February 12: Date of infamy

In looking at other sites and old almanacs for today's entry in one of my other blogs, it struck me that February 12 is associated with more than its share of abominations. 105 years ago today, on February 12, 1809, Charles Darwin was born, and it would have been better for the world if he hadn't been born. Abe Lincoln was born on the same day; there are some people who have a negative view of Mr. Lincoln, but I'll let Americans argue over that. A sampling of other notable events on this date:

225 years ago
1789

Ethan Allen, a leading figure in the American Revolution and one of the founders of Vermont, died at the age of 51 of an apparent fit of apoplexy while returning home from a visit to his cousin. His book Reason: the Only Oracle of Man had been published in 1785, and the title tells all you need to know about Mr. Allen's religious views. The book was a critical and commercial failure, and Mr. Allen's foolishness has now presumably been corrected.

40 years ago
1974

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, was arrested by force after he and his wife had refused two summonses for him to meet with state investigators. Soviet officials had been outraged by the recent publication of Mr. Solzhenitsyn's novel The Gulag Archipelago, an expose of the U.S.S.R.'s prison system. The next day, Mr. Solzhenitsyn was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and deported to West Germany.

Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.
Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him,
Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?
This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. John 12:3-6

Eight days after kidnapping newspaper heiress Patty Hearst from her Berkeley, California apartment, the Symbionese Liberation Army demanded that her father, San Francisco Examiner editor and president Randolph Hearst, give $230 million of free food to the poor as evidence of good faith in negotiating for his daughter's release. The SLA's leader, Donald DeFreeze, aka "General Field Marshal Cinque Mtume," addressed Mr. Hearst as "the corporate chairman of a fascist media empire of the ultra right," and told him he was "quite willing to carry out the execution of your daughter to save the life of starving men, women, and children of every race." The demand was accompanied by a tape of Miss Hearst pleading for her father's cooperation. According to the Wikipedia entry, the seven heads of the SLA's logo represented the seven principles of the bogus holiday Kwanzaa. I have to admire the Judas Iscariot-like passion for social justice of Mr. DeFreeze, even if he was just a street thug whose career in wealth redistribution began with an attempt to rob a prostitute of $10. If he hadn't committed suicide during a shootout with police in Los Angeles on May 17, 1974, Mr. DeFreeze, the only Negro member of an organization that was supposedly leading the "black revolution," may well have ended up with a position in the administration of White House occupant B. Hussein Obama or become a tenured professor at Eastern University, participating in protests with Ron Sider and Tony Campolo.

25 years ago
1989

Police in Pakistan killed six people who were protesting Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (1988), which was accused of being disresepctful toward the prophet Muhammad. Two days later, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa--a legal judgment--calling for the death of Mr. Rushdie, and the day after that, one of the Ayatollah's aides offered $1 million for Mr. Rushdie's death, prompting Mr. Rushdie to go into hiding. The reaction of Muslims to The Satanic Verses was considerably different from the reaction of Christians to the film The Last Temptation of Christ several months earlier, but that's a subject for another post.

20 years ago
1994

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: Deuteronomy 30:19

Sue Rodriguez, 43, a resident of Victoria, British Columbia, died in hospital. She was diagnosed with amyotropic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease) in 1991, and sued the B.C. government for the legal right to assisted suicide, which was an offense in the Criminal Code of Canada punishable by a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. On September 30, 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada, in a 5-4 decision, upheld the Criminal Code prohibition on assisted suicide. Svend Robinson, a member of the Canadian House of Commons (NDP--Burnaby-Kingsway), assisted in Mrs. Rodriguez's campaign, and claimed to have been in the hospital room when she committed suicide with the help an anonymous physician. Although assisted suicide remains illegal in Canada, national opinion seems to have shifted in an increasingly pro-death direction in the 20 years since the death of Sue Rodriguez, but no doctor has yet been identified or come forward as the one who helped end her life, which makes this blogger suspect that the "anonymous" physician may have been a "nonexistent" physician. The only person who claims to have been in the room with Mrs. Rodriguez is Svend Robinson, and yet he's never been charged in connection with her death. Mr. Robinson was the first Canadian MP to come out of the closet as a sodomite, and he was constantly trying to get the law changed to lower the age of consent for sex--no doubt to make it easier for men to have sex with boys. His career in Parliament ended shortly after he stole an expensive ring from a public auction site.

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. I Timothy 2:12

In Toronto, Rev. Victoria Matthews was consecrated the first female Bishop in the Anglican Church of Canada.

The Winter Olympic Games, featuring 1,884 athletes from 67 countries, opened in Lillehammer, Norway. Much of the opening ceremony consisted of celebrations of Norse paganism.

10 years ago
2004

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Romans 1:18-32

More than 85 couples participated in "marriage" ceremonies as the city of San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to sodomite and lesbian couples in response to a directive from Mayor Gavin Newsom, contrary to a California state law.

Scientists in South Korea announced that they had created 30 human embryos by cloning for the purposes of embryonic stem cell research, and had removed embryonic stem cells from them.