Monday, February 25, 2019

Why you can't trust Snopes; Hillary Clinton edition

In a speech in 2015 Hillary Clinton said the following:

Yes, we’ve nearly closed the global gender gap in primary school, but secondary school remains out of reach for so many girls around the world. Yes, we’ve increased the number of countries prohibiting domestic violence, but still more than half the nations in the world have no such laws on the books, and an estimated one in three women still experience violence. Yes, we’ve cut the mortality rate in half, but far too many women are still denied critical access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth.
All the laws we’ve passed don’t count for much if they’re not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice, not just on paper. Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.
But Snopes declares that the statement "Hillary Clinton said in a speech that Christians in America must deny their faith in Christianity." is false. Snopes rated the comment false because they say that demanding better education, an end to domestic violence, and a reduction in the mortality rate of women in childbirth won't require Christians to change their religious beliefs.  Interestingly they don't comment on the implications of Hillary's use of the term "reproductive health".

It is undebatable that she is saying that religious beliefs have to change to conform to her vision of the world.  The question raised by Snopes is are the beliefs she's demanding must be changed beliefs that are held by Christians in America today?

First note she's clearly saying that we must change religious beliefs that condemn "reproductive health care", i.e. abortion.

Clearly Snopes is ignoring the fact that when Hillary says "reproductive health" she means abortion. That usage is common to all leftists because it allows them to call for legalizing or funding abortion without directly saying so.  

Contrary to the Snopes claim what most conservatives were saying wasn't that Hillary said we had to deny our faith in Christ but that she was saying that Christians would have to change our moral code to conform to hers.

Clearly based on what Hillary said there is no other interpretation; she is saying that American Christians must change their position on abortion; that is religious teachings must conform to Hillary's morality.

Even if we take Snopes claim as stated Hillary was demanding that Christians reject Christianity for if one believes that Christ taught that abortion is murder then changing one's belief is a rejection of Christianity because if one says that Jesus taught something that wasn't true, i.e. if abortion is ok and Jesus said it wasn't, then clearly He wasn't God. But if we say that Jesus isn't God we're rejecting Christianity. After all Paul said that if Jesus didn't rise from the dead our faith is in vain but if Jesus wasn't God then He didn't rise from the dead either because as atheists are always, and correctly, saying normal people don't rise from the dead on their own.

This is a prime example of why you can never ever trust Snopes.  The person who wrote the Snopes position is either ignorant--and doesn't know how leftists like Hillary use the term "reproductive health"--or a deliberate liar who tried to spin her comments in order to bury the truth and deny the clear unambiguous meaning of Hillary's words in order to protect her from the consequences of her statement.

No comments: