Pro-life?

Over at Aetiology, Tara is confused. She somehow thinks that Focus on the Family is actually anti-life.

She says:

Indeed. I'd love to see them mount a campaign against a foundation that fights horribly painful guinea worm infections, AIDS in monogamous, married relationships; and funds scientific breakthroughs for a number of underfunded illnesses. Go ahead and show us again, FoF and ALL, just how "pro-life" you really are.

I'm sorry to say that Tara just doesn't get it. The answer to the conundrum is glaringly obvious. FoF and other assorted "values" groups are most definitely pro-life. That is their stated agenda. Confusion arises because these groups also have an unstated pro-suffering agenda. Being pro-suffering requires that one be pro-life. It places no such requirement on respect for life.

Guinea worms? AIDS? Wake up, Tara. They're our fault. Some stupid, ignorant guy and his stupid hippie girlfriend ate some stupid apple and now we all have to suffer for it. Suffering is a magic spell that brings us closer to some illusory absolution from crimes we didn't commit. It makes perfect sense!

Do unto others as you would have done unto you. If suffering is glorified then sufferance becomes a desirable state of affairs. Suffering, therefore, is to be inflicted upon all others regardless of whether they want it or not. Therein lies the failure of the Golden Rule.

I for one am fucking sick of it. Are we to be a society that embraces life only to rejoice in torture and a pathological lack of respect for the human condition, or a society that lifts one another above such petty nonsense so that we may truly begin to live?