Tag: Planned Parenthood

A Good Guy With a Penis…

.Reading time 5 minutes.

Now that, thanks to Alabama, we are on the road BACK to the Supreme Court to legislate women’s bodies, their rights and their legitimacy, I’m wondering where the good guy with a penis comes in? “Gun rights” (a total oxymoron) activists think that somehow more people with guns will stop the bad actors with guns in emergencies, when it has clearly been proven that more guns simply mean more gun deaths[1].  So, by this kind of logic doesn’t it stand to reason that if women can’t be trusted to have responsibility for their bodies that there would be more onus on men to NOT impregnate them?

Apparently, men have nothing to do with pregnancy except being able to tell a woman what she must do with it.  Men are not mentioned ONCE in HB 314, even though German death camps (yes, the bill can’t seem to stomach to name Nazis or The Holocaust) and Chinese and Rwandan genocide are mentioned[2].  The bill does manage to invoke the founding fathers by reminding us that “In the United States Declaration of Independence, the principle of natural law that “all men are created equal” was articulated” in the same breath that the bill mentions “the American civil rights movement” (yes, you read that correctly…small “c”), the “anti-slavery movement” and the Nuremberg war crimes trials (?!?!?!). Never mind that the phrase “all men” as written by Jefferson and accepted by his narrow demographic peers quite intentionally did not include non-white humans of any kind, indentured people and most certainly not people with a vulva.

There are 140 seats in the Alabama state legislature.  Of those seats, only 22 are held by women (15.7%) and of those 22 there are only 7 Republicans[3] of which Rep. Terri Collins who introduced the bill is one.  Still HB 314 passed with only one Democratic “yea” vote. Men did this.  Men commit marital rape.  Men force women to get abortions.  Men force women to raise children alone.  Men did this.

In a country that has never properly acknowledged how it was built on the rape of non-white women to produce more white wealth, the direction of HB 314 does not bode well.  History tells us that men won’t hold each other accountable for the way women are abused, whether that be in a domestic violence situation or in this situation with the right to manage pregnancy.  We watched it with the Kavanaugh trial with the Stanford rape case and countless other campus rapes, and we see it now.  There is no good guy with a penis.  Men in the United States are culturally biased to regard women as possessions that are subject to their will and to ignore their agency…sometimes in settings where “boys will be boys” and sometimes quite publicly, as they are now.

These state laws restricting and eliminating a woman’s divine right to manage her body and its ability and responsibilities with regard to conception cannot stand.  For a religious leader like me they are a total denial of the Unitarian Universalist Principles and they should be fought as an affront to religious liberty.  Roe v. Wade must be preserved and permanently protected.  What is more, there need to be much more explicit laws and activism concerning men’s role in the creation of life.  If men are so concerned about the sanctity of life, where are the Anti-Impregnation movements?  Where are the legal restrictions on men and ejaculation?  Why aren’t we legislating Viagra and erections?  Because men operate under the grossly misconceived assumption that every guy with a penis is good.  Frankly, we’d be safer if they all had guns.

If you’re wondering what kind of dismal prospects exist for those who may be at risk of carrying a pregnancy to term after an incestuous rape, have a look at Alabama’s age of consent laws which are entirely binary gendered and refer to non-vaginal sex as “deviate” (HERE)

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081

[2] https://legiscan.com/AL/text/HB314/id/1980843/Alabama-2019-HB314-Introduced.pdf

[3] http://www.ncsl.org/legislators-staff/legislators/womens-legislative-network/women-in-state-legislatures-for-2019.aspx

Liberal Religion…Where Are You?

.Reading time 7 minutes.
MIssissippi Aborton
The death of religious liberty, signed into law. (Photo: KTVZ)

Religious liberty is under attack, and liberals, progressives and even the centrist Democratic Party is nowhere to be found.  Not a single Democratic candidate has found their footing in addressing the religious based bigotry that is being put into law across the country at the urging of radically conservative Christian factions in the United States.  In the vacuum left by moderating faith voices, the shrill and draconian voice of Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and numerous others in the Trump Administration has created an environment that has emboldened states to actively turn back the clock to pre-Roe v. Wade days and further.  The latest fetal heartbeat law, just enacted in Mississippi makes this state now nearly impossible for women seeking abortion services (there is only one clinic in the entire state.)  This law was driven by conservative religious groups just as was the “religious exemption” in the Affordable Care Act, the anti-transgender bathroom bills and the wedding cake bills.  What is more, the administration has aligned itself with global faith-based partners to limit access to a variety of reproductive health care and social protection options that make it clear that this administration is working overtime to push an agenda that is entirely shaped by a narrow religious perspective on human sexuality.

But this should be no surprise.  One look at the Republican Party Platform and the religious agenda is in plain sight.  The platform mentions the word “faith” in the context of religion 22 times in its 66 pages and includes an entire section on the first amendment and religious liberty.  This strategy has galvanized a portion of the party around a religious ideology that calls itself victim while restricting women’s rights, erasing LGBTQ people and ignoring the racial and economic realities of HIV/AIDS at the cost of yet more black and brown lives.  The Republican Party Platform should in fact be called the “Conservative Religious Party Platform.”

And Democrats are silent.

The Democratic Party Platform mentions the word “faith” once and the word “religion” four times and always in the context of civil rights.  Many applaud this absence, believing that the separation of church and state must begin in politics.  As I watch the march toward government endorsed limitation and oppression being led by rabidly conservative faith, I know that silence is the most dangerous response.  Ignoring these legislative efforts as being the actions of fringe outliers, is a mistake.  After blocking most of Obama’s court appointments, the Mitch McConnell endorsed Trump Administration has successfully stacked the national courts with young conservative justices who are aligned with the Republican platform and its faith based agenda.  They are the buffer that will keep these obscene laws in place.

I do believe that there must be a bright light between religion and government. But politics is an entirely ideological exercise and even just from a strategic standpoint, one has to recognize the power of religion in that dialogue.  Although politics should never be driven by religion, it must always answer to ethical, moral and yes, religious ideals, that are the personal level of the political game.  This is why we talk about a candidate’s family, or their like-ability or how we trust them.  The challenge for Democrats is that with such a ‘big tent’ attempting to be inclusive of such a wide swath of religious ideologies, this could appear to be an impossible task.  The result is that candidates largely avoid the topic altogether, except when trying to court orthodox communities or telling their personal stories.

The current and growing slate of Democratic candidates for the 2020 Presidential Election must recognize and address the religious war that is unfolding on the state legislative level and in communities across the country.  The candidates must put a stake in the ground around faith in the public discourse and they must be willing to take the counsel of not just traditional Judeo-Christian leaders with large and devout “flocks”.  What is more, they can’t just court Islamic leaders simply as a “show” of faith and solidarity.  The smart Democratic candidate will convene a coalition of faith leaders that also includes Unitarian Universalists (like myself), Bahá’í, Buddhist, Humanist/Atheist and other spiritual/ethical voices that have a broad reach to create a platform that defends true religious liberty by bringing in as many perspectives as possible.

Religious liberty is under attack.  If non-conservatives, religious nones and liberal faith leaders do not place themselves squarely in the dialogue about politics, religion and society, our voices will be permanently legislated out of the discourse.  WE will be the fringe. The evolution of belief, the ability to activate global reach and increasingly fluid dialogue between cultures requires that faith leaders of all stripes be ready to fight for both freedom of religion and freedom from religion when necessary.   This is the unique position on faith that a progressive candidate has the opportunity to leverage.  My fear is that without this effort, we will all be headed to a new dark ages and the tools to create enlightenment will be out of our reach, just like what has now happened in Mississippi.

– ALD