Predators don't need a bathroom

This article in the HuffPo (my emphasis)

So to those of you who think you’re being helpful by “protecting” me and my fellow women, you’re like a shark sitting in the lifeguard chair. I wasn’t uncomfortable until you showed up at the pool and the only potential predator I see is you. 

Your mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives and daughters don’t need you to walk them to the bathroom for safety. Your fathers, brothers, friends and sons need to walk themselves away from their own double standards. Women are sexually harassed and sexually assaulted on school campuses, on the street, at their jobs, on the Internet, in their own homes, in ANY public place. And it has been excused or ignored for so long because of what you and I are taught from the first years of our interactions with each other: You, as a male, are not accountable for your own actions. It’s MY responsibility, as a female, to not “provoke” you. But then you get to knight-in-shining-armor your way through life for those in your protected categories and I am expected to applaud you. Why the outrage now over bathrooms? Why aren’t you outraged every single day? 

If you’re telling me that there are high volumes of boys and men out there, in schools or in general, who are just waiting for a “loop-hole” to sexually assault girls and women, we have bigger problems on our hands than bathrooms.

Exactly.  

Is God a She?

There has been some discussion of late as there are now woman bishops in the Church of England and this suggests that, you know, God COULD be a she as well as a he.

“When we use only male language for God we reinforce the idea that God is like a man and, in doing so, suggest that men are therefore more like God than women,” Rev. Emma Percy, chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford, told the Sunday Times. “If we take seriously the idea that men and women are made in the image of God, both male and female language should be used.”

It caught the attention of Phyllis Zagano in the National Catholic Reporter (a liberal RC newspaper):

What next? Now even the Church of England is talking about admitting that maybe, just maybe, inclusive language can be used to describe God. You know, the whole "She Who Is" business.

....Think it will catch on? I mean, what if all Christianity understood God as the limitless being beyond gender, in whose image all are created? That would mean women could image Christ. And you know what that could lead to.

Snort.

Evangelical challenge on women's roles

Biblical conservatives are generally not happy with women's equality.  We see it in the battle over women's ordination (won in the Episcopal church, ongoing in the Roman Catholic church) but it is particularly prominent in the Evangelical conservative community.  

However, it's harder and harder in modern life to keep women pregnant at home in the kitchen or in the homeschool room, when women want legitimate careers of their own.  From Religion Dispatches

Some evangelicals’ complementarian commitments appear to be influenced more deeply by nostalgia for 1950s suburbia than by the Bible itself. The gulf between leaders’ wishes and women’s lives reveals how tone-deaf, incomprehensible, and inconsistent elite preferences have become....

Traditionalist evangelical elites may have overreached. Now, in light of the preferences and necessities that undergird evangelicals’ egalitarian family arrangements, leaders will have to concede that people can interpret scripture according to shifting cultural realities. Of course, this interpretive malleability and liberty of conscience isn’t extended to people who think differently about homosexuality.

Of course it is no coincidence that opposition to gay rights is linked to  rigid gender norms.

Conservative evangelical elites are expending a great deal of energy to keep acceptance of homosexuality out of their churches and institutions. But when it comes to enforcing patriarchy, they simply aren’t fighting as hard. As they battle on two fronts—often against their own people—evangelical leaders may have to decide whether homosexuality or egalitarianism is the greater evil.

They will struggle to argue that marriage is non-negotiable as they concede that gender roles are very much up for debate.

The re-definition of marriage, as Associate Justice Ruth Bader GInsberg reminded us yesterday, is not over same sex couples.  It's already occurred, when we acknowledged the fundamental equality of the partners in a marriage.

On Cardinal Burke

Recently, Raymond Cardinal Burke, the arch-conservative prelate has been in the news for an interview that basically blamed women for everything wrong in the Roman Catholic church.

Alexandra Petri in the WaPo takes him down:

Burke observed: “The Church becomes very feminized. Women are wonderful, of course. They respond very naturally to the invitation to be active in the Church. Apart from the priest, the sanctuary has become full of women. The activities in the parish and even the liturgy have been influenced by women and have become so feminine in many places that men do not want to get involved.”

Well, sure. Women are wonderful. Only, if they’re involved, everything is RUINED. Other than that, they are great and it is wonderful that they are participating.

But  this one takes the cake; it's those feminists that made those priests assault those children!

“We can also see that our seminaries are beginning to attract many strong young men who desire to serve God as priests. The new crop of young men are manly and confident about their identity. This is a welcome development, for there was a period of time when men who were feminized and confused about their own sexual identity had entered the priesthood; sadly some of these disordered men sexually abused minors; a terrible tragedy for which the Church mourns.”

I’m sorry, I’m a little dazed from striking my head repeatedly and mightily on my desk. That’s what it was. It was the feminists who were behind this whole thing. We should have known. They were the puppetmasters (puppetmistresses?) all along. The worst part of radical feminism was when the feminists all rose in a single body and insisted that the Catholic Church become embroiled in pedophilia. It is a wonder that we still listened to feminists after that.

And this:

If you think that once women come into places and do things, there won’t be room for men to come into those places and do things any more, you are scared that the power you have is undeserved. Or you would not be so desperate to keep the door closed.

 Amen sister.

Women and the Vatican

The Roman Catholic Church has a woman problem.  This is not limited to its efforts to control women sexually (as it lurches between Madonna and Whore as its only view of the feminine).  It's also manifest in the failure of the RC church to recognize women as leaders-- limiting them to a servant role.  This is not a surprise, given that the recent Popes have had only limited exposure to Real Women  -- their doting mothers, and women/nuns as servants. They've literally never had to deal with women with families, women with careers. You know, real women in the modern world.

And so, neither pope, John Paul II nor Benedict XVI, in their roles as leaders of the Roman Catholic Church worldwide, seems to have had any significant personal experiences preparing them to relate appropriately to women in the modern world. Their limited understanding of female gender would have come only from women subordinate to them. These may be the only models with which either man was familiar. It seems no wonder, then, that John Paul saw the very essence of femaleness as “being for others”—men evidently exempted. Joined at the hip, Benedict not only endorses John Paul’s teachings, but also, at least in the case of his attack on the LCWR, apparently holds that “others” are the hierarchy. 

The current problems of our institutional Church are organically interrelated. A just and equitable rearranging of the deck chairs, starting an entirely new way or seeing and working with women, as respected equals, sharing the same basic baptismal rites, is long overdue.

Fascinating essay by Andrew Sullivan follows up on the consequences of this dismissal of women. 

Without women, the Church will die. One of the more obviously radical things Jesus does in the Gospels is to treat women as complete equals. Yet the Church that was constructed after Him was based on male supremacy and eventually male segregation in the priesthood – forbidding by celibacy even the influence of wives and daughters. Of course this creates a circular, hermetically sealed worldview. But I’ll tell you this: if women had been priests or priests had ever had kids, the child-rape scandal would have been stopped in its tracks. The criminals would have been busted, not protected. 

If the hierarchy still refuses to get this, if it does not shift on women and married priests, it will, in the West, lose the mothers. And once you lose them, the church is all but over. They are, in so many ways, the church. Two women – my grandmother and my mother – taught me to love my faith, cherish it, protect it. They both gave me life, but they also gave me faith. For so long they have been taken for granted – and even, as with the American nuns, persecuted and investigated for doing God’s work. 

When the church gives holy mothers the same respect it gives one Holy Father, it will begin to regain its moral authority. It will begin to turn back towards the one so many seem to have forgotten: Jesus.

"Legitimate Rape": just lie back and think of Ryan

We've talked before about the Republican agenda against women and redefinition (essentially denial) of rape.

NOw GOP senatorial candidate from MO believes that a woman can't get pregnant if she's a victim of "legitimate rape".

The GOP vice Presidential candidate believes that the term should be "forcible rape".  Otherwise, he pretty much agrees.  

The GOP party platform states that abortion should be illegal, with no exemptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother.  That is the current platform defining what Romney-Ryan stand for.  

Think about what that means.  Think of a 9 year old girl raped by her stepfather who would be killed if she carried a child to term. The Republican party shrugs.  So sad.  We'll send flowers to her funeral.   (In Brazil, where this happened, the girl had an abortion to save her life.  The Roman Catholic Church excommunicated her and her mother for this grave sin.  The raping stepfather?  The Church had nothing to say about that.  Boys will be boys, and every sperm is sacred. )

GOP party members in Virginia believe a pregnant woman seeking a (legal) abortion should have a hard plastic object thrust inside her for a medically unnecessary ultrasound.  We call that rape, too.  And the list goes on.

Candidate Akin is not an anomaly. He is the honest face of the modern  Republican party.

If you are voting Republican this fall, you are voting for a party that sees every woman as a walking womb that is owned by the state.  That believes all women lie about rape.  That if you're pregnant, you really wanted it.  Or if you dressed in a short skirt, you were asking for it.  That has an ancient view that a woman is either a Madonna, or a whore, and either way can't be trusted with a decision.

Kinder, Küche, Kirche.

If you are not outraged you are not paying attention.

Stop the War on Women

Updated:  Andrew Sullivan pulls no punches.

Until this incarnation of the Republican party is destroyed at the polls, we live in its thrall. We have in this election an opportunity not just to re-elect a president capable of making the Grand Bargain we all need; but to punish and humiliate the most extreme, irrational, hateful version of Republicanism that now stalks the land, led by a brazen liar and fathomless cynic. 

It's an opportunity of a lifetime: to use this election to try and destroy the fundamentalist insanity that has effectively destroyed any American conservatism worthy of the name. Former Republicans, Independents and all non-fundamentalists, Christians and Jews and Muslims, have a chance to excise this metastasizing cancer from our politics.

The Roman Catholic church's war on women, II: an adolescent view of sex

Why are the Men in Rome getting their cottas in a twist over women? Because they are afraid of women. And, because they have a teenaged boy's view of sex and sexuality which makes independent women dangerous. Here's an article that discusses how the contraception battles reflect a stunted, non-adult view of women's sexuality.

…it is unsettling when men who may never have experienced sex feel qualified not just to speak about it but to pronounce on it with certainty.

[using] contraception [does not make] “pleasure the point of the act.” This is how adolescents think. Teenagers dream of constantly available sex, uninhibited by any possibility of pregnancy. That priests would talk the same way about sex between a husband and wife who have chosen to use contraception reflects inexperience and adolescent projection.

Adults understand that good sex, with or without contraception, goes deeper than pleasure. It is complex and demanding…

[E]very human activity has the potential to become unbalanced. Having children mindlessly, year after year, as former generations of Catholics did, is just as harmful to the social good as the refusal to connect sex with pregnancy. ....

To defend contraception within marriage is not to defend sexual license. Married couples who have pledged a lifetime of commitment to each other and their families have the right and the duty to make their own decisions about contraception. The church’s role is to help them arrive at the decision that is right for their lives. It is not to dictate one-size-fits-all rules that have no foundation in practical experience.

Given that the vast, vast majority of Roman Catholic women use some form of contraception, and given that Roman Catholics are THE most supportive religious group towards gay inclusion and marriage equality, and given that large numbers favor women's ordination, and given the universal dismay that has come from their investigation of the American nuns, and the universal disdain over their investigation of the girl scouts, it is way past time for the Old Men of Rome to go back into their palace and have some meaningful reflection about the role of women in modern lives. We're no longer limited to "madonna" and "whore".

Meanwhile, another blogger writes that the issue is the Vatican's effort to treat everyone like children, and a failure to recognize that the congregation has matured.  It's no longer "pray pay and obey".

The crux of the matter, as it were, is that most of the nuns, like many Catholics, have matured beyond the Vatican’s imaginings. The notion that postmodern Catholics assent to “the doctrine of the faith that has been revealed by God in Jesus Christ, presented in written form in the divinely inspired Scriptures, and handed on in the Apostolic Tradition under the guidance of the Church’s Magisterium,” (or, simply, the fathers know best) is simply ludicrous. As one observer asked me, “What Bible do they read? 

The truth is, most Catholics no longer look to Rome for guidance on our personal lives, or anyone else’s. Nor do we live within the narrow confines of a cultic Christianity, or, as women, accept male leadership and priestly ministry as if theirs were God-given and ours were not. We appreciate the complexity of these matters and strive to create forums in which to listen, discuss, discern, and pray. 

In short, our ways of being are as different from the Vatican’s as are our views....
The effort to rein in [the nuns] is meant as much to scare the rest of us into line as to corral the nuns. I can say with confidence that it won’t work.

The Roman Catholic church's war on women, I: American culture wars in the vatican

First, it was attacks on women's access to contraception--as though any employer has any right to know about my personal health decisions. And, they cover this in the specious claim that their religious freedom requires loss of mine. (Good discussion of that here.)

Then was the slapdown of American nuns , who are the most widely respected representatives of American Catholicism. The reaction has been swift, strong, and dismayed.

American Catholics have not forgotten how long it took bishops to wake up to the sexual-abuse crisis they created. And now they see that the Vatican took just three years to determine that it had no other option but to put 80 percent of U.S. nuns — whose average age is seventy-four — into receivership, an effort led in part by Cardinal Bernard Law. That decision has unified a good deal of Catholics all right — against Rome.

And it's clearly based onAmerican politics:

[I]t turns out that conservative American churchmen living in Rome—including disgraced former Boston Cardinal Bernard Law—were key players in pushing the hostile takeover of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, or LCWR, which they have long viewed with suspicion for emphasizing social justice work over loyalty to the hierarchy and issues like abortion and gay marriage.

yes, that would be the same Cardinal Law who escaped to the Vatican in the wake of the sex abuse scandal in Boston, and remains in Rome in a sort of exile.

But outdoing even this, the latest Roman Catholic hierarchical lunacy is an investigation of the Girl Scouts, of all institutions. Apparently the American RC Bishops think that the girl scouts are a front group for (you guessed it) Planned Parenthood.

You cannot make up this stuff.

As writer Mary Valle notes,

I’m beginning to suspect that the mere notion of girls meeting, gaining skills and becoming competent human beings is a threat. Are Catholic girls no longer being encouraged to follow their own dreams? To speak their minds? To lead others? (Not to mention doing community service, camping and crafts!)

How did we get here? One of the important things about Girl Scouting is bringing different types of people together and learning about each other’s culture. That is: inclusion. Conservative-hatched American Heritage Girls, the new challenger, seems to offer only Godliness and Countryishness. Girl Scouts is international! AHG, not so much. … Bishops: stand down. Stop trying to besmirch things that are wonderful! Stop casting aspersions! You are attacking our girls. Americans! Defend your Girl Scouts. As far as I’m concerned, Girl Scouts is one of the best organizations our country has ever produced. If a line in the sand is being drawn, I know which side I’m on. Scouts.

One final note:

[D]uring a meeting of Vatican personnel in early 2012 to discuss the LCWR assessment, a senior Vatican diplomat warned that launching a crackdown now might be a bad idea in light of domestic American politics, especially an increasingly nasty campaign season featuring rhetoric about a "war on women."

According to sources with knowledge of that meeting, officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith replied that such concerns were "exaggerated."

In the wake of the outrage over the treatment of the nuns, and the scorn greeting this latest effort, I wonder if the Vatican still thinks so?

But hang out that welcome banner, 'piskies, because a lot of disaffected Catholics might want to drop by for a sabbatical.....

The root of the war on women

From Alternet, a compelling essay:

We’re having this debate over issues once considered settled because the right is trying to blame virtually all of the nation’s economic and social problems on one cause: the supposedly broken American family. It’s their only solution. It’s also increasingly clear that shoring up the family, in their view, involves restoring a traditional vision of the family, in which the man is head of the household, and women accept their civilizing role....

There it [is]: the notion that when government supports women, it is substituting itself in the role of husband and father. I tried to tell Steele that nothing about a woman having no co-pay for contraception prevents her male partner from being “responsible” once they “come together.” I never even got to make the point that women have a lot of the same health issues even if they’re not with a male partner. Some of us use the pill for health reasons, some of us use it to plan when to have children, and some of us use it to have sex we enjoy in relationships where there’s no thought of creating a family. The way men always have, by the way.

But the fact that I had to skirt the border of explaining how our lady parts work, and what special health needs we have from puberty to post-menopause, seems part of the problem: I don’t want to have to do that on national television — on a political news show. Why are we even having this conversation in 2012?

.... Today, there are other ways to shore up the family. If economically successful, college-educated people are more likely to marry and stay married, as Murray and his conservative colleagues agree they are, shouldn’t we look for ways to make sure more Americans are economically successful and college-educated? It seems like a win-win, whether our goal is to support marriage or to prevent the continued immiseration of the American working and middle classes, right?

Meanwhile, in Arizona, a new law would declare women pregnant two weeks before conception. Not kidding.

Arizona lawmakers gave final passage to three anti-abortion bills Tuesday afternoon, including one that declares pregnancies in the state begin two weeks before conception.

Republican misogyny is revealed (updated)

I continue to be shocked at the deep misogyny expressed by the Republican right wing and their elected officials.  It's a complete disdain for women.

We've had to deal with the repulsive language of Rush Limbaugh in describing a woman with whom he disagreed.  The disdain for women in the fallout from that, in the views of his supporters, is palpable.    They really see us as nothing but sexual receptacles.

And then,  if it is not bad enough that the Republicans want all employers to be able to deny insurance coverage for contraception  (see "Blunt Amendment"), now in Arizona, lawmakers propose a rule where a woman can be fired if she wants to buy contraception unless she exposes her medical history to her employer.

Arizona legislators know that whether or not her insurance covers it, a woman may get the prescription she needs to prevent an unintended pregnancy. They want to give her boss the right to control that too. The bill they are pushing would not only allow employers to take the insurance coverage away, but it would also make it easier for an employer who finds out that his employee uses birth control to fire her. You heard me right . . . to fire her.

This is a breathtaking invasion of privacy and personal dignity.  It is not my employer's business how I comport myself in my personal life--except, apparently, in Arizona.

But why are we surprised?  Laws proposing mandated ultrasounds for women seeking abortion exist (and are being proposed) in many states, including transvaginal ultrasound in some cases.  That's right, before seeking a legal medical procedure, these states demand that a woman undergo an invasive procedure in which a hard plastic wand is thrust inside her, whether she wants it or not.  We have a word for that:  it's rape, and its intention is to inform women that their uterus belongs to the state, not to her,  and to shame her.  As one editorial wrote,

This isn't about whether abortion is right or wrong. 

This is about the scope of government. Even those opposed to abortion should have qualms about the government mandating medical procedures and waiting periods. 

Under any other circumstances, forcing an unwilling person to submit to a vaginal probing would be a violation beyond imagining. Requiring a doctor to commit such an act, especially when medically unnecessary, and to submit to an arbitrary waiting period, is to demand an abrogation of medical ethics, if not common decency.

Never mind that data show women given ultrasounds prior to abortion do not change their minds. As with the discredited myth that abortion is linked to breast cancer, opponents have no problem ignoring actual data.  The outcry has even reached the Doonesbury cartoon.

In Kansas, a law is proposed to protect doctors if they lie to a woman about the health status of her fetus.  In otherwords, don't tell her if she has a severely disabled child.  Don't give her any reason to consider a legal medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy.  But there's nothing in the bill to provide support to a family who discover their child has a devastating permanent disability.  Hey, those are the breaks, right?

But as a Georgia lawmaker points out, women are like cows and pigs.  So what if her fetus is dead? She should still carry it to term, just like happens out on the farm.  Yup, even if she knows her body is harboring a corpse, she can't do anything about it.  No matter that

recommending continuing a non-viable pregnancy is a violation of the standard of care, meaning the Georgia Representative would like to legislate medical malpractice standards

Then there's the constant battle against Planned Parenthood, an organization that is the primary caregiver for many women in this country, providing cancer screenings and contraception in addition to birth control.  The Komen fiasco was a wakeup call, but "defunding Planned Parenthood" remains a Republican litmus test and rallying cry (which would-be nominee Mitt Romney just joined).

But it's not enough we should be barefoot and in the kitchen, pregnant. The Republicans are also opposing renewal of the Violence Against Women Act because they don't think women, immigrants or same sex couples should be protected from domestic violence.

At a closed-door Senate Republican lunch on Tuesday, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska sternly warned her colleagues that the party was at risk of being successfully painted as antiwoman — with potentially grievous political consequences in the fall, several Republican senators said Wednesday.

Gee, ya think?

The party that opposes government involvement in nearly anything actually endorses government intrusion into the lives of women.  Because, after all, we're only women.  The outrageous efforts continue to add up.  And the deep misogyny all this expresses is also supported by paternalistic conservative Christian denominations.  It's all very Handmaid's Tale, isn't it?

Heck, they even brought out SWAT teams in Virginia to deal with a non-violent protest against the attack on women's rights.  Funny, no SWAT teams when the Tea Party shows up with guns threatening violence against the president.

I'd like to see powerful women on both sides of the aisle, as well as men and women of faith, speak out vocally against these attacks on the dignity and self-determination of women.

Women have had the franchise to vote for less than100 years in this country.  Let's make sure we exercise it before they take that away as well.


Update:  It keeps going on.  Texas (land of Rick Perry) refuses to allow funding to go to Planned Parenthood.  Since they are not allowed to discriminate between providers, this means that TX will lose its entire medicaid funding for family planning.  But hey, they're  women, right?

[T]he state broke federal Medicaid rules by discriminating against qualified family planning providers and thus would be losing the entire program, which provides cancer screenings, contraceptives and basic health care to 130,000 low-income women each year.... 

According to Medicaid law, Mann said, a state cannot restrict women's ability to choose a provider simply because that provider offers separate services -- in this case, abortion -- that aren’t even paid for by the Medicaid program.

(Cartoon from here)

Who really defends the Constitution? (update)

Following upon on Chris Christie's veto of marriage equality in New Jersey, and the remarkable idea in contravention to the Constitution that a minority should have its rights voted on by the majority: Andrew Sullivan points out how the minority opposed to marriage equality keeps changing the rules, and can't even manage to be consistent in their "pro-Constitution" views. (My emphasis)

They moved the goalposts on us. When we actually began to win in state legislatures, such as California (twice!), or New Hampshire, or now Maryland and New Jersey and Washington State, that process became suddenly unacceptable - and undemocratic! - as well. Even on an issue many hold to be a core civil right, we were told the courts were irrelevant and now that the legislatures were irrelevant. This was particularly odd coming from conservatives who at one point in time were strong believers in restraints on majority tyranny. But this is what a legislative debate can do that no referendum can, and it's why the founders established a republic not a pure democracy:

...But the way in which a tiny 2- 3 percent minority seeking basic civil equality has been forced now to be subject to state referendums, even after winning legislative victories, strikes me as revealing. It's basically an attack on representative government, a resort to the forms of decision-making which maximize the potential for anonymous bigotry and minimize the importance of representative government, a core achievement of Anglo-American democracy, that can help enhance reason of the accountable against the sometimes raw prejudice of the majority.

Christie is a man whose candor I admire in many ways. But this was an act of cowardice and unfairness and a misguided disregard for representative democracy. How many other duly enacted laws must now be sent to the referendum process for final judgment. Why have a legislature at all? And this from the party that claims to defend the Constitution.

Live your life by your own values. Set an example if you choose. But do not, in a representative democratic republic, presume that you can force your views on those who equally passionately, believe differently.

Update: Meanwhile, the Prop8 case will have its next level of appeal to the 9th circuit en banc. And gay couples still can't marry in CA.

The hypocrisy of "religious freedom" in the attack on women

Last week, we were treated to an image from a House hearing on contraception, in which nearly all the speakers were male, and all were opposed to contraception. This battle should have been over 40 years ago, but apparently, men still want the right to decide if women get to control their bodies.

Of course, in keeping with the current right-wing meme, this isn't framed as an issue about contraception, but about "religious freedom". And this applies not just to contraception, but marriage equality and abortion. But it's not about freedom at all. It's about elevating one faith group's views over every other. Not content with expecting their own congregants to live by their doctrine, they want the government to force the rest of us to do so. (Read Catholic writer Gary Will's take down here)

And while we're looking at the disgusting situation of men in Washington deciding what women can do with their bodies, Dahlia Lithwick tells us what the men in Virginia did. (My emphases-- and please do go read the whole thing.)

This week, the Virginia state Legislature passed a bill that would require women to have an ultrasound before they may have an abortion. Because the great majority of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks, that means most women will be forced to have a transvaginal procedure, in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced. Since a proposed amendment to the bill—a provision that would have had the patient consent to this bodily intrusion or allowed the physician to opt not to do the vaginal ultrasound—failed on 64-34 vote, the law provides that women seeking an abortion in Virginia will be forcibly penetrated for no medical reason. I am not the first person to note that under any other set of facts, that would constitute rape under state law.

And the juxtaposition is striking, as Alex Koppelman writes.

This all makes for an odd spectacle: Republicans in Washington are up in arms over the violation of religious liberty they say is involved in forcing a religious institution to offer insurance that completely covers birth control. But, not far away, their colleagues are working to pass a law that forces a woman to undergo an invasive procedure in order to have an abortion—a law which clearly violates that woman’s liberty, not to mention her person. On that, they seem to be silent.

David Frum sees the same problem,

Freedom for some must be freedom for all, and the rights of churches are most convincingly upheld by those who also uphold the rights of women.

Let's be very clear on the inconsistencies of the fetus fetish brigade. They are not "pro-life" if the life is that of a woman. Here's a searing story from a woman whose placenta ruptured during pregnancy leading to a massive and life-threatening hemorrhage. The only way to save her is to terminate what is an inviable pregnancy.

Everyone knew the pregnancy wasn’t viable, that it couldn’t be viable given the amount of blood I was losing, but it still took hours for anyone at the hospital to do anything. The doctor on call didn’t do abortions. At all. Ever. In fact, no one on call that night did. ….

A very kind nurse risked her job to call a doctor from the Reproductive Health Clinic who was not on call, and asked her to come in to save my life....The doctor who didn’t do abortions was supposed to have contacted her (or someone else who would perform the procedure) immediately. He didn’t. Neither did his students. .... I don’t know if his objections were religious or not; all I know is that when a bleeding woman was brought to him for treatment he refused to do the only thing that could stop the bleeding. Because he didn’t do abortions. Ever.

My two kids at home almost lost their mother because someone decided that my life was worth less than that of a fetus that was going to die anyway. My husband had told them exactly what my regular doctor said, and the ER doctor had already warned us what would have to happen. Yet none of this mattered when confronted by the idea that no one needs an abortion. .... After my family found out I’d had an abortion, I got a phone call from a cousin who felt the need to tell me I was wrong to have interfered with God’s plan. And in that moment I understood exactly what kind of people judge a woman’s reproductive choices.

This "religious freedom" argument is not about freedom at all. At least, not for women.

As the old saying goes, if you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?

Contraception, abortion, Komen and Catholics (1)

Wow, so much to blog about, as people seek to control and manipulate the wombs of American women. My next two posts will address this.

First, the Roman Catholic Church is outraged that Catholic hospitals and other non-religious industries associated with Mother Church might be required to support contraception as part of their health care.

I'm all in favor of letting them have an exemption, EXCEPT for these points-- and they are big points.

1) For many women, patients as well as employees, there is no "choice" about a Catholic hospital. They are a big business and they OWN the medical care in many parts of the country. So you can't go off and go to a different hospital, or work for a different hospital: they are literally the only game in town. Should they be able to require that unwilling patients and employees live under Catholic Diktat?

2) And as NPR points out, while they may be Shocked! Shocked! at the current federal rules, there is already ample precedent: the fact remains that dozens of Catholic hospitals and universities currently offer contraceptive coverage as part of their health insurance packages because state laws require it.

3) We don't let a Catholic businessman deprive his employees from contraception because of his religious disagreement. Why is this different?

4) Contraceptive meds are also used for non-contraceptive treatments. As a lesbian birth control is not an issue, but I spent some time on the Pill for medical reasons. Do they think that could be denied?

5) They don't approve of gay relationships. Do you think they should be able to deny treatment to gay Americans? What if they are the only hospital in a region?

6)The rates of teen pregnancy AND abortion are much higher in the US than Western Europe. This is considered to reflect much easier access to contraception in Europe. As the bloodshed of the 30s pointed out, prohibition is seldom an effective strategy. But then, the interest is not in blocking abortion. It's in controlling women. Of course, the relative paucity of 6-children families in the local parishes reveal that in this as so many other things, the laity are practising a "don't ask don't tell" with the doctrines ofMother Church .

7) do you think they cover Viagra? Just asking.

And I say this as a baptised, confirmed, nun-educated and happily EX Roman Catholic.

Equal protection under the law: for men only

The 14th amendment provides for equal protection under the law. It is a fundamental component of our constitutional republic that prevents simple majoritarian abuse of any group.

Here's what it says:

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."


But according to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, "citizens" and "persons" do not include women. Quite remarkably finds that the 14th amendment, which doesn't mention race, is about race and only protects on the basis of race.

Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that….Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law. That's what democracy is all about.

Writing at the blog Hunter of Justice, lawyer Nan Hunter responds,

But let's get real - the bottom line import of this approach to constitutional interpretation (shared by many in addition to Justice Scalia) is that it eviscerates constitutional protection for marginalized and unpopular minorities, allowing (often temporary) majorities to scapegoat them for evils real and imagined and to impose legal disabilities unrelated to any legitimate, much less proportional, public goal.

Under Scalia's originalism, the only recourse for ending even the most oppressive law would be for a legislative reversal, ie, for a new majority rule….the point of a constitution as a charter of government is that some principles are structural, not merely that we the people have agreed that a few mostly 18th and 19-century practices are now off the table….

Who benefits from this mode of constitutional interpretation? Well, to ask the question is truly to answer it, wouldn't you say?

And from the HuffPo:

Marcia Greenberger, founder and co-president of the National Women's Law Center, called the justice's comments "shocking" and said he was essentially saying that if the government sanctions discrimination against women, the judiciary offers no recourse.

"In these comments, Justice Scalia says if Congress wants to protect laws that prohibit sex discrimination, that's up to them," she said. "But what if they want to pass laws that discriminate? Then he says that there's nothing the court will do to protect women from government-sanctioned discrimination against them. And that's a pretty shocking position to take in 2011. It's especially shocking in light of the decades of precedents and the numbers of justices who have agreed that there is protection in the 14th Amendment against sex discrimination, and struck down many, many laws in many, many areas on the basis of that protection."

What this also does is telegraph how Scalia would view Prop8, should the case come to the SCOTUS. A majority of voters in CA decided to marginalize an unpopular minority. That's perfectly fine with Scalia. It enshrines a remarkable power in the mob. As discussed by Robert Cruickshank, whom I also quoted in the previous post:

One reason our state government fails is that we’ve essentially set up a fourth branch of government – the people – that can negate anything done by the other three branches, but without any real checks or balances on the powers of that fourth branch.

In American constitutions, at least until the present day, the power of the people has been limited and bounded to ensure that all rights are protected. The right clearly wants to undo that convention, and give the people the power to trump the Constitution by mob rule.

I think Scalia's is quite a dangerous viewpoint that undermines the integrity of our republic.

The trouble with women

The Vatican now considers women's ordination on par with child sexual abuse.

New rules the Vatican is expected to issue soon on penalties for priests who sexually abuse children will also put the ordaining of women in the same category of the most serious crimes under church law....

"Quite frankly, it is an outrage to pair the two, a complete injustice to connect the aspirations of some women among the baptized to ordained ministry with what are some of the worst crimes that can be committed against the least of Christ's members," U.S. Catholic editor Bryan Cones wrote at the monthly magazine's web site in a blast that appears to echo the views of many.

"This decision boggles the mind: The faithful have been justly demanding for nearly a decade clear guidelines for dealing with the sexual abuse of children, along with just punishments for both offenders and bishops who have abetted these crimes. What we have gotten is half of what we have been asking for (still no sanctions for bishops), along with a completely unconnected and unnecessary condemnation of the ordination of women."

Meanwhile, the Church of England seems stalled with women priests and unable to take thestep to women bishops.The Guardian:

The Church of England now expects both the benefits of establishment and the cultural freedom of private religion. At the very least, a national church should not become disconnected from the best values of the country it serves. But as the general synod, which begins tonight, will again confirm, the Church of England is strangely unwilling to do this. It devotes a shocking amount of energy to debating the supposed inferiority of women, gay men and lesbians. These issues matter intensely to some believers inside the church, but they make it look intolerant to the much larger number of people outside it.

Una Kroll

But maybe, just maybe, the established Church of England could now seize the opportunity to offer our nation a small example of how it is possible to live in a community that is based on mutual love and respect despite profound differences. That, I believe, is what God wants us to learn to do, and it is what Christian witness is all about. Come on, Church of England. Give us a moral lead for once.

The Observer:

Most of Britain has accepted that women can assume positions of authority and that homosexuality is a quite ordinary part of human experience. The explicit discrimination practised by the church is unacceptable in most non-religious settings and would be illegal if expressed by any other employer. There are, meanwhile, ample theological grounds for accepting that women are not created subordinate to men and that homosexuality is not hateful in the eyes of God. Dr Williams was determined not to go down in history as the Archbishop who split the church. He could have been remembered by future generations as a religious leader who stood unequivocally on the right side of a moral argument about sexual equality. Regrettably, that opportunity seems now to have passed.

Oh, come on get OVER it! Women have a lot to offer, not better or worse, just different, and that perspective is interesting, enriching, and important. These arguments are just like those that prevented talented women from advancing as scientists, doctors, or lawyers. Remember Sandra Day O'Connor was initially offered a job as a legal secretary, although she was admitted to the Bar. It's nothing to be proud of. With this sort of lunacy, the CofE is becoming an increasingly irrelevant historical artifact. The Vatican, of course, is bobbing behind, long lost in mediaeval times.

Update Let's remember that one Canon Kearon exposed the exasperation of the Archbishop of Canterbury with this remark:

Then Canon Kearon looked out at a room that was at least nearly half full of people of color, and the first thing he said was the "problem of increased and growing diversity in the Anglican Communion has been an issue for many years." He said that by the 1990s leaders in the communion has begun to name "the diversity of opinions in the communion and diversity in general as a problem and sought some mechanisms to address it."

If that doesn't define an early-20th century pale-stale-and-male viewpoint, I don't know what does.

Woman nominee for bishop in Scotland

From Ruth Gledhill:

Oxford graduate Dr Alison Peden has been chosen as one of three candidates for the vacant episcopal see of Glasgow and Galloway in Scotland. If she is elected on 16 January, she will become the UK's first woman bishop. It would in many ways be fitting for Scotland to be the first UK province to have a woman bishop. The US had the first one in the world, Barbara Harris, who incidentally was nominated back in the 1970s by Mary Glasspool, now lesbian bishop-elect in Los Angeles. Scotland and the US church go back generations. After the American Revolution, the Bishop of London, who had previously ruled over the American church as if it was a far-away London parish of little importance, refused to give newly-independent US Episcopalians a bishop of their own. So they went to Scotland, which duly obliged. The surprising thing about Scotland is that it has taken this long to put a woman on a shortlist after their General Synod voted in favour back in 2003.

So, given that many provinces of the Anglican Communion do not support women as priests, let along bishops, why is it no one is schisming over them? Just wondering.....

UpdateHow prescient I am. The Wounded Bird is reporting that schismatic Bp Iker might be leaving the schismatic group ACNA over the woman issue:

Essentially the ordination of women as priests and bishops is schismatic. It continues to be the major cause of division among those who consider themselves to be orthodox Anglicans. As long as the ordination of women continues, we will be in a state of impaired or broken communion. It is a barrier to unity.

Uganda bans female genital mutilation

CNN reports on an amazing piece of good news from Uganda:

The Ugandan parliament unanimously passed a bill banning female genital mutilation, a traditional rite that has sparked an international outcry and is practiced in some African and Asian communities.
The practice, which involves cutting off a girl's clitoris, is also called female circumcision. In some communities in eastern Uganda, it is practiced in girls up to age 15.
Convicted offenders face 10 years in prison, but if the girl dies during the act, those involved will get a life sentence, according to officials in the east African country.
"A majority of Ugandans felt it is a disgusting act, but you have to remember that this is a cultural belief that has been practiced for generations," said Fred Opolot, the government spokesman. "That's what took the bill so long to pass."
Human rights activists have decried the practice, which they say poses major health risks for girls and may lead to death. It also causes complications during sex and child birth, activists say.

More on the bad news from Uganda here and here.

A proposed anti-gay law could make Uganda perhaps the most dangerous place for homosexuals and drive the gays of Uganda further underground. In a rare interview, the first of its kind with a newspaper journalist, a lesbian told Saturday Monitor’s Rodney Muhumuza why she is very scared.

Upholding Tradition

From MSNBC:

A Pakistani lawmaker defended a decision by southwestern tribesmen to bury five women alive because they wanted to choose their own husbands, telling stunned members of Parliament this week to spare him their outrage.

"These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them," Israr Ullah Zehri, who represents Baluchistan province, said Saturday. "Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid."

Be it resolved that slavishly upholding tradition for its own sake is unjustified in modern society.

Of course I find this obscene and indefensible, as I find burying women in burkas obscene, or female "circumcision", or Suttee, or other "honor killing". It's an extreme on a continuum with the fear of the feminine and misogyny that are presented by many of our own society's cultural conservatives--think the protest against women bishops. At its root, it comes from the same place: women as lower, as "other", as lesser. I am no cultural relativist. I find no justification for the oppression of women "because it's always been like this" no matter the society in which it occurs.

The Grey Lady Weighs in

For those who do not know, the New York Times is called the Grey Lady (possibly because of the dark splotches the newsprint leaves on your fingers!)

In an article about the C of E:

---

The vote came at an awkward time for the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, who leads the worldwide Anglican Communion, with a claimed membership of about 80 million, about 55 million of them active in church affairs. His efforts to prevent a schism within the church in Britain have taken place against a background of deep division between liberals and traditionalists within the Anglican church worldwide, mainly over the issue of homosexuality within the clergy......

At a meeting last week in Jerusalem, the conservatives voted to create a separate body within the Anglican union to carry the fight against the American church and its liberal allies, amid warnings that the new body could form the basis for a separate church if the conservatives’ demands went unheeded. Archbishop Williams has condemned the move, saying that the new body has no legal standing and challenges Christian teachings of tolerance......

But traditionalists emerging from the meeting vowed to continue their fight and hinted that the risk of a breakup of the church remained. ...

“It’s getting worse; it’s going downhill very badly,” the Rev. David Houlding, a leader of the traditionalists, said after the York vote, according to a report by the newspaper The Guardian. “It’s quite clear that there is a pincer movement, and we’re being squeezed out.” But he added, “There will be no walkout — yet.”

---

Church Schism widens over women bishops

From The Independent:

Divisions appeared to widen yesterday between senior Church of England clergy on opposite sides of the debate over the consecration of women bishops, as the issue dominated the agenda at the General Synod.

The Synod has already agreed to the principle of women bishops, but has yet to decide what should be done to appease the 1,300 clergy who are threatening to leave the Anglican Church over the issue. ....

Talks might yet be hampered by claims last night that some bishops have already secretly met advisers to the Pope, relaying their concerns over a “liberal” direction to senior Vatican figures.

So what does the POPE have to do with a Church of England issue?

Traditionalists voiced their objections to a national code of practice

The Rev Angus MacLey of Sevenoaks in Kent said such a code would be "inadequate" and "unworkable" for those who wanted to set themselves apart from women bishops.

.....

The possibility of women bishops had strong backing from male members of the Church attending the synod. Tim Hind of Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset called for women to be freed from the "shackles" of legislation.

How much of this is of-a-piece with the anti-gay viewpoint? Is it all based in misogyny and sex-is-icky viewpoint? Although I suspect that a number of the anti-women are gay Anglo-Catholics who really ought to be in Rome.

Just me, I suppose.