Religious-right leaders say they want to limit government’s authority — except when it comes to regulating private decisions they don’t like. On Monday, for example, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said states should be able to ban birth control. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down such laws as violations of a right to privacy for consenting adults. Santorum doesn’t like that:
“The state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statutes they have. That is the thing I have said about the activism of the Supreme Court, they are creating rights, and they should be left up to the people to decide.”
Such a rationale might please someone like Texas state Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, who last year declared that he and other social conservatives in the state Legislature were engaged in a “war on birth control.”
They want government “off our back,” but they think it has legitimate business intruding into your bedroom.
What is it about the Venus that sociopaths like Santorum find so obsessive?
It’s never about men’s reproductive rights. Has anyone said “boo” about vasectomies?
No. It’s The Pill, contraceptives of any kind, and sex, sex, sex! Sorry, only women’s sex. I truly think that Santorum has a mental problem regarding women, but that Newt, Gov. Good Hair and others simply pander. Newt, of course, loves the Venus and Perry is too clueless to have an opinion even if he could articulate it.
But, seriously, what is it about these “social conservatives” that drives them frothing insane about women? Did they all hate their mothers? I think it’s an indictment against Iowans that Santorum hasn’t been booed out of the state for being a Taliban, and the rest of the Rethuglicans for being hypocritical panderers. I thought that rural equating to stupid was an outdated stereotype. Apparently, I need to reevaluate that.
I refuse to concede that the country has devolved back to the days when Walt Cleaver opened the front door and announced, “Honey, I’m home!” I refuse to support anybody who professes to “take America back” because I advocate taking America forward.
Republicans want more government control including the bedroom. They will tell all of us little people to turn off the lights and go to bed at a certain time. And god forbid if anyone has sex because they will come in and check the sheets. This whole thig is so crazy and they get people to follow them. There are a lot of simple minds. How many of them would follow Jim Jones or Kareas if they were asked to
Hi Doc Bill. I have three quick points:
1) Birth control is perceived to be the magic genie that freed women to leave their roles as full-time, stay-at home mothers and the role of Susie homemaker “for my man,” which allowed them to go out into the work place and rise to positions of authority over men. People like Santorum believe that doing away with birth control will put the “evil genie” back into his bottle and your wife back into the lap of Betty Crocker where it belongs.
2) The right wing fanatics are scared to death that a time will come when there are no longer enough white people. We need to get rid of birth control and get about the business of making more white people before it is too late. Corollary: Expect a later codicile that says it is okay for black people and Mexicans to use birth control because of the “unique problems” in those communities (wink, wink).
3) Birth control is viewed as a potential abortion agent. When you define “soul injection” as occurring at the moment of fertilization, and your nature is to be a right wing extremist, it is only natural that you will want to force actual policy to comply with the farthest nether corners of your extremism. But more importantly, getting rid of birth control will free up millions of new white babies for adoption by lily white Christian fundamentalist and evangelical couples that would not adopt a child of color if their lives depended on it. They never stop to ask, “Has God made me infertile so I can adopt and care for one of the black babies that He loves so much?” Somehow, they can just never quite make it to that point.
Charles, I’ll go along with point 1 of yours for sure and I’ll agree-ish with point 2 but I have a disagreement with point 3 because I don’t think the “rethuglicans” are that pure in their heart.
I think George Carlin said it best that the conservatives are really, really, really concerned about you in the womb but once you’re born you’re on your own! The same “pro-life” morons support war and capital punishment.
They’re not pro-life, they’re pro-women suppression. It’s all power and no power to the child.
Very sad.
Hey Doc Bill that was a nice rant, really enjoyed it. I’d love to discusss it with you further but I have to go now. I’m due over at the CVS where I’ll be protesting, marching around with a “just say no to CVS” sign, promoting a boycott until CVS stops filling persciptions for the pill. Because right now only 19% of the children in America aren’t sure where their next meal is coming from (how scary is that?) and that percentage is way low, we need to get it up to at least 30-35%.
All the republicans do is kowtow to the pseudo-Christians & the richest 1%. They care not for the mainstream Americans.
Rant? Moi?
Two things bug me about sociopaths like Santorum and Bachmann. In Bachmann’s case it’s the sheer delusional bubble in which she lives that nobody seems to point out is not real. She makes up stories, like the one about the woman whose daughter became “mentally retarded” after taking a vaccine, out of whole cloth and gets a pass. Not a single news organization tried to verify that the woman existed, probably because they knew it was fiction, but nobody hauled Bachmann out on the tarmac and called her a liar to her face. Bachmann invents her own “reality” and not only is she not hounded for it, she’s running a presidential campaign! Even Pat Paulsen was more credible.
Santorum, alas, is a one-trick-pony. Once he’s finished suppressing women he’s finished. He has no economic policy, no domestic policy (other than the domestication of the wild woman), no foreign policy, no science policy and no education policy. He’s so hung up on sex he can’t see straight. The fact that he came in second in Iowa is downright frightening.
Fortunately, in the Real World ™ neither of these bozos have a chance, but even their entertainment value has dropped to zero. It’s time to call this act The Aristocrats!
Well it looks like governor spray-on hair is unfazed by his 83rd place finish in Iowa last night. He’s vowed to fight on, which can only mean he has his staff trying to think up even more extremist ideas than getting rid of birth control. However Sanatorium has set the bar quite high. Let’s see……as president I promise to drop 200 million bible-bombs on Iran. I will sent all the queers to Guantanamo. I will order the execution of any federal judge that rules America isn’t a Christian nation. And I will replace the Jefferson memorial with the Falwell monument.
“Even Pat Paulsen was more credible.”
Well, DUH! He was the most credible since the ’30’s!
Has anyone wondered why it is mostly men who rant and rave in favor of the pro-life movement? The fight is led by celibate prelates from The Vatican, as well as Christian evangelical fundamentalist leaders. if these same men could become pregnant they would probably try to make abortion a sacrament.
Gary, while it’s mostly men in public leadership positions, this may be because of cultural attitudes rather than a difference in opinion.
Looking in the GSS data, women tend to be a little more pro-life than men for most abortion-related questions. On the other hand, this looks to be mostly associated with religious differences between the sexes — acceptance of the Bible, strength of religious identification, frequency of religious attendance, degree of belief in God. Once you pull out the correlational significance associated with those, sex doesn’t look much more significant than zodiac sign.
I’ll also note that Santorum is a Roman Catholic, and most of Santorum’s stances on sex, abortion, and contraception seem to be fully consistent with the official Catholic Church stance and the papal Humanae Vitae encyclical. Perhaps some cynical reporter will eventually care to ask him some gotcha questions based on Kennedy’s famous 1960 campaign speech on religion.
Wayne Christian is a baptist; the SBC is not so rigidly heirarchical, so doctrinal positions are not so sharply defined. However, it would seem SBC doctrinal opposition is to contraceptive methods that in part work by preventing implantation after conception (as being “abortion”), and to the availability of contraceptives to the unmarried (as contributing to fornication). The “magic genie” cultural shift aspect that Charles raises is probably a significant element of the broader contraceptive opposition within the membership, but doesn’t seem to be part of doctrinal justifications by Baptist theologians.
Well said, ABB3W, very theologically sound.
The theological differences between SBC and RC dogma/heirarchical structures are undeniable, however both share a strong patriarchal structure. While the RCs have a somewhat better stance on civil rights, the SBC has been unabashedly racist in its theological views. Since current political and social climates have curtailed the SBC’s racist beliefs and practices they have simply channeled their hate mongering toward abortion and homosexuality.
The pro-life Republicans associate birth control, stem cell research, invitro-fertilization, and the teaching of evolution with abortion. That’s why they want to ban all birth control, even for married couples. They also don’t care about kids after they are born.