hellfire. The root of this issue is religious prejudice and nothing more. No one should care if two women get married or two men get married any more than they should care about the millions of weddings between a man and a woman, half of which will end in divorce. There is no difference. Is it because two chicks can't procreate? Then an old man and old woman shouldn't be allowed to get married either. Or infertile people. This whole thing is ridiculous, and I'm disgusted by the hate engine of it.

Me: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/polygamists-celebrate-supreme-courts-marriage-rulings


"The nuclear family, with a dad and a mom and two or three kids, is not the majority anymore," one polygamist cheers.

R.W.: Who are you talking to? Was there another post I missed that got deleted? I see nothing in MY post about hate, or gays being second class citizens or comparing them to blacks, or bestiality. If you want to debate me, maybe you should address the argument I make and not someone elses. Let me summarize. The government should remove all financial benefits from Marriage. Pay your taxes as individuals. Estate taxes should be eliminated thereby removing any benefit from marriage when a partner dies. Insurances cost should be per individual. If you want to add a spouse or children to your policy, it should cost you. In my company, we had a married couple that had to pay TWICE the insurance premium as everyone else. They were both covered under one policy, but because their premium was deducted from their check, they had to pay for 2 premiums when they only ever used 1. If two men or two women or a man and a woman or two women and 1 man want to get married, it should be none of my or your business. Bestiality has nothing to do with marriage. I don't think those who practice it are clamoring to marry their black lab. But their is quite a large population of people who believe in polygamy as part of their religion, and to be against that shows your religious bigotry. Hopefully, with education and counseling, you can put aside your hatred, and Polygamists will no longer be imprisoned for practicing their faith.

Me: It is unfortunate when the bumper sticker slogans don't coincide with your arguments, Rick.

A.G.: So you think we should run this country based on being afraid of what polygamists celebrating? Should we consult them on our economic issues too? Better ask them about foreign policy, as "The Polygamists" are our country's dipstick for ethical health! While we are at it, we should ask a focus group of illegals their views on offshore drilling.

R.W.: Sounds like the only one is afraid is you. What is that? A Polyphobe? Why do you compare them to Illegal Aliens? The are Americans. They are here, they don't drink beer, get used to it. I can't believe you would discount their wishes. You make them second class citizens. They can still vote you know. It's sad when the majority feels it has the right to dictate how the minority should live.

A.G.: Rick, what do you expect when you post a pic like that? It's spitting in the face of yesterday's step in the right direction away from crazy town and bigotry. If you want to discuss banning all gov benefits for all people, great, then don't use the image of two women getting married to do it. Gay marriage should have nothing to do with that separate debate. I can't believe you are actually surprised I interpreted your post this way. And I have no idea what back alley you turned down with the me hating polygamists thing...some of my best friends are polygamists. Black polygamists. Illegal alien black polygamists.

Me: "''liberal slippery slope' craziness..." I guess A.G. cannot remember what she previously said and is now wondering why polygamists are being discussed.

Girl scouts on the decline

*Update*

It seems that I was more right than I thought I was about the girl scouts. And Leonard Pitts was wrong.

It's always wrong to inflict a political agenda upon children, and that's what the girl scouts have done for decades. The boy scouts are now following suit, for no other reason than to be "tolerant," "inclusive," and "non-judgmental."

These compromises never mollify the Left. The Left never compromises, it always destroys its enemies. Like a zombie, the Left never stops, never pauses, never relaxes, it never stops pressing for its total victory.

'The Anointed' vs. the 'Beknighted': Why Progressives Refuse To Learn From Bad Results

This article was so good I had to repost it in its entirety.
------------------
by Brian Cates
25 Jun 2013, 4:43 AM PDT

One of the common traits of "progressive" social policy--especially since the radicals took over the Democratic Party in the 1960's--has been the penchant for slapping a fresh coat of paint onto previously failed social policies and trotting them out again as revolutionary new ideas that haven't been tried before.

Why is it that progressives can't seem to learn from past failures, reexamine their failed policies and try something truly new or different?

For the self-styled anointed elite who view it as their destiny to gain massive amounts of power so they can 'fix' human nature and perfect society, it doesn't matter whether their new social policies worked or not.

Their pure principles and motives that make them special demanded these courses of action, therefore they were the only right actions to take. What else were they supposed to do? Go back the 'failed' traditional, conservative way that wasn't perfect? Of course not!

Commitment to ideology actually limits and narrows the options that elites will consider in designing new policy. Someone who learns from mistakes will adjust their views accordingly through trial and error and through experience. They'll alter their thinking about how to approach and solve problems. Their consideration of possible alternative courses of action will grow with experience. For the elite progressive leadership, this isn't possible.

There is nothing practical about what an ideologue does. Ideology trumps practicality. Having pure principles and motives in the service of a Utopian vision trumps experience and any nasty fixation on beknighted things like results or success & failure. So instead of a growing list of alternative ways to tackle problems as the years go by and failures mount, you get the spectacle of progressives stubbornly trying the Same Old Thing while either

1) lying & claiming this hasn't been tried before or

2) admitting it was tried before and failed before but it wasn't implemented by THEM and they are going to get it right THIS TIME.

As Professor Thomas Sowell explains in Chapter 5 of his book, The Vision of the Anointed, entitled 'The Anointed vs The Beknighted', a key trait of the leadership in the progressive movement is the ability to shield oneself from points of view based on something OTHER than ideology. Like say, for instance, years of experience and practicality.

French philosopher Jean Francois Revel puts it this way:

"...Ideology....is an instrument of power; a defense mechanism against information; a pretext for eluding moral constraints in doing or approving evil with a clean conscience; and finally, a way of banning the criterion of experience, that is, of completely eliminating or indefinitely postponing the pragmatic criterion of success and failure."

Progressive elites consider themselves revolutionaries that are far smarter than anyone who has come before them. Therefore "old" ways of dealing with problems must be dismissed out of hand and their new methods implemented.

Reactionary philosophy of thought like this leads to the rejecting of even common sense traditions and customs. It's old. They didn't think it up. It didn't lead to perfect or 'good enough' results. Therefore they can do better by tossing that out and doing what almost always is the exact opposite of the traditional way of dealing with the problem.

Nothing shows the ability of this present administration to shield itself off from practical experience quite like the 'job creation' fiasco that's unfolded for the past 4 1/2 years. Arrogant elites from Washington, eggheads with theories they created from their pure motives and their utopian views actually think they know more about how to create jobs and grow the private sector than people who have been in that private sector for decades learning through trial and error what works and what doesn't.

What have we ended up with? Disasters lik green energy 'job programs' that end up spending $10 billion dollars worth of taxpayer money to create a grand total of 355 permanent jobs.

Think I'm joking? I'm not.

These elitists simply ignore all those decades of experience to charge ahead and enact policy based on their theories, many of which have already failed in the past--repeatedly.

The Anointed doesn't want to hear that his vision is unworkable or false. People who keep trying to show him this become 'the enemy' and need to have their voices suppressed.

This is likely why Obama has refused to meet with his business council and hear criticism of the job-destroying policies he's been pursuing. Why deal with the hassle of listening to criticism/input from people who don't know as much as he does about how to create jobs? What would be the point?

Of course Obama's media enablers and defenders do their utmost best to keep people from realizing the truth that these emperors don't have any clothes on: These elites are not nearly as competent or smart as they and their media sycophants present themselves as being.

We're going to spent the next several years discovering this yet again as ObamaCare crashes and burns.

Remember how President Obama reacted when confronted by Paul Ryan about the true costs and negative effects Obamacare would have if it was passed & implemented? Just about everything Ryan claimed has already come to pass, but Obama didn't want to hear a word of it. 'The Anointed' was forced to listen to 'The Beknighted' and he clearly resented every second of it.

Since the mainstream media has gone 'all in' on helping these Progressives sell their agenda of unlimited power to transform American society from the top down via Washington DC, they do everything they can to give the illusion to the public that these people know exactly what they are doing.

The idea of granting these grasping egomaniacs more and more power is presented by these media mouthpieces as being perfectly reasonable. How can Washington solve all our problems for us if we don't let them help us by granting them ever increasing powers over us?

So the media do two things:

1) They presents power grabs by ideologues who want to destroy our constitutional republic of divided, limited government as the actions of heroes fighting for all of us to fix our problems. They're heroes! They're our champions! Cheer them on!

2) Conversely, the media will attack anyone who questions these dangerous power grabs, trying to force a top-down transformation on the country as being evil extremists motivated by hate and racism, who's views don't deserve an equal hearing.

Progressives may boast about their supposed anointed vision and their vast knowledge, but in the end most Americans will learn to see through this and spot people bound by a narrow inflexible ideology that limits them to the point that all they offer is the Same Old Thing, which is always dependent on ever more power being handed over to them to enforce a top down transformation of the nation.

It's time for all Americans to spot this fraud and reject it.

Cher sings "Woman's World"

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

-----------------------

Cher sung this song on "The Voice" finale. At first blush it comes across as a feminist power anthem (I am woman, hear me roar), but if you take a look, you'll immediately note that her "empowerment" is actually a result of a rebound from a bad relationship with a man. Interestingly, this bad relationship is still dominating her thinking ("Shake it off, stop thinking about you").

From this broken relationship and all its negative effects she constructs another reality ("But honey this is a battle that you haven't won") and then claims that "This is a woman's world." All the lyrics of the song are directed at the eeevil man and what he has done to her. The entire context is trying to forget him.

So I wonder, is this the real root of feminism? They would say that it's about equal treatment, equal pay, and equal opportunity. But it seems to me that feminism is not really about this at all. Feminism is reactive. It is built on hurt, bitterness, and violation (real or imagined). Its subconscious undercurrent is revenge. It's not about equality, it's about getting even.

I risk over analyzing this forgettable song. But it seems to me that the attitudes embodied in it are emblematic of the thinking of a lot of feminists. Hate and revenge reveal their ugly little heads in feminist rhetoric rather frequently. So it is no wonder that their ideological opponents recoil at them. Many of them are simply unpleasant people.

----------------------------

I'm dancin' solo
In the dark on the club floor
I need to let it go
Shake it off stop thinkin' 'bout you

I lose myself in the beat of the drum
Tryin' try-tryin' to forget what you done done
But honey this is a battle that you haven't won

Torn up, busted, taken apart
I've been broken down
Left with a broken heart
But I'm stronger
Strong enough to rise above

This is a woman's world
This is a woman's world
Tell the truth
This is a woman's world
Tell the truth
This is a woman's world

And I'm stronger
Strong enough to rise above
This is a woman's world
This is a woman's world
Tell the truth
This is a woman's world
Tell the truth
This is a woman's world

And I'm stronger
Strong enough to rise above
This is a woman's world
This is a woman's world

Love Hurts, your lies, they cut me
But now your words don't mean a thing
I don't give a damn if you ever love me
'Cause it don't matter I'm movin' on

Go-gonna lose myself in the beat of the drum
'Cause honey this is a battle that you haven't won

All the women in the world
Stand up come together now
This is a woman's world
Everybody in the club
Stand up come together now
This is a woman's world
All the women in the world

Stand up come together now
This is a woman's world
Everybody in the club
Stand up come together now
This is a woman's world

When was hell set up? - FB conversation

Me: So sorry, I'm really not the "doctrinal police." But did I hear you say that hell has not been set up yet?

B.S.: Hell as in the lake of fire (gehenna as Jesus called it)has not been set up yet, right now sheol a place of darkness and torture is where fallen angels and non believers are awaiting judgment. Not until the great white throne judgement where Satan will be the first one cast into the lake of fire will the eternal hell be established.

Me: What Scripture says that hell will be established at that time? And if dead non-believers are already being tormented (Tartaroo), then it sounds like they've already been judged?

B.S.: 2 Peter 2:4 ESV

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;

Revelation 20:10-15 ESV

and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Me: Great Scriptures. But you didn't answer either of my questions. Sorry, I don't mean to be contentious.

B.S.: Both scriptures seem pretty clear that judgment is future, after the thousand year reign. Not sure what your argument is, or why these scriptures don't prove that torment is not eternal hell.

Me: At the risk of being deemed argumentative, I'll repeat my questions: 1) Could you please identify the Scripture that says hell will be established later? 2) And if dead non-believers are presently being tortured, then have they not been judged already? I'm not sure why you mentioned torment being eternal hell, because I did not ask you about that.

B.S.: Ok, I'll give you my answer but to go into it more I feel we need to talk in person.

1) Hell as Jesus described it is eternal torment. Eternal is forever, and this literal eternal judgment is described in the verses I mentioned before as being established for the first time after Jesus comes to reign in a thousand year period.

2) dead non-believers would fall in the same category as fallen angels described in the verse in Peter as being held until judgment comes.

3) the reason I mention that is because you are relating torment to judgment.

Hope this clarifies, but to talk further I would rather talk in person, to keep from misunderstanding.

Me: Never mind. You don't have to answer if you don't want to or don't know. I'm fine with that.

B.S.: I want to, I'm just not sure if we are understanding each other.

B.S.: Ok Rich, after that last comment (don't know) I can't resist.

1)Are you trying to say Hell is already established or are you looking for those words to come from scripture?

2)What scriptures are you basing that off of?

3)What scriptures say that the dead are being judged now?

Me: I didn't mean to insult you, I was simply trying to account for your unwillingness to directly answer. Sorry. I was asking you to give Scriptural support for the statement in your sermon. I cannot find anywhere in Scripture that indicates when hell was created.

When you said that "sheol a place of darkness and torture is where fallen angels and non believers are awaiting judgment," that sounds to me like a judgment has already taken place. Otherwise, why would God punish people? How could he do so without judging them?

B.S.: Hell as described by Jesus is a lake of fire (ghenna), right now if there is a lake of fire it is not being used for judgement. The lake of fire is reserved for after judgment that comes at the establishment of the eternal reign of Christ. Beginning with the great white throne judgement. 

As to if Sheol is a place for those that have already been judged, I don't know? Your interpetation?

2 Peter 2:4 ESV
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;

Seems to me that scripture is saying they are being kept until judgement.

I feel that my scriptural support in Revelation 20 is my basis for what I used in my sermon.

I guess if you feel that is not support, than I don't know what you are looking for.

My point was that Satan is not currently in Hell, that He is prowling around like a roaring lion.

Again I ask you if you are opposed to my defense, prove to me from scripture that Hell as in eternal judgment is not a future event. If you can tell me how I was wrong in saying what I said then do so, and I will publicly acknowledge my wrong in what I said.

Me: Easy, my friend. It's hard enough to preach sermons every week and not say something that someone takes issue with, let alone having to make a public correction every time.

I haven't actually taken a position yet with you, so let me do so now. First, Scripture does not tell us if hell is set up yet, so we should be reluctant to make any statement at all about that. So my response is, since Scripture doesn't say, I don't know.

Second, we should be interested in clarity regarding the critical issues of the Gospel, salvation, and the nature of God. I think that the issue of the intricacies of hell/Hades/Tartarus/ Gehenna/sheol might be an interesting study, perhaps, but I don't think it is necessarily profitable for the the advancement of the Kingdom or for living a holy, victorious life in the Spirit.

Third, we tend to view the things of God in a linear fashion, according to our Western cultural and intellectual mindset. However, God is not linear, binary, or subject to our logic. The Hebrew mind can hold two seemingly contradictory things at the same time without the need to reconcile them. This means the issue of when hell is created is not subject to linear time.

Now we are going deeper than I want to, sorry. Suffice to say, for the God we worship, who is not subject to to constraints of time as the Beginning and the End, the beginning of hell probably doesn't mean much.

Political Notebook - By Laura Lundquist

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

------------------------------
Laura Lundquist is starting to become a regular on these pages. She is reliably skewed to the Left, and as such, when one reads her "news" reporting, the first question one must ask is, "Wow, I wonder if this is true?" Her writing has arrived at the point where whenever I see her byline, I automatically scan for whoppers, interpretive comments, and bias. Unfortunately, I am rarely disappointed.)
The biggest political happening locally last week was the state Republican convention, where simmering internal resentment was predicted to express itself in a struggle for party leadership.

Even if the divide in the state GOP hasn’t widened, it has deepened as moderates have strengthened their challenge to the more hard-line conservatives. (Her choice of words belies her personal position. Hard line means: Adamant, hard-boiled, hard-core, hard-nosed, inflexible, militant, stand pat, staunch, steadfast, stern, stiff, strict, unbending, uncompromising, ungiving, unyielding. So Ms. Lundquist shapes the presentation by her use of words in order to plant preconceptions in her readership.)
That hard-line faction usurped control during the 2013 Legislature, putting Art Wittich, Jeff Essman, Mark Blasdel and Gordon Vance in leadership positions formerly held by more moderate Republicans. (That is. Those moderate Republicans are more like normal people... you know, liberals. They' re more thoughtful, nuanced, flexible, accommodating. So, the reporter is conveying very specific information, which tells us more about her than it does about the story she's reporting. We know from a prior "news report" of hers that she, like most liberals, loves the moderate Republicans. And we know from editorials that her employers at the Bozeman Chronicle share similar predilections about the virtuous moderates.)

Moderates held onto some party leadership spots, but they too were challenged over the weekend.

Between the end of the Legislative session and the convention, both sides targeted each other in the media. They have also chosen labels to distinguish themselves from each other. The moderate group is the “Responsible Republicans,” while the hard-liners are the “True Republicans.”

Moderates tend to be “big-tent” Republicans, more tolerant of a range of views and more willing to give ground on some issues to gain on others. The hard-liners are less compromising on what they define as Republican ideals. (Ahh, see? Terms that she has assigned ["moderate," "hardliners"] are assumed to be accurate monikers and as such now receive their definitions. This is how supposed "straight news" gets manipulated. Implicit in this view is the idea that compromise is a good and desirable thing. We can see how these kinds of underlying assumptions color the presentation. It just so happens that Ms. Lundquist is a little less elegant in her obfuscation than the more practiced national media.)

For example, in an “either you’re with us or against us” vein, (Oooh, a reference to the statement of George W. Bush which was roundly mocked by the Left, and even by Star Wars. It's a self-evident trope of the left that demonstrates narrow-mindedness, unthinking conformity, and lack of intelligence.) former Whitefish representative Derrick Skees recently suggested that Republicans who don’t uphold “party principles” should receive no support in elections and should even be targeted for defeat, according to the Billings Gazette. He said party members should rate each other on their adherence to principles, although he offered no suggestions for deciding which principles should rule. (This little caveat carved out by Ms. Lundquist is negated by her previous sentence. Mr. Skees was just quoted as saying "party principles." Does not Ms. Lundquist read what she writes? Those principles are not hard to locate. If you have political aspirations and you do not agree to the principles of the party you wish to associate with, then you are not that party. Seems simple enough.)

Party moderates, such as Bruce Tutvedt of Kalispell and Llew Jones of Conrad, said Skees’ proposal amounts to a “purity list” that would divide and harm the Republican Party, the Gazette reported. (Ms. Lundquist, since you seemed to have talked to these two moderates, did you happen to ask them which Republican party principles they disagreed with? Did they offer "no suggestions for which principles" should be abandoned?)

Aware that their battles are playing out in the public eye, Republicans may have negotiated an agreement on who should lead before the convention election, for when the dust settled, incumbent Chairman Will Deschamps kept his job, having received more than 50 percent of the vote.

Laura Lundquist can be reached at llundquist@dailychronicle.com or 582-2638.

Atheist chaplains in the military - FB conversation

I posted this:

Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) will be introducing an amendment in Congress to create atheist chaplains in the Armed Forces.

D.G.: Interesting! I'd hope for maybe "humanist" rather than atheist? At least that's how non-religious celebrants/officiants usually describe themselves.

Me: I was hoping you had a comment about the hilarious stupidity of this.

D.G.: I suppose you also believe that a "spiritual atheist" is an oxymoron. This all goes back to our magnum opus about whether transcendence must involve an external reality. :)

Me: If by "spiritual" you mean something supernaturally transcendent to material existence, then of course the honest atheist should refuse any sort of spirituality.

The duties of a chaplain are to offer (1) prayer, (2) spiritual counseling, and (3) religious instruction.

An intellectually honest atheist (1) lacks belief in a god or gods to pray to (2) has no spirituality, and (3) no religious beliefs.

D.G.: (1) Prayer needn't be to a god. I sometimes say Buddhist meta, or other affirmations, and I find they have the same effect on me that prayer did when I was a believer. It's about a focusing of the mind, emotions, and will; and a surrender of what one cannot control.
(2) Like many atheists, I define spirituality in terms of the mind and the sub-conscious, not anything external.
(3) I don't know how often military chaplains perform religious instruction; but an atheist chaplain could certainly lecture on ethics.
(4) You forgot performing ceremonies to mark major life events; there are many humanist officiants who do this.

Me: Redefining the conventional meanings of terms in order to suit your worldview is ex post facto.

"Prayer is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with a deity, an object of worship, or a spiritual entity through deliberate communication."

"'Spirituality' is derived from the Latin spiritualitas and the Biblical "roeach/pneuma". It means to be put in motion, to be a living person, and being driven. In a Bibilical context it means being animated by God."

Child can get birth control but not new lungs - juxtaposition

So the girl couldn't get new lungs until a judge did a one-time suspension of the rules. But since another court decides that girls of any age can get the morning after pill, she can have all the contraceptives she wants. 

The courts will be the government entity that rations healthcare, which means that the hysterical protestations of the Left that Obamacare would not ration healthcare was true. 

Note the bioethicist's concern. We can have all those people rushing the court system to carve out their own exceptions to the rule, can we?

-------------
Court: girls can buy morning-after pill, for now

Girls of any age can buy generic versions of emergency contraception without a prescription while the federal government appeals a judge’s ruling allowing the sales, according to a ruling Wednesday by a federal appeals court.

The brief order issued by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan permitted two-pill versions of emergency contraception to immediately be sold without restrictions, but the court refused to allow
unrestricted sales of Plan B One-Step until it decides the merits of the government’s appeal. It did not specify why the two-pill versions were being allowed now, though it said the government failed to meet the requirements necessary to block the lower-court decision.
-------------------
Judge rules in favor of girl who needs lungs

A dying 10-year-old girl can move up the adult waiting list for a lung transplant after a federal judge intervened in her case Wednesday, a move questioned by a renowned medical ethicist.

U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson suspended an age factor in the nation’s transplant rules for 10 days for Sarah Murnaghan because of the severity of her condition.

The girl’s family believes that is enough time to find a match. Sarah has been hospitalized at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for three months with end-stage cystic fibrosis.

“We are beyond thrilled,” Janet Murnaghan, the girl’s mother, told The Associated Press, while adding, “Obviously we still need a match.”

The Newtown Square family filed suit Wednesday to challenge organ transplant rules that say children under age 12 must wait for pediatric lungs to become available, or wait at the end of the adult list, which included adults who aren’t as critically ill.

Nationwide, about 1,700 people are on the waiting list for a lung transplant, including 31 children under age 11, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.