It's Not a War on Women, It's a Crusade!

Armor of God PJs, for Parents Who Want to Teach Their Children the Crusades Were Fun

By now you’ve all heard the news—the Republicans have their Jockeys in a pucker because they don’t like that folks are saying they’re waging a war on women. And they’ve brought out their mighty mouths to denounce the accusation. RNC Chairman, Reince Priebus, unwittingly confirmed that even Republicans like cannabis saying “Now if the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars, then every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, so then we’d have a problem with caterpillars.” Accusation—women—caterpillars. I get it, man. I vaguely recall having those conversations in college after a few bong hits. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon would be playing in the background, and an ant on the windowsill could progress to ant arms races, ant détente, and was it possible ant colonies utilized Sun Tzu’s Art of War strategies. I so get you, man.

Caterpillar Logic clearly needed backup--some reliable “Old Glory” spin. So RNC spokesman Sean Spicer pulled the “if you disagree with us ‘true Americans’ you must be a traitorous flag burner” trump card, a little trick he picked up serving master Bush. Spicer said about the war on women phrase “It’s not only bad, but it’s downright pathetic they would use a term like ‘war’ when there are millions of Americans who actually have engaged in a real war. To use a term like that borders on unpatriotic.” Oh applause, applause, Sean! Where’s my flag so I can raise it? After saluting it, I’ll salute you, Sean. God, you do make me hungry for apple pie! I’d say communications-wise, “Mission Accomplished!” Oh, I’m sorry. Did that little piece of 2003 Bush rhetoric fail to include all of our soldiers who’ve died in that senseless war since that little stunt on the USS Lincoln? Also, I guess accusing Obama of waging a “war on religion” must be different. But I digress…

Let’s face it. These two choir leaders (and all their FOX surrogates in choir robes singing the same hymn) have a point. Is this really a war waged on women? I think I’ll go out on a liberal limb here and agree that “war on women” is inaccurate, for what’s going on in this country is nothing less than a religious crusade. Now the Democrats can’t say that, because saying anything with even a whiff of Christian critique in a country where 4 in 10 people believe that the earth is no more than 10,000 years old is about as clever as putting Palin on a presidential ticket(1). But I’m not a politician running for office, so I damn well can.

The great thing about a crusade is that it gives the crusaders pretty much full authority to do anything they want, because it is in the name of God. Pope Urban II, the initiator of the First Crusade back in 1095, after promising “a remission of all sins for all who die in the service of Christ,” did the equivalent of an 11^th Century fist pump and yelled “Deus vult!” Or “God wills it!” (He’d have made a hell of an NFL coach I think.) Off to Constantinople and Jerusalem some 100,000 dashed to kill infidels; crusaders made up of the rich, poor, criminal, and saintly. No need to wait to cross the Bosporus and Dardanelles for their God-willed task. Hell, Jews lurked right there in Europe. So Crusaders butchered and burned thousands in unimaginable attacks on their way to “save” the holy land. In a traveling orgy of savagery, once the crusaders made it to Jerusalem, they spared no one. Fulcher of Chartres, a French chaplain, described the carnage in the holy city.

“Within this Temple [Solomon’s] about ten thousand were beheaded. If you had been there, your feet would have been stained up to the ankles with the blood of the slain. What more shall I tell? Not one of them was allowed to live. They did not spare the women and children.”(2)

While atrocities occur in all wars, this war was in the name of God. These were zealots high on bloodlust, and their acts still scar relations between Muslims and Christians.  God willed it, my ass.

It may seem a bit extreme to start my argument with sins committed a millennium ago. But I think it’s good to let history remind us now and then that things can get mighty out of hand when a bunch of guys (or women for that matter) strap crosses on their chests and act on the divine authority. The Christian Crusades morphed into inquisitions. While most students have studied the horrific Spanish Inquisition, fewer have heard of the Albigensian Crusade, a twenty-year period of terror in Southern France from 1209 to1229 to eliminate Catharism, compliments of Pope Innocent III. (I would have suggested a different name.) Among other Cathar practices that irked Innocent, these “heretics” included women in their clerical ranks and had no problem with contraception. Upon church orders a half million people--men, women and children—were murdered in the Languedoc region of France. Both Cathar and sympathetic Catholic. In fact, it is from a Papal Legate Arnaud-Amaury that we get a particularly callous saying, one that’s been repeated in wars since. When laying siege to Bezier, a confused crusader asked him how to distinguish the Cathars from the Catholics. He answered “Kill them [all]! Surely the Lord discerns which [ones] are his."

Another “Innocent Pope”, Innocent VIII, issued the Bull Summis desiderantes on December 5th, 1484. That bull in effect gave two depraved German inquisitors the equivalence of a rave New York Times Book Review for their truly frightening work the Malleus Maleficarum or The Hammer of Witches. The handbook detailed how to detect, torture, and kill witches, instructions that facilitated the deaths of thousands of women. Scholars cannot agree on estimates culled from extant records, but responsible figures ballpark no less than 60,000 women burned between the period of 1500-1650.(3)

 

 Christian Crusades, inquisitions, a handbook on how to torture women from the era most consider the renaissance—what on earth do these have to do with Republican policies affecting women today? And no, I’m not listening to Pink Floyd.

First, let’s start with an extensive (and statistically responsible) study from 2006 that found “roughly half (49%) of conservative Republicans [said] the Bible should trump popular will.” Another 29% of moderate Republicans agreed.(4) Let me repeat that for it bears repeating. Half of conservative Republicans and damn near a third of moderate Republicans think that the Bible—or let’s be clear—what they think the Bible says—is more important than democratic rule. That’s a lot of theocratic Republicans out there. Now, who constitutes the base of the Republican Party? That’s right. Evangelical Christians. And 60% of them believe that the Bible should win when it conflicts with the will of the people.(5) The press talks a lot about the Republican Party’s rightward swing, but few if any tackle the real truth—that the war on religion is coming from the uber-religious. And they control the new, evangelically directed Republican Party. That party is now some weird love child spawned by Ayn Rand and an Old Testament patriarch. And the pearly gates of this tax-free club would likely stiff Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, or even Ronald Reagan.

Second, what beliefs drive these people beyond the idea their interpretation of the Bible is more important than majority rule? This is where women come into the picture, and poor Eve is our diva of double standards. For those wishing to keep women’s sexuality in careful check by their husbands or law, we need first to look at the often cited I Timothy 2:14: “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” So, Eve (not Adam) was deceived. Woman is gullible and in need of protection; man is rational. (Newt Gingrich the obvious exception.) But all you have to do is read Genesis to remember that Adam quite willingly gobbled that fruit down as well. Yet woman bears the responsibility.

So it’s a woman’s fault alone if you walk through an apple orchard and find nothing but cores, but that doesn’t equate with female authority. Au contraire for according to the evangelicals, 1 Corinthians 11:3-9 clarified her subordination: “But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man... For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.” Ah, Paul (or subsequent Pauline interpreters of Paul), so much for following Christ’s path of treating women equally.(6) Of course, that doesn’t stop the Southern Baptist Conference and the Vatican for latching on to Paul’s narrow views and keeping women from the pulpit.

American women, especially poor women, are caught in the crossfire between biblical literalism and privacy. And even though Jesus never spoke on abortion or contraception (although abortifacients were certainly used in the era and women used the era’s contraceptive methods), the Christian right cherry-picks passages from the Old and New Testaments in order to clean up these female practices. Fuck privacy. Privacy is for presidential candidates whose financial records are in Swiss accounts. Privacy is between men and their doctors. Privacy is for property owners and corporate patent rights. For these biblical literalists, when Jesus said “as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me,” (Matthew 25:40) these folks see a zygote. They don’t see a poor woman without financial or emotional support who has sought human comfort with a man who could give a shit about her. Nor do they see a married woman who has to make a painful choice 22 weeks into a pregnancy when she discovers the child she desperately wants is dying inside her and cannot be saved, but the law the state just passed does not allow the doctor to induce labor. No, she must wait agonizingly until the child actually dies and an infection ensues, which could take weeks. Why? Because in Exodus “Thou shalt not kill” prevents killing. These are the same people that want us to bomb Iran to preserve Israel. Go figure.

But what evidence is there that an actual crusade is being waged? That would require evidence of many crusaders and many attempts to quell these female infidels. Senator Barbara Boxer offered up a laundry list in this week’s Politico.(7) I’ve condensed and embellished her list below. As Jefferson would say, “to prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”

1.     In the House of Representatives, Republicans have introduced 30 bills that would restrict a women’s reproductive health care.

2.      At the state level, nearly 500 bills that define and limit women’s health care have been introduced in 39 states. Who introduced these bills? You guessed it. Republicans with a small percentage of them introduced by conservative Democrats.

3.      And then there’s “personhood legislation” sponsored by—*gasp*—119 House Republicans and another 19 of McConnell’s minions in the Senate. These are zygote-happy bills that outlaw abortions and give no exceptions for a woman’s life or health. And, duh, they would in effect make some forms of birth control illegal. These laws would also bar doctors from saving women when they have ectopic pregnancies. Yeah. Pretty sure that’s what Jesus would have wanted.

4.      Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (is it just me or does this guy remind you of one of the Seven Dwarfs?) just happily penned a repeal of the state’s Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which protected women’s equality in the workplace. Yeah, equal pay for women can really hurt business and the economy. The Seven Dwarfs must have been working in a Right to Work mine. Oh, and by the way, when Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (Obama’s first bill passed in 2009 once taking office) 36 Senate Republicans voted no. But then women will be home raising kids, so no problem.

5.      Then there’s the ongoing crusade against Planned Parenthood. This is a crusade being waged at both the federal and state levels. Good ole’ boy, Rick Perry has strapped a big red cross to his Carhart jacket and signed a “tiered priority system” that ensures Planned Parenthood clinics would be the last to receive any Title X funding. This, of course, violates the Social Security Act. But the Federal Gubmint can’t tell Texans what to do. Hell, they could just secede from the union. Meanwhile, 130,000 women are without healthcare.(8)

6.      Transvaginal ultrasound laws. These by-God got my attention as you’ve read in a previous blog post. Virginia’s Republican legislators pretty much played the doctor on TV with this law. But Virginia is just one state. Crusading Republicans wishing to intimidate women and put (I guess) biblical rods up women’s vaginas have introduced and fought for bills in Alabama, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Maryland, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Wyoming and…hell yeah, Texas.(9)

7.     One of my personal favorites (not listed by Boxer) is Arizona’s “tell your boss why you’re on the pill” bill. “Replicating but broadening the federal push to let employers deny women access to birth control….the bill stipulates that, unless a woman brings in a note proving she is not using it to avoid getting pregnant, an employer can deny birth control to any woman in the workplace.” Seriously, women need a note from their employers to get their insurance (which they work for) to cover contraception. And why? According to female sponsor Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, “We don’t live in the Soviet Union.” There’s a red news flash. She went on to say “My whole legislation is about our First Amendment rights and freedom of religion.” Whose rights, Debbie? Employers’ rights? Or the religious rights of employees? Hey, those women don’t have to work there, right? Don’t you just love when people force their religion on others and scream about their religious rights being taken from them?(10)

8.       The crusade extends beyond our borders. Since the Senate must ratify all treaties with a 2/3s majority, here’s one that the Republicans won’t seem to budge on: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. You’re probably saying, yeah, but it must be really controversial. It must be for good economic reasons. No, the usual stuff—reproductive freedom discussions, equal rights amendments discussions, etc. The text does not require that, but Republicans grasping their Bibles in one hand and James Dobson’s phone number in the other decided it’s better to fall in line with the other “progressive nations” that have not ratified: Iran, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Palau and Tonga. Hey, Republicans. Didn’t your moms ever tell you that you are judged by the company you keep?(11)

9.       One more example…and there are many more. Arizona, again. I’m sick of the rain, but there is no amount of sunshine that state offers that could lure me to retire there. A newest piece of legislation that’s causing a kerfuffle is one that will protect doctors from any medical malpractice should they chose to withhold information to their pregnant patients that could lead those women to seek an abortion. While I was shocked to learn about this, I was more shocked to find out that doctors in Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Utah, Idaho, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, and South Dakota can already act like they don’t see something seriously wrong on an ultrasound, or Tay-Sachs disease in a Chorionic villus sampling, or any variety of tragic reports from amniocentesis. No, the doctor’s religion and moral code trumps that of the woman and her family.(12)

Having written this, I know many who read it are going to squirm. Wow. Let’s not attack the Christians, after all, most of us are Christians. I hear you. My mom taught me early on to never make fun of someone’s parents or religion. “Their parents,” she used to say, “is beyond a kid’s control. And a person’s religion is deeply personal and their own business.” Those two factors in a person’s life were off limits for criticism as far as she was concerned.

But my Mom also taught me to stand up for myself. She liked the saying “what’s fair for the goose is fair for the gander.” I do believe it is troubling and even paradoxical to be intolerant of the intolerant. And I accept religions as long as those religions do not attempt to force those beliefs or practices on me. But I think we’re at a point in this country when we have to call bullshit on those extreme elements that have captured legislatures and want to impose their theocratic rule on our daughters’ bodies and earning capacities. The First Amendment's Free Exercise clause is not there to allow people to impose their religious beliefs on others. Unless we start calling this what it is and call these people out, that part of our Constitution is gravely in danger of being reinterpreted to mean “free exercise of a particular form of Christianity.” And that’s not a constitution that is good for women or men.

(1)  http://www.gallup.com/poll/145286/four-americans-believe-strict-creationism.aspx

(2)  The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source Materials. Second Edition. Edited by Edward Peters. University of Pennsylvania Press. Philadelphia, 1971. www.clas.ufl.edu/users/sterk/Practicum/fulcher.pdf

(3)  Why Witches Were Women by Mary Nelson

(4)  The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Politics-and-Elections/Many-Americans-Uneasy-with-Mix-of-Religion-and-Politics.aspx

(5)  The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Politics-and-Elections/Many-Americans-Uneasy-with-Mix-of-Religion-and-Politics.aspx

(6)  Jesus radically departed from the tenets of the day by teaching women. In one instance, when visiting two sisters in their home, one sister became flustered when making preparations while the other sister sat at his feet to listen to his teachings. He at that point told the flustered woman to chill on the Martha Stewart tasks and focus on learning. (Luke 10:38-42).

(7)  Barbara Boxer, “Foul Play: War on Women Real.” Politico, (4/15/12) Available at: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75143.html

(8)  Amanda Peterson Beadle, “Texans Rally Against Defunding of Planned Parenthood, Which Would Leave 130,000 Without Health Care,” Think Progress. Available at: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/03/07/439979/texans-rally-against-defunding-planned-parenthood/

(9)  Kate Sheppard,“Mandatory Transvaginal Ultrasound Laws: Coming to a State Near You,” Mother Jones. Available at: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/transvaginal-ultrasounds-coming-soon-state-near-you

(10)                 Annie Rose Strasser, Arizona Senate Committee Endorses ‘Tell Your Boss Why You’re on the Pill” Think Progress, Available at: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/14/444111/birth-control-to-control-birth/?mobile=nc

(11)                 This convention has been around since 1979. The text defines discrimination as follows: "...any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field."

(12)                 For a list of Arizona’s bills with pdf texts, see: http://www.azpolicy.org/current-bill-status. A doctor’s opinion on such bills may be read at: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/03/09/az-allowing-doctors-to-practice-bad-medicine

Hey, Rush, Your Apology’s Not Accepted. You attacked all our daughters!

Okay, I know how this is supposed to work. You’ve had the beee-sponsors squeezed out of you like birds out of the snake that you are. And after gushing out your over-fed dinner, fixed for you by white guys just like you, you wipe your reptilian lips and say, “In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack.” I’m supposed to say, “ahh, he’s contrite. Let’s all be friends.” And I sit here and watch those birds stagger back to life, looking around for another corporate mouth to crawl into, and I say “You didn’t mean a personal attack? Are you fucking kidding me?! You suggested Sandra Fluke post sex videos on line so you could watch! Was that a way to say, 'Howdy?! I deem you an equal'?!"

You’ve been perfecting the ad hominem attack and making a fat king’s ransom out of ripping others for so long, you never thought an attack on a young woman who attends law school would trip you up, did you? You’ve called the First Lady “uppity,” called the President’s economic program “reparations,” and race baited happily to your whitey tighty demographic. They’ve devoured your comments about illegal immigrants being “invasive species,” and your boys’ club relished your description of any group of women who won’t sit down and take any shit as “feminazis.” Hell, you even scorned somebody suffering Parkinsons. Only from a reptilian brain could come that little number about Michael J. Fox! But now you over-stuffed yourself, because you went after our daughters. And here’s a lesson for all you bloviating bullies out there, if you go after our daughters, you’ve got some damn angry mother bears standing right behind them.

See not only are moms protective as hell, but we've all been there. We made it to junior high right as Title IX was just getting started and watched it reluctantly be enforced by smug male administrators throughout our high school years. We got called all those names—slut, prostitute, cunt, you name it—just for breaking into the boys' clubs of better paying jobs or more interesting careers. We got patted on our asses, derided, put down, chided, told we were “too pretty to be doing what we were doing” or “too pretty to talk like that or have that opinion.” At my university in 1978, when I tried to change my major to history and political science, the dean in charge of signing off on the change told me “You’ll never get a teaching job because you don’t coach football.” I told him to sign the damn form and I’d worry about getting the job. Later in my career when I fought that type of discrimination, I once confronted an all male hiring board with the question "have you ever had a woman in your department? And don't you think not having a woman in your department could be perpetuating the idea that women aren't historically or politically important?" Yeah, I was a bitch. And I got that job.

We were also there before Roe v. Wade or available birth control. We watched young girls in our small towns “go away for the summer” and come back chastened and quiet. Others bore children early and stayed in those towns without a hell of a lot of options. All the while the chirpy church ladies were reading Marabel Morgan’s Total Woman and wrapping themselves in cellophane for their husbands and Jesus. Piously and primly lip-sticked they’d literally interpret scripture for us on Sundays telling us about the dangers of sin. Yeah, we understand the hypocrisy of the Fundamentalist Right when it comes to women. Been there, seen that.

We’ve listened to our friends who’ve survived rape. Not metaphorical rape, but rape. The real terrible thing. And we watched those friends cope with what that means in a woman’s life. With what that takes from a woman. We’ve watched the amazing strength of those survivors. We don’t like language that demeans women, period. It’s all part of that whole culture, and we by-God know it.

And Rush, we were around when Anita Hill testified before the white male Senate Judiciary Committee after Clarence Thomas had been nominated to the Supreme Court in 1991. We watched and got pissed then when a white boys’ club grilled a professional and intelligent African American woman on deeply personal sexual issues. White male senators “shocked” that something like “sexual harassment” even existed.

So you political parasite feasting on the blood money you make from rancor and hate, you’ve gone after one of our own. For every time a woman is publicly scorned and reduced to a sexualized snark for having an opinion, we all are—and in the words of the Dixie Chicks—

“We’re not ready to make nice

We’re not ready to back down…”

So save your PR-written apologies. They're no good here.

Welcome to Gilead: Now Spread Those Pretty Little Handmaid Legs for Your Transvaginal Ultrasound.

The problem at my age having read a shit load of both fiction and politics is sometimes I get the two worlds crossed. Take this week. I guess I thought I was living in 2012 America—quirky, polarized, crazy as hell in the South, sure--but still bound by the Supreme Court ruling in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey,, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). You remember, that pesky little no “undue burden standard” left us by Sandra Day O’Connor when she was the swing vote darling on the Supreme Court? What was undue burden? Well, it was O’Connor’s grand bargain, tenuously upholding a woman’s right to choose an abortion if need be, but it prevented states from placing any "substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability." I went to sleep last night thinking that decision was still in place and that birth control was a standard and accepted feature of women’s health. I slumbered in a blissfully ignorant state where the 14^th Amendment’s Due Process Clause protects more than just corporate speech. It protects my daughter’s privacy.

But good gynecological gawd! I awoke this morning, not in America, but scared shitless in Gilead, Margaret Atwood’s cautionary theocratic and authoritarian hell for women. If you haven’t read that book, The Handmaid’s Tale, you’d recognize the setting—it’s a lot like Texas, Oklahoma, and now Virginia. These are the clever uber-patriarchal states that have passed “transvaginal ultrasound laws,” which require women to submit to having rods with cameras rammed up their vaginas for no medical purpose other than to shame the women and edify the Republican right. Seriously, this week’s news is so much like Atwood’s 1986 “scare-your-Victoria-Secrets-panties-off” world where fundamentalists are in power and female suffrage, contraception, abortion, hell even women’s literacy are verboten that I’m sporting a red robe tonight. The Gilead she portrayed put dissidents, non-Christians, and homosexuals to death. In this dick-led dystopia, pollutants damaged the nation’s inhabitants to the point of mass infertility. So those in the high echelons who were eggless or with sperm that preferred to hang out and pray rather than swim used “handmaids” for procreation. Those “lucky” women with a good crop of eggs were treasured brood sows for barren, upper crust Christian couples. Offred, named for Fred, the commander who owns her (Of Fred—get it?), must endure monthly couplings when Fred mounts her like a sweaty, panting missionary while she lies between his seething wife’s legs. Yuck. The image of Rick Santorum in this role is doing me a hell of a lot of emotional damage that might only be remedied by a full Saturday of George Clooney movies and a Costco pack of D cell batteries. Without such an intervention, I might become completely asexual.

But let’s explore these “transvaginal ultrasound laws.” Of course, they’re not called that. No, they’re dressed up in nice little Orwellian dresses like Virginia’s law, which claims it’s all part of “informed consent for abortion.” But when women “consent” to the abortion, those “Commanders of the Faithful”—that top tier crowd of men quite pious and planted in Virginia’s legislature-- have written the law so that women also “consent” to having their vaginas probed by a ultrasound wand. In other words, no camera up your vagina; no abortion. There’s no consent at all. 

This procedure, of course, is entirely unnecessary. In fact, according to the American College of Radiology and the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, “for first-trimester ultrasound scanning, ACOG recommends trans-vaginal or trans-perineal scanning if the trans-abdominal exam is not definitive. ACOG offers a list of 12 “indications” for doing this type of scan, which include attempts to confirm a suspected ectopic pregnancy, to assess for fetal anomalies, to evaluate vaginal bleeding or pelvic pain, or to estimate gestational age.” (VA Ultrasound Bill at Odds with Medical Standards) Abortion simply didn’t make their list. So the only reason to write such a procedure into law is to humiliate and intimidate a woman seeking an abortion.

Virginia, of course, is not alone in passing these state in your woo hoo laws. And who's really surprised that Texas has one? I mean really. In Texas, the “OfRicks”, or women whose vaginas are now property of the state should they choose abortion are required to sign this “consent” form:

“(6) I UNDERSTAND THAT I AM REQUIRED BY LAW TO
HEAR AN EXPLANATION OF THE SONOGRAM IMAGES UNLESS I
CERTIFY IN WRITING TO ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:
___ I AM PREGNANT AS A RESULT OF A SEXUAL ASSAULT,
INCEST, OR OTHER VIOLATION OF THE TEXAS PENAL CODE THAT
HAS BEEN REPORTED TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES OR
THAT HAS NOT BEEN REPORTED BECAUSE I REASONABLY
BELIEVE THAT DOING SO WOULD PUT ME AT RISK OF
RETALIATION RESULTING IN SERIOUS BODILY INJURY.
___ I AM A MINOR AND OBTAINING AN ABORTION IN
ACCORDANCE WITH JUDICIAL BYPASS PROCEDURES UNDER
CHAPTER 33, TEXAS FAMILY CODE.
___ MY FETUS HAS AN IRREVERSIBLE MEDICAL
CONDITION OR ABNORMALITY, AS IDENTIFIED BY RELIABLE
DIAGNOSTIC PROCEDURES AND DOCUMENTED IN MY MEDICAL
FILE.”

Talk about the progressive part of Gilead! At least in Texas, if you've been raped, a second penetration of your vagina may be waved with the above clause. Those boys are so thoughtful down there. Across the border in Oklahoma, that's where you'll find some tough fundamentalist sons-of-bitches though. By God, rape is no excuse there! No whining! No sympathy. Suck it up! Here comes the wand. The commanders are fully in charge in the "Sooner State."


And hell, I haven't even started talking about the "personhood laws." Laws that make birth control that prevents implantation after fertilization illegal, not to mention thirty other scenarios I can't even begin to write about. Blood pressure....eating binge...too many side effects for me at this point. (Deep breath and sigh.)


Clearly we’re all living in a scary land. Our daughters are nothing more than “two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.” (The Handmaid’s Tale)  Rick Santorum, about three hairs to the right of Pope Benedict XVI, says of contraception:  “It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also [inaudible], but also procreative.” Today Darrel Issa, “Chair-commander” of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, framed nicely an investigation on women’s health coverage entitled “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State:  Has the Obama Administration trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?” That he didn’t allow women to testify made it clear what kind of rules we’re to operate under in Gilead.

As Offred tells us in The Handmaid’s Tale, “I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.” The sad, fucking truth is that this is real, and it’s up to us as women to stand up and get mad. So call your legislator, sign a petition, and get ready to march in comfortable shoes, cause ladies, we’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do!

So get busy. Here's a way to start.  
1. Send your senator an email:    Senate emails
2. Send your member of Congress an email:House email link
3. You might send a note to Representative Darrel Issa and let him know that women should be a part of any discussion of birth control: Representative Darrell Issa
4. A boycott of Virginia and letting Governor Bob McDonnell know why you won't be visiting might be a nice touch:Governor Bob McDonnell, Virginia 
Of course, that's just a start. There are other ways...but no need wasting a good snit. 

Gay Marriage will Ruin My Marriage?

The happy couple in 1992

Big news from my state: our legislature passed gay marriage and the bill is on its way to Governor Christine Gregoire for her signature, which she promises to deliver Monday. Just in time for Valentines Day. Oooh, wee! Phew! Raise your mimosa, girlfriend! I’m trying to take it all in, because it’s evidently going to irrevocably change my life, or so says groups at CPAC and covens like Concerned Women for America. They tell us this week’s Ninth Circuit Court's ruling, which overturned California's Prop 8, and the upcoming extension of nuptials to Washington State’s gay and lesbian community are the end of marriage and ultimately the family. Or, as the girls at Concerned Women for America warn, “homosexual marriage will devalue your marriage. A license to marry is a legal document by which government will treat same-sex marriage as if it were equal to the real thing.” They go on to argue:

“If the Smithsonian Museum displays a hunk of polished blue glass next to the Hope Diamond with a sign that says, ‘These are of equal value,’ and treats them as if they were, the Hope Diamond is devalued in the public's eye. The government says it's just expensive blue glass. The history and mystery are lost too.”

Holy hardest known natural material! As a teacher who starts every year with a unit on logic and fallacies, those ladies have seduced me with their clear metaphorical reasoning! (That didn’t sound too gay did it?) Moreover, the idea that my polished blue glass marriage might get plunked down next to a Hope Diamond coupling...Oops. (Sorry, I have a hard time telling diamonds from cubic zirconia—they’re both lovely at ten paces.) That’s the other way around. Let’s fix that. The idea that my Hope Diamond marriage might get plunked down next to a piece of polished blue glass…well you can see that I’m bound as a blogger to detail out how much I’ll miss my marriage and my husband once this whole thing unravels as a result of some guys with good taste tying what will no doubt be a fabulous knot. And you can bet your evangelical tight asses when they do, the guys exchanging vows with a Northwest software industry backdrop won’t be wearing cubic zirconia!

         The Concerned girls for America are justifiably worried that history and mystery will be lost. It’s probably a good idea here to tell you a bit about the history and mystery of my marriage, just so you’ll see how much I’ll lose when these gays break up my twenty-year union.

         In terms of history, I met my husband after spending a summer researching frontier prostitution in Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene mining district. I came back to my teaching job that fall with boxes of nineteenth century police records, fire insurance maps and more research than any master’s thesis could ever use. I’d been on a research project of sorts for the right guy up to that age (30), and like beads on a rosary, I had collected the right guy (or so I thought before then) at the wrong time, nice guys most of the time, and then wrong guys too much of the time.

In a 1980 VW Rabbit with the backseat removed for his Samoyed, my teacher husband drove into my life. His big, white doggie buddy rarely rode in the back, though, simply because he preferred to ride shotgun and snack on Twizzlers with the boss. I was absolutely bedazzled. For this scene contrasted sharply to the previous guy I’d dated, a wealthy Seattle businessman who couldn’t date on Sundays, because that was the day he washed his expensive yuppie car. Guess which bead on the rosary he was.

Mr. 1980 VW Rabbit and I flirted for a few weeks, and then he got up the courage to leave a sticky note under my door asking me on a date. (I’ve still got that sticky note in my jewelry box.) That date all but cinched the deal for me, and within a month I was packing up my cozy little beach cottage and moving in with him and a dog with a penchant for Twizzlers.

That’s the beginning of our history. The mystery I suppose is marriage itself, that journey that puts you on roads you never dreamed you’d travel. I now ride shotgun, or to be more precise, he often does because I have a problem with chicken breaking. On our journey we’ve driven through a rough pregnancy and all the subsequent twists and turns and lovely country of raising our beautiful daughter. My husband travels with a high maintenance partner that he takes too often to emergent care for migraine rescues, where he sits quietly in dark rooms until the medicine kicks in and my vomiting stops. He travels with someone who’s had to stop the journey for surgery several times, including neurosurgery. On this journey we’ve remodeled houses and our original expectations of marriage. We’ve battled, unpacked our past baggage, and then figured out what baggage to continue to carry and what to leave behind. We’ve laughed and laughed and laughed. We’ve buried our family members and held each other in that grief. We’ve carefully red-penned road maps, and now we’re heading to a new direction together next year, a new life neither of us would have dreamed even five years ago would ever be possible. Regardless of what opportunities or travails await us around the next turn, I plan on remaining strapped in next to this best of all friends and men, because I love him madly. Yeah, I’ll sure miss him now that gay marriage is around. I’m damn sure all of our hard-earned bond will suddenly veer off this matrimonial road.

Now let’s rationally examine if a gay or lesbian coupling could match what we have, and if they can’t, then I suppose, like those bun-coiffed white breads at Concerned Women for America, I’ll just have to follow their diamond/blue glass logic. Let’s take a fictitious lesbian couple, for example. I can think more like a lesbian than a gay male for obvious reasons. Plus, I do have a promise to myself that should I ever cross that sexual Rubicon, I’m shooting for a three-way with Rachel Maddow and Stephanie Miller. But I digress…

Would a lesbian ever go through relationship after relationship in her twenties awaiting Ms. Right? And then, upon meeting her, immediately know it and rush headlong into the relationship? Check.

Would a lesbian get all smitten by a canine-toting smart girl in an old car? Oh hell yes. Or then stick with that smart girl, and that smart girl stick with her through childbirth, parenting, medical crises, grief, and all of life’s changing directions? Uh…yeah. Could those two love each other madly? Well, of course. Why is that hard to understand?

So which then is diamond and which is cubic zirconia? Nobody knows until they’ve been in marriage for a while. There are no guarantees. The only thing that makes a marriage a diamond is its hardness, its imperviousness to chipping and the hot pressures of the world. And that quite frankly is based in values, luck, timing, and a commitment to one another. The hard work of marriage isn’t packed between your legs. Marriage is a diamond if it helps two people travel through this big mean world; marriage is a diamond if it gives two people diamond strength.

But those smug klugs at Concerned Women for America counter with one more metaphor to support their diamond reasoning. And this one is as brilliant as they are:

“If government grants professional licenses to just anybody, every profession and qualified professional is devalued. The government says an uneducated panhandler can do brain surgery.”

Clearly those girls’ polyester pantsuits are chaffing in places they shouldn’t. This is what we call arguing through inappropriate metaphor in my government classes, and oh, what a beauty of an example. Makes me almost want to teach next year and not retire just so I can share this one in my opener unit. I said almost.

Explaining Mitt Romney’s Dog Crime to my Border Collie or ‘How Seamus Shit Happens’

Flick and her hedgehog

It had been a fairly long Friday at school today. When I hit the door, Flick is at the top of the stairs with her little snarl-grin she gets for me, wiggling her entire body in the thrill of our reconnection. I’m just as thrilled to see her, and from the bottom of the stairs until the moment I reach her--my arms full of purse and grocery bags, in my usual doggie/kitty baby-voice I coo and say “Ooooh, my Flick, my cutest baby, my lover…how are you today? What a beautiful girl…what a good girl….oh hello to you, too.” The purse must be dropped and full affections must be delivered, not only to Flick but to my cat who swirls around my feet awaiting the same attention. Then comes the second cat squeaking out a raspy “rowl”. What a greeting! No matter what kind of day I’ve had, I’m fully uplifted by this furry welcome wagon. We all reconnect. Toys are brought and offered. There’s much excitement. Flick immediately goes out to the back yard for a bathroom journey but is just as quickly back on the deck wagging at the slider. She wants in. She wants to tell me something.

She’s quite exercised. First, she runs to the bedroom and grabs Froggy, dropping it for me. Then she finds her tennis ball. I pet her and ask her why so energetic. “I’m not energetic, dramn it,” she answers as she sails through the kitchen.

“No?” I say as I get ice cubes from the refrigerator. She hates the sound of ice cubes dropping in a glass, so she takes another circuit through the house. She runs back, grabs a bite of kibble, and then I know for sure she’s got something on her mind. She’s a nervous eater and tends to snack when she’s stressed. She chews kibble while she paces, and even though she scatters kibble throughout the house, I love this about her. Having gone through a half-rack of Oreos after a bad day a time or two in my life, I can relate.

“Uh….Mom…is it true what I heard on the radio this morning?” she asks.

“What?” I filled up my glass with water and took a drink.

 “Ya know, the gruy who wants to bre president that tried his dog to the roof of the car and drove across the crountry? (Chomp chomp)  Is thrat true?” She’s crunching kibbles the whole time she’s talking, so she’s a bit hard to understand. I take another drink before I answer.

“Romney…well he’s a Republican.” Like that’s supposed to explain that behavior to a Border Collie.

“Ya, Romney. Did thrat really happen?” Flick continues to pace and chomp, pace and chomp. She’s got kibble from one end of the kitchen to the other.

“I’m afraid so,” I answer carefully. “But he didn’t just tie Seamus to the roof. Seamus was in his carrier, you know, his bedroom.” That was a bad enough image, but I didn’t want to scare her. I Frank Luntzed the hell out of it.

“So rif he becromes president, rill dogs have to ride on the roofs of cars?” She’s rarely still, but she has stopped shortly when she asked this and looked at me with those big, brown doleful eyes. I reach down and rub her behind her ears.

“Oh, Flick, beautiful girl. Of course not! You’ll always get to ride shotgun right next to Dad.”

“Uh, Mike,” she corrected me. Flick continues to have some issues with the fact that I’m the alpha female. She’s so alpha it’s a wonder she didn’t drop a testicle. She grudgingly relinquished the role when we rescued her, and when Mike’s not around, Flick and I have a true sisterhood. But as soon as he gets home, she sometimes forgets and thinks she’s top female; she thinks she’s the wife. I look at her with love but directly in her eyes.

“Dad,” I say firmly. She reaches back to sniff her “girl parts.” She does that for comfort in stressful situations, too. But she quickly refocused on the topic.

“So, what about rother dogs. Will they have to ride on roofs if he’s president?”

“No. Presidents can’t order dogs to ride on roofs. They can only invade other countries after lying about weapons of mass destruction and order people tortured. Dogs are safe.” I rubbed her head. She rolled over on the floor, attempting to keep her mind off the scary images in her head—the picture of being trapped in a vestibule on top of a car for 12 hours and shitting herself in that cold, scary wind tunnel. She closed her eyes as I rubbed her stomach. This should appease her, I thought. She rolled back up and shook. No luck.

“But wrhy didn’t they ret Seamus ride in the car?” She had her teeth in this and wouldn’t let it go. I started rubbing her chest and then back again.

“I don’t know, my good girl, my cutest girl. He’s an asshole. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“But I am wrorried about it. You know me. I wrorry about shadows! I wrorry about the ice maker! I wrorry about big truck breaks. Now I have to wrorry about Mitt Romney putting rus dogs on roofs!” She ran to the back room and came back with her hedgehog and made it grunt and few times. I sat down, and she came and put her head in my lap.

“But you’re safe, and you know you never have to worry about us putting you on a roof.” I rubbed her behind the ears, those soft ears.

“But I’m a Border Collie! It’s my job to wrorry. I don’t have any sheep!” She stopped and nuzzled me, looking up at me. Then she softly said, “besides….I’ve been there…”

“I know you have, girl. You’ve never talked about it.” She pulled away from me and made her way back to her bowl for another mouthful of kibbles and began more rapid, nervous pacing.

“I cran’t,” she said as she chomped.

“I know, girl. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“You didn’t, Mom. I did.” She circled the couch as if herding it.

“Flick, come here….you just need to come, lie down. I’ll make a fire. Lie here beside me and relax. It’s going to be okay. Romney won’t win anyway. He’s not even popular in his own political party let alone with the rest of the country. About 39% of the people in this country are owned by at least one dog. That disgusting story plus the fact that Romney’s a rich guy who’s responsible for outsourcing his own labor in his companies is going to prevent him from being a viable general election candidate.” Flick came and lay at my feet. She rolled over in a huff.

“I need to hear rit from Dad,” she said. I rolled my eyes.

“Yeah,” I said exhaling in that way I do when I love and am at the same time disgusted with a family member’s behavior. “I figured as much. We’ll talk to Dad when he gets home. He’ll tell you Romney has no more chance of winning the presidency than a Chihuahua has of becoming a good sheep dog.”  Flick closed her eyes and slept. I fear her dreams placed her in a doggie dystopia where the government required dogs to ride on roofs and each SUV on the freeway sported a shit stain down its back window with a bumper sticker that said Romney 2012. I just hope Flick asks my husband about what “man-on-dog Santorum” refers to. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t believe me if I told her.

For some more information on Romney's unimaginable dog crime, see:

Mitt Romney and the dog on the car roof: one columnist's obsession (at Politifact)

 Romney's Cruel Canine Vacation
For some balance: Wall Street Journal
Some question as to the REAL story about how they cleaned the dog up (Although if it were an automatic, drive-through car wash, it would have tore the things from the top of the car. Stories change over the years in the retelling. I think that they retold this story over the years fondly is the point. It shows a lack of empathy at its core. And, if a person can't empathize with a poor animal, he won't likely empathize with a poor child needing food or health care. Or a factory worker who has lost his job. Or a college student saddled with unimaginable debt to get a public college education. It's about empathy.)

Alice in Wonderland says "Hellooooo 2012!"

Su Blackwell's Down the Rabbit Hole

Well folks, December was a total loss as far as posting on the blog. I started a piece called “Down the Rabbit Hole,” which followed the frenetic pace of the month as if I were Alice tumbling down into Carroll’s surreal world. I fell past December task after December task. I met Mitt Romney the Dormouse. But the writing lurched when I had trouble deciding just who to make the Mad Hatter—Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, or my superintendent. Oh, my…the choices, decisions, and online shopping. I just couldn’t put it all together. And many of you don’t know this about me, but it’s healthy that I didn’t finish it; I didn’t make it Martha-fucking Stewart perfect. I let it go. In December. Good for me!

All of it took a different surreal turn on December 17^th when we boarded a plane to Kona. There, I floated in a dreamlike bliss of turtle swims, Pele visits, spending time with my family and one of my best friends, and sipping the Kona coffee my neurologist had just told me I should try giving up. (Really? I’ve given everything else up—now coffee too? But it helps my migraines. It’s a variable. So it’s being reduced. I may show up on America’s Most Wanted soon.) My neurologist, Dr. Sylvia Lucas, MD PhD is an amazing migraine specialist in the Pacific Northwest. And if she demands that requirement, then God damn it, I’ll do it. I’m breaking my usual rule of no-names on this blog to mention her. She’s not only a great researcher and started the Headache Center at the University of Washington Medical Center, but she is by far the most personable, down-to-earth, easy-to-talk to doctor I’ve ever had. I absolutely adore this woman, and I wish every patient had a doctor like her. Somebody should tape her interactions with patients and use those as training DVDs for interns. Title them “How to be brilliant and listen to those who aren’t as brilliant but are in pain.”

We just got back from our Big Island idyll in time to celebrate our 19^th wedding anniversary, New Year’s Eve. Our celebrations are always at home where we see plenty of fireworks by looking out across Puget Sound. I don’t like to be on the roads on New Year’s Eve, and even if we felt adventuresome, we couldn’t abandon our Border Collie who needs our emotional support at midnight when expensive fireworks are inevitably set off about a block from our house down on the water. It happens twice a year there. It’s a little vacation house that people only come to a few times a year. When they do, they bring fireworks that—even if they’d purchased them on a reservation—are so lavish and expensive, the money spent on them could have easily purchased two tickets to Kona. I don’t get it and neither does our Border Collie. She barks nonstop panicked and pacing. So our New Year’s Eve is the countdown, a kiss, and then let the barking and dog whispering begin.

As the morning breaks, even though I don’t officially set New Year’s resolutions, for I think self-improvement goals much more appropriate after bouts of illness, or the illness of a friend, or a near car crash—I do hope you’ll indulge this list of things I will attempt to see more clearly in 2012. I find that when I get myself into the most trouble, is when I haven’t stopped to look at things that frustrate me through another lens. Here’s what I’ll try to see:

1. I will try to see that when my “constitutional law president” signs a bill that allows both his administration and future administrations (crazy-ass as they may be) to militarily detain people without any geographic limitations whatsoever, violating international law simply because “it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war” that I need to see it as positive. After all, I just have to repeat to myself, “same shit, different bill, same shit different bill…” since the Obama Administration already had been indefinitely detaining terrorist suspects. I have to just say, since he’s a Democrat and I voted for him, it’s okay that he can indefinitely detain me as a terrorist if the FBI doesn’t like this blog and thinks it a threat to national security. After all, I do say “fuck” a lot.

2. I will try not to flinch when my superintendent says, “I honor the work you teachers do.” (He’s never been a teacher or spent time in the classroom.) I will attempt to count to five before I roll my eyes when he looks past me or any other woman to talk to my husband or any other man. I’ll attempt to look at the district as a fiscal entity and not as a place where students are inspired and challenged and offered the opportunity of in-depth learning. Perhaps I’ll buy a piggy bank and place it on my desk at school to remind me of the new role of public schools.

3.  When I get frustrated and angry with my principal, I’ll attempt to see the woman inside her that struggles with family and health and a boss from hell. I’ll try to remember the principal she once was before she learned to prevaricate her way through years of community scrutiny and this new Napoleonic super. I’ll attempt to conjure up the image of that sturdy woman who held us all together after a student was killed by her father; the principal I hugged tightly on that day and said, “I’m so proud to work with you.”

4.  I will try not to think of Republicans one-dimensionally. After all, the party is now a veritable Joseph’s coat of many colors, and for those who remember that Old Testament story, such flashy patchwork manifestations only end in more boasting, suspicion, and envy within a family. No, the Republican Party is a family of brilliant colors. I will try to see them not for their biblical rhetoric, but for their biblical metaphorical significance.

5. I will attempt to see automated customer service the way an automated customer might see it. And when, after listening to the phrase “Thank you for waiting, we care about your business” for the fifteenth time, I’ll merely nod like the automaton I’ve become on the other end and grin like an appliance. If, and when I get a real person on the other end, I won’t change my tone if I detect a Bangalori affect. I’ll maintain my slow, deliberate, blender speed and get the help I need. No synapses in my head will fire the notions human labor replaced by computers, nor outsourcing, nor a loss of service business. Nor will I replay my usual internal tape of “Yeah, right…and they want public education to apply the standards of private enterprise to the public sector.” So help me God I won’t!

6. I will begin to enjoy the increased volume of commercials during my favorite television programs. I don't have many favorite television programs, and many of them are news programs, so to DVR them and watch them later is pointless. I will especially appreciate loud pharmaceutical ads that list possible side effects like "watery bowels" and "erections lasting more than four hours." You just never know at my age when this information might come in handy for a woman.

7. I’ll attempt to see the world the way Michele Bachmann does. So that means if (God forbid) my daughter is raped and becomes pregnant, I’m duty bound to require her to have the baby. Fiscally naïve minorities caused the 2008 financial crisis. There’s no global warming, evolution is a hoax and “intelligent design” should be taught in public schools. The HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. My dear friends who are gay have “identity disorders,” and Bachmann is a messenger sent from God to prevent gay marriage. I know there’s more, like her oft-repeated statement on Iran wanting to bomb and destroy Israel.  Is there a side of a mushroom I have to eat to see these things?

8.  I will start to enjoy more the Republican primary/caucus sideshow and predatory reality shows like Hoarders or Storage Wars, both of which are the Dickensian LOLCATS of our age. After all, these do us all a service by ameliorating our wealth disparity and obscuring the covert war we are currently waging against Iran. Such things are messy and controversial. We don’t want to acknowledge them nor talk about them. The fact Ahmadinejad has one of our toy spy drones, which dropped from the Persian skies is just a fluke. Time to join American Attention Deficit Disorder (AADD) that makes the military industrial complex function. Why fight it?

9.  I will start to believe in phrases like “clean coal” and “uncompromising integrity.”

10. I will start to watch one hour of FOX News a week just to balance my “liberal” news sources.

Or maybe I’m still down the rabbit hole.

Happy New Year!