{"id":168,"date":"2008-09-28T20:39:01","date_gmt":"2008-09-28T20:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/09\/eugenics-lives-lousiana-lawmak.html"},"modified":"2008-09-28T20:39:01","modified_gmt":"2008-09-28T20:39:01","slug":"eugenics-lives-lousiana-lawmak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/09\/eugenics-lives-lousiana-lawmak.html","title":{"rendered":"Eugenics lives! Lousiana lawmaker wants to sterilize the poor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rep. John LaBruzzo, a Republican from Metarie (David Duke’s old haunts) wants to pay poor women $1,000 to get sterilized. Why? Because people receiving food and housing assistance “are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated residents.” The New Orleans Times-Picayune has the story<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\n

“What I’m really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare,” he said. <\/p>\n

He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men. <\/p>\n

It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said. <\/p>\n

LaBruzzo, 38, is white, married to a lawyer, has a toddler daughter and holds a bachelor’s degree from Louisiana State University. <\/p>\n

[snip–so to speak]<\/p>\n

“It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, he’s a racist,’ ” LaBruzzo said. “The hard part is to sit down and think of some solutions.” <\/p>\n

LaBruzzo said he opposes abortion and paying people to have abortions. He described a sterilization program as providing poor people with better opportunities to avoid welfare, because they would have fewer children to feed and clothe. <\/p>\n

He acknowledged his idea might be a difficult sell politically. <\/p>\n

“I don’t know if it’s a viable option,” LaBruzzo said. “Of course people are going to get excited about it. Maybe we’ll start a debate on it.” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, he’s done that. New Orleans’ Catholic archbishop, Alfred Hughes, was the first area clergyman to come out against LaBruzzo’s proposal. According to RNS<\/a>, Hughes based his opposition on two elements of Labruzzo’s proposal: the technique of direct sterilization and the underlying purpose of manipulating the birth rate to reduce certain populations as a matter of public policy.  <\/p>\n

More broadly, Hughes said, the plan “would also constitute a form of eugenics that the church and this country have always condemned.” <\/p>\n

Over at dotCommonweal<\/a>, where I saw this news, Notre Dame’s Cathleen Kaveny applauds Hughes but notes that the archbishop’s historical analysis is flawed: <\/p>\n

\n

“He’s wrong in saying we Americans have always condemned eugenics. That’s the problem. We haven’t. I do not believe in whitewashing history-the history of Christianity or the history of the United States. And I do believe in making contemporary citizens and believers confront the bad decisions of the past. The United States does not have a good history with eugenics -before the Second World War, and the revelations of the atrocities of Nazi Germany, it was attractive public policy.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Professor Kaveny goes on to cite the infamous Buck v. Bell case<\/a> of 1927 in which Justioce Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for the majority that upheld forced sterilization for the good of the rest of society, declared: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”<\/strong> <\/p>\n

In the comments thread to that post, some tried to tie this sin of eugenics to “liberal Christianity,” an inflammatory charge aimed at progressive believers in America now, as then. But America’s ugly dalliance with eugenics is replete with instances of progressives who were so enamored of social engineering or bringing about paradise on earth that they succumbed to the worst temptations to make it happen. (And of course, conservatives, perhaps like the GOP legislator in Louisiana, were no better; maybe Sarah Palin will have him to dinner if she’s elected.) <\/p>\n

This episode is a good reminder of our common failings, and how far we have come, but also how realistic we must be about our faults, the faults of others, and the grace of imperfection in everyone. <\/p>\n

ThinkProgress.com has updates<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. John LaBruzzo, a Republican from Metarie (David Duke’s old haunts) wants to pay poor women $1,000 to get sterilized. Why? Because people receiving food and housing assistance “are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated residents.” The New Orleans Times-Picayune has the story: “What I’m really studying is any and all possibilities…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,12,36,1,9],"tags":[169,170,171,172,173,174,22],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-catholics","category-defining-progressive","category-election-08","category-religion-in-the-public-square","tag-archbishop-hughes","tag-eugenics","tag-forced-sterilization","tag-imbeciles","tag-john-labruzzo","tag-oliver-wendell-holmes","tag-progressives"],"yoast_head":"\nEugenics lives! 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}