What's Provocative About the Tebow Super Bowl Ad?

What's Provocative About the Tebow Super Bowl Ad?
Star Parker
Monday, February 01, 2010

Why are pro-abortion groups so up in arms about the Tim Tebow ad that CBS will run during the Super Bowl?

According to the press release of Focus on the Family, the Christian organization sponsoring the ad, the former University of Florida Heisman Trophy winner Tebow and his mother, Pam, "will share a personal story centered on the theme of 'Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.'''

The Tebows are devout Christians, and Pam gave birth to Tim despite advice from her doctor to abort because of illness during her pregnancy. Since the script is not publicly available, all we know is the family story and knowledge that the ad passed muster with CBS.

We spoke with Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger and asked if the ad in any way speaks to the politics of abortion. The answer was an emphatic "no."

According to Schneeberger, it's "not selling, it is celebrating" and is about the "love between a mother and a son."

So what's provoking the letter writing campaign of feminist groups to CBS to pull the ad? Why would the National Organization of Women call this "offensive to women" or would the Women's Media Center call it "divisive"?

Sure, there's no question that Focus on the Family is pro-life and opposes legal and readily accessible abortion. But CBS wouldn't be running this ad if its focus was political advocacy.

So what's bothering these women?

Two things.

First, the enabler of human brutality is de-humanization. Pro-abortionists know that our existing legalized abortion regime can only continue as long as we keep the human face off abortion.

It's why ultrasound has revolutionized this world. When young women who have doubts about taking their pregnancy to term see the live child within them, they overwhelming decide to give birth. You don't have to preach. They see that this is life and they know what to do.

I have written in the past that if the personal ultrasound experience could be conveyed to public consciousness, the abortion holocaust would stop.

The Tebow story will put this human face on abortion for the 100 million or so who will watch the Super Bowl. Nothing could be scarier for the culture of death.

When Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin, she put a human face on slavery. When the American public understood that slaves were human beings, the capacity to tolerate slavery was punctured.

Abraham Lincoln supposedly said to Stowe when he met her in 1862, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."

Last week Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at Auschwitz, the former Nazi death camp in Poland. It marked the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, where over one million, mostly Jews, were murdered.

The six million who were slaughtered in the holocaust in Europe challenges comprehension. But the meaning of this changed when Anne Frank's diary was published in English in 1952. When the public at large read the thoughts and feelings of this young girl, recorded in hiding before she went to her death with her family, the human face of the holocaust emerged.

The second aspect of the Tebow ad that scares abortionists is that it shows that love arises from personal responsibility. This beautiful story of a mother and son shows that love is not about political claims but about individuals taking responsibility for their life and knowing that life is about more than self. It is caring for others and knowing that you are part of something bigger than just you.

At a time of great spiritual unrest in our country, I believe this courageous initiative taken by the Tebows and Focus on the Family will be well received.
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The Super Bowl Kerfuffle
Matt Barber
Monday, February 01, 2010

"If you don't like it just turn off the TV!" goes the liberal mantra as all form of sexual perversion, obscenity and violence slinks unannounced into our living rooms. But when the message is perceived to undercut some carefully crafted left-wing narrative? Well, then not so much.

Fire-breathing feminists, liberal-media automatons and other "progressive" pro-aborts are anything if not predictable. They've once again concocted controversy where – to the emotionally stable among us – there is none.

The latest target of their cultish ire is Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback and all-around-great-guy, Tim Tebow. A crusty glut of anti-birth femi-ninnies (so cute when they're mad), representing an ever-dwindling number of pro-abortion fundamentalists, have drawn a bead on Tebow for the crime of, well, existing.

Additionally charged with "speaking while Christian," Tebow has knotted many ninny knickers by agreeing to participate, along with his mother Pam, in a Super Bowl ad commissioned by the Christian group, Focus on the Family.

As the mainstream media tells it, the ad will, in about 30 seconds, apparently set the "women's movement" back 40 years. It's additionally presumed (nobody's seen it or even read the script mind you) to both horrify and offend the entire nation.

So what have these dastardly Dobson devils done? Leaks indicate that the spot will share the story – inspirational by any objective standard – of how Pam Tebow "chose" to carry baby Tim to term despite a doctor's recommendation that she have an abortion. That's it. No "abortion is murder" tag line (it is). No "down with Planned Parenthood" pitch (yes, please). Simply: "Hi, I'm Pam. I chose to have my baby and not abort him. He won the Heisman. Neat, huh?"

Well, you'd think Roe v. Wade had just been overturned (it will be) and that every bra-burning broad in Berkeley faced time in the pokey. The usual suspects – a shrill gaggle of leftist "women's groups" – got the vapors, hit the fainting couch and demanded in their enduring "take-the-trash-out!" tone that CBS censor the Tebows and pull the spot.

Erin Mattson, vice president of The National Organization for Women (NOW) told ABC News that Tim's story was "really quite offensive. … This ad is hate masquerading as love!" she barked (Tim wasn't dismembered alive and scraped in pieces from his mother's womb, you see. That would've been peachy).

The New York-based Women's Media Center launched a censorship petition drive (since dwarfed by pro-family efforts ) framing the ad as an "attack on choice."

You get the picture.

OK – so much pablum, so little time: "Attack on choice?" "Hate masquerading as love?" Does patchouli oil cause brain damage? Give liberals a fish; they'll eat for a day. Give them hemp; they'll smoke half, weave a rope and then hang themselves with it.

It's remarkable that these people are so invested in a culture of death – so blindly devoted to goddess "choice" – that they've lost all sense of how foolish they appear to others. Rather than taking the time to walk through an introspective analysis, they involuntarily lash-out.

They fail to ask: "In what possible way is it an ‘attack on choice' for a woman to share the tale of how – when given two clearly defined options – she ‘chose' life over abortion?" That's choice defined. It just happens to be – from an angry, oft-hurting, always twisted perspective – the wrong choice.

They fail to ask: "In what possible way is it ‘hate masquerading as love' for a woman to share the tale of how – when given two clearly defined options – she ‘chose' life over abortion?" That's love defined; more still, while risking self so the child within might live. (Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. John 15:12).

So if not logic, then what?

Fear.

Fear of truth. Fear that others will be touched by truth. Fear of exposure. Fear that it's all slipping away. Fear for a legacy lost. Fear that maybe they're wrong. Fear that maybe their choice was wrong. Fear of history's judgment. Fear of God's judgment. Just fear.

But they needn't fear.

This is about life. The Tebows' story is about life. And the giver of life is the giver of love. And the giver of love – who is both the bread of life and perfect love – gives us this: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear …"

Don't fear. Choose love. Choose life.