"Pharmacists for Life", principles and snivelling whiners: Part 1.

(CORRECTION: The original version of this story claimed that "Liberty Magazine" was published by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. That was wrong, and the article has been corrected.)

This is the story of a woman ... a woman with no discernible principles whatsoever, a point we will demonstrate by taking the long road.

First, what does it mean to have "principles"? Or, more specifically, to have the strength of your convictions? A natural answer is that you're prepared to stick to those principles come hell or high water, that those principles will take precedence over all other considerations and that, quite simply, you're not prepared to compromise them strictly for convenience.

Need an example? No problem. As you can read in this article, Eli Herring was a man of principle:

In 1995, Eli Herring, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, turned down the National Football League draft and a potential multimillion-dollar contract with the Oakland Raiders because Herring, as The Wall Street Journal and Reader’s Digest reported, wouldn’t play football on Sunday.

Now that's principle. It doesn't matter one whit whether or not you agree with Herring's religious beliefs -- there's no way you can't admire the man. What Herring is in effect saying is, "I have certain beliefs, and I am prepared to deal with the consequences of those beliefs -- no whining, no complaining." Prepared to deal with the consequences of those beliefs. Remember this; it's important.

You can say the same thing about Eric Liddell, the Scottish runner who was the inspiration for the movie Chariots of Fire. Liddell's religious beliefs also took precedence over his dream of an Olympic gold medal:

Scottish runner Eric Liddell was expected to be one of the top contenders in the 100-meter race at the 1924 Olympics. He probably would have been, too, if the opening heats for the event would not have been on a Sunday. Liddell considered Sunday to be a sacred day, and he refused to run on it. Even though he pulled out of his best event, Liddell did not give up on his dream of winning a medal. Instead, he entered the 400-meter race, which had its heats on a different day. While nobody expected him to do well, he ended up winning the gold medal in world-record time.

And, like Herring, Liddell knew the consequences and accepted them. Principle.

And then there are the hypocritical, unprincipled whiners, as you can read here, once again from the same issue of "Liberty Magazine":

Recently another case involving principle, athletics, and religious observance came to the fore, this time in Oregon. However, this wasn’t a case of an athlete turning down a multimillion-dollar contract or seeking to take off a holy day. Rather, it was a group of young athletes at Portland Adventist Academy (PAA) asking both the state board of education and the Oregon School Activities Association, or OSAA, which manages competitive sports programs among the state’s schools, to accommodate the Sabbathkeeping desires of the school’s basketball team, the Cougars.

The issue might not have arisen had not the Cougars been a successful team. In 1996 the Cougars qualified for the state tournament and eventually won the championship. OSAA officials changed the semifinal game’s time to Friday afternoon, allowing the team to play. However, it is argued, the body would not have made any further schedule adjustments, which meant the Cougars would have forfeited games they would have been required to play on Saturday morning or afternoon, time that is part of the seventh-day Sabbath observed by Adventists, as well as by Jews and by some Christians in other denominations and independent churches. (A Salvation Army church in Grants Pass, Oregon, has in recent years promoted Sabbath observance along with Sunday services, for example.)

What happened after the 1996 Cougar victory appears to have set in motion the current crisis: OSAA wanted the Adventist school to promise that it would not forfeit other games if the team gained a spot in future play-offs. School officials could not in good conscience sign a pledge such as that; they then went to the Oregon Department of Education and sought a ruling compelling OSAA to make “reasonable accommodation” for the students.

And what does this all mean? It means that those fine, upstanding, religious young men from PAA were a bunch of snivelling, whining, unprincipled crybabies who, on the one hand, wanted to honour their religious beliefs and yet, on the other hand, wanted everyone else to have to adjust to accommodate them.

As you can see above, the tournament organizers had already rescheduled one game to accommodate the PAA players. But further accommodation would undoubtedly have meant further chaos in the schedule, with PAA not even promising to show up for future games if they qualified.

Come now, you're thinking, would it have been so difficult to shift games around on the weekend? Oh, yes:

... OSAA has for decades enforced rules banning competition on Sunday, the day of rest observed by the state’s largest Christian faith, the Roman Catholic Church, and its second-largest, the Mormons.

As you can see, competition was already banned on Sunday and now the PAA was asking that it be banned from Saturday morning and afternoon as well. In short, the PAA was asking everyone else to put up with massive inconvenience just so they could keep competing. These are, quite simply, people who don't have the strength of their convictions. Unlike Liddell or Herring, despite their public sanctimonious piety, they weren't prepared to accept the consequences of their beliefs. Crybabies. Nothing but crybabies.

Which brings us to Karen Brauer of the "Pharmacists for Life", who you've met previously and who also has no principles to speak of. But you'll have to wait for Part 2.