Insight on the News

YMCA Rooming​—How Safe?

● The Young Men’s Christian Association, better known as the YMCA or the Y, began as a means for providing rooming and recreation amid “Christian” surroundings. A report in the “National Observer” (September 7, 1974), however, indicates that the YMCA faces a serious problem: homosexuality.

One prominent homosexual is quoted as saying: “Ys are ideal because there’s a largely male atmosphere, often younger men, . . . and often men who are open​—and not merely receptive but willing—​to seek sexual encounters.” One reader’s comment (in a later issue of the newspaper) indicates the problem is not new. A member of the YMCA for six years in the 1920’s, he writes that he gave up the membership “after I was robbed several times, assaulted twice, and propositioned many times.”

Though protesting any implication that the problem is major, one Executive Director of the YMCA wrote: “I, as well as all other YMCA professionals, recognize that we do have the problem of the homosexual in the ranks of the YMCA membership.” A New York director said: “We can’t make room checks every night. . . . Sometimes we gulp and admit those we might disapprove of, realizing that we can provide them not only with a bed but with a chance for counseling and other help.”

Counseling immoral persons is one thing, but inviting them to sleep in your midst while they carry on their immorality is another. Did the officials of the Y never read that the apostle Paul warned: “A little leaven ferments the whole lump”?​—1 Cor. 5:6.

Weaning​—At What Age?

● Scriptural evidence indicates that Abraham’s son Isaac was not weaned until the age of five.a Some find that hard to believe. Interesting, therefore, is a report in “Science” magazine (September 13, 1974) on the practice among nursing mothers of the !Kung people of southern Africa today. (The exclamation point represents a clicking sound in their language.) The report says that, being a nomadic people and having no soft food for their babies, !Kung mothers “nurse them for 3 or 4 years.” Accompanying the article is a picture of one mother nursing a child who is “nearly 5 years old.” Yes, even in minor details the Bible record is sound.

One Thing Leads to Another

● Decades ago, the transfusing of one person’s blood into another’s veins became a common practice. Then the transplanting of organs came into vogue. Where might this all lead? An article by the president of the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, entitled “Harvesting the Dead,” gives some idea.

According to the article, many “scientific and theological groups” favor a redefining of death. The new definition would label as “dead” anyone whose brain functions had fully ceased, producing a state of “irreversible coma.” What then? The suggestion is made that, although now legally “dead,” the bodies could still be kept breathing and functioning through respirators in special hospitals, if desired, for a period of years. This could open the way for “farms of cadavers which require feeding and maintenance, in order to be harvested.” These “neomorts”​—legally “dead,” but actually living bodies—​could then be used, the article says, for training medical students and interns, who could practice surgical procedures, including amputations. Major organs could be catalogued and computerized for ready availability in transplants. The ‘legally dead’ persons could be “drained periodically” to supply blood for transfusion.

Admittedly, the article presents these only as possibilities. However, interestingly, the author says that the initial precedent for all this is the “blood donation” and the “precedent in blood of commercialization.” In contrast, the Bible inculcates respect for people’s bodies, even for those actually dead (not just in an “irreversible coma”). (Gen. 23:1-6; 49:29; 50:24-26; 1 Sam. 31:8-13) But men today contemplate wholesale ‘cannibalizing’ of bodies. And even that seems too mild a term​—for cannibals never maintained “farms” of human bodies to be “harvested.” This shows where things can lead once men begin to violate Bible standards, including its prohibition of taking the blood of another creature into one’s own body.​—See Deuteronomy 12:23; Acts 15:28, 29.

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