John Stonestreet – Page 55

Vaccine Requirements for Euthanasia?

Dec 20, 2021John StonestreetEuthanasia and Assisted SuicideEuthanasia

Recently, a Switzerland-based euthanasia clinic posted that, going forward, anyone seeking so-called “death with dignity” must be fully vaccinated first.

It isn’t quite as crazy as it sounds. They aren’t saying you have to be healthy before they kill you. Instead, they’re taking precautions for the sake of the people who provide “assistance in dying.” They don’t want patients infecting the medical professionals tasked with killing them.

Even so, there’s plenty of tragic ironies here. For two years now, we’ve been talking about “doing what it takes” to save lives in the face of Covid. “If it saves just one life” then, we were told, that the masks, the mandates, and the lockdowns were all worth it. At the same time, proponents of doctor-assisted dying tell us that people should have full autonomy over death.

Inconsistencies like these remind us that as much as we suppress eternity in our hearts, it’s still there. Even when our worldviews deny it, life is a wonderful gift of God, and dignity is intrinsic to who He has made us to be.

Male Swimmer Breaks Women’s Records

Dec 14, 2021John StonestreetTransgenderFairness in Women's Sports, Transgender

*John Stonestreet, Radio Host and Director of the Colson Center*

To hear the NCAA tell the story, an average swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania became a nationally ranked superstar overnight. Check the receipts, and we learn Will Thomas only started breaking records and winning meets by comically huge margins when he began going by “Lia” Thomas this past year.

Similar incidents are increasingly happening in various sports at all levels, but swimming offers an especially clear picture of what it means when we allow men to compete against women. Success in swimming is heavily dependent on physiology. The length of the body, the body’s center of gravity, and even the placement of a person’s belly button can mean the difference between an average swimmer and a major competitor. A man can identify however he wants, and can even take dangerous hormone supplements, but his belly button isn’t going anywhere.

This sort of let’s-all-pretend-we-don’t-know-what’s-happening groupthink isn’t good for college sports or for women’s rights. It’s not good for Lia Thomas, his teammates, or his competitors. No matter how fast he swims, no man really breaks a women’s record.

Canceling Grades

Dec 6, 2021John StonestreetCritical Theory, EducationCritical Theory, CRT, Education

Last week the LA Times reported that, facing soaring rates of D’s and F’s, more schools are simply doing away with grades entirely. Instead, teachers are encouraged to give students little to no homework, move deadlines, and have fewer outcome-driven measurements of achievement.

What’s the rationale behind the move?

“By continuing to use century-old grading practices,” wrote L.A. Unified’s chief academic administrator, “we inadvertently perpetuate achievement and opportunity gaps, rewarding our most privileged students and punishing those who are not.” In other words, standardized grades are racist.

But isn’t suggesting that poor or minority kids can’t get good grades itself a racist belief?

A major reason for merit-based grading is that if we don’t evaluate students based on their achievements, we’ll evaluate them on something else; in this case, an administrator’s preconceived ideas about their ability to succeed, based entirely on ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

Even more, by doing away with grades, educators keep students from the potential to succeed, no matter how hard they work. It’s a different kind of tyranny, but no less destructive: the tyranny of low expectations.