The Charter for Compassion

A new organization and movement have been founded with the goal "to build a peaceful and harmonious global community".

Utilizing the minds of some of the greatest religious thinkers of our time---including
Archbishop Desmond Tutu---The Charter for Compassion "seeks to remind the world that while all faiths are not the same, they all share the core principle of compassion and the Golden Rule. The Charter will change the tenor of the conversation around religion. It will be a clarion call to the world."

The following video clearly illustrates the goals of this burgeoning global movement, and simply and coherently verbalizes the widely accepted need for a universal propagation of compassionate tolerance.



The Charter for Compassion will be collaboratively created using input from people from every corner of the globe via new innovative software that enhances a collective decision-making process.

The previously mentioned group of religious elders, dubbed "The Council of Sages", will work together to distill the thoughts and input of thousands of contributors into a concrete document that "will not only speak to the core ideas of compassion but will also address the actions all segments of society can take to bring these ideas into the world more fully. The Charter for Compassion will then be signed by religious leaders of all faiths at a large launch event, followed by a series of other events to publicize and promote the Charter around the world".

First, collaborative suggestions regarding the preamble of the Charter are being sought at this very moment.

Starting on November 20th, input will be sought regarding the "eight core elements of compassion":

• Compassion as empathy not pity.
• Compassion as concrete action.
• Compassion as a lens for scripture.
• Compassion’s role as a spiritual tool and its relation to be
• Compassion as fundamental to all faiths.
• Compassion as an urgent global need.
• Compassion as concern for everybody.
• Compassion and the Golden Rule.

Then, beginning on November 27th, there will be specific calls to action for different groups:

• Educators
• Scholars
• Congregants
• Religious leaders
• Media
• Youth

Subsequently, beginning December 4th, a summary of the Charter's declarations will be created, reflecting on how the Charter will actually bring about change in the world.

If you would like to submit your own story as a part of this growing conversation, click here to visit the segment of the site devoted to contributors' personal testimonies.

The Charter for Compassion may be the exciting birth of a new expression of how compassion, tolerance and global cooperation can change the world and alter humanity's very way of thinking. Please consider visiting the site and perhaps even sharing a story of how you feel compassion can be generated, propagated, and disseminated throughout the world.

Religion and Discrimination in Healthcare

(Note: This is my fifth post under the auspices of the nurse blogger scholarship which I recently received from Value Care, Value Nurses.)

A San Diego fertility clinic that refused to provide artificial insemination to a lesbian woman based on her sexual orientation has tasted defeat at the hands of the California Supreme Court.

Guadalupe Benitez was denied insemination by two doctors at the North Coast Women's Care in Vista, California, after being told by the doctors in question that their Christian values would not allow them to artificially inseminate a lesbian. In later testimony, the doctors stated that they simply would not perform the procedure for any woman who was unmarried, despite her sexual orientation.

While a state appeals court did indeed rule in favor of the doctors' rights to refuse to treat based on sexual orientation or marital status, the California Supreme Court overturned that ruling by citing The Unruh Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by any business---including medical facilities---based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, and many other protected categories.

An editorial in the Los Angeles Times praises the decision, while also citing disturbing statistics that many states actually have legislation in place protecting doctors' rights to deny patients treatments or services that they find "religiously objectionable". The LA Times also shares the results of recent studies revealing that 14% of doctors polled stated that they would deny certain treatments to certain individuals while refusing to provide viable alternatives or referrals for such care, if confronted with a situation at odds with their religious convictions.

In reaction to the ruling, the Los Angeles Times editorial states:

"The tradition of religious freedom in the United States is one of the founding ideals of this country. But as our framers envisioned it, religious freedom referred to a right to practice one's own religion free of interference from others. It did not refer to religiously based interference with the rights of others, who may have their own and different religious traditions. Even in the relatively religiously homogeneous era of the framers, such interference was not acceptable. It is even less so in 21st century America. With religious heterogeneity growing, the devotional demands of one group may be increasingly at odds with those of others.

"Yet too often, our deference to religion in contemporary American society has allowed us to subordinate all other values. It has allowed us to routinely accept religiously motivated behaviors that we otherwise would have no reluctance to sanction and that, indeed, would be impermissible with any other justification.

"So it's time to say 'enough.' In the United States, we all are free to practice our religion as we see fit, as long as we do not interfere with the well-being of others by imposing our religious views on them. If physicians or other healthcare providers who have religious objections to legal medical treatments will not at a minimum inform their patients about those treatments and refer them to others who will deliver them, they should act in a way that is consistent with their convictions and the well-being of their patients and find other professions. "Freedom of religion is a cherished value in American society. So is the right to be free of religious domination by others."

I could not agree more with the statements by the LA Times editorial team. While I wholeheartedly respect the beliefs and values that guide any individuals' life, doctors and medical personnel hold an oath to first "do no harm", and I believe that "harm" includes refusal to provide care to another human being based upon discrimination, potentially leaving that individual without recourse or alternative affordable options for such care. Even though in vitro fertilization is indeed an elective procedure which does not have life-and-death implications per se, it is the principal of the matter that lies at this heart of this case.

As the LA Times stated in yet another editorial: "A clothing store may choose not to sell polo shirts. But once it sells polo shirts, it cannot withhold them from customers based on their race, religion, sexual orientation and so forth." Taking into consideration that medicine is also a business, following the letter of the law, a business must abide by anti-discrimination laws when serving consumers of any class, group, or minority, regardless of the feelings or values of the business owner or operator.

Now, doctors can still indeed refuse to perform abortions, in vitro fertilizations, or any other manner of procedure that does not fall within the bounds of their personal moral compass (just as the aforementioned clothing store can choose to not sell polo shirts). However, following non-discrimination laws, if they choose to offer a procedure to their patients, then it must be offered equally to all, not solely to select groups who meet the doctors' criteria for moral righteousness.

While some may argue that the refusing doctors did, after all, refer the plaintiff to another provider who eventually performed the procedure (and apparently incurred the costs that the patient would have paid in higher fees to the other provider), it is easy to imagine other less fortunate patients being sent on a wild goose chase, seeking medical care that was consistently denied to them based on some aspect of their beliefs or lifestyle.

The California Supreme Court obviously felt that this case had much broader implications beyond fertility and in vitro insemination. With this decision, the court decided to send a clear message that protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation and marital status is just as crucial as protection against discrimination based upon race or gender. If this case had been decided differently, perhaps we would then begin to see further erosions of the rights of gays and lesbians in all manner of areas of legal, medical and commercial transactions.

I am certain that this issue is not going away, and that proposals and ballot initiatives striving to ban gay marriage entirely will surely gain moral steam in reaction to this decision. However, the California Supreme Court has taken a stand, and I personally feel that their choice to rule in the plaintiff's favor, however controversial, will stand the test of time and further appeal.

Evolution, Debate and Faith

Based upon articles and media reports, the debate over evolution---or the lack thereof---still rages around the world. This morning, National Public Radio broadcasted a short piece on the “Turkana Boy”, the complete skeletal remains of a 9-year-old boy discovered on the shores of Lake Turkana, Kenya in 1984. These remains, at 1.6 million years old, are the oldest-known specimen of Homo Erectus, and are poised to be publicly displayed for the first time at Kenya's national museum in Nairobi.

It appears that the evangelical Christian communities in Africa---specifically in Kenya---are afire with opposition to the theory of evolution, requesting that the Turkana Boy's remains be relegated to a back room of the museum with a posted caveat that evolution is still only considered a theory. As reported on CNN.com via a report from the Associated Press, Bishop Boniface Adoyo, the leader of millions of African Christians from 35 denominations, has stated that exhibits and scientific reports which support the theory of evolution undermine the church and its teachings. Stating recently that "these sorts of silly views are killing our faith," the bishop clearly verbalizes the perceived attack on faith which the religious community feels is being waged by the proponents of evolution, as well as the church's adamant refusal to consider evolution as even remotely possible within the Christian cosmology.

I'm not entirely certain why I was compelled to write about this issue this morning, but it sparked within me a curiosity regarding the intersection---or rather, collision---of science and religion, which frequently pose difficult moral questions. Whether it be evolution, stem cell research, abortion, or family planning and contraception, these hot-button issues test the waters of our culture and its ability to withstand apparently untenable moral dilemmas. Of course, politics plays a role when the government intervenes (take the case of Terry Schiavo, for example), or when political candidates are forced to take a stand on a timely and contentious "moral" issue. (Just what isn't "moral", anyway? And in terms of those "value voters" that are ubiquitously discussed at election time, don't we all cast votes based upon our "values"?)

When discussing evolution and the Turkana Boy, it will be interesting to see how this debate evolves (pun originally not intended). Being neither a scientist nor a theologian, the potential for compromise appears slim from my viewpoint. If the religious community refuses to allow for even the possibility of truth behind a widely accepted and validated theory, compromise and understanding appear beyond reach. And when the scientific community openly derides or mocks the beliefs and faith of the pious, agreement or understanding is further debilitated.

Boycotts of exhibits serve little to inform the public, rather simply fueling further ignorance and division. When children are denied the teaching of evolution---or are encouraged to discount its scientific basis entirely with complete absence of critical thinking---who is truly served? From the point of view of an individual without religious affiliation and raised in a devoutly secular household devoid of all notions of faith (except for Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, that is), I am honestly often perplexed by organized religion in terms of its dogmatically held tenets.

Seeing the violence and carnage often waged ostensibly in the name of religious belief or affilation (think Shiite versus Sunni, for instance, or perhaps the Spanish Inquisition), one may be led to believe that religious thought and belief have indeed precluded reason during countless human societies, both modern and historical. I try not to lose my faith in human kind and its ability to embrace dialectically opposed belief systems wherein faith and science can live relatively peacefully, perhaps even with some cross-pollination and intermingling concepts. There is room for both subjectivity and objectivity in most every realm of thought and inquiry, and I'm sure many authors and thinkers have already done a great deal to advance the cause of peace and reconciliation between the two seemingly disparate camps.

Albert Einstein once wrote in a letter dated February 10, 1954: "If God has created the world, his primary worry was certainly not to make its understanding easy for us". I think his statement still holds true, and I wonder if he would feel that any advancement has been made since his death, or rather that we humans still exist in a miasma of ignorance and mistrust of both one another and the universe at large. As for the Turkana Boy, I have no doubt that the ire his exhibition is creating in Kenya is not about to be dissipated by calls for understanding and acceptance, but I still hope that some incremental change---mind by mind, heart by heart---can contribute to a quiet groundswell of cooperative understanding, even amidst these ages-old questions still begging for answers which will undoubtedly always leave someone disappointed.