A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Our lord said, Truly, I assure you, whoever does not enter the sheepfold through the gate but climbs in some other way is a thief and a marauder. The one who enters through the gate is shepherd of the sheep. The keeper opens the gate for it, and the sheep hear his voice as he calls each one of them by name and then leads them out. When he has brought out all those the sheep that are of his that belong to him, he walks in front of them.
He's a leader they follow, and the sheep follow him because they recognize his voice. They will not follow a stranger. Such a one, they will flee from because they do not recognize a stranger's voice. Now even though Jesus used this figure of speech with his hearers, including the disciples, they did not grasp what he was trying to tell them. So he said to them again, my solemn word is this, I am the sheep gate.
All who came before me were thieves and marauders whom the sheep did not recognize and did not obey. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be safe. He will go in, and he will come out, and he will find pasture. The thief comes only to steal, to slaughter, to destroy.
I came that they might have life and have it to the full. And this is the gospel of the lord. Which you recognize as yesterday's reading too. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. At least I hope you do.
Well, I was all prepared with some joyous remarks, but I got in in the sort of the middle of sixty minutes last night. How many here saw that show last night? I like a show of hands on that. I don't want to waste my precious thoughts. That's not very good percentage.
And I do not have enough of the data to be very factual about who was speaking and what their position was and all that. Those of you who saw it know, you know very well what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about Nordstrom, the great, merchant from Seattle, Washington, I think, or someplace out West Of The Mississippi. That's my geography. But, well, it's on my mind, and what is so frightful about it is this is that it is not isolated what went on there last night and that it was a very good part of the sixty minutes.
It was a woman who, in the state is Arkansas, that I'm sure of, and she is head, as I'm not sure of this, whether she's head of the state department of health or the health director of the school system. I think it's the second. She was very pedagogic and extremely much of a demagogue. She spoke in tones that would made Moses on Mount Sinai look like a pygmy. She spoke with the utmost assurance she was well groomed.
She made a a startling appearance. She'll probably be our next the first woman president of The United States. She's got it she's got it made really. She really is a demagogue. And that's one of the qualifications of being president or any other political office.
It simply means of the people, remember. Her whole thrust was teenage pregnancy and how to stop it. Arkansas apparently has the unenviable situation status of being second in the union of having teenage pregnancies. And she went what has caused the big stir Now this is Arkansas. That's a I think a Bible Belt state.
I know it's a very fundamentalist place. I know that from experience. People out there believe in the Bible, a lot of them do anyway, very fundamentalist. Anyway, her solution to this enormous problem of teenage pregnancies is condoms. That every she wants to establish a clinic in every public high school in which they will give the girls Why they give them to the girls?
That's a kind of a mystery to me. But anyway, where the the good little girls can get condoms for free. And that is supposed to prevent pregnancy and cut down on teenage girls being mothers. And she quoted figures to prove it. She gave, I think, three schools where her plan has gone into operation and they've cut down teenage pregnancies to zero.
Now just a little point came in, but it's a big point. Don't ever forget it! A baby was born to one of these teenage girls and the birth of that baby and taking care of it to help it survive cost the taxpayers $25,000. Do you get my drift? Over this whole argument never forget it.
Over this whole argument of contraception, there's a big dollar sign. Fortunes are being made out of it. And having babies cost taxpayers money. It's much easier to to to to give them a condom. I don't know what the present going price of one is, but it's not $25,000.
And that $25,000 was just to bring this baby into the world and keep it living. Now this woman was pretty strong against abortion, so she says, because she says what she's what she's doing will prevent abortions, that she has never recommended abortion, and I believe her. Because as she said with the utmost wisdom that would make Socrates look kind of pale, that you don't talk about abortion unless you have a pregnant woman with a baby. That's really profound knowledge. Now, that was that was her big argument that and there was a picture showing these teenage girls as young as 14 who are having their babies.
And, you know, one of the things that I one of those things that the girls all talk about missing because they're have have to leave school is their prom, their senior prom. Boy, that must be something to go to. I never went to one. I went to a boys school and we didn't have one. Strange it may seem, but anyway, that senior prom seems to be the whole point of going to high school for many girls.
But the what do you make out of it? Remember, this woman is terrifically influential. It showed her, and I use this word carefully, haranguing the student body. What chance have those students against a woman like that with her ideas? They don't have a tiniest chance.
Then they have an interview with the young girls who had babies, and they ask them, If condoms had been free, would you have used them? Most of them said yes. One said no. The argument, of course, is does this, giving them away, making them for free, does this encourage, promiscuous, intercourse? There's another word for that.
It's vulgar, but it's much truer to this to the situation. And, of course, there's the pros and the cons. Take your pick. I don't but when you get something free to keep you from being pregnant through intercourse, it certainly is going to be interpreted in many instances as giving that action an okay. That's alright to do.
Now here's what I want to summarize. Oh, god. Not once did the word god come in. Not once. They brought on a minister.
He spoke very well, very well, but he didn't bring in the word god either. But he did talk about chastity. But remember, chastity has no meaning if you divorce it from god. Virtue has no meaning unless it's divorced from god. Read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
You'll see that. There's no use talking about chastity, talking about who God and my relationship to God and my obligation to God, and that obligation is translated into conduct which is either virtuous or vicious. It's that simple, but this is not presented. They say you cannot tell them dear little girls to say no. That's ridiculous.
Saying no, you wanna know why you say no. You wanna know why you must say no. Saying no is no answer to anything, including drugs. Anyway, if you wanted to see an example of utmost secularism, that is this worldly view of life. You should have seen it.
And my concluding point is this: Remember, there is no sin in a girl having a baby. The sin was in fornication, and that god forbids. In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit. Amen.