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October 27, 2012

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low-tech cyclist

And it goes without saying that if the Republicans win, Federal funding for Planned Parenthood is gone. Better that poor women just have a lot of kids, so the wingnuts can rail at them for having sex, and then refuse to give mothers more food stamps if they have more kids.

They sure care a lot about kids being born once they're conceived, but after that, they're just another symptom of our evil system of dependency that must be disincentivized, regardless of the consequences to the actual kids, who apparently must be made to pay for their parents' sins.

(Oddly enough, that flies directly in the face of a very specific teaching of Jesus, but that doesn't stop even the religiously-motivated wingnuts.)

kathy a.

it has just gotten worse and worse; more and more outrageous.

i think that to a large extent, the aggressiveness of the campaigns to remove women from positions of control over their own bodies and own families (and own lives) is wrapped up in a larger disdain for women. if one hears "feminazi" a few dozen times a day for months and years, one might start believing such a thing exists -- and that is dangerous to manhood (and by extension, the church, the flag, and so on).

in a similar fashion, a majority of americans express racist sentiments . a good number may not be conscious of prejudice -- but the open race-baiting of the last few years has not exactly moved us toward more tolerance.

Eric Wilde

At times like these, I'm glad my daughters have dual citizenship. The thought of Republican leadership again makes me physically ill.

nancy

Melissa Harris-Perry's open letter to Mourdock.

Let me explain something to you. When we survive sexual assault, we are the gift. When we survive, when we go on to love, to work, to speak out, to have fun, to laugh, to dance, to cry, to live, when we do that, we defeat our attackers. For a moment, they strip us of our choices. As we heal, we take our choices back. We are the gift to ourselves, our families, our communities, and our nation when we survive.

Now let me say this very clearly to you Mr Mourdock, and to all of your shameless endorsers: we did not survive an attack on our consent just to turn around and give up our right to choose to you. Not without a fight.

Are you sure you want to have that fight?

It's this I had in mind when I made a comment in the previous thread about the violence of rape. This bizarre discussion from the right has reminded me of powerful memories I'd not thought about in a while. As the then 'den mother' and house administrator of a professional dance company, I am taken back to the violent rape of one of 'my' dancers. I rather imagine that as focused, young and quiet as she was that she was without any sexual experience. We were about six or seven days shy of the final performance of the year. Somehow, this woman, who had been stalked, then terrorized in her own third floor apartment, to which the rapist had arrived in a pick-up truck with an extension ladder, went on stage the following weekend. She was on stage alone a good amount of the time. How she did this I will never know, but she prevailed.

We owe victims far more acknowledgement of their pain than the Right currently seems capable of assembling. All of that is so shameful. I think it's a stain the right will own for a long time.

kathy a.

yes, nancy. people who think like mourdock do not, at a fundamental level, believe women to be human. women are either owned (by fathers or by husbands), or they are sluts -- and, possibly mostly, they [we] are hypotheticals. caricatures. vessels. the violence and threats only really matter if they are made against another man's property; it is the property crime, and not the woman herself, that matters to them.

your dancer showed great courage, going ahead anyway. i hope and expect that she felt the support of you and those who cared for her. and she did prevail.

you reminded me of something i had forgotten, about a high school student i tutored one summer after she flunked a class. the teacher thought she was stupid, lazy, and boy-crazy, or something. it turned out that the student had been gang-raped in a rest room at another school, and the message she got was basically that she was a slut who invited it. wtf? she was a very bright student; she only needed to know that she mattered, that it wasn't her fault AT ALL, and then she could do the work just fine.

that summer was over 35 years ago. it makes me furious to know that dinos still roam the earth, stomping around and proclaiming their dominance. and even worse, that anyone is listening.

eric -- you are not off the hook with your daughters' dual citizenship. you are one of the good guys; work your stuff at home.


nancy

kathy a. -- Two heartbreaking details from my dancer's experience. She was three-thousand miles away from home, alone for the first time at age 22, hoping to pursue her dance dream after school at Mt. Holyoke. And her third floor window was cracked because she'd adopted a kitten and wanted it to be able to access the roof while she was at work at the studio. It was spring.

By fall, the police had arrested the serial rapist through identifying his MO and physical description which was unique and incontrovertible. She'd been gone for the summer and had returned to town. I had to debate with myself whether to tell her of the arrest. That was a difficult moment. I told her. I never knew whether that was the best thing to do. But I did. I hoped it would reassure her, but then again, how could anything have? Her world had changed forever.

lt-c. High stakes?. Yes indeed. And too many people, even young women, have no memory of what used to be common in this regard.

jeanne marie

Just for the record, the Catholic Church is also against in vitro fertilization believing that it frequently involves the “deliberate destruction” or freezing of embryos, which is against the Church’s respect for human life. Furthermore, it separates procreation from the conjugal act.

As a lapsed Catholic (in no small part because of the church's nefarious meddling in secular politics), this is a position I think is immoral. It's just cruel to not support an infertile couple's desire to have a child.

low-tech cyclist

jeanne marie - there was a time when, although I disagreed with the Roman Catholic Church's positions on and relating to abortion, I had a certain respect for them, because the Church was (or at least appeared to be) pro-life across the board, not just until birth.

Lately they still mouth the same words about social and economic justice, but it's clearly not of any importance to the hierarchy; they're not going to put any weight behind their beliefs there.

Not to mention that it's hard to take seriously the moral stances of any organization that hasn't done a thing to penalize all those archbishops and cardinals who covered the tracks of molesting priests so that they could victimize more children. They're a church and a criminal conspiracy.

beckya57

The Catholic Church has lost all credibility with me because of the way they have re-victimized their parishioners who have come forward with their abuse stories. They have made it clear that they are far more concerned about the money they are losing in lawsuits then they are about their flock, or about maintaining integrity as an organization. As for them going around telling the rest of us how to live, my response is to remind them of the Gospel verse about removing the plank from one's own eye before taking the mote out of anothers. They don't get to lecture the rest of us when they've done so little to address the harm that they've done.

jeanne marie

Lesley Gore's You Don't Own Me PSA! Awesome get out the vote message. (but, ick, stay out the comments)

As for the Catholic Church . . . it's heartbreaking for me. This is my heritage, these are my people. And I miss my small multi-cultural/racial/generational inner city parish.

But I am ashamed to be associated with the RC Church. So me and my family are "gone, gone, gone".

paula

JM---If you liked You Don't Own Me, do what you can to make Nov 6 Take A Woman To Vote Day. See http://bit.ly/RYu5Kd

kathy a.

JM, that's great!

nancy

jm --Husband is a devotional Catholic, former-altar-boy son is lapsed for now, and I'm catholic, small c, mostly unchurched. I think, given the association of the more extreme elements of Catholicism with the crazy-angry-then-more-crazy right, it has become hard to remember all of the other divisions and efforts within Catholicism which minister to the poor, promote justice and try to live in kindness to those within and without the Church. Falling short, but working another day. Then another.

My spouse teaches at a Jesuit university where a number of faculty would agree that while their credentials might have taken them to more academically 'notable' environs, they feel that its institutional framework is one of decency and respect, where teaching, not 'publish or perish', is the order of the day. That's what attracted and retained them. That was and remains essential to its mission.

In other words, Catholicism is a big messy project -- like many others. The Dolan loudmouths love centerstage too much. Opus Dei is what? A misogynistic secret society cult? Sisters of Providence are busy running hospitals and providing charity care. Soup kitchens in my city are staffed with Catholic volunteers who have probably not been to confession in years. I have friends who have 'left' the Church in body but not in spirit or deed. The local parish snapshot is a wonderfully ragtag picture in a lot of places. (Garrison Keillor's description of Minnesota Catholics at Mass in their 'car coats' still makes me laugh.)

If I had a magic wand, I'd wave it and overnight remove tax-exempt status from all religious institutions engaging, as you note, in nefarious meddling in secular politics. The Catholic Church hierarchy ought to be silent on those matters and be deeply, profoundly and humbly penitent about more important others. Institution cleanse. "Gone, gone, gone" is understandable though.

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