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Friday, February 16, 2007 12:00 AM

Why I had to quit the John Edwards campaign

During my brief tenure as blogmaster for a Democratic presidential contender, I experienced the right-wing smear machine firsthand

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  • Monday, February 19, 2007 03:38 AM

    Tainted evidence

    I can't believe Ms. Marcotte would cite here 'expose' on the Catholic Church's teaching on birth control as exculpatory evidence against the claims she is a bigot.

    In that post, Ms. Marcotte states she received a two page sheet from a "friend" who was involved in a premarital class at a Catholic church. Ms. Marcotte does not scan and upload this sheet as most others in the left blogosphere do when discussing a document. (I guess this really was 'going undercover the lazy way' or she is not familar with the ubiquitous PDF)

    In the lead up to the post Ms. Marcotte states that what she is about to expose is all true and widespread. "The critical issue here is understanding that this is not a fringe teaching. This is mainstream Catholicism. In fact, as my friend noted, since this is “liberal” Austin, this was a pretty mild version of what the church is pushing on people—friends of hers who are both medical professionals in the more conservative Colorado were required to go to three separate family planning sessions to be fed misinformation about contraception, which they also had little patience for since they also knew full well it was horse shit."

    The fact that Ms. Marcotte thinks Catholic parishes are liberal or conservative based on the city they are in should tell you that she doesn't know much about Catholics or their churches.

    So we have no document, hearsay evidence and then her post is directly refuted by the vast majority of self-identified Catholics leaving comments. One is left with the impression that instead of investigating the real world counseling Catholics are receiving before marriage, Ms. Marcotte decided to portray Catholic premarital teachings in as negative a way as possible.

    Her writing is this way by design. Whether Ms. Marcotte is anti-Catholic only she really knows, but the post in question is not evidence against such a supposition.

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