Another Dominionist Nail.

I had to work today to remain calm after the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby.

I've written long and hard about the Dominionist movement trying to convert this country to a theocracy.  I know it sounds like some crazy conspiracy theorist ranting against chem trails.

But please consider for a moment.  The religious attitude about contraception displayed by the plaintiffs is a very small minority of Christian far right wing groups.

Witness the article written by Jack Jenkins over at ThinkProgress.  Go on over there and read it, I'll wait.

Ok, done?  Good.  I think I waited for even the slow readers to get back, if not, just let me know.

It is plain to see that the majority of religious Americans do not agree with Hobby Lobby.  Certainly the majority of religious institutions representing religious Americans don't.

So, why is this being touted as a win for "religious freedom"?  Because the guys loudly proclaiming victory are representatives of that Dominionist movement.  It is a tactic used by movements in the past whose goal is to overturn the established political order - loudly proclaim your goals to be in tune with the majority, even if your actions betray a very different path.  This tactic worked for Communists in Europe in establishing big Socialist parties, and it definitely worked for the National Socialists (the Nazis) in Germany.  It confuses the issue, because people in general are very forgiving and assume that what people say in public - especially in the press - is what they really mean.

Most people require pretty substantial proof to show that a group's public statements hide a sinister or publicly unpopular position.  These folks are taking advantage of that.  They know you are, basically, fair.

They have no such scruples.

Please note that many of the things the right wing is fighting for are laws which disadvantage women.

Note that this is, in a small way, an extension of the fight against contraception.  A fight liberals thought we'd won decades ago.  Remember the constitutional amendment they tried to put to the vote in Georgia (or maybe it was Mississippi) in 2012?  The one proclaiming that "personhood" begins at conception?  Yeah, it sounded harmless enough, until you realize that many of our contraceptives work by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the wall of the womb.  Meaning, of course, that the amendment would have made 90% of the contraceptives American women use illegal!

In one fell swoop.

Notice that the proponents of that amendment never said squat about that.  They tried to focus the argument on abortion, carefully avoiding the unpopular part of the consequences of approving that amendment.  Yeah, that's another way they work.  Sneak this stuff in when you're looking the other way!

Notice a pattern here?  A progression?

Most of this stuff is about the reproductive rights of women.  On the surface, that is.

But think about it.   When a women gets pregnant, it doesn't just become an inconvenience for a time.  It changes her LIFE.  Having a child doesn't just tie up 9 months until the kid pops out.  The pregnancy itself is a hazard to your life.  It gets worse when institutions like Planned Parenthood (which is devoted to women's health services exclusively) are defunded and forced to close, because then people whose careers are devoted to knowing what to do for a women who is in a distressed state of pregnancy are no longer available.  When certain procedures which can save your life are not performed in 90% of American hospitals because they are related to abortion procedures.

Not to mention the labor itself, in which not insignificant numbers of women die each year as a result of.

Then, of course, assuming you and the child survive the pregnancy and the labor of childbirth, there's the next ... oh, something like the next 30 years of your life, raising and nurturing that child, since these days kids aren't always on their own until they're in their thirties.

No, pregnancy is not a simple thing, and for all of these reasons, some women don't want to get pregnant.  Heck, some guys, even husbands, don't want to be fathers!  Some couples just aren't suited to be parents, and for the sake of the kids, they shouldn't be forced to be.

But if these right wingers have their way, they'll force that on us.  All of us.

Where will it stop?  Will they be satisfied to just keep you ladies barefoot and pregnant?  Think so?  Might they someday begin talking about the scanty and immodest clothing women wear?  Do ya think they might some day force you to wear - skirts?  Or worse yet - dresses?

Heck, if they can force you to get pregnant, isn't it reasonable that they might force you to stay at home with that child?  Be dependent on some guy for your upkeep?  Maybe they'd prefer that if that man dies, you just get tossed out on the street, since you won't be able to get a job.

Is that what you'd want for your future?  Or for your kids?  To have our society forced back into 19th century thinking where women have no rights, no personhood?

Because if we let them do it, that's where they're going.

As a male, I object.  I didn't marry my wife to be a servant.  I don't want my daughters to be servants. I want my kids to be full, productive citizens, with all of the rights and responsibilities men do.  I want to see our society to grow into a progressive, caring, forward looking society.

One where all people have the same rights, the same benefits before the law and the same opportunities to make their way in the world as they see fit.  A good education, healthcare, and employment prospects.

If we leave the country to the tender mercies of the Dominionists, we'll never see that.

If you agree with me, vote.  Tell your friends to vote.  I don't care where you live - VOTE!  Even if you live in rural Alabama, or Georgia, or even Mississippi, where rednecks think they rule the roost.  If enough people who object to this progression towards theocracy get out there and vote, we can show them different!

Throw out the seditionists who want to put preachers in power!  Throw out the republicans-in-name-only who are really Tea Partiers and religious extremists.

This November is more important than you think.  It may be a mid-term election, which are usually not that important - but then so was 2010, and that one gave the House to Republicans!  Let's take it back.

VOTE!  and vote Democratic this November!

#Dominionism  #Religion  #SupremeCourt  #politics  #harmfromreligion

Be careful what you ask for.

I posted a quote I got from an email discussion in another venue this evening on Facebook, but I eventually couldn't let it go - I've got to talk about it here and expand it a bit.

"If we give the government the ability to tell us we can't have abortions, we are also giving them the power to tell us when we will have abortions and that opens up more doors that I care to open."

I know that Republicans have, in these last couple of years, lost their ability to discern such simple things as irony or hypocrisy, but for a political party whose defining principle has been a distrust of big government and a desire to see as little interference in private lives as possible, this obsession with abortion over the last several decades has been painful to watch.  It indicates that they almost never have been able to see those faults.

The standard counter that the pro choice crowd uses is that anti-abortion laws violate the integrity of a woman's right to decide the fate of her own body and how she will obtain the health care she decides she needs according to her doctor's advice.  How she will determine the course of her life, without being trapped by the desires and beliefs of others.

I fully endorse that argument.

But it ignores something Republicans themselves have ignored for over forty years.  A subject that otherwise is near and dear to the heart of every Republican - the subject of governmental power and its ability to overpower the rights of the citizens of this country.  Republicans have always felt the need to restrain that power - to keep the government out of our lives and to prevent it from interfering with our personal decisions.

Unless, of course, it is intended to control something else that Republicans feel the need to restrain.

Women.  Women and their unfettered power over themselves, which threatens the traditional power structures of Conservative principles.

Ok, so let's do a short thought experiment.  Suppose for a moment that Republicans win.  (Shudder)  They outlaw abortion in all 50 States and US territories.

Hooray for the Party!  (Hoots and whistles, guns going off into the air, etc.)

Now, let's look carefully at this for a minute.  What have they done?  Yeah, yeah, violated the rights of every woman in America, I know, but what else?  What power have they given the government?  When you restrain the rights of citizens, you allow the government more power.

The argument against abortion hinges on the supposed rights of the fetus to live - that it is human and has a right to life, hence the self-imposed name of the anti-abortion movement.  That principle raises the rights of the fetus to be superior to that of the mother who sustains its life.  She becomes, in the words of the pro-choice movement, a human incubator.

In this case, you give the government the power to place the life of that fetus above that of the mother.  You give the government the power to weigh those two lives and to make a decision on which is more important.

For now, the folks who are against abortion would be happy.  They control the conversation for now, and feel that abortion will be a thing of the past.  The women who may die as a result aren't important, they are just women.

But.

Let's take a trip through time.  It's twenty years down the road.  Republicans have managed to contain abortion completely.  There hasn't been a legal one in decades.  But another worry has increasingly gotten their attention.

In spite of their efforts to restrain the voting rights of minorities, to cut back on programs that "encourage" the dependance of the poor on the government, they have refused to acknowledge that their outlawing of contraceptives has resulted in a massive increase in the numbers of poor minorities.

Things are getting out of hand.

As a last ditch effort to restrain that growth, Congress outlaws minorities from having more than one child and mandates an enforced abortion policy for all minority women who have already borne a single child.

Or, they enforce a one-child policy on people who make less than $100,000 per year.

Or on all Catholics.

Or on all non-evangelical Christians and non-Christians.

Or perhaps just on Hispanics.  Or just blacks.

You get the point.   Once that can of worms has been opened, and the government has that power, HOW they exercise it becomes a measure of what the power elite determine is in THEIR best interests.

Not yours.

Do you get it now?  In Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that women have the right to abortion.  That the government cannot make the decision for them as to which life - theirs or the fetus' - is more important.  SCOTUS said that the decision belongs to the individual woman.

Not the government.  That is a restraint on governmental power.  That decision protects us all from allowing the government from making the decision as to who may have an abortion or who may not - or who MUST.

Or who is exempt.

How much do you want to bet on who gets the exemptions and who doesn't?

Heads the rich win, tales the rest of us lose.

Once is an accident, twice could be coincidence, three times is probably deliberate...

In the last five years since President Obama was inaugurated, Republicans have been wrong on every single issue they have addressed in both the public eye and in Congress.  They met the day he came into office and agreed to work to make him both a one term President (which failed, miserably) and an unsuccessful one.  (Also a miserable failure.)

In short, and in practice, that means if President Obama is against it, they are for it, and if he is for it, they are against it.  Birthing (pun intended) the joke that all he has to do to rid himself of them is to come out in favor of breathing...

But, as one who has watched this sad soap opera fairly closely, this isn't the first time I've seen and noted that this is such an egregious indication of racial bigotry, it is surprising more people haven't noticed until now.

But I do think some folks may be getting the message.  The President's ratings are going up, ObamaCare is growing in popularity, and more and more folks are noticing that a lot of red States are not playing fair with health care by refusing to extend Medicare, resulting in massive numbers of people lacking insurance in those States.

Healthcare may be the Republican party's undoing.

Just the other day, the Republican dominated House voted for the 50th time to repeal ObamaCare, aka., the ACA.  A bill which will, for the 50th time, die in the Senate.  I hope the Senate has a nice cozy recycling bin for all that wasted paper...

Americans LIKE the ACA.  Millions of people now have affordable insurance for the first time.  Note that term, "affordable".  Not only is it affordable, but the policies have to meet a minimum standard of provided healthcare.

Don't forget the provisions of the ACA requiring the provision of contraceptives, which 98% of American women have used at one time in their lives.  And which Conservatives are madly contesting at every possible turn, filing suit in more than one State trying to overturn on religious grounds.

Win or lose, those lawsuits WILL cause a lot of American women to see the Republicans in a different light.  A much worse light.

Like jobs, healthcare is a subject that hits every American in the paycheck.  There snit a human alive who doesn't, at one point or another, need the attention of a doctor, or at the very least, need the financial assurance that accidental injury will be covered in case of accident.   Even if you are disgustingly healthy and never get sick for a day, you are still subject to the whims of fate and Murphy's Law - accidents do happen.

More and more people are beginning to see the inhumanity of not providing people with affordable health care, especially preventive care.  As Republicans continue to fight the ACA, more people see their efforts as willfully contrary to the welfare of the American people they have sworn (as officeholders) to uphold and protect.  Willfully mean, nasty and just plain ugly.

November can't come soon enough for me, let's get together and throw the bastards out.