Here’s a short round-up of important culture war news for you.
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Tennessee just passed another pro-life law. From USA Today:
It passed the Senate 23-5 just after 12:30 a.m. Friday on a party-line vote.
In addition to banning abortions after the point a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is as early as six weeks, the legislation also prohibits the procedure:
If the doctor knows that the woman is seeking an abortion because of the child’s sex or race.
If the doctor knows the woman is seeking an abortion due to to a diagnosis of Down syndrome.
For juveniles in custody of the Department of Children’s Services, including removing the current option to petition a judge for permission.
While there is an exception to the restrictions if a woman’s life is in danger, there will be no exceptions for rape or incest.
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The United Nations has climbed aboard the “ban conversion therapy” train, calling on the global community to make counselling for those struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction or gender confusion illegal. Read the entire report in The Christian Post. It is chilling stuff.
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Rod Dreher has a devastating analysis of the current binge of statue-smashing going on across the United States. A statue of George Washington was pulled down and set aflame with a burning American flag in Portland, Christopher Columbus is being toppled wherever he towers above traffic, and authorities are deliberating the removal of Jefferson and other founding fathers, as well. In London, Winston Churchill has been boxed up like an unwanted plaything. Dreher predicts that an increasingly enraged silent majority will eventually respond in distinctly unpleasant ways, especially as Trump appears unable or incapable of doing anything constructive in response.
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Over in First Things, Peter Hitchens has a magnificent essay on the same subject titled “Iconoclasm Returns to Oxford.” An excerpt:
It is the [Cecil] Rhodes statue that is controversial. But this is no longer really about Rhodes. In the last few days it has been under police guard. Not long ago a large demonstration, wholly ignoring supposed rules about avoiding viral infection, gathered beneath it while shouting about decolonization, as if Britain still had an empire. Perhaps they wish it was so. People need enemies, and dismantled empires are nothing like as good for this purpose as living, breathing ones. It was, as such things are, incoherent. A rather old campaign to take Rhodes down, copied from South Africa, has now somehow merged with a British “Black Lives Matter” movement, copied from the U.S. And all over Britain, statues of forgotten politicians, merchants, generals, and admirals (and now the blue plaques that commemorate them) are being investigated, to see if they in some way celebrate a wicked past. Even the looming sculpture of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square has been first scrawled on by protestors (who also defaced a nearby monument to Abraham Lincoln) and then hidden in a box by Greater London’s feeble authorities. This is a good indication of the state of modern Britain, teetering on the edge of a cultural revolution so severe that its greatest modern figure has lost his power as a unifying force and memory.
The abortion debate has blown up in Croatia’s elections, with pro-life statements from a number of candidates rendering the Left apoplectic. From Balkan Insight:
In a video debate on Wednesday, organised by the daily Vecernji list, Goran Jandrokovic, from the ruling conservative Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, and the nationalist singer Miroslav Skoro, leader of the new right-wing Homeland Movement, expressed hostile views to all abortions – both agreeing that “life begins with conception”.
