Are Republicans warming up the jail cells they want to put American women into who have the temerity to continue using birth control after the GOP’s bans take effect?
Roe or not, birth control or not, same sex marriage or not...What is the basis for yes or no? None of it is explicitly covered in the Constitution. Zero. The originality idea indicates that since none of the above is mentioned, there is no basis to rule constitutionally on any of it. The Bible is NOT - I repeat - NOT - a basis for laws. So who makes morality? Who judges? The Church - whichever one you follow - is not the arbiter of law in our society. There are common sense laws that follow our right to pursue life, liberty and happiness. That one, for example, can’t murder somebody or steal another’s property (tell that to our white collar criminals). So, even if, as Thomas states, eliminate the cases that are/were law, it doesn’t and shouldn’t stop abortions, contraception, types of marriage, since none of it is in the Constitution and none of it violates common sense laws. Why do we give so much power to these entities that supposedly enforce morality (while violating it with child abuse, rape, tax exempt status, money laundering). If people want to attend a church and use that as their moral compass, that’s great. I don’t stand in anyone’s way. But the same people don’t get to tell me how to live my life.
By the same token, there is no mention of free speech in the constitution, only that Congress shall make no law, abridging speech or assembly. Yet the courts give the likes of Trump a right not in the constitution.. The right to say anything he wants, same with the seditionists and traitors
The last congress in it's waning days (it had 22 days) before the Republican congress took over, passed a law (the Defense of Marriage Act) that legalize gay marriage, federally, as by that time, the public had come to a consensus that they were OK with such.
They also had the same opportunity, to legalize abortion through the country, but failed to do so. Question is why? Perhaps there were too many Democrats who were actually opposed to abortion
Anyway Congress was smart, it included interracial marriage in their law, and that alone shut Clarence Thomas up. The man thinks that because he is a pimp for Harlan Crowe and has a white wife, that he is not black anymore, and that his peers are rich, white men and women.
Malcolm X had a name for himhttps://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=malcolm+x+house+negro
Kudos! I wonder if your approach: let's get original, then, fascist "Supreme" Court, could come into play if there is a showdown between the Legislative Branch legislating rights and the religio-fascist Court saying no, can't do that. Problem is, do we end up with Dodd, let the States deal with it, which is a horror show?
This is an extraordinary read. Not only the outrageous SCOTUS and ADF f*ckery, but the personal anecdotes at the Vatican and in Columbia. Your daily newsletter is the most important one to land in my inbox each day. Thank you for sounding the alarm.
The current GOP is the American Taliban in action; whether the laws come from the Bible or the Koran, the mentality justifying their use as a basis of laws for everyone, comes from the same source: religious belief. By definition each faith system sees itself as the ONE TRUE FAITH. With hundreds, if not thousands of faith systems throughout history the concept is ludicrous on its face.
The irony is that the "privacy principle" which is the foundation underpinning Roe v Wade, et al. is the same principal at the foundation of religious freedom: "believe what you will, but don't impose your beliefs on me". Of course, the GOP would not be able to comprehend irony if they stepped in it.
The acceptability of any mutual sexual behavior must rest on the mutual consent of the participating parties; rape occurs when mutual consent is lacking. Similarly, consent is required for any acceptance of or conversion to any faith system. Metaphorically, spiritual rape occurs when a faith system is imposed either at the point of a sword, or by a SCOTUS ruling the ignores or seeks to undermine the "right to privacy".
In a Moslem country. A woman who says she was raped, must have four male witnesses, as females are no considered people, if there were four male witnesses they would be accomplices, thus hardly any cases of rape are reported, just like Iran saying there are no gays in Iran. Those that are caught are subjected to sexual reassignment surgery.
As a consequent raped women are considered adultresses,and covered with a white sheet, buried up to her waste and then stoned to death by the crowd.
Wow! Every article you write is amazing but THIS! Women and men against tyranny need to read this! And the main cause is not religion at all. It’s power and greed. So many powerful nations are experiencing declining birth rates which means less economic and physical power. The more young slaves forced to produce the better for the wealthy and powerful. Disgusting. Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry wo/men? Let’s make it deafening!
Based on the best-selling novel by Margaret Atwood, this series is set in Gilead, a totalitarian society in what used to be part of the United States. Gilead is ruled by a fundamentalist regime that treats women as property of the state, and is faced with environmental disasters and a plummeting birth rate. In a desperate attempt to repopulate a devastated world, the few remaining fertile women are forced into sexual servitude. One of these women, Offred, is determined to survive the terrifying world she lives in, and find the daughter that was taken from her.
I remember when The Handmaid's Tale came out. Your description ,DMS, is better than the magazine book-reviews I read at the time. I was not much impressed with it as a work of science fiction. Although, I must admit, Atwood is good with words.
You are absolutely right, religion is the excuse, for almost everything, what the real motive is, is power and control. Religion is the tool that clouds mens minds, religion is used as a means to control people. Using an ethereal carrot and stick, (heaven and hell), It really was most effective on ignorant minds, and the church used it to strike terror in battle hardened knights, hence the crusades.
Out of print now, but a great book, that dissects the Bible is "Word Controlled Humans" by John Harlan. Religion, as Constantine knew, is simply a tool by which to control people.
Having hundreds of gods, and priesthoods is pretty messy, inconvenient and expensive.
Egypt and Rome, as well as Greece had a pantheon of gods, each one had a priesthood and to satisfy the priesthoods, who were also quarreling and back stabbing for favor and money, the ruler had to waste resources building hundreds of temples throughout the land, and placating all of those greedy and quarrelsome priests.
Ahkenaton and Constantine found a solution, select one religion as the religion of the land, with one priesthood and eliminate the competition, like Manicheans.
Knowing that it had a winning tool, the Church of Rome sent out proselytizers, armed with nothing more than an argument that, the King or Chieftan, had better control over his people if hey worshiped one god, rather than a panoply of gods, and thus one priesthood who was dependent upon the king \ for his power, prestige and protection. Thus the Norse were converted from Harold Bluetooth, to Olaf Trygvasson, whom the Norse priests declare a saint, as he actually massacred all Norse who would not abandon the old gods.
The king was also dependent on the priest (Charlemagne actually created the Popehood) by selecting a poor dedraggled bishop of Rome, and making him Pope, and the Pope in turn crowned him emperor and thus Charlemagned and all subsequent kings "ruled by the grace of god".
A priest of Mani, who the church has named Augustine (meaning the great one), watched with horror as Pople Leo ("the great") threw Manicheans into the coliseum with all of the glee formerly reserved for Christians and had his "come to Jesus" moment, and cleverly worked with a Dude named Jerome to write the Latin Vulgate, in which he imported Manichean ideas, like duality (a good god, and a bad god)
You are so correct Mr. Farrar. The one and only thing all religions have in common is rules for proper and improper behavior. The rules may differ from one religion to the next. But they all have rules for behavior. Thus it should not be difficult to see what Religion is: a mechanism of human social control.
And while I am on the topic of religion; let's look at the subject of a "god." Not all religions have a god or gods in them. Western religions do. The Judeo-Christian movements claim that there is one "God" which created everything, controls everything, knows everything.
The skeptics ask: how do you come to this conclusion? The Judeo-Christian answer has been summarized by Saint Thomas Aquinas with his five proofs of the existence of god found in his Summa Theologica; the greatest Christian statement by the greatest Christian thinker ever. Here it is:
The universe exists, this we cannot deny. "Something" had to bring it into existence. That "Something" is what we call "God," "Yaweh." The universe had, out of necessity, to be created. any thing that exists must have a beginning. It must have been caused by some agency, some "thing." We see creation all around us. That cause is "God." The effect is the universe. The preceding is a precis of the great man's 5 Summa arguments. I first read them when I was 16 years old.
Saint Thomas then went on to show why all his arguments are flawed. For this the church almost excommunicated him. But eventually the zealots came around and not only accepted him, they canonized him for the powerful and clear thinker that he most certainly was; head and shoulders above all those around him. This is how Saint Thomas refuted his own argument:
If you allow one person to use that Cause and Effect argument to explain the existence of the universe; then you must allow another person to use the same argument to say: we accept that "God" exists; so therefore something must have created "God." What created God? And that person can say an Uber-god created that god.
This argument can be repeated an infinite number of times and each time it is just as valid as the first time it was used. Which leaves us with an absurdity which has no resolution. Thus we must admit that it is not possible to prove the existence of "God."
Church leaders were livid with rage at Aquinas. Then he said we must accept the existence of "God" on faith. If we accept his existence we are rewarded with everlasting joy in heaven. If we fail to accept his existence we suffer everlasting torment in hell. After this statement they forgave his blasphemy and eventually canonized him. A verity. Control is the key.
There you have it........ At the age of 18 while standing before my grandfather's coffin, a man I truly loved, as I begged for faith I had an epiphany: There is no god, it is absurd.
Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I am. I exist. And although the greatest Anglican thinker Bishop Berkeley said I cannot prove it: you exist.
I became a Catholic, on he outside, for seven years. The woman whom I married at the time, insisted on being married in a Church (The Church of the Golden Altar in Panama city, Panama..
So I said my share of hail Mary's and Padre Nuesra's, and made up stuff to confess.
Anyway what I now is that Chrisianity, Islam and Judaism require a mentally dull mind, and beliefs requires circularity of reasoning.
As an example
I asked he question: Why do you beehive in the bible.
The answer is "It is the word of god".
How do you know it is the word of god?
Because it says son in the bible. Substitute Yahwah or Allah and it is the same.
The bible is the word of god because it says so in the bible is the word of god because it says so in the bible is he word of god e bible is the word of god because it says so in the bible is he word of god ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
And why do people believe, because of
1. Authority tells them to.
2, The carrot and stick
3. The crap that they hear from authority, assuages their fears, fulfills their needs for protection , security and emotional care, and for superiority and control. (The former is female needs, the latter male needs)
Yes Mr. Farrar that circular reasoning is referred to in treatises on logic as "Petitio Principii" small circle. Religion is full of small circles with minute radii.
Do you agree that a x produces y and that y is the cause of X, that we have a case of circular reasoning or Petitio Principii.?
X is gravity and Y is mass. Newton's theory of mass gravity
Where in scientists, without thinking it through, because Newton is sacrosanct and his theories are "holy writ" postulated that gravity is a property of mass, and then the bright minds of science concluded that mass is the source of gravity. That's how they believe the universe was ordered. And because there is not enough mass in the universe to account for the suns and plantery bodies, not to mention moons and the Kepler belt, they had to find a way to save themselves from embarrassment, so they invented Dark Matter, and as of late they have invented another invisibile and ethereal force.
If the model doesn't fit, then adjust the model, that is inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning would h ave them, setting aside the theory, doing some more research and adjusting, but you can't with inductive reasoning.
Here is my opinion, and it is only that. Gravity is a current force, produced by a current process, the same process that creates our electro magnetic field, the same process that creates the Van Allen Belt.
And a current process, cools over time, and as it cools the gravitic field is weakened.
This notion, fits Occam's Razor as it accounts for the reason why dinorsaurs and ground sloths and mastaons grew so large, and why they have disappeared. It also explains the origin of water on earth, as there is too much water, so scientists theorize being bombarded with snowballs from space, without any idea where such snowballs originated.
Too much to go into at the moment, but I have a long, long rant, and invoke NASA, who knows it, and Dentists who also know that it is stress on bones, that create bone mass, and stress is induced by perambulating in the current gravitic atmospheric environment.
Mr. Farrar, I agree with all you say except for the size of dinosaurs. There is a glitch in it. But not important enough to argue over. I understand what you are saying about dentists and bones. There is a counter argument not worth laying out here.
I do like your "current" theory and your attempt to formulate a general theory of forces in the universe. Einstein spent his entire adult life trying to formulate such a theory and a mathematical model to go along with it while he was in the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton. He failed. I am always amused at how people refer to Einstein as though he successfully revealed the inner secrets of the universe to us. He did not. He failed again and again all his life.
He was awarded the Nobel for his mathematical model of how electrons are emitted from a cathode in a vacuum tube. Not for coming up with a nuclear theory. He got this award for work he did when he was about 21 and an employee in a patent office in Switzerland. He had never been in a physics laboratory. Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg gave us nuclear theory with their laboratory work. Enrico Fermi demonstrated it with his Pile of carbon blocks under the bleachers of Stagg Field at the Univ. of Chicago.
There are only three forces in the universe that we know of :
1) Short, they hold nuclei together
2) Medium, they form molecules and generate Q, or electromagnetic
effects
3) Long, Gravity, needs no description.
Einstein tried to formulate a single unifying theory and accompanying mathematical model to account for all three "Forces." He failed.
Those increasingly powerful nuclear accelerators, like the "Large Hadron Collider" in Switzerland are attempts to find out if there are any more forces we are, as yet, unaware of. There might very well be some more. It is reasonable to believe more exist. For instance can a Proton or Neutron be split? Are there forces holding them together?
Newton did not exactly propel us forward in our thinking when he said there was such a thing as "force" which held the moon in orbit and caused things to fall down. Quite the opposite. he shoved us back into the dark ages before the Renaissance. "Force" is not possible in the mechanical world revealed to us by the great Enlightenment thinkers. "Force" is a beautiful example of mysticism. A step backwards intellectually. Newton himself was disturbed by the concept of "Force," in spite of the fact that he himself was the first person to formulate the idea and generate a mathematical model for it. A model which worked stupendously well until Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg and Enrico Fermi came along. Newton was deeply religious and thought that "Force" was somehow ungodly, un-Christian. He was correct about that.
Nobody knows what "Force," is. Nobody knows what mass is. They are defined in terms of each other They are a case of petitio principii. You are most certainly correct in that.
At a certain point it is necessary to recognize that our level of knowledge is not sufficient to understand some things. Maybe our ability to understand will never be sufficient for some things in our universe. This is used by some of my acquaintances to argue in favor of a god. I do not. I simply recognize that humans have limits; limits we are not even aware of. Or, in the words of that intelligent, slimy Donald Rumsfeld: "unknown unknowns."
IMO, you are closer with "power" and right about religion, which merely codifies the eternal plight of the female. I'm going to get in trouble with Brother Farrar, here, but we are animals. The root is "the selfish gene." Now we have considerable DNA research, one observation is a startling prevalence of some contribution from Genghis Khan: one guy: around the doggone world. I humbly submit that there is a parallel between the behavior of any given conquering horde and any given, for just one instance, new male lion in a pack. Mostly the new boss is literally going to kill the defeated guys babies. The power is at root the power to make the females pregnant.
LOL. Brother Farrar here, and no I do not take exception with you. Maybe the problem with Russia is too much Mongol blood. I look at Putin, his generals and leadership and what do I see, but men with Mongol DNA.
The reason that male lions and bears, as well as other mammals, kill the babies of females that they haven't fathered, is to stop the female from lactating and thus go into estrace.
They are driven to ensure that there prodigy survive, and he can't fornicate as long as the female is lactating. A mother with cubs is something that a male doesn't want to mess with, even though he is bigger. When a female is in estrace she can't control her own body
When a male is sexually stimulated he can't control his either, except that humans are suppose to be different, but what I've seen of their behavior when it comes to sex, they really aren't that far removed from the hominids that drank out of ditches and ate grass.
The GOP has a solid history of being real handsy with women - just like most "religious" cults. Lot of parallels between the two. It's almost like they share the same playbook...
If birth control is banned in the US by the Republican Taliban, I imagine we'll be forced to acknowledge we no longer inhabit the free world - only the third world.
I wonder when the shoe is going to drop that men no longer have responsibility for child support? Because, you know, like the archbishop said, it's her fault anyway, and was it Ron Johnson who blurted out the one about there was no such thing as pregnancy from "real" rape, because she could "shut that down?" And that was awhile back.
Whee! In Az. we have a Supreme Court Justice, Bill Montgomery, who openly opposes abortion. If he doesn't recuse, he'll be deciding the fate of abortion in Az. When are young women going to get angry on a scale large enough to stop this nonsense?
My son teaches college in Arizona. He has informed me that most of his students are Mormons. Arizona was once part of a Mormon empire named Desereta.
Mormons are extreme misogynists, keep women in submission, although the official church has bent to oblige a changing social and governmental environment, and does not condone polygamy, there are breakaway Mormons who still practice it with full impunity, some have as many as 12 "sister wives". And nothing is done about them. They even have TV shows about Sister wives.
Lived here 30 years. It's not just Az, but Utah and also parts of Idaho and oregon. They are definitely a big force for right wing politics in the western states. Also probably why the Kochs and others have targeted our state legislator races and public schools. The kids coming up through the private/charter schools such as ALA (Mormon) will continue to support policies that drag us back to 1850.
If you can find a copy, you will be interested in a book: "From Housewife to Heretic," by Sonia Johnson. It documents her experience as a devout Mormon woman who was in the midst of the Mormon Church's stepping into the last breach to stop the Equal Rights Amendment. The Church, which presumably has tax-exempt status, also marshalled membership to phone-bank massively to California to stop the initiative that was going to legalize gay marriage in the State. ("Prop. 8?") (Who needs Putin's Web trolls when you command millions of obedient Mormons?)
I live in a partially Mormon neighborhood in East Mesa Az. The church here gets a lot of breaks and they run the city. Every time a school is built they get to build an indoctrination center next door on free real estate. Not kidding. The church has always said it didn't support things like plural marriage, or the Bundys, or whatever, but they never do anything to unsupport it. Lots of our state legislators are not mormon but "represent" their constituents who always vote R no matter what. My own legislators are some of the worst.
You are right, I've seen a map of Desereta. In fact the eastern part of Oregon and Washington are Alabama, the only reason the states are blue, with Democratic government is because of Portland in Oregon, King County, and Snohomish Country in Washington with help from the I-5 Corridor,and San Juan County,. The rest of the state, especially on the east side of the Cascades is as right wing as you can get.
"State of Jefferson." Aspirational unification with Northern California, where Shasta County has even been featured in the NYT for MAGA nationhood: it's not going well: literally hand count the vote? Maybe not; I don't know.
Oh they are workin' on it, Claudia. Glad you told us about your state.
From the The Conversation published 11/18/22:
"During the November 2022 midterms, voters added protection for the right to get an abortion to constitutions in California, Vermont and Michigan. Kentucky voters were asked a reverse version of this question – whether the state constitution should bar abortions. They said no."
Put American women into stir who have the temerity to continue using birth control after the GOP’s bans take effect?
Short answer. Yes.
At SCOTUS, Alito and Thomas admit that they apply "natural law" before the text of the Constitution. To them and perhaps four others, natural law is Catholic dogma.
Prior to the 1930s, the church had no official position on contraception. But on Dec. 31, 1930, Pope Pius XI issued a papal encyclical, Casti Connubii (Latin for "Of Chaste Wedlock"), which for the first time explicitly prohibited Catholics from using contraception. In 1964, Pope Paul appointed a commission on birth control to advise him. As the panel deliberated, anticipation ran high; many journalists, clergy and lay Catholics expected the church to lift the ban. Scottish songwriter Matt McGinn wrote a jaunty tune, recorded by Pete Seeger, about a woman with a house full of children waiting for the pope to “bless the pill.” She buys a package of birth control pills so she will be ready when the church acquiesces. In the final stanza, she hopes to hear the pope’s approval “before my man comes in.”
The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (5th edition) promulgated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops states that “Catholic health institutions may not promote or condone contraceptive practices but should provide, for married couples and the medical staff who counsel them, instruction both about the Church’s teaching on responsible parenthood and in methods of natural family planning” (# 52). The Bishops also declare that “Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic health care institution. Procedures that induce sterility are permitted when their direct effect is the cure or alleviation of a present and serious pathology and a simpler treatment is not available (#53). https://www.sju.edu/centers/icb/blog/what-does-the-catholic-church-teach-about-contraception#:~:text=The%20Ethical%20and%20Religious%20Directives,medical%20staff%20who%20counsel%20them%2C
Doesn't actually say that women should be prosecuted for stuff like "possession of contraceptive materials."
But as Thom said, Justice Thomas said SCOTUS should reconsider Griswold. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that a state's ban on the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy. The case concerned a Connecticut law that criminalized the encouragement or use of birth control.
When I was a kid, my dad was a DA. No spitting on the sidewalk. Abortion was illegal. F&B. Fornication and bastardy were crimes. The 3 p's. Pimping, pandering and prostitution. If the policed charged anybody, my dad took the case through a "preliminary hearing" to the grand jury. I remember a few juicy cases.
Prior to 1965 contraception was probably illegal but I do not remember any prosecutions. The first condoms made of rubber were made in 1855 and by the 1860s, rubber condoms were being mass produced. Skin condoms were still more popular though, because they were cheaper and the early rubber ones tended to fall off. In 1920 came latex, made using a process with rubber suspended in water. The first oral contraceptive, Enovid, a mix of the hormones progesterone and estrogen, was approved in 1960 by the FDA.
I remember that my mother held stock in one of the first pills.
I don't believe that PA law at the time would have implicated people caught with rubbers in their possession.
Thanks for the history. I stopped going to confession in the 1970s because I had to work every other Sunday as a condition of my job in nursing in a Catholic hospital and was told to quit by a priest. I wouldn't confess my use of birth control which made my confessions "null and void." I hoped to live until menopause so could make a good confession and I wouldn't go to hell. I haven't believed any of that for decades. I also remember that I had to have my husband's permission to get a prescription for "the pill." We can't go back.
I remember those days, "rubbers" were sold under the counter. I managed to acquire some Trojans, passed them out to the gang, everyone carried one in the wallet, just to show off, and to my knowledge none of them were used. Sex wasn't that easy, as very few kids in my age group, even in High School, owned a car, unless their Daddies were rich, like the kid whose father was a VP of Sears and Roebuck, and drove a brand new 1955 Red T-Bird and a senior who drove a new Lincoln Continental.
My Medical Center is owned by the nuns of St Joseph, which has other medical centers along the west coast, and they won't prescribe abortificents, and wouldn't birth control pills, until they became OTC. They also will not prescribe or assist in self administered euthansia.
My wifes brother died of throat cancer in California, and went out that way, the pain was too great. I stood death watch in 1964 over my uncle, who dwindled from 180 lbs of a vital, strong, healthy man, to a stinking cancerous sore (smelled like death) of a 90 lb skeleton, and the doctor warned me not to give him any morphine pills, or I would be charged with murder.
Such is the love of Christianity, better to die a painful, bed ridden, rotten living corpse, than to peacefully end your own suffering.
The largest demonstrations in my city of 27,000 were for the women's marches. They drew hundreds of people of all genders to our downtown area. So the answer to the question is simply: DEFIANCE.
Most people do not raise daughters to be a doormat or a broodmare. If a woman chooses that path, so be it, but choose is the operative word when it comes to having a large family.
How's this for irony? It's from a Google search and is talking about John Rock, one of the inventors of the pill:
"Dr Rock was a passionate campaigner for birth control but he was also a devout Catholic. It has been argued that he devised the 21/7 regimen because he believed it would make the pill acceptable to the Vatican."
If the Supreme Court Catholic members are stupid enough to do this (and they are), see you in the streets and at the voting booth. THE FUTURE IS FEMALE!
But there is escape somehow: I just wish I had the slightest consciousness of when I transitioned from a good little parent-miming reactionary prig to Green Party pioneer and eventual Hartmannista. Maybe Arianna Huffington has some insight? I do not remember some "revelation," and I guess I will die puzzled.
Some brains lean into magical thinking and some simply are not built that way. What's real, tangible, and proven won me over despite loving human imagination; it was in my mid-twenties. Brain development, curiosity, and travel is such a blessing and the results were gradual.
I was raised by atheists born in 1913 and 1915, who left their Protestant churches. I grew up for 14 years in Mormon Utah and we skied on Sundays and holidays in the 60's: best skiing in the world and uncrowded because the Mormons were in church!
I tried religion at mid-life, Catholic, due to a friend of my parents who was a liberal Catholic. That lasted for 10 years when they started preaching anti-abortion legislation from the pulpit. I sent a letter of formal resignation and received a phony reply from the priest in 2015.
Having a faith can be a good experience, depending on the group one is in, but the Democratic Party is good enough for me. At age 74 I'm real sick and tired of being preached to, lectured at, scolded, and bored. I loathe meetings and church is just another meeting.
It was Todd Atkin from Missouri who said that pregnancies rarely occur from "legitimate rape". It's reassuring that members within the GOP are representing not only the interests of Big Bribery, but also the little people - like "legitimate rapists".
We see from this frantic push from those on the right to outlaw birth control, to control women’s bodies and behaviors by outlawing abortion and through other means, to stop any iteration of universal health care (as discussed yesterday), and to ban books and dictate curricular content, etc., etc., the phenomenal power of an idea, and especially the power of an idea when passionately and zealously pushed by a “true believer” who has money, influence, or a position in government, an institution, or society. In the example of Hoffman yesterday, the effect is magnified when sophisticated charts, graphs, statistics, and supposedly valid scientific facts are utilized inappropriately or misused by someone with a bad idea or belief system and a pernicious agenda.
It is crucially important to identify such ideas as Thom did so effectively and thoroughly with his history lesson illuminating Hoffman’s white supremacy and with the male superiority and female blaming starting with Eve in the fabled Garden of Eden. It is also crucial to have a competing narrative or set of ideas which can be articulated plainly and used to reveal the faults in the false and erroneous ideas, beliefs, narratives, and myths.
But as Thom’s piece makes clear, power in the hands of the people who are promoting malicious or profoundly destructive ideas prevents truths from adequate exposure and acceptance. Bad ideas are spread and perpetuated when people who have power, money, and influence are in a position to block the insights and scientifically validated facts of real scholars and professionals who are using authentic science rather than pseudoscience, superstition, and fear tactics with dangerous nonsense.
There has been ample empirical evidence to prove that whites are not superior and that differences are clearly attributable to economic, social, and political inequities. The primarily religious notions of male superiority and female culpability and guilt have likewise been thoroughly discredited. Lots of other examples regarding numerous other controversies are easy to find where the myths and mistakes are revealed as false and indeed foolish. So, why do we seem to be regressing? Why are the ludicrous ideas and beliefs resurging and resurfacing and gaining adherents in many places?
Obviously, using propaganda and controlling narratives, media including literature, and educational initiatives (or outlawing education) are the most effective ways of suppressing truths, real facts, and science. This was recognized by people with a right-leaning, reactionary, control-obsessed mindset a very long time ago. They designed a pseudo-intellectual and anti-educational strategy for duping the people from the working class and the poor into believing they were going to be educated. They fooled almost everybody; even some very smart people. It was called compulsory school attendance and it was intended to condition, program, control, indoctrinate, pacify, and anesthetize the population, all while convincing them they were receiving a wonderful benefit. Their genius was in assuring by the passage of laws that arbitrary authority would always take precedence over th rights and needs of students.
We have people such as Thom who have done a deep dive into the history and logic of things such as healthcare, racism, xenophobia, white supremacy, free market fundamentalism, etc., etc. Yet no one will use that X-ray machine to examine how we came to have schools which do incredible harm, which are then revered as sacred institutions and which everyone expects to save us.
Wait. Haven’t I said all this before? Many, many times? Yes, I have. Someday, someone will get real and do the necessary work and face the bitter truth to spell it all out much better than I can. Someday, if it is not already too late.
Great comment, probably made to late for most to read. I up voted it, it deserves more.
I do take exception to one of your paragraphs about Public Education. I need look no further than my paternal ancestors.
My 5th great grandfather died after he educated his oldest son, but before he could tutor his youngest sons.
The grew up illiterate and thus at a disadvantage in business. The family had, since 1618 been planters and major players in the politics of early Virginia, until the Cavaliers fled England in the wake of the Cromwell victory. They remained planters until about 1767, when my 5th ggf died.
The family (my line) was illiterate until Thomas Mann preached universal public education.
My grandfather was the first to be educated, only to the 8th grade, my dad graduated from HS, and picked up some college credits post retirement. I have an MBA, both BA and MBA courtesy of government programs. (neither mom or me had the means to fund college), son has a PhD ,thanks to grants.
Were it not for Thomas Mann, I would have had a dismal future and would probably have died years ago from injury or disease.
Admittedly my education was less than desireable, with the exception of three teachers, most of mine were old, unmotivated and unequipped to teach, then again this was less than 10 years after WWII, and all of the potential teachers were fighting in Europe or Pacific, and teaching was left to the elderly and incompetent. My algebra teacher was bonkers,a real mental case, my English teacher (Mrs Riggs) was a stereotypical old lady in tennis shoes (that is what she wore) My American History teacher was obese and wrote on the blackboard as she talked, her upper arm bouncing and distracting, I quickly got writers cramp trying to keep up with her writing, regardless of how you tested, she failed me and anyone who didn't turn in a notebook with all of her black board scribblings.
I don't know what the school environment is like today, but I fear that with religious and right wing influence, it has to be horrendous.
Education has always been indoctrination. Indoctrination to produce loyal, patriotic, law abiding citizens.
The history I learned in school, is not the history I know to be true, from my own research and books like Howard Zinn's A Peoples History of the United States. And even there the right wing foundations are making an effort to discredit Zinn, as it refutes the myths that were fed as pablum.
All that aside, if it weren't for public schools (our public schools are so much different than those in England), hardly any of us would even be able to read a menu, much less have an internet in which to post our most profound thoughts :)
The holy writ of the Christians says nothing about abortion or birth control, an oblique reference is in Leviticus where a man who does injury to a fetus, must pay recompense to the host.''
The real reason is cultural and political, From the Church of Romes view, it is about dominance, a numbers game, the desire is to gain more wealth and power, by out breeding all other religions.
With American evangelicals, and even minorities, it is also a numbers game, but as Thom points out in other writings and on his show, that in countries where women have control over their own lives, the countries economically prosper, but the "poor men" feel oppressed because they can no longer dominate women, and thus feel reduced to the status of women (emasculated). Men who feel emasculated and cannot erect and consummate the sex act. PhRMA has found a cure, a pill which enables them to erect, and thus overcome their mental sexual disability. But pills have side effects and besides their effect on the endocrine system, they leave the customer with a boner that takes hours, sometimes days, to dissipate.
The church will have to ban Viagra then! The last 40 years at least, the Catholic church has sent their armies of impoverished across the border, instead of using swords, they just work cheap. I read once where the Earth can barely support 2 billion people and currently we're at about 8 billion, and the greedy want even more? Most of the immigrants letting in support unlimited greed, religion, oppose gay rights, opposable abortion, and have less opposition to living under a dictatorship. The right keeps claiming that the Democrats are letting in immigrants for votes, when in fact I think they will vote Republican. Few non-religious immigrants come in illegally or legally. The separation of church and state is what made America great. Once we lose that, we will be in the same boat as all the other capitalist theocratic autocracies.
Church banning Viagra? Laughs. If men got pregnant, abortion would be a commandment.
I totally agree with your depiction of immigrants as religiously conservative.
America is pestered with misogyntic, homophobic Hispanics, and Europe with western values hating, Islamists. They want our money, our lifestyle, but not our values.
Roe or not, birth control or not, same sex marriage or not...What is the basis for yes or no? None of it is explicitly covered in the Constitution. Zero. The originality idea indicates that since none of the above is mentioned, there is no basis to rule constitutionally on any of it. The Bible is NOT - I repeat - NOT - a basis for laws. So who makes morality? Who judges? The Church - whichever one you follow - is not the arbiter of law in our society. There are common sense laws that follow our right to pursue life, liberty and happiness. That one, for example, can’t murder somebody or steal another’s property (tell that to our white collar criminals). So, even if, as Thomas states, eliminate the cases that are/were law, it doesn’t and shouldn’t stop abortions, contraception, types of marriage, since none of it is in the Constitution and none of it violates common sense laws. Why do we give so much power to these entities that supposedly enforce morality (while violating it with child abuse, rape, tax exempt status, money laundering). If people want to attend a church and use that as their moral compass, that’s great. I don’t stand in anyone’s way. But the same people don’t get to tell me how to live my life.
Selective freedom. Makes my blood boil.
By the same token, there is no mention of free speech in the constitution, only that Congress shall make no law, abridging speech or assembly. Yet the courts give the likes of Trump a right not in the constitution.. The right to say anything he wants, same with the seditionists and traitors
The last congress in it's waning days (it had 22 days) before the Republican congress took over, passed a law (the Defense of Marriage Act) that legalize gay marriage, federally, as by that time, the public had come to a consensus that they were OK with such.
They also had the same opportunity, to legalize abortion through the country, but failed to do so. Question is why? Perhaps there were too many Democrats who were actually opposed to abortion
Anyway Congress was smart, it included interracial marriage in their law, and that alone shut Clarence Thomas up. The man thinks that because he is a pimp for Harlan Crowe and has a white wife, that he is not black anymore, and that his peers are rich, white men and women.
Malcolm X had a name for himhttps://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=malcolm+x+house+negro
Kudos! I wonder if your approach: let's get original, then, fascist "Supreme" Court, could come into play if there is a showdown between the Legislative Branch legislating rights and the religio-fascist Court saying no, can't do that. Problem is, do we end up with Dodd, let the States deal with it, which is a horror show?
This is an extraordinary read. Not only the outrageous SCOTUS and ADF f*ckery, but the personal anecdotes at the Vatican and in Columbia. Your daily newsletter is the most important one to land in my inbox each day. Thank you for sounding the alarm.
The current GOP is the American Taliban in action; whether the laws come from the Bible or the Koran, the mentality justifying their use as a basis of laws for everyone, comes from the same source: religious belief. By definition each faith system sees itself as the ONE TRUE FAITH. With hundreds, if not thousands of faith systems throughout history the concept is ludicrous on its face.
The irony is that the "privacy principle" which is the foundation underpinning Roe v Wade, et al. is the same principal at the foundation of religious freedom: "believe what you will, but don't impose your beliefs on me". Of course, the GOP would not be able to comprehend irony if they stepped in it.
The acceptability of any mutual sexual behavior must rest on the mutual consent of the participating parties; rape occurs when mutual consent is lacking. Similarly, consent is required for any acceptance of or conversion to any faith system. Metaphorically, spiritual rape occurs when a faith system is imposed either at the point of a sword, or by a SCOTUS ruling the ignores or seeks to undermine the "right to privacy".
Religion and rule is nothing but hypocrisy, Trumpian at that. Laws apply to others, but not to them.
Mr. Cassidy, late in life Bertrand Russell was asked: what is the most important thing mankind needs? He answered in one word: tolerance.
In a Moslem country. A woman who says she was raped, must have four male witnesses, as females are no considered people, if there were four male witnesses they would be accomplices, thus hardly any cases of rape are reported, just like Iran saying there are no gays in Iran. Those that are caught are subjected to sexual reassignment surgery.
As a consequent raped women are considered adultresses,and covered with a white sheet, buried up to her waste and then stoned to death by the crowd.
Wow! Every article you write is amazing but THIS! Women and men against tyranny need to read this! And the main cause is not religion at all. It’s power and greed. So many powerful nations are experiencing declining birth rates which means less economic and physical power. The more young slaves forced to produce the better for the wealthy and powerful. Disgusting. Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry wo/men? Let’s make it deafening!
A description of The Handmaids Tale:
Based on the best-selling novel by Margaret Atwood, this series is set in Gilead, a totalitarian society in what used to be part of the United States. Gilead is ruled by a fundamentalist regime that treats women as property of the state, and is faced with environmental disasters and a plummeting birth rate. In a desperate attempt to repopulate a devastated world, the few remaining fertile women are forced into sexual servitude. One of these women, Offred, is determined to survive the terrifying world she lives in, and find the daughter that was taken from her.
I remember when The Handmaid's Tale came out. Your description ,DMS, is better than the magazine book-reviews I read at the time. I was not much impressed with it as a work of science fiction. Although, I must admit, Atwood is good with words.
You are absolutely right, religion is the excuse, for almost everything, what the real motive is, is power and control. Religion is the tool that clouds mens minds, religion is used as a means to control people. Using an ethereal carrot and stick, (heaven and hell), It really was most effective on ignorant minds, and the church used it to strike terror in battle hardened knights, hence the crusades.
Out of print now, but a great book, that dissects the Bible is "Word Controlled Humans" by John Harlan. Religion, as Constantine knew, is simply a tool by which to control people.
Having hundreds of gods, and priesthoods is pretty messy, inconvenient and expensive.
Egypt and Rome, as well as Greece had a pantheon of gods, each one had a priesthood and to satisfy the priesthoods, who were also quarreling and back stabbing for favor and money, the ruler had to waste resources building hundreds of temples throughout the land, and placating all of those greedy and quarrelsome priests.
Ahkenaton and Constantine found a solution, select one religion as the religion of the land, with one priesthood and eliminate the competition, like Manicheans.
Knowing that it had a winning tool, the Church of Rome sent out proselytizers, armed with nothing more than an argument that, the King or Chieftan, had better control over his people if hey worshiped one god, rather than a panoply of gods, and thus one priesthood who was dependent upon the king \ for his power, prestige and protection. Thus the Norse were converted from Harold Bluetooth, to Olaf Trygvasson, whom the Norse priests declare a saint, as he actually massacred all Norse who would not abandon the old gods.
The king was also dependent on the priest (Charlemagne actually created the Popehood) by selecting a poor dedraggled bishop of Rome, and making him Pope, and the Pope in turn crowned him emperor and thus Charlemagned and all subsequent kings "ruled by the grace of god".
A priest of Mani, who the church has named Augustine (meaning the great one), watched with horror as Pople Leo ("the great") threw Manicheans into the coliseum with all of the glee formerly reserved for Christians and had his "come to Jesus" moment, and cleverly worked with a Dude named Jerome to write the Latin Vulgate, in which he imported Manichean ideas, like duality (a good god, and a bad god)
Aw shucks. I can only hold a grudge as far back as Simon de Montfort at Montsegur! :)
The man who said: Slay them all, god will sort them out.
You are so correct Mr. Farrar. The one and only thing all religions have in common is rules for proper and improper behavior. The rules may differ from one religion to the next. But they all have rules for behavior. Thus it should not be difficult to see what Religion is: a mechanism of human social control.
And while I am on the topic of religion; let's look at the subject of a "god." Not all religions have a god or gods in them. Western religions do. The Judeo-Christian movements claim that there is one "God" which created everything, controls everything, knows everything.
The skeptics ask: how do you come to this conclusion? The Judeo-Christian answer has been summarized by Saint Thomas Aquinas with his five proofs of the existence of god found in his Summa Theologica; the greatest Christian statement by the greatest Christian thinker ever. Here it is:
The universe exists, this we cannot deny. "Something" had to bring it into existence. That "Something" is what we call "God," "Yaweh." The universe had, out of necessity, to be created. any thing that exists must have a beginning. It must have been caused by some agency, some "thing." We see creation all around us. That cause is "God." The effect is the universe. The preceding is a precis of the great man's 5 Summa arguments. I first read them when I was 16 years old.
Saint Thomas then went on to show why all his arguments are flawed. For this the church almost excommunicated him. But eventually the zealots came around and not only accepted him, they canonized him for the powerful and clear thinker that he most certainly was; head and shoulders above all those around him. This is how Saint Thomas refuted his own argument:
If you allow one person to use that Cause and Effect argument to explain the existence of the universe; then you must allow another person to use the same argument to say: we accept that "God" exists; so therefore something must have created "God." What created God? And that person can say an Uber-god created that god.
This argument can be repeated an infinite number of times and each time it is just as valid as the first time it was used. Which leaves us with an absurdity which has no resolution. Thus we must admit that it is not possible to prove the existence of "God."
Church leaders were livid with rage at Aquinas. Then he said we must accept the existence of "God" on faith. If we accept his existence we are rewarded with everlasting joy in heaven. If we fail to accept his existence we suffer everlasting torment in hell. After this statement they forgave his blasphemy and eventually canonized him. A verity. Control is the key.
There you have it........ At the age of 18 while standing before my grandfather's coffin, a man I truly loved, as I begged for faith I had an epiphany: There is no god, it is absurd.
Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I am. I exist. And although the greatest Anglican thinker Bishop Berkeley said I cannot prove it: you exist.
This I believe. I have faith in you.
I became a Catholic, on he outside, for seven years. The woman whom I married at the time, insisted on being married in a Church (The Church of the Golden Altar in Panama city, Panama..
So I said my share of hail Mary's and Padre Nuesra's, and made up stuff to confess.
Anyway what I now is that Chrisianity, Islam and Judaism require a mentally dull mind, and beliefs requires circularity of reasoning.
As an example
I asked he question: Why do you beehive in the bible.
The answer is "It is the word of god".
How do you know it is the word of god?
Because it says son in the bible. Substitute Yahwah or Allah and it is the same.
The bible is the word of god because it says so in the bible is the word of god because it says so in the bible is he word of god e bible is the word of god because it says so in the bible is he word of god ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
And why do people believe, because of
1. Authority tells them to.
2, The carrot and stick
3. The crap that they hear from authority, assuages their fears, fulfills their needs for protection , security and emotional care, and for superiority and control. (The former is female needs, the latter male needs)
Yes Mr. Farrar that circular reasoning is referred to in treatises on logic as "Petitio Principii" small circle. Religion is full of small circles with minute radii.
Now I am going to disturb you.
Do you agree that a x produces y and that y is the cause of X, that we have a case of circular reasoning or Petitio Principii.?
X is gravity and Y is mass. Newton's theory of mass gravity
Where in scientists, without thinking it through, because Newton is sacrosanct and his theories are "holy writ" postulated that gravity is a property of mass, and then the bright minds of science concluded that mass is the source of gravity. That's how they believe the universe was ordered. And because there is not enough mass in the universe to account for the suns and plantery bodies, not to mention moons and the Kepler belt, they had to find a way to save themselves from embarrassment, so they invented Dark Matter, and as of late they have invented another invisibile and ethereal force.
If the model doesn't fit, then adjust the model, that is inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning would h ave them, setting aside the theory, doing some more research and adjusting, but you can't with inductive reasoning.
Here is my opinion, and it is only that. Gravity is a current force, produced by a current process, the same process that creates our electro magnetic field, the same process that creates the Van Allen Belt.
And a current process, cools over time, and as it cools the gravitic field is weakened.
This notion, fits Occam's Razor as it accounts for the reason why dinorsaurs and ground sloths and mastaons grew so large, and why they have disappeared. It also explains the origin of water on earth, as there is too much water, so scientists theorize being bombarded with snowballs from space, without any idea where such snowballs originated.
Too much to go into at the moment, but I have a long, long rant, and invoke NASA, who knows it, and Dentists who also know that it is stress on bones, that create bone mass, and stress is induced by perambulating in the current gravitic atmospheric environment.
Mr. Farrar, I agree with all you say except for the size of dinosaurs. There is a glitch in it. But not important enough to argue over. I understand what you are saying about dentists and bones. There is a counter argument not worth laying out here.
I do like your "current" theory and your attempt to formulate a general theory of forces in the universe. Einstein spent his entire adult life trying to formulate such a theory and a mathematical model to go along with it while he was in the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton. He failed. I am always amused at how people refer to Einstein as though he successfully revealed the inner secrets of the universe to us. He did not. He failed again and again all his life.
He was awarded the Nobel for his mathematical model of how electrons are emitted from a cathode in a vacuum tube. Not for coming up with a nuclear theory. He got this award for work he did when he was about 21 and an employee in a patent office in Switzerland. He had never been in a physics laboratory. Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg gave us nuclear theory with their laboratory work. Enrico Fermi demonstrated it with his Pile of carbon blocks under the bleachers of Stagg Field at the Univ. of Chicago.
There are only three forces in the universe that we know of :
1) Short, they hold nuclei together
2) Medium, they form molecules and generate Q, or electromagnetic
effects
3) Long, Gravity, needs no description.
Einstein tried to formulate a single unifying theory and accompanying mathematical model to account for all three "Forces." He failed.
Those increasingly powerful nuclear accelerators, like the "Large Hadron Collider" in Switzerland are attempts to find out if there are any more forces we are, as yet, unaware of. There might very well be some more. It is reasonable to believe more exist. For instance can a Proton or Neutron be split? Are there forces holding them together?
Newton did not exactly propel us forward in our thinking when he said there was such a thing as "force" which held the moon in orbit and caused things to fall down. Quite the opposite. he shoved us back into the dark ages before the Renaissance. "Force" is not possible in the mechanical world revealed to us by the great Enlightenment thinkers. "Force" is a beautiful example of mysticism. A step backwards intellectually. Newton himself was disturbed by the concept of "Force," in spite of the fact that he himself was the first person to formulate the idea and generate a mathematical model for it. A model which worked stupendously well until Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg and Enrico Fermi came along. Newton was deeply religious and thought that "Force" was somehow ungodly, un-Christian. He was correct about that.
Nobody knows what "Force," is. Nobody knows what mass is. They are defined in terms of each other They are a case of petitio principii. You are most certainly correct in that.
At a certain point it is necessary to recognize that our level of knowledge is not sufficient to understand some things. Maybe our ability to understand will never be sufficient for some things in our universe. This is used by some of my acquaintances to argue in favor of a god. I do not. I simply recognize that humans have limits; limits we are not even aware of. Or, in the words of that intelligent, slimy Donald Rumsfeld: "unknown unknowns."
IMO, you are closer with "power" and right about religion, which merely codifies the eternal plight of the female. I'm going to get in trouble with Brother Farrar, here, but we are animals. The root is "the selfish gene." Now we have considerable DNA research, one observation is a startling prevalence of some contribution from Genghis Khan: one guy: around the doggone world. I humbly submit that there is a parallel between the behavior of any given conquering horde and any given, for just one instance, new male lion in a pack. Mostly the new boss is literally going to kill the defeated guys babies. The power is at root the power to make the females pregnant.
LOL. Brother Farrar here, and no I do not take exception with you. Maybe the problem with Russia is too much Mongol blood. I look at Putin, his generals and leadership and what do I see, but men with Mongol DNA.
The reason that male lions and bears, as well as other mammals, kill the babies of females that they haven't fathered, is to stop the female from lactating and thus go into estrace.
They are driven to ensure that there prodigy survive, and he can't fornicate as long as the female is lactating. A mother with cubs is something that a male doesn't want to mess with, even though he is bigger. When a female is in estrace she can't control her own body
When a male is sexually stimulated he can't control his either, except that humans are suppose to be different, but what I've seen of their behavior when it comes to sex, they really aren't that far removed from the hominids that drank out of ditches and ate grass.
Being a 74-year-old straight woman happily single by choice after a lifetime of awful experiences with men, I concur!
Remember when JFK had to convince voters he wasn’t beholden to the pope?
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16920600
Biden is still trying to convince people of that.
Except now there’s a whole segment that wants him to be.
US Archbishops have been advocating he be denied communion until he pushes Catholic’s moral laws.
Didn't Biden sign the Defense of Marriage Act, that legalized federal Gay Marriage?
IIRC, gay marriage (sodomy) is also against Catholic law.
The GOP has a solid history of being real handsy with women - just like most "religious" cults. Lot of parallels between the two. It's almost like they share the same playbook...
If birth control is banned in the US by the Republican Taliban, I imagine we'll be forced to acknowledge we no longer inhabit the free world - only the third world.
I wonder when the shoe is going to drop that men no longer have responsibility for child support? Because, you know, like the archbishop said, it's her fault anyway, and was it Ron Johnson who blurted out the one about there was no such thing as pregnancy from "real" rape, because she could "shut that down?" And that was awhile back.
Whee! In Az. we have a Supreme Court Justice, Bill Montgomery, who openly opposes abortion. If he doesn't recuse, he'll be deciding the fate of abortion in Az. When are young women going to get angry on a scale large enough to stop this nonsense?
My son teaches college in Arizona. He has informed me that most of his students are Mormons. Arizona was once part of a Mormon empire named Desereta.
Mormons are extreme misogynists, keep women in submission, although the official church has bent to oblige a changing social and governmental environment, and does not condone polygamy, there are breakaway Mormons who still practice it with full impunity, some have as many as 12 "sister wives". And nothing is done about them. They even have TV shows about Sister wives.
Lived here 30 years. It's not just Az, but Utah and also parts of Idaho and oregon. They are definitely a big force for right wing politics in the western states. Also probably why the Kochs and others have targeted our state legislator races and public schools. The kids coming up through the private/charter schools such as ALA (Mormon) will continue to support policies that drag us back to 1850.
If you can find a copy, you will be interested in a book: "From Housewife to Heretic," by Sonia Johnson. It documents her experience as a devout Mormon woman who was in the midst of the Mormon Church's stepping into the last breach to stop the Equal Rights Amendment. The Church, which presumably has tax-exempt status, also marshalled membership to phone-bank massively to California to stop the initiative that was going to legalize gay marriage in the State. ("Prop. 8?") (Who needs Putin's Web trolls when you command millions of obedient Mormons?)
I live in a partially Mormon neighborhood in East Mesa Az. The church here gets a lot of breaks and they run the city. Every time a school is built they get to build an indoctrination center next door on free real estate. Not kidding. The church has always said it didn't support things like plural marriage, or the Bundys, or whatever, but they never do anything to unsupport it. Lots of our state legislators are not mormon but "represent" their constituents who always vote R no matter what. My own legislators are some of the worst.
Move to New Mexico, the only thing good about AZ is Grand Canyon.
You are right, I've seen a map of Desereta. In fact the eastern part of Oregon and Washington are Alabama, the only reason the states are blue, with Democratic government is because of Portland in Oregon, King County, and Snohomish Country in Washington with help from the I-5 Corridor,and San Juan County,. The rest of the state, especially on the east side of the Cascades is as right wing as you can get.
"State of Jefferson." Aspirational unification with Northern California, where Shasta County has even been featured in the NYT for MAGA nationhood: it's not going well: literally hand count the vote? Maybe not; I don't know.
Lordy, here we go: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-19/la-me-covid-vaccine-public-health-officer-shasta-county-california
Oh they are workin' on it, Claudia. Glad you told us about your state.
From the The Conversation published 11/18/22:
"During the November 2022 midterms, voters added protection for the right to get an abortion to constitutions in California, Vermont and Michigan. Kentucky voters were asked a reverse version of this question – whether the state constitution should bar abortions. They said no."
They will revert to barbarism. That is the direction of the GOO.
Religion is barbarism. Every horror known to man has been justified by religion, no exceptions.
Put American women into stir who have the temerity to continue using birth control after the GOP’s bans take effect?
Short answer. Yes.
At SCOTUS, Alito and Thomas admit that they apply "natural law" before the text of the Constitution. To them and perhaps four others, natural law is Catholic dogma.
Prior to the 1930s, the church had no official position on contraception. But on Dec. 31, 1930, Pope Pius XI issued a papal encyclical, Casti Connubii (Latin for "Of Chaste Wedlock"), which for the first time explicitly prohibited Catholics from using contraception. In 1964, Pope Paul appointed a commission on birth control to advise him. As the panel deliberated, anticipation ran high; many journalists, clergy and lay Catholics expected the church to lift the ban. Scottish songwriter Matt McGinn wrote a jaunty tune, recorded by Pete Seeger, about a woman with a house full of children waiting for the pope to “bless the pill.” She buys a package of birth control pills so she will be ready when the church acquiesces. In the final stanza, she hopes to hear the pope’s approval “before my man comes in.”
The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (5th edition) promulgated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops states that “Catholic health institutions may not promote or condone contraceptive practices but should provide, for married couples and the medical staff who counsel them, instruction both about the Church’s teaching on responsible parenthood and in methods of natural family planning” (# 52). The Bishops also declare that “Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic health care institution. Procedures that induce sterility are permitted when their direct effect is the cure or alleviation of a present and serious pathology and a simpler treatment is not available (#53). https://www.sju.edu/centers/icb/blog/what-does-the-catholic-church-teach-about-contraception#:~:text=The%20Ethical%20and%20Religious%20Directives,medical%20staff%20who%20counsel%20them%2C
Doesn't actually say that women should be prosecuted for stuff like "possession of contraceptive materials."
But as Thom said, Justice Thomas said SCOTUS should reconsider Griswold. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that a state's ban on the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy. The case concerned a Connecticut law that criminalized the encouragement or use of birth control.
When I was a kid, my dad was a DA. No spitting on the sidewalk. Abortion was illegal. F&B. Fornication and bastardy were crimes. The 3 p's. Pimping, pandering and prostitution. If the policed charged anybody, my dad took the case through a "preliminary hearing" to the grand jury. I remember a few juicy cases.
Prior to 1965 contraception was probably illegal but I do not remember any prosecutions. The first condoms made of rubber were made in 1855 and by the 1860s, rubber condoms were being mass produced. Skin condoms were still more popular though, because they were cheaper and the early rubber ones tended to fall off. In 1920 came latex, made using a process with rubber suspended in water. The first oral contraceptive, Enovid, a mix of the hormones progesterone and estrogen, was approved in 1960 by the FDA.
I remember that my mother held stock in one of the first pills.
I don't believe that PA law at the time would have implicated people caught with rubbers in their possession.
Thanks for the history. I stopped going to confession in the 1970s because I had to work every other Sunday as a condition of my job in nursing in a Catholic hospital and was told to quit by a priest. I wouldn't confess my use of birth control which made my confessions "null and void." I hoped to live until menopause so could make a good confession and I wouldn't go to hell. I haven't believed any of that for decades. I also remember that I had to have my husband's permission to get a prescription for "the pill." We can't go back.
I remember those days, "rubbers" were sold under the counter. I managed to acquire some Trojans, passed them out to the gang, everyone carried one in the wallet, just to show off, and to my knowledge none of them were used. Sex wasn't that easy, as very few kids in my age group, even in High School, owned a car, unless their Daddies were rich, like the kid whose father was a VP of Sears and Roebuck, and drove a brand new 1955 Red T-Bird and a senior who drove a new Lincoln Continental.
My Medical Center is owned by the nuns of St Joseph, which has other medical centers along the west coast, and they won't prescribe abortificents, and wouldn't birth control pills, until they became OTC. They also will not prescribe or assist in self administered euthansia.
My wifes brother died of throat cancer in California, and went out that way, the pain was too great. I stood death watch in 1964 over my uncle, who dwindled from 180 lbs of a vital, strong, healthy man, to a stinking cancerous sore (smelled like death) of a 90 lb skeleton, and the doctor warned me not to give him any morphine pills, or I would be charged with murder.
Such is the love of Christianity, better to die a painful, bed ridden, rotten living corpse, than to peacefully end your own suffering.
The largest demonstrations in my city of 27,000 were for the women's marches. They drew hundreds of people of all genders to our downtown area. So the answer to the question is simply: DEFIANCE.
Most people do not raise daughters to be a doormat or a broodmare. If a woman chooses that path, so be it, but choose is the operative word when it comes to having a large family.
How's this for irony? It's from a Google search and is talking about John Rock, one of the inventors of the pill:
"Dr Rock was a passionate campaigner for birth control but he was also a devout Catholic. It has been argued that he devised the 21/7 regimen because he believed it would make the pill acceptable to the Vatican."
If the Supreme Court Catholic members are stupid enough to do this (and they are), see you in the streets and at the voting booth. THE FUTURE IS FEMALE!
Excellent, however people brainwashed from birth, really have no choice. If it weren't for brainwashing there would be no religions.
But there is escape somehow: I just wish I had the slightest consciousness of when I transitioned from a good little parent-miming reactionary prig to Green Party pioneer and eventual Hartmannista. Maybe Arianna Huffington has some insight? I do not remember some "revelation," and I guess I will die puzzled.
Some brains lean into magical thinking and some simply are not built that way. What's real, tangible, and proven won me over despite loving human imagination; it was in my mid-twenties. Brain development, curiosity, and travel is such a blessing and the results were gradual.
I was raised by atheists born in 1913 and 1915, who left their Protestant churches. I grew up for 14 years in Mormon Utah and we skied on Sundays and holidays in the 60's: best skiing in the world and uncrowded because the Mormons were in church!
I tried religion at mid-life, Catholic, due to a friend of my parents who was a liberal Catholic. That lasted for 10 years when they started preaching anti-abortion legislation from the pulpit. I sent a letter of formal resignation and received a phony reply from the priest in 2015.
Having a faith can be a good experience, depending on the group one is in, but the Democratic Party is good enough for me. At age 74 I'm real sick and tired of being preached to, lectured at, scolded, and bored. I loathe meetings and church is just another meeting.
Here, here, Diana. Favorite mug saying---Oh No, Another Damn Meeting!
Pretty sure I'll die not being sure. If God is out there or all around us, I hope I found out!
It was Todd Atkin from Missouri who said that pregnancies rarely occur from "legitimate rape". It's reassuring that members within the GOP are representing not only the interests of Big Bribery, but also the little people - like "legitimate rapists".
We see from this frantic push from those on the right to outlaw birth control, to control women’s bodies and behaviors by outlawing abortion and through other means, to stop any iteration of universal health care (as discussed yesterday), and to ban books and dictate curricular content, etc., etc., the phenomenal power of an idea, and especially the power of an idea when passionately and zealously pushed by a “true believer” who has money, influence, or a position in government, an institution, or society. In the example of Hoffman yesterday, the effect is magnified when sophisticated charts, graphs, statistics, and supposedly valid scientific facts are utilized inappropriately or misused by someone with a bad idea or belief system and a pernicious agenda.
It is crucially important to identify such ideas as Thom did so effectively and thoroughly with his history lesson illuminating Hoffman’s white supremacy and with the male superiority and female blaming starting with Eve in the fabled Garden of Eden. It is also crucial to have a competing narrative or set of ideas which can be articulated plainly and used to reveal the faults in the false and erroneous ideas, beliefs, narratives, and myths.
But as Thom’s piece makes clear, power in the hands of the people who are promoting malicious or profoundly destructive ideas prevents truths from adequate exposure and acceptance. Bad ideas are spread and perpetuated when people who have power, money, and influence are in a position to block the insights and scientifically validated facts of real scholars and professionals who are using authentic science rather than pseudoscience, superstition, and fear tactics with dangerous nonsense.
There has been ample empirical evidence to prove that whites are not superior and that differences are clearly attributable to economic, social, and political inequities. The primarily religious notions of male superiority and female culpability and guilt have likewise been thoroughly discredited. Lots of other examples regarding numerous other controversies are easy to find where the myths and mistakes are revealed as false and indeed foolish. So, why do we seem to be regressing? Why are the ludicrous ideas and beliefs resurging and resurfacing and gaining adherents in many places?
Obviously, using propaganda and controlling narratives, media including literature, and educational initiatives (or outlawing education) are the most effective ways of suppressing truths, real facts, and science. This was recognized by people with a right-leaning, reactionary, control-obsessed mindset a very long time ago. They designed a pseudo-intellectual and anti-educational strategy for duping the people from the working class and the poor into believing they were going to be educated. They fooled almost everybody; even some very smart people. It was called compulsory school attendance and it was intended to condition, program, control, indoctrinate, pacify, and anesthetize the population, all while convincing them they were receiving a wonderful benefit. Their genius was in assuring by the passage of laws that arbitrary authority would always take precedence over th rights and needs of students.
We have people such as Thom who have done a deep dive into the history and logic of things such as healthcare, racism, xenophobia, white supremacy, free market fundamentalism, etc., etc. Yet no one will use that X-ray machine to examine how we came to have schools which do incredible harm, which are then revered as sacred institutions and which everyone expects to save us.
Wait. Haven’t I said all this before? Many, many times? Yes, I have. Someday, someone will get real and do the necessary work and face the bitter truth to spell it all out much better than I can. Someday, if it is not already too late.
Great comment, probably made to late for most to read. I up voted it, it deserves more.
I do take exception to one of your paragraphs about Public Education. I need look no further than my paternal ancestors.
My 5th great grandfather died after he educated his oldest son, but before he could tutor his youngest sons.
The grew up illiterate and thus at a disadvantage in business. The family had, since 1618 been planters and major players in the politics of early Virginia, until the Cavaliers fled England in the wake of the Cromwell victory. They remained planters until about 1767, when my 5th ggf died.
The family (my line) was illiterate until Thomas Mann preached universal public education.
My grandfather was the first to be educated, only to the 8th grade, my dad graduated from HS, and picked up some college credits post retirement. I have an MBA, both BA and MBA courtesy of government programs. (neither mom or me had the means to fund college), son has a PhD ,thanks to grants.
Were it not for Thomas Mann, I would have had a dismal future and would probably have died years ago from injury or disease.
Admittedly my education was less than desireable, with the exception of three teachers, most of mine were old, unmotivated and unequipped to teach, then again this was less than 10 years after WWII, and all of the potential teachers were fighting in Europe or Pacific, and teaching was left to the elderly and incompetent. My algebra teacher was bonkers,a real mental case, my English teacher (Mrs Riggs) was a stereotypical old lady in tennis shoes (that is what she wore) My American History teacher was obese and wrote on the blackboard as she talked, her upper arm bouncing and distracting, I quickly got writers cramp trying to keep up with her writing, regardless of how you tested, she failed me and anyone who didn't turn in a notebook with all of her black board scribblings.
I don't know what the school environment is like today, but I fear that with religious and right wing influence, it has to be horrendous.
Education has always been indoctrination. Indoctrination to produce loyal, patriotic, law abiding citizens.
The history I learned in school, is not the history I know to be true, from my own research and books like Howard Zinn's A Peoples History of the United States. And even there the right wing foundations are making an effort to discredit Zinn, as it refutes the myths that were fed as pablum.
All that aside, if it weren't for public schools (our public schools are so much different than those in England), hardly any of us would even be able to read a menu, much less have an internet in which to post our most profound thoughts :)
The holy writ of the Christians says nothing about abortion or birth control, an oblique reference is in Leviticus where a man who does injury to a fetus, must pay recompense to the host.''
The real reason is cultural and political, From the Church of Romes view, it is about dominance, a numbers game, the desire is to gain more wealth and power, by out breeding all other religions.
With American evangelicals, and even minorities, it is also a numbers game, but as Thom points out in other writings and on his show, that in countries where women have control over their own lives, the countries economically prosper, but the "poor men" feel oppressed because they can no longer dominate women, and thus feel reduced to the status of women (emasculated). Men who feel emasculated and cannot erect and consummate the sex act. PhRMA has found a cure, a pill which enables them to erect, and thus overcome their mental sexual disability. But pills have side effects and besides their effect on the endocrine system, they leave the customer with a boner that takes hours, sometimes days, to dissipate.
The church will have to ban Viagra then! The last 40 years at least, the Catholic church has sent their armies of impoverished across the border, instead of using swords, they just work cheap. I read once where the Earth can barely support 2 billion people and currently we're at about 8 billion, and the greedy want even more? Most of the immigrants letting in support unlimited greed, religion, oppose gay rights, opposable abortion, and have less opposition to living under a dictatorship. The right keeps claiming that the Democrats are letting in immigrants for votes, when in fact I think they will vote Republican. Few non-religious immigrants come in illegally or legally. The separation of church and state is what made America great. Once we lose that, we will be in the same boat as all the other capitalist theocratic autocracies.
Church banning Viagra? Laughs. If men got pregnant, abortion would be a commandment.
I totally agree with your depiction of immigrants as religiously conservative.
America is pestered with misogyntic, homophobic Hispanics, and Europe with western values hating, Islamists. They want our money, our lifestyle, but not our values.
I became pregnant to my now spouse in 1989. I was well aware that I didn't have the maturity to become a mother, so I opted for an abortion.
I've never had any regrets. I also went on to marry my now-spouse, and we have the most beautiful daughter.
I should have added: I became pregnant because my then fertility control - an IUD - failed.