(Cross posted because it was a good rant, very cathartic, so I thought I would spread the love.)
A bunch of dried up old male a$$h@les in Virginia are passing a law that mandates transvaginal ultrasounds for women before getting an abortion:
The ultrasound legislation would constitute an unprecedented government mandate to insert vaginal ultrasonic probes into women as part of a state-ordered effort to dissuade them from terminating pregnancies, legislative opponents noted.
“We’re talking about inside a woman’s body,” Del. Charnielle Herring, a Democrat, said in an emotional floor speech. “This is the first time, if we pass this bill, that we will be dictating a medical procedure to a physician.”
Tell you what, Virginia State House (and Senate and Governor if it passes and is signed): why don’t you take this probe, lube it up nice and good (this’ll be cold for a moment), and stick it up your own most intimate orifice?
So you literally want to tell a doctor what procedure they must use on a woman? And for what? “Informed consent” my ass. Of course, everyone knows that this is a lie and it’s about controlling women, but just to spell it out, do you think women are dumb? That they are not informed about what the end result of not terminating a pregnancy is? Oh, gee, it ends with having a baby. You really must think us wee widdle women are idiots.
Except we know one thing: the instant the government mandated you get a stick up your ass or else face lifelong, dire consequences (which bringing a child to term is, for better or worse), you’d be howling and screaming about the violation of your right to privacy and to make up your own mind on the advice of your doctor about what medical procedures are necessary or needed in your own personal case.
But probing a woman with an invasive ultrasound that isn’t even medically necessary in most cases where a woman chooses to have an abortion, hey that’s not a bridge too far for you. This bill makes no sense whatsoever on its supposed merits, unless of course you believe that the poor little woman with a medical probe sticking out of her vagina, upon seeing the fetus wiggling on the screen, will so fall in love with the little tiny heartbeat and fingernails that they suddenly change their minds and hey! you’ve saved a tiny human life that houses a soul (according to YOU) from some sort of gruesome murder.
Except that is not your choice to make, or influence. You’re not only hypocritical in passing this bill that you would not ever pass about male patients, you are tormentors. Bullies. You are misogynists of the most vile kind. I have worse names for you, but I think I have made my point.
Get out of my vagina, and the vaginae of the rest of America’s women. You are not fit to govern, nevermind tell me and my doctor what procedures are or are not necessary.
This is being reported as likely to get though the VA Senate, and the Governor says he’ll sign.
And folks wonder why I sound anti-religion.
Informed consent IS an important principle to me, but I’m also uncomfortable with the government dictating what conversations and decisions take place in a doctor’s office.
And SomervilleTom, I think it’s possible to be anti-Religious Right without being anti-religion or even anti-Christianity. After all, there’s plenty of forms of Christianity who don’t go along with this. In fact I would submit if we truly governed by Christian principles we’d all be better off.
but on this one, you are so so so so wrong. This ISN’T ABOUT INFORMED CONSENT. This is ALL and ONLY about changing a woman’s mind by preying on her emotions on an already difficult choice. Read the post: “…do you think women are dumb? That they are not informed about what the end result of not terminating a pregnancy is? Oh, gee, it ends with having a baby.”
And, religion is garbage. F*ck religion. Yeah that’s right, I said that.
And dude, Christianity is SO much about shitting on women. The whole HISTORY of the religion is littered with it. Old shriveled white men deciding how women will have to behave in society. Don’t pretend that it is not. Just because there’s a few modern “liberalized” forms of Christianity doesn’t excuse its history, or the fact that moderate Christians help a lot to enable the wingnutters by taking discussions of religion and god off the table.
Just sayin’. Own the history if you’re going to defend religion.
it’s just that the whole whimpy ‘but it’s not Christianity’s fault” line just totally pisses me off.
Yes, it is. And Islam. And the rest. I need to find the Neil deGrasse Tyson Youtube speech about how science stops when the scientist decides “it’s too complex, must be God.” Throughout history, progress and science and equality have been fought against tooth and nail by religion.
I’m with you all the way on this one, I’ve got your back.
It’s becoming something of a pet peeve. It’s like, “hey, it’s all right to debate anything you want/…just don’t touch religion!”
I hate sacred cows. As I remember, mythology tells us that some famous guy who hallucinated burning bushes did, too.
Your religion is not sacred, it is not set aside from having questions put to it. If you want to believe in an invisible sky man who knows and sees all (EW), that’s definitely your prerogative, but you do not have the right not to have to defend that point of view in a discussion.
OK, now I am way off topic (though tangentially related). Getting off my hobby horse now!
is conditioning a woman’s exercise of a constitutional right on submitting to the insertion of a foreign object into her body, presumably against her will. There’s a word for that kind of thing, and it starts with R.
Frankly, I doubt that even the current right-wing US Supreme Court would approve of this law. Kennedy isn’t ready to overrule Roe, and there’s obviously no possible medical justification for this law.
Here’s one version of it, it’s not the one I was thinking of but along the same lines.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YotBtibsuh0
That may be true, but then again the entire history of humanity has been about treating women poorly. This has been true across cultures and religions, so it’s not like Christianity is unusual in this regard.
Are the only ones still stuck doing it, did you notice?
In the deep south (or Utah) where religion holds an iron grip, I’d say a lot of women’s choices are curtailed or downright refused.
Funny how that parses along with rampant religiosity.
I wouldn’t exactly say that China, for example, is a bastion of enlightenment when it comes to women’s rights.
I would say China has a problem with GENERAL human rights first. The red revolution, at a minimum, sort of didn’t discriminate (unlike, say, the overthrow of the Iranian Shah by Islamists did). Women took part and became part of the work force. It was a pretty abrupt change in the very traditional society that had existed before the early 1900s.
The track record of greatest concern is actually the repression of their poor, free speech, etc. Women suffer there, but they are not specifically targeted as women.
However, if you are referencing the one-child policy etc, I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. It’s not an anti-woman policy (though the direct sufferers are women). It’s an anti-child policy. I’m not saying they carry it out in a fair, equal, or nice manner (far to the contrary) but the INTENT is not to suppress women for the sake of suppressing women.
Religious societies and groups, on the other hand, are all about that.
Perfect example of religion ruining what were somewhat equal women’s rights (right to divorce husband, hold property, and more). All out the window when Christianity moved into town.
Well, there was a transition period when the Irish Church did, for quite some time, allow priests to marry, but that was curtailed as well.
I would go so far as to say this is not about religion so much as chauvenistic power. The way I see it this has about as much to do with real Christianity as terrorism has to do with true Islam. Religion is a convenient cover, but nothing more.
And it comes down to women protesting control by men, and large demonstrations in Virginia – I had no idea this was going on, and appreciate that Lynne called attention to it, frankly.
The proponents LOUDLY say this is about their religion. Frankly, I see more similarities than differences between this brand of “Christianity” and radical Islam — and BOTH are religions. Telling me that this isn’t about religion is like telling me that the Civil War was about “states rights”. The distinction you draw may matter to you, but in my view it colossally misses the point.
This kind of horse manure is out of control in our culture today, totally out of control.
The bottom line is that I don’t much care, frankly. It’s sick, wrong, and disgusting. It makes me feel ashamed to admit that I ever set foot in a church (and I was a pillar of the Episcopal Church for thirty years).
I am not an ultrasound technician, but why would they use a TVG probe if they’re trying to force the women to see fetuses? That’s not the procedure typically used in prenatal scanning. When my wife had the scan, it was entirely external, using a normal surface probe The only reason I can see to use an invasive probe is to heighten the humiliation. I’m no doctor, but neither are the members of the VA House who want to do this thing.
Therefore traditional ultrasounds, while useful for determining one is pregnant (which IS a usual procedure for such things) are not of high enough resolution to play on the heart strings of a potential fetus-mama.
David nailed it, above, but was reluctant to spell it out. I’m less reticent.
It’s about R A P E. Want an abortion? You must submit to rape.
Welcome to Virginia, 2011.
I am hesitant to use such terms because, if I was a rape victim, having that word thrown around for a medical procedure when I went through far worse would be hurtful I think, but is IS related to the R-word anyway. I think you can constitute it as some form of assault on a woman.
Though there *are* “foreign object” statutes about rape and such. However, presumably the doctor in question performing it is a professional, and professionals make you feel, if not comfortable with whatever GYN ickyness you are faced with, at least not feeling violated because of it. (Hey, we woman have to have metal and plastic crap shoved up our vaginas on a regular basis – which is why I have NO sympathy for men and their bitching and moaning about post-40 prostate exams.)
OK again off topic, but suffice to say…I’m not willing to say the R-word in regards to this, but damn close, and I can see why people would.
Think about this IN the context of a rape survivor though who became pregnant by their rapist…imagine what this makes THEM go through. Nevermind the 13 year old victim of incest, etc.
AND if you know anyone in Virginia, there ARE protests going on, see for example: Virginia female legislator attaches rectal exam requirement before receipt of erectile dysfuntion medication to anti-abortion bill: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/30/mandatory-ultrasound-bill-virginia-anti-abortion_n_1242627.html
A protest is planned outside the Virginia Legislature for 2/20/12; see also “The Republican War on Women” invading the Vagina in Virginia: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tobias-barrington-wolff/virginia-ultrasound-bill_b_1278832.html
Ya edited down the best part of my rant. ;-P~~~
How come “ass” is ok but not “assh-le”? And how come it’s not all right to spell it out, but replacing a few letters with similar looking symbols is fine???
You New Englanders. Such prudes, seriously!
We try to keep a family-friendly front page. Just ’cause. 😉
As it is amusing, useful to whack Mitt over the head with, and the worst word in it is, I think, “hell.”
The silver lining here is that either 1) Romney will pick Va. Gov. Bob McDonnell as VP and instantly scare many Republican women into voting for Obama; or 2) the national outrage over this, bolstered by poll results, will end the chances for McDonnell, and any other Republican who supports anything similar. The Democrats are so incredibly lucky in their opponents.
Lynne, you are WAY OFF BASE on your earlier comments giving offence to a religion that is just (and often moreso) as capable of being a source of good as a source of offence itself. There are millions of Christians who want absolutely nothing to do with these nutcases and are honestly just as offended as you are are that some people twist it for their own ends. In fact we may be more offended in someways because while you can dismiss these attitudes as being somebody else’s we have to put up with the notion, which you seem more than happy to perpetuate, that they speak for all of us, and that they shamelessly twist what is after all OUR religion too.
Consider the United Church of Christ, a progressive denomination which is pro-choice, pro-lgbt equality, pro-social justice, while firmly rooted in Biblical tradition. We like to say our faith is 2000 years old, but our thinking is not. Our tradition has always valued education, enlightenment, and liberty of conscience, though like our country also founded on those ideals has sometimes had trouble getting there. As a Congregationalist, yeah the Salem Witch Trials were us. I have no problem acknowledging history, but we’re no more responsible for that than modern Germans are for the Holocaust and with various denominations it is completely unfair to pin the sins of one branch of Christianity on all of Christianity.
Heck just read the Bible itself, especially the Gospels. Jesus’ message was one of love not hate, of inclusion not exclusion. He went out of his way to associate with those that society had otherwise marginalized. When asked point blank, “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment of the law?” He replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your spirit, and all your strength.” He went on to volunteer that the second greatest commandment was like it: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” He went on to emphasize that, “Upon these two commandments rest all of the Law and the Prophets” and in Luke’s Gospel illustrates His point with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Of course, all the great religions come down to those points though worded slightly differently. For example Rabbi Hillel is quoted as saying, “That which is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor; that is the whole of the Torah – the rest is commentary.” Likewise it is a pillar of Islam to serve others and give charitably.
It’s bad enough the Religious Right and the Roman Catholic hierarchy act as though they speak for all Christians. The last thing we need is the secular left agreeing with them on that particular point.
My brand of Christianity is emphatically not anti-woman. Women may and do serve in all aspects of life and ministry of the church whether lay or ordained. We also are not anti-science. There are scientists in my own local church and throughout the denomination. We don’t see God as a substitute for science; God is a matter of faith and thus another realm entirely. You’ll find that much of what I said in this and the previous comment applies not just to UCC/Congregationalism, but Mainline Protestantism generally.
… generally comes in two flavors. The first is to claim that science and religion are completely orthogonal to each other, the so-called non-overlapping magisteria concept. The other is the claim that they do overlap, but are not in conflict, the position of the Templeton foundation.
Since you’re arguing for the former, I’d point out that to maintain this dichotomy depends on religion keeping to it’s on sphere, which it rarely does. That is, religion should give up on making any testable claims, or run the risk of being falsified. History shows us that this notion is a small minority of religious thought – that religions do make and have made testable claims pretty routinely.
…lest you think I’m ignoring some inconvenient elements, I do acknowledge that there are passages in the Bible which modern enlightened people would struggle to adhere to – those that condemn homosexual acts, subordinate women to men, and accept slavery. These passages are products of their time and place as people (fallible mortals all) tried to understand God. They pale in significance to the overall theme of the Bible and as Hillel put it “just commentary”.
…. are we saying that the gospels some how misquote Jesus on slavery? That god wasn’t clear enough to these people on the issue of slavery?
He was a’for it.
http://www.evilbible.com/Slavery.htm
The majority of the Bible, INCLUDING the New Testament, has this proscribed information, and it IS the overall theme. The Bible is basically a wordy tome on “how you should live your life,” and whole chapters are devoted to slaughtering tribes, raping and stealing women, and beating the hell out of slaves you own when they misbehave (but do it in the proscribed way, please!). Also, what you should and should not eat, and how many wives you should have. Cherry picking the thing only shows that you acknowledge the troublesomeness that is Christianity. Your claim of faith means that in some way, you are enabling those who adhere to a more dangerous “interpretation” of the Bible. (It’s not interpretation on your part. It’s cherry picking. Big difference. Would you ever take the passages you say are full of mercy (which Jesus never would have applied to freeing a slave or saving a gay from persecution but nevernmind) and literally chuck the rest of the Bible out the window? I mean, really create a NEW Bible publication *without* all that mayhem and killing and slave-justification in it? Call it Bible 2.0 and acknowledge only *that* tome instead of the original as the Bible of your Christianity? No? It’s too “sacred” to take the scalpel to its pages? Then you are cherry picking.)
PS God and science are antithetically opposed. Just because some denominations decide not to get involved in promoting a twisted view on science doesn’t mean your untestable hypotheses aren’t anti-science. I could start a religion today, claiming the sky will get bright purple and yellow stripes when the giant god-bird of Alcatraz comes home to roost, gather some followers who believe me, and then when science points out that this is pretty much damned unlikely, yell and scream that for ME it’s a matter of faith and you can’t tell me what to think and LA LA LA LA LA I’m not listening! You’d think I was totally nuts.
Well.
Of course, any document written 2000 years ago is not going to fare all that well on equality issues in comparison to modern society. Although, for its time, it was actually a fairly progressive document.
And as for your claim in another comment above:
This statement contradicts the reality of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the majority of the American civil rights movement in the 1960s, not to mention much of the abolitionist movement — both of which were profoundly religious.
The fact is that religion can be, and has been, used for pro-equality or anti-equality purposes alike. Blanket claims that all religion has gotten in the way of social progress is simply wrong when one actually looks at the history of social movements here in America and elsewhere.
I do not think that the phrase “throughout history” necessarily means “at every moment in history,” nor do I think that Lynne meant that. If she’d said “In every period of history,” you wouldn’t have that complaint at all. At any rate, pointing out that some religious figures have promoted progress at some times has the same validity as pointing out that some Christian religions do not oppress women to the extent that Catholicism and some others do. It doesn’t make religion a net benefit for society.
The fact that the 2000-year-old document is archaic in its social values absolutely requires that you cherry-pick which parts of it you accept, if you want to live in contemporary society. That the hierarchy of the Catholic church cherry-picks parts that militate against women’s rights puts them at odds with our society. To defend the Church because they also do some good things is a judgement that its overall effect is positive. Some of us don’t agree, and think our society and the world at large would be better off without religion in general and the RCC in particular.
that the fact that the civil rights movement and anti-slavery movements were largely driven by deeply religious conviction does not mean that “religion is a net benefit for society.” I’m not sure how one would even measure that, but there are fairly reasonable sociological arguments on both sides of that question.
However, I was responding to lynne, who provided no qualifications to her argument concerning the relationship between equality and religion. The historical reality is far more complex than she makes it.
Do you think I am so stupid as to not know a few (smattering really) people of religion did some good with their beliefs instead of bad?
Does that really wipe out the entirety of religious persecution, or what we’re seeing religious adherents do now? And that by not having a conversation about what it is about religion and magical thinking that causes this to happen, it’s really hard to address the problem?
that you would characterize the abolitionist and civil rights movements, among if not the most important social movements in American history, as a “smattering.” Not to mention that these are but two examples of religiously-based social movements in the whole of human history. Also not to mention that I am not arguing, and had not argued, the ridiculous proposition that this “wipes out the entirety of religious persecution.” I was merely responding to your completely black and white characterization of religion’s role in social history.
I find that conversations with people who despise religion to such a degree that apparently they lose the ability to accept historical fact for what it is are not much more fruitful than people who base their entire argument on untestable faith.
Let me try an analogy.
Men abuse their wives and children all too often. When a valid claim against a wife- or child-abuser surfaces, the most common “defense” is something along the lines of “but look at all the good things he’s done …”
Anyone who knows even a little history knows that organized religion has done good things — your example of the abolitionist movement and certain portions of the civil rights movement being to fine examples.
As you observe, however, even these are not black and white (no pun and intended). Many of the Christian denominations in the US split over the abolitionist and civil rights movements. The reason that the “Southern Baptist” convention exists separately from, for example, the American Baptists is because white members of the Baptist tradition refused to worship with blacks. It’s true that Martin Luther King was a minister. It’s also true that the churches of the America, particularly in the south, steadfastly resisted desegregation. He is sainted and lionized by most religious organizations today. This is absolutely not how many of those same religious organizations treated him while he was alive.
Similarly, the history of interracial marriage is filled with racist stances from the churches of the time.
One does not have to “despise religion” to come to the opinion that religion, at least in the last few centuries of America, has caused a great deal of grievous harm, no matter how much good some of them may have also done.
In this case, the Catholic church is perpetuating a long and disturbing institutional misogyny. We can argue about its motivations, we can argue about what causes what, but at the end of the day it is still true that this policy being promulgated by this church today is sexist, through and through.
I’m not sure if that’s what Lynn is trying to say in her words, but that’s what I discern from her commentary here.
This policy is sexist. This stance is sexist. The fact that it comes from a religious organization makes it, if anything, even more distasteful. It is most emphatically NOT an attack on religion to insist that this kind of abuse — especially the egregiously intrusive legislation being pushed by the religious right in Virginia — must be stopped.
I agree wholeheartedly. However, lynne’s comments in this thread go well beyond the Virginia legislation. As she put it:
Hard to see how that’s not a generalized “attack” on religion.
Religion (and all magical thinking”) is a cancer.
The less a society has members that think magically, the better it becomes, the more fair, the less bigoted, and the more caring of the environment and each other. The lowest rates of infant mortality, higher rates of education, etc, all seem to occur in countries with fewer believers. I doubt that’s a coincidence. When you think prayer is an answer to illness or ill fortune, and thus enabling *some* in society to think it’s the *only* answer to such…well, the outcomes suffer.
Think about it: the most educated countries in the world are less religious. They abandon magical thinking and thus, magical thinking has less and less influence on their policies and politics.
Our religious (and not just right wing!) devotion to nod and smile and pay for everything that Israel perpetrates on Palestinians (in lands Israel violently took over mere decades ago).
Our policy there is 100% informed by religion. For right winger Christians, it literally is about an apocalyptic vision of the second coming.
Yeah, but religion doesn’t harm anyone really in today’s society. It’s mostly a net good. /snark
… abolitionism and the civil rights movement isn’t properly a narrative of the religious correcting a problem – it’s a narrative of religion finally catching up to morality.
This ‘catching up’ issue isn’t unique to abolitionists, as King recognizes with regard to the civil rights movement.
On a great many moral issues, including ones that they claim as triumphs, religion was late to the party.
I’d ditch the lube.
My post from yesterday on what our own state is up to on this score.
Any word on if this can ever get any traction? Should we be worried?
…at least in the short term. The abortion bill is part of the legislative agenda of Mass. Citizens for Life, a group whose persistence has so far not been matched by success.
I was particularly interested in the 15 legislators who apparently see no conflict between advocating for this particular mandate while opposing mandates in general. But a lot more than those 15 legislators are co-sponsors of the abortion bill (link in my post). Since apathy is a fertile ground for mischief, it would certainly not hurt if constituents who oppose the bill heard from them.
If the point of forcing this procedure prior to an abortion is have the woman see the fetus, how do they propose to force her to look at the monitor? Will they duct tape her face down pointing toward the monitor, then also duct tape her eyes open? Will the doctor stand there and dictate to the woman that she must look at the monitor before he can continue with the procedure? I can’t BELIEVE the nerve of these legislators to even bring this legislation forward.
A Clockwork Orange, or its homage, Robot Chicken, myself.
It seems to me it would be a lot more productive if this community would stop arguing about religion and start talking about ways people here and in Virginia can get involved and rise up against this horrible anti-woman law.
Albeit I did not bring it up, I am just sick of people enabling the religionists to do such things by taking a discussion of religion off the table.
At least after the first week or so of pregnancy? Just curious.
Your comment titled “Jesus and Slavery” above is full of inaccuracies. I’m pretty knowlegdeable on the teachings if I do say so myself and I’m fairly certain Jesus Himself said nothing about slavery or homosexuality (or reproductive rights for that matter). There are passages on these topics in the Old Testament (right along side really picky things that nobody but the most orthodox of Jews even remember exist today let alone attempt to practice) and letters of Paul. For the Old Testament I would point out that much has been superseded by the New Testament and for Paul I would say he’s entitled to his opinions, but the rest are entitled to disagree. Paul in many ways is the first of what I would call by the oxymoronic-sounding term “Old Testament Christian” which is how I would describe much of the Religious Right. Many scholars believe that Paul, a Roman Citizen Hellanized Jew Pharisee who was part of the establishment in every way on both religious and political grounds (and was originally a chief persecuter of Christians) sanitized the much more radical teachings and attitudes of Jesus himself. It does not take much interpretation to understand what Jesus meant when He gave a direct answer to the inquiry about the GREATEST commandment.
Regarding testable claims, there are forms of Christianity, and other religions for that matter, that attempt to do this, but there also many of us who reject those attempts and I implore you to acknowledge and understand the difference. Even the basic question, “Is there a God?” has no objective, fact-based answer. I would answer in the affirmative because (but only because) I believe it not because I can prove it; that is what makes it faith rather than science. Nothing wrong with that, but equally nothing wrong with you answering this question in the negative, because for you He doesn’t exist. Myths about God creating man notwithstanding we must remember that anthropologically man creates his God. I for one am completely on board with evolutionism and get quite worked up when Creationism is taught as a fact or even plausible theory. I’m sure that the historical Jesus was conceived like the rest of us and stayed dead like the rest of us. I believe that many of the miraculous and supernatural events described in the Bible were myths, metaphors, or simply not explanable by the available science of the time. I’m joined by many on my side of the Christian spectrum in these beliefs and have no problem with the idea that we have a mythology just like any other religious tradition.
so the Jews like slavery and hate homosexuals, but Jesus fixed everything up.
Got it.
I figure your comment was made at least partly in jest, but needless to say I don’t think this is the important takeaway from the differences between the Old and New Testaments. Instead, the important takeaway is that these writings are simply products of their time. When the New Testament was written, certain aspects of society were (at least marginally) more progressive than when the Old Testament was written. Today things are much more socially progressive than when either the Old or New Testament was written.
The point being that social progress or regress has little to do with religion itself, which can be (and has been) used to either reinforce or challenge dominant anti-equality social mores.
… there are claims from your religion that you would assert are true, yes? When you say that “…’Is there a God?’ has no objective, fact-based answer” I would think that the reasonable thing to take from that premise is to withhold judgement on god’s existence, which I assume you don’t. I suspect that when you said ‘answer’ what you meant was ‘proof’. After all, if you believe in God then you believe that there is an objective answer to the question ‘Is there a god?’ and that you’ve found it. The pivot on the word ‘proof’ distinguishes between ‘objectively true’ with ‘objectively knowable’.
We need to recognize that religion is simply a tool; nothing more, nothing less. That is, religion is a human invention that can be put to use either for good or for ill depending on who is wielding it. Blaming religion — either in whole or in part — for the ills of mankind is like blaming the hammer when someone uses it to bash in someone else’s skull rather than to drive a nail. What determines whether a hammer is used to drive a nail or bash a skull? What determines whether religion is used to bring about “heaven” or “hell” (either literally or metaphorically)? For better or for worse, it all comes down to intention.
… religion short. Certainly it’s a human invention and it certainly has uses and can be used, but a claim that “religion is simply a tool” sells short all that religion claims to encompass. Religions, in general, are not ‘simply‘ a tool, they are also a collection of claims (testable or otherwise) about many things not the least of which is (usually) the nature of the universe. They usually prescribe and proscribe on the basis of authority derived from those beliefs. Certainly these claims have a use as a tool, but they aren’t asserted for their utility,… they are asserted for their allegedly accurate description of truth. When the WBC claim to be protesting funerals because of a religious ‘calling’, I take them at their word.
The areas we tend to get into trouble with religion come into being on account of two phenomena. The first is the reliance on faith beyond evidence and the second is a claim to authority. Those two things, when taken in context together, produce a mighty concoction that can and does drive action, and as we see here, legislation.
Though related to both of the two features of religion that you cite, I think the broader issue with intermixing religion and politics directly is simply that we’ve recognized that absolutist claims do not coexist well with a pluralistic society. Religious dogma is often absolutist in nature, which to me is the bigger problem than reliance on faith or claims to authority.
Of course, the extent to which specific legislation is “really” driven by either absolutist religious claims or reasonable secular purposes is not always easy to discern.
“…absolutist claims do not coexist well with a pluralistic society.”
Gravity is an absolutist claim, but it is absolutist with the caveat that it is open to revision on new evidence. In this way, belief in an absolutist claim can be very rational. The problem with Religious dogma is that it is dogma – not open to evidentiary change.
… attitudes of women:
Democratic Women Boycott House Contraception Hearing After Republicans Prevent Women From Testifying
So precisely because this hearing is about religious liberty and not contraception (as if the two didn’t overlap) women are inappropriate to speak on the question.
You can’t make this stuff up.
The first thought this image provoked in me was “Salem Witch Trial”.
What a terrifyingly awful day for women. This misogyny must be stopped. NOW.
…it took a couple of clicks to figure out who Ms. Fluke is and as far as I can tell is a random law student who happens to be female. If the Democrats want to call Issa’s bluff on the argument that the hearing is about religious liberty there are plenty of women in positions of religious leadership who I’m sure can help them out.
… would have been informative in that her experience in the matter is first hand.
It was on point as her situation was analogous and exemplary of an exemption’s consequences.
… when we can hear the pontification of old men?
We should respect them because they wear clerical collars, and therefore cloak their misogyny with church-speak.
[snark-off]
Christopher, the point you continue to apparently miss is that many of us are sick to death of hearing from men and/or women “in positions of religious leadership”. The idea that only religious leaders have anything substantive to say about religious liberty is precisely the kind of thing that is getting us in trouble here.
I would rather hear from real women, including Ms. Fluke, than hear from a random religious leader who happens to be female.
…and frankly not very progressive. Religion is part of our society and provide important voices, though certainly not the only voices, on the issues of the day. Sometimes others will agree and sometimes they won’t, which in a pluarlistic society is just fine. Especially on issues affecting religious institutions of course they should have a voice. If you deny that then really, you’re just as bad as those who deny women THEIR place in the discussion about issues affecting them.
Mr. Lynne, you found a different source that provides more information about Ms. Fluke than the links I clicked through, so I accept her place in this discussion.
I wrote my comment in response to the following from you:
Whether you intended it or not, what I heard was “regular people don’t count” (your precise words were “a random law student who happens to be female”). Instead, you apparent preference was for “women in positions of religious leadership”.
My family of origin was Southern Baptist, I spent more than thirty years as a reasonably fervent Episcopalian, and so I have a certain resistance towards the idea that only people in “positions of religious leadership” have “important” voices. Balderdash.
I have not suggested that anyone be denied a voice (the Republicans on the committee are doing a fine job of that). I am instead reacting to your apparent assumption that regular people (like a “random law student who happens to be female”) should be ignored in preference to people with “important voices”.
But perhaps we have all beat this horse to death. I have no particular wish to change you, and presumably you feel the same towards me. We have very different perspectives on religion and the role it plays in society. Perhaps the most we can ask for is that we have a “candid and frank exchange of views” and then move on.
If the person coming to testify is the president of this, or the Commissioner of that, they testify first, signed up by a smiling lobbyist, while most of the committee is still in the room to listen. If the person wishing to testify is not a ‘stakeholder’ but a mere citizen taking time off from work on their own dime – they wait until the bitter end when maybe one or two legislators are still around. Just saying. I know because I have shut my office (a defacto pay cut since I am self employed) and waited 4 to six hours to testify many, many times on issues I care about, such as the hearings on child abuse and over hauling foster care.
…and just conclude by saying maybe I wasn’t clear. I don’t think that religious voices are the ONLY legitimate voices. I also did acknowledge what Mr. Lynne found more information about Ms. Fluke that is relevant to this discussion. I do generally assume that Congress is interested in “expert” testimony from people in the relevant fields – not so much from “regular folks” like either you or me for that matter. I also was trying to follow the logic of Chairman Issa, not agreeing with it (I find I’ve had a hard time conveying when I’m using logic without agreeing with it; maybe that’s a weakness in my argument skills.) to suggest that if Chairman Issa were sincere in his excuses about his hearing being about religious liberty and thus only calling religious leaders he should be willing to call religious leaders who disagree with him or if he used that as a way to block women again he should be willing to call religious leaders who are women. Basically I was suggesting that if Democrats suggest such a witness and Issa still refuses Issa’s real agenda will be exposed to those unlike us who aren’t paying quite as close attention.
How very non-progressive of you! This is in response to comments titled “It is” and “case in point” (with apologies that Explorer doesn’t allow me to nest comments anymore). Your description of Christianity leaves out much of Mainline Protestantism, and especially the United Church of Christ, the statistics for which show that our levels of education ARE higher in aggregate than for many denominations. As for Israel, you are correct about how the Religious Right sees that issue, but the United Church of Christ (and maybe others) take a much more nuanced and balanced view of that conflict. We have passed resolutions calling out Israel and supporting human rights of Palestinians from time to time. I’m completely OK with your opinion that religious views can be subject to scrutiny especially when they affect policy, but the truly progressive attitude would be to show some respect, and at very least get your facts straight before you criticize.
Sorry, Christopher, but the UCC is not representative of “Christianity”. According to WikiPedia, the Southern Baptist convention alone has about 16M congregants, compared to about 2M for the UCC. WikiPedia claims that the Roman Catholic church claims 68.5M congregants, but that number is inflated by the way the Roman Catholic church counts members (once born into the church, it is essentially impossible to be “de-enrolled”).
What you call a “stereotype” is what many people simply experience. For example, America is the only first-world nation that simply denies the fact of anthropomorphic global warming — a substantial contributor to that denial is right-wing protestant fundamentalist Christianity. Similarly, America is the only first-world nation where teaching evolution in science classes is still remotely controversial.
Where else in the world do significant numbers of people still claim that the Earth is 6,000 years old? Where else in the world to significant numbers of people claim a literal belief in each and every word of the King James Bible (though they are a bit evasive about which version is the officially Blessed One)?
In my experience, America’s slide into religious extremism has two clear milestones. It began with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and turned precipitously for the worse response to the 9/11 attacks.
I sincerely hope that the rabid right and Catholic Church have overplayed their hand in this campaign, just as they overplayed their hand with the Schiavo fiasco. One would think that being burned by the likes of Rick Santorum is enough, but apparently at least some Americans want more.
That would make me guilty of exactly what makes me cringe about the Relgious Right and to some extent Roman Catholicism. You call the stereotype experience, but isn’t that EXACTLY what stereotypes are based on? Isn’t it just as wrong to pigeonhole a whole religion based only on one’s own experience as it is pigeonhole, say, a whole race based on anecdotal bad experiences with members of that race? So, experience is no excuse for stereotyping and I am appalled that a progressive would defend that logic. If you add together all of Mainline Protestantism you can get a few million more. I count as Mainline Protestantism (without inviting debate on who should or shouldn’t be included, but for the sake of argument): The United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), the American Baptist Convention, The Episcopal Church, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. The point is that even if we are the minority there ARE MILLIONS of Christians who belong to moderate/liberal denominations and we are sick and tired both of the Right dominating the public perception of Christianity and the Left assuming that the Right is correct in that regard. I don’t agree with Creationism any more than you do, but it is a symptom of a particular brand of Christianity, not of Christianity in general. Global warming denial is almost entirely the realm of business interests and to the extent they unite with religious interests it is only in the context of the Republican coalition. Fact of the matter is that many Evangelicals are on board with environmental protection because they see it as a duty to be good stewards of God’s Creation. My point is I, a practicing Christian also lament, that we have not kept up on certain enlightened policies, so don’t go blaming all of us when clearly all of us are not responsible.
The many jumps in “logic” that lead you to be “appalled” are your own. The claim of “stereotyping”, like the claim of bigotry, is your own.
I freely grant that there are reasonable voices within Christianity, I’ve never challenged that. Sadly, those reasonable voices are not influencing this campaign and have been largely silent in national politics since 9/11.
It is long past time for all those millions of Christians who are “sick and tired … of the Right dominating the public perception of Christianity” to act. Whining about people like lynne, me, and “the Left” is hardly helpful, especially when you so often defend the statements of right-wing Christianity in so doing. You create the distinct impression that your attachment to protecting the church is far important to you than your passion for progressive causes.
I’m not blaming all of you, and after years of correcting you after you make the same insulting accusations, I wonder why it is so difficult for you to understand the difference. “All” is not “many” and “all” is not “the majority”. We first argued about this years ago when you had similar difficulty differentiating between “All Catholic priests are child abusers” and “Some Catholic priests are child abusers”.
It is not “stereotyping” to observe that the fundamentalist right wing of Christianity dominates the political and media culture today. That doesn’t say that “all” Christians are fundamentalist right-wingers. For whatever reasons, those fundamentalists have the microphone and you don’t. One of the reasons I fled the Episcopal parish where I worshiped for nearly thirty years was its unwillingness to take a stand against right-wing public policy (in that case, the looming Iraq invasion of 2003). The clergy of that parish NEVER DENOUNCED the torture and abuse done by the US government. They preferred to babble about heaven and “love” and “spirituality” and similar churchy topics. There may be millions of “moderate/liberal” Christians — if so, where are their voices?
If you are one of them, doesn’t it make more sense for you to focus your comments on attacking right-wing extremists instead of defending them?
When media reports of “Christian activists” describe political movements to stop the death penalty, or efforts to punish Christian political officials who sanction torture and kidnapping, or congressional testimony demanding that our most poor, most ill, most aged, and least powerful citizens be provided for by the wealthiest nation in human history, then I’ll be more sympathetic to claims about all the efforts those “moderate/liberal denominations” make.
Right now, the right wing dominates the public face of American Christianity. Like it or not, that is a simple fact.