The Blackbird Whistling, Or Just After

Changing Hearts: New Op-Ed Urges Pro-Life Pro-Choice "Partnership"

RH Reality Check has an interesting article by Anna Clark  called "Changing Hearts, From Pro-Life to Pro-Choice."

She chronicles her tale from fervid anti-choice to passionate pro-choice. And no, her change of heart does not involve an abortion in her life.

What I love about this piece is that it humanizes the struggle itself. Clark dislikes the idea of two warring sides and laments that her ideas on reproductive rights would have changed much sooner had pro-choicers bother to talk to her about their beliefs rather than eying her up as the enemy.

It's difficult to not become enraged about the issue itself, but do we need to be constantly enraged at each other? Pro-choicers watch religious, political, and largely misogynistic rhetoric take away the right to our own bodies and futures (let alone our own personal and/or religious or spiritual beliefs.) Pro-lifers believe that sex-hungry women defile their bodies and wipe away their sin by conveniently aborting their innocent babies.

It's emotional. It's volatile. But is it, essentially, for the everyday women who find themselves on one side of the issue or the other, the truth? Are the assumptions made by each side about the other really what's going on in the hearts and minds of women?

I would argue that it isn't. That those at the polar extremes of the abortion issue speak the loudest and get the most news coverage. And then I wonder if, when someone tells me she's pro-life, it's only my own smallness that causes my knee-jerk dislike, even disrespect for her.

Clark writes:

Enemy caricatures mask the greatest strength of pro-choice philosophy: inclusiveness.

Pro-choice society, like democratic society, is predicated on space for those who disagree. When we play sides, we forget there are no enemies in the vision we pursue. Our inclusiveness of those who choose not to have abortions, and even those who judge abortion to be morally wrong, is our movement's power. When we approach anti-choicers as friends, not only do we act on the heart of our beliefs, but we create space for anti-choicers to become our allies.

I'm not sure how I feel about my ability to embrace the total inclusiveness thing, but women speaking openly and non-judgmentally to other women (and men) about this critical issue, can only be a good idea.

Rape as a Weapon of War in the Congo [Part 2 - The Savagery]

It is difficult to write this section because what I am about to describe is nearly unimaginable. But it is true and it is happening. Not to one woman. Not to ten, or one hundred, or one thousand. Not to ten thousand. It's happening to hundreds of thousands of women throughout the DRC. It is happening right now, this second, as you read this.

Women, children, babies. Raped, tortured, mutilated. Many times in front of their families. Many times for days on end. They are gang raped. They are raped with objects. Sticks. Rocks. Bayonets. Guns. They are raped with the sheer intent to destroy - body and soul. Women have had firearms discharged into their vaginas, blowing out their female anatomy, yet surviving. Girls under the age of three, women over eighty.

Women are left with wounds, infections, STDs, and traumatic fistulas. A traumatic fistula is a tear in the wall between the vagina and the bladder and/or the rectum, leaving the woman entirely incontinent.

Having been raped these women are frequently and "justifiably" abandoned by their husbands. Bearing the stench of incontinence, they are often ostracized by their villages. Unable to bear children, they lose their primary value as mother or wife.

Individual stories are nearly unbearable to hear. Congolese human rights activist Christine Schuler Deshchyver describes:

Babies. The last baby who was raped, it was in April. She was ten months old, so a very small baby. She was raped. The same gang raped the mother during two weeks. Then they came to Bukavu into my office. I wanted to bring the baby to the hospital, but she was so injured she died in my arms. Ten months—can you imagine that? And these people, these women in Congo, are just begging for life, not begging for money, just the right to live in their country safely.

The New York Times recently reported:

“I still have pain and feel chills,” said Kasindi Wabulasa, who was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her husband’s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes, they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot him anyway.

***

Honorata Barinjibanwa, 18, [...] said she was kidnapped from a village [...] raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said. [...] She is also pregnant.

The HRW  report cites a Congolese doctor in eastern DRC specialising in the treatment of rape victims:

"In peacetime, the demands on Congolese women are limitless; but in this war, the most insane fantasies have found their expression. When seven soldiers rape a women or little girl, and thrust a knife or fire shots into her vagina, for them the woman is no longer a human being, she is an object. And since there are no longer any laws or rules, combatants pour out their anger and their madness on to women and little girls."

Particularly horrifying is the indiscriminate targeting of victims. Even in times of war, certain standards of decency usually remain - at least in a percentage of the terrorizing population. But no code of ethics seems to stand in the DRC. According to an Amnesty International report:

All levels of the population in eastern DRC are affected by sexual violence. Survivors hail from all ethnic groups, all social strata and all age groups,(24), from rural and urban districts. Those raped may be seriously ill, physically or mentally disabled or pregnant. In some areas, rapes of men and boys are common. In the words of one rapist[...], "It makes no difference".

John Holmes, head of the U.N. Emergency Relief Operations described DRC's intensity and frequency of rape as "the worst in the world," explaining

It's the scale and brutality of it. It's the use of it as a weapon of terror. It's the way it's done publicly, for maximum humiliation.

Prevalence of Rape

In the first six months of 2007 the UN reported reported 4,500 instances of rape in the Southern Kivu province alone. However, only the most extreme cases are reported. Keep in mind that a woman who admits to being raped bears the stigma of it for the rest of her life. She exposes herself and her children to abandonment by her husband. If she is unmarried, admitting lost virginity makes it nearly impossible to find a husband, which is essentially the only way to make a place for herself in Congolese society.

Rapes are reported when a woman requires life-saving medical care and must admit what has happened in order to get it. That is, if she has manages to discover that medical help is available and to safely traverse many miles to arrive at one of the few hospitals able to treat her condition.

Therefore, the actual number of rape cases is much higher than 4,500 in six months. Holmes estimates that "many -- perhaps most -- attacks go unreported." Most? So the actual figure may be ten times higher, though probably more. And remember, we're only talking about South Kivu - a province with a population of 245,000. If we add in the population of surrounding rural communities, it's still less populated than, say, the city of Boston or Tuscon. Using the reported number of cases only, that would lead to 9,000 (90,000) women brutally mutilated, beaten, and raped in a single year. That's 750 (7,500) women every month. 173 (1,730) every week. 25 (250) per day. In an area with the population of Boston.

Information from the Stephen Lewis Foundation gives even higher figures:

In October, 2006, UN Under Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, reported that "In the eastern Congo, over 12,000 rapes of women and girls have been reported in the last six months."

But Jean-Marie Guenhenno knows that the number of rapes that go unreported as usually ten or twenty times higher than those that come to official attention, and vastly higher still during a war. [Em. mine]

Who is raping the women? Who isn't.

Although much focus is placed on the Interahamwe (Rwandan Hutus who perpetrated the 1994 genocide), virtually every militant group is a danger to women. Perpetrators also include the Congolese army and any of dozens of armed civilian factions. Even UN peace keepers have been cited as some of the worst offenders.  Activist Christine Schuler Deschryver explains:

All of them are raping women. It is a country sport. Any person in uniform is an enemy to women.

Next: Rape as a Weapon of War in the Congo [Part 3 -- The Healing]

"Like Rwanda, but Worse" - Rape as a Weapon of War in the Congo [PART ONE: History of the Conflict]

Women in the People's Democratic of Congo have been enduring barbaric sexual atrocities during the country's violent civil unrest for more than a decade. Yet the western world seems to hardly have noticed. This is the first in an ongoing series documenting the situation in a country where women and children are inhumanly brutalized, where even the most unimaginable forms of rape have become common weapons of war.

Many are questioning how this level of sexual violence grew to such dramatic proportions. Although atrocities and rape in wartime are common, U.N. leaders consider the intensity and prevalence of horrors in the Congo to be "the worst in the world."

It's interesting to note that, according to a recent NY Times article

Many Congolese aid workers denied that the problem was cultural and insisted that the widespread rapes were not the product of something ingrained in the way men treated women in Congolese society. “If that were the case, this would have showed up long ago,” said Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, who coordinates a sexual violence program in Bukavu.

Contrarily, an Amnesty International  report asserts that it is precisely women's lower societal status that allows for this type of targeting in wartime.

"When you lift the stone of sexual violence, you will find another stone of the treatment of women more generally, which is effectively slavery. Women do everything: they walk miles for food or water, they care for the children, they cook, they clean, they cultivate the land and they earn the family income… That is the female condition in the Congo. "

 -- Expatriate woman psychologist working in DRC, interviewed by AI

In the very least, Congolese law leaves nowhere for these women to turn as crimes of rape, torture, mutilation, kidnapping, and sexual slavery are committed with nearly 100% impunity.

A 2002 HRW report summarizes women's status in Congolese society.

Even before the war in Congo, women and girls were second class citizens. The law as well as social norms defined the role of women and girls as subordinate to men. Although women are often a major-if not the major-source of support for the family, the Congolese Family Code requires them to obey their husbands who are recognized as the head of the household.

Women and girls are also subordinate by custom and practice. A woman's status depends on being married and girls tend to marry at a young age. It is generally considered more important to educate boys than girls[...] Literacy statistics for Congo (also) show gender-specific discrimination.

Male household heads often settle violent crimes against women and girls outside the courts. Some have "resolved" rape cases by accepting a money payment from the perpetrator or his family or by arranging to have the perpetrator marry the victim. [...]

Women and girls who are raped suffer significant loss of social status[...] In cases of the death of women and girls by murder or negligence, the family of the victim sometimes agrees to accept the equivalent of a woman's bride price as compensation and does not pursue the case further.

Congolese views about women and the issue of sexual violence were clearly demonstrated in 2005 when UNICEF spearheaded the first march against sexual violence in the boarder city of Goma. Hundreds of brutalized women donned black head scarves and nervously took to the streets. In a PBS interview, American filmmaker Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt describes the event:

...the march ended up being more chaotic than we imagined because every one of the bystanders, male or female, heckled the women marching. Their position was, "Why are you doing this? This is stupid. What is sexual violence?" On an official level, there aren't any adequate laws against rape, and no one has been convicted of rape in 40 years, other than three or four people who were not soldiers.

Let's take a quick look at how the climate in the Congo escalated to create an atmosphere conducive to these horrors.

Rwandan Atrocities Bleed Across Boarders

The Democratic Republic of Congo has been torn by conflict almost since its origins. Although women have long suffered pervasive injustice in this climate, sexual violence crescendoed to horrific levels and epidemic proportions in the wake of civil violence that was instigated by the atrocities in neighboring Rwanda.

(If you need a refresher on the Rwandan genocide, go here, here, or here. Read this. Watch this.)

For three months in the spring and summer of 1994, a rush of Rwandan Tutsi refugees fled to Zaire to escape mass genocide at the hands of the Rwandan Hutus. Under government directive the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) slaughtered over 800,000 Tutsi men, women, and children before being overthrown by the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPP). By 1996, a large number of RPF members, (known also as Interahamwe)  fled the new government and  crossed the boarder as well. Human Rights Watch  summarizes:

The government responsible for the genocide then led more than a million Hutu into exile in Congo, then Zaire, where civilian refugees and the military together established themselves in camps along the border. Under the direction of the defeated political and military leaders, soldiers and militia reorganized and rearmed within the refugee population, preparing for new attacks on Rwanda.

In late 1996 the Rwandan government sent its troops into the Congo, asserting the need to impede preparations for attacks on Rwanda as well as any obligation to protect the Banyamulenge, Congolese of the Tutsi ethnic group, who were being threatened by local and national Congolese political authorities.

The Rwandan soldiers together with combatants of the Allied Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo...a hastily organized coalition of Congolese forces, attacked the camps and killed tens of thousands of Rwandans, many of them unarmed civilian refugees. Hundreds of thousands of refugees then returned to Rwanda, some of them voluntarily, some of them forced to do so by Rwandan government troops. Some two hundred thousand Rwandans fled westward through the forests.

Many of the civilians were massacred in the following months by RPA or AFDL troops but several thousand ex-FAR and militia members regrouped to resume fighting the Rwandan government forces in Congo and later in Rwanda.

During this time, the Zairian government was toppled by a rebellion and a man named Kabila came to power and reinstated the country's former name - the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the instability following the coup, Kabila began to lose favor and troops from neighboring Zimbabwe, Angola, Chad, and the Sudan quickly became involved in an effort to encourage stability.

As of 2004 nearly four million people perished in the conflict and a 2006 Economist article considers this period to be "the bloodiest since World War II."

In 2001 Kabila was assassinated and replaced in power by his son. Since then there have been two rounds of general elections, but little has been done to stabilize the country's rampant and savage violence. Varying factions fight each other and the government, and ethnic contentions conflate the violence.

Congolese citizens are left trying to survive amid a state of near constant destruction and uncertainty. Rebels take control of villages, or simply destroy them by killing the men, raping or kidnapping the women, and burning the village to the ground.

Over one million Congolese are displaced, especially in the eastern part of the country where the Interahamwe militant faction "Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda" is particularly active. Starvation and disease are rampant.

In this environment of political and economic struggle, racial hatred, and lawlessness, one across-the-board "enemy" stands above them all - women.

Next: Rape as a Weapon of War in the Congo [Part 2 - The Savagery]

 

What's Wrong With This Picture? - AI's New FGM Campaign

Came across info on this on Feministing and Salon. A Swedish ad firm came up with a new campaign for Amnesty International against female genital mutilation.  I'm surprised by how many people consider this a great ad campaign. Yes, the images are beautiful and striking, but they are also completely ineffective.

I responded on a couple boards with the following:

Neither the images nor the text come close...

I'm really disappointed in this campaign. Neither the images not the text come close to conveying, or even suggesting, what really happens to these girls.

First of all, they deceptively convey only one part of one type of FGM. (The other part would have been cutting off a good chunk of "petals" before sewing.)

Consequently, the rose isn't DAMAGED at all! It's not MUTILATED. It's a lovely image of a rose that has been sewn in the middle. In fact, the rose is so unblemished it appears that the stitches could be removed and it would bounce back into its former perfection. The text doesn't describe what female genital mutilation really is and it doesn't suggest the physical, emotional, and psychological consequences of the act.

Given that the actuality of this horror is beyond what anyone unacquainted with it could or would imagine without being explicitly told, this is just too vague to be of any consequence. FGM is so unpleasant to contemplate and so removed from most of our everyday lives that the only way to get someone to fully experience the stomach-turning, chill-inducing discomfort of recognizing what it really is, is to be BLATANT.

And, I'm sorry but in the pink image the "clitoris" is healthy and thriving and absolutely untouched.

Too artistic. Too (thriving, unblemished) beautiful. Too vague.

What do you think?

...Coming up next "Female Genital Mutilation and Male Circumcision - Why They Don't Equate"

Scientists Plead -- "No More Ab-Only Funding!"

President Bush has proposed increasing funding for abstinence-only education to $204 million in 2008, despite the fact that the programs promote marriage as the only acceptable family structure, stigmatize and encourage silence in sexually abused youth, deny information to sexually active youth, and ostracize and condemns LGBT youth based on views that are entirely religious in origin. (This is not to mention all the studies, surveys, and reports that follow, which demonstrate the danger and sheer ineffectiveness of the AOE programs...)

In fact, abstinence-only programs have such freedom with the federal dollar that they recently broadened their target base to include all unmarried adults under the age of thirty! The escalating nature of this climate prompted a group of scientists to rally against Bush's proposal with a hard-hitting, fact-filled response backed with plenty of scientific documentation.

Earlier this week, professionals from institutions such as Columbia, Yale, and the University of California sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging her to discontinue federal funding for abstinence-only education. The letter went on to cite the mountain of recent documentation demonstrating the inefficacy and potential damage of these programs. They note the condemnation of abstinence-only teachings by the American Public Health Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the Society for Adolescent Medicine.

The opinions of these organizations is further enforced by recent Congressional testimony from former Surgeon General Richard Carmona:  

Dr. Carmona's testimony confirms the political motivations behind abstinence funding and the failure to address issues of efficacy and scientific accuracy. He suggested that ideology and theology have taken priority over women's health in the current administration. Dr. Carmona reported that the Bush administration "did not want to hear the science but wanted to, if you will, ‘preach abstinence,' which I felt was scientifically incorrect."

The letter  highlights “multiple deficiencies” in ab-only ed and expresses “surprise and dismay” that Congress proposes to “extend and even increase” funding abstinence-only education programs.   They attach various national and international studies and surveys, which fortify their position, including those sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and  the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

By design, abstinence programs restrict information about condoms and contraception - information that may be critical to protecting the health of young people and to preventing unplanned pregnancy, HIV infection, and infection with other sexually transmitted organisms. They ignore the health needs of sexually active youth and youth who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning for counseling, health care services, and risk reduction education. Withholding lifesaving information from young people is contrary to the standards of medical ethics and to many international human rights conventions. 

The letter goes on to show that little evidence supports the efficacy of these programs to promote abstinence or reduce pregnancy and STDs in teens, while strong evidence suggests

…that many comprehensive sexuality education programs, which include information on both abstinence and contraception, do help young people delay initiation of intercourse.

AOE did succeed in heightening teenagers' doubts that condoms were effective in preventing HIV or other STDs. (Presumably decreasing the likelihood they will be used for this purpose once the boy or girl becomes sexually active.)

Virginity pledges were shown to temporarily delay the onset of sexual activity, but once these teens did begin to have sex they were much less likely to use condoms or seek reproductive health care of any sort.

Abstinence-until-marriage programs, which recently extended to target unmarried adults up to 29 years of age, presented an increasingly unrealistic goal as the average age of the onset sexual activity has lowered to 17, while the average age Americans get married is around 26 and continues to rise.

The letter also cites the 2004 Congressional Report , headed by Rep. Henry Waxman, that found disturbing inaccuracies in ab-only educational materials. 

The U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Government Reform - Minority Staff found that 11 of the 13 most frequently used curricula contained false, misleading or distorted information about reproductive health - including inaccurate information about contraceptive effectiveness, purported health risks of abortion, and other scientific errors. Recent reviews of these abstinence curricula from Santelli and colleagues at Columbia University have found similar inaccuracies, particularly misinformation about the efficacy of condoms and contraception.

At the very minimum, the report can be summarized as finding that AOE programs typically

• grossly underestimate the effectiveness of condoms and other contraceptives in preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs);
• make false claims about the physical and psychological risks of abortion;
• offer misinformation on the incidence and transmission of STIs;
• replace scientific facts with religious views and moral judgments; and
• distort medical evidence and basic scientific facts.

Lets look at this in a little more detail. The Washington Post reported:

Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.

In addition, the report found education materials that asserted

• A 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person."
• HIV can be spread via sweat and tears.
• Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse. (Actually, it's less than 3% when used consistently and correctly, as much as 14% with incorrect or inconsistent use)

One curriculum, called "Me, My World, My Future," teaches that women who have an abortion "are more prone to suicide" and that as many as 10 percent of them become sterile. This contradicts the 2001 edition of a standard obstetrics textbook that says fertility is not affected by elective abortion.

Another curriculum tells youth that a long list of personal problems — including isolation, jealousy, poverty, heartbreak, substance abuse, unstable longterm commitments, sexual violence, embarrassment, depression, personal disappointment, feelings of being used, loss of honesty, loneliness, and suicide — “can be eliminated by being abstinent until marriage.”

Similarly, other curricula teach that mental health problems are a consequence of sexual activity, without considering the evidence that these problems might themselves cause premature sexual activity, or that they might have a common origin.

 Gender roles got roped into the fray, with materials that often

present as scientific fact notions about a man's need for "admiration" and "sexual fulfillment" compared with a woman's need for "financial support."

Another cirriculum instructs: “Women gauge their happiness and judge their success on their relationships. Men’s happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments.”

One book in the "Choosing Best" series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. "Moral of the story," notes the popular text: "Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."

As you might imagine, abstinence groups were displeased with the report and found all sorts of ways to call it inaccurate, especially since the teaching materials are all still in place. Choosing the Best responded to the fairytale criticism by explaining that the story

is designed to illustrate the differences in communication style between men and women. In addition to missing the point of the story, Waxman fails to mention that this program is for older teens, deals with “Making Marriage Work” and presents widely accepted, mainstream relational principles that encourage the development of listening and appreciation skills in a marriage relationship.

I guess the Choosing Best people consider this perfect justification for a federally-funded youth-targeted parable -- taking fault not for critics' interpretation of the message, which they uphold, but jumping to clarify the story's "age-appropriateness" for teens and supposedly sound application to marriage.

Just for good measure, here are a few tidbits from a Seicus Fact Sheet "In Their Own Words: What Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs Say"

* “There are always risks associated with it [premarital sex], even dangerous, life-threatening risks such as HIV/AIDS. Using contraceptives does not change this for teenagers.” - FACTS Middle School, Student Handbook, p. 50

* "...students who do not choose to exercise self-control to remain abstinent  are not likely to exercise self-control in the use of a contraceptive device.” - Game Plan, Coach’s Clipboard, p. 27

* “AIDS can be transmitted by skin-to-skin contact.” - Reasonable Reasons to Wait, Teacher’s guide, Unit 5, pg. 19

* “A guy who wants to respect girls is distracted by sexy clothes and remembers her for one thing. Is it fair that guys are turned on by their senses and women by their hearts?” -  Sex Respect, Student Workbook, p. 94

* “One thing that sex education and the media fail to communicate is the power of sex. Spies, who are trained not to give away government secrets, even lose their sensibilities and give in to the power of sex, often because of what a woman is wearing.” (SPIES?!) - WAIT Training, Workshop Manual, p. 86

* “These are simply natural consequences. For example, if you eat spoiled food, you will get sick. If you jump from a tall building, you will be hurt or killed. If you spend more money than you make, your enslavement to debt affects you and those whom you love. If you have sex outside of marriage, there are consequences for you, your partner and society.” - Sex Respect, Student Workbook, p. 11

Seen enough? Let's move on...

It gets even worse when our Christian Conservative abstinence "values" actually hamper the country from effectively saving lives in other countries that we've agreed to help. The letter to Pelosi cites the grotesque findings of the Government Accountability Office, which reported that  AIDS–ravaged countries qualify for US aid only if they spend one-third of the donated resources on abstinence-only education. This was mandated without  regard to overriding health and  poverty issues, deeply embedded cultural and religious differences, and rampant gender inequality which can eliminate a female's option to abstain.

As a result, thousands needlessly fall ill in the absence of pervasive condom education and dispersion because  we'd rather impose our Puritanical views of abstinence-over-information, in which most of our own citizens don't believe. This restriction also greatly impedes our ability help the sick and dying, as it doesn't allow funds to be allocated based on areas of need - at least not 33.3% of them.

Whether the letter will do any good or not remains to be seen. It would certainly seem that some response is called for. Read the letter for yourself with links to all the studies cited at RHRealitycheck.org.

*** More info (if you really need it)
Physicians Oppose Inaccurate and Dangerous Abstinence-only Sexuality Education in Texas Textbooks

The Case Against Abstinence-Only Sex Education (article w/Shelby Knox on BeliefNet)

PBS Documentary: The Education of Shelby Knox

A self-described "good Southern Baptist girl," 15-year-old Shelby Knox of Lubbock, Texas has pledged abstinence until marriage. But she becomes an unlikely advocate for comprehensive sex ed when she finds that Lubbock, where high schools teach abstinence as the only safe sex, has some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and STDs in the state.

Five Years of Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education: Assessing the Impact

MSNBC:  

    Doctors denounce abstinence-only education

    Abstinence-only sex ed defies common sense: Education  policy spreads ignorance, sends confusing message to teens

Abstinence-Only Goes Beyond Teens

The federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

NoMoreMoney.org (for Abstinence Until Marriage Programs)
    *  In Their Own Words: What Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs Say
    * Harmful Consequences Abstinence Only Doesn't Work

Colorado Ballot Initiative Seeks to Define "Personhood" At Conception

The Colorado supreme court gave the go-ahead to a ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to assert that "personhood" begins at conception. Denver post writes

The amendment, if approved by voters, would extend constitutional protections from the moment of conception, guaranteeing every fertilized egg the right to life, liberty, equality of justice and due process of law.

How would this work, exactly? Do they get a social security number? Can you declare them as a dependent? What about the 20-50% of fertilized eggs that never implant to the uterine wall and are flushed from the body? Funerals? Do you need to file a "fertilization certificate" with the state as soon as you're sure? Could miscarriages be manslaughter? No more in-vitro. No more research using stem cells...

The typical craziness ensues in the comment board. Some make great points, but much of it is just frightening.

Anyway, you gotta love the guy in the article that equates abortion with the Columbine shootings...

"Let Me Live Free While You Live Like I Tell You" - The Misplaced Morals of the Christian "Libertarian"

Thanks to Suricou Raven at Moronality, I came across Vox Day's blog, Vox Popoli, by way of his pro-Coulter post "Ann Is Crystal Clear", which contends that

"...women's suffrage is completely incompatible with human liberty..."

Vox backs this with the vague reasoning that "emotion" always leads to fear, which always leads to heightened preoccupation with homeland security. At  least I think that's what he means from the single sentence he devotes to the point:

"One cannot defend freedom on the basis of emotion, as fear always runs to promises of security, however nebulous."

He slams-home his point of women-wreck-democracy-with-their-emotional-voting  with the astute realization that

"...no bald politician has been elected in either the United States or the UK with the exception of Eisenhower and Churchill."

I guess he means elected since women's suffrage. I'm also guessing that baldness is preferable because less hair means more brains (which would actually give most women an advantage) - or it could be because the youngish Vox is, in fact, ah-hem...balding? - (and oh the irony that Vox's email is "Vday")
 

But this is so ridiculous, it hardly merits mention. What I want to speak about is this emerging trend, apparently known as Christian Libertarianism. Vox's site has the brash sub-head of "Live Free or Die!" Denying half the population the right to vote is certainly on the right track.

True Libertarianism holds the noble principals of individual freedom and self responsibility. It advocates individuals making and accepting responsibility for their own social and economic decisions.In other words, you're free to life your life the way you want as long as doing so doesn't impinge on the rights of others to do the same...even when they do things you personally find depraved, dishonorable, or just plain dumb. And here's the problem. I'm not saying you can't be a Christian and a Libertarian, of course you can. But the moment you attempt to force others to live by the principals outlined by your religion, you are a Libertarian no longer.

In Steven Yate's lengthy essay "How I Became A Christian Libertarian" he chronicles his intellectual journey and attempts to rationally synthesize the two disciplines.

Although Yate's admits that "Libertarianism is rooted in a philosophy of natural rights that inhere in individuals, not groups," and goes on to say the tenets of Christianity are not the opinions of a group but rather...  well, simple truth. So it's okay.

As far as I can tell, most Christian Libertarians explain their stance by first quoting scripture illustrating that god approves of a hands-off government and then point to a handful of bible stories that may be viewed as representing individual freedom and culpability. Right about now doubts will be cast as to whether non-Christian individuals can possibly handle this type of freedom without an overriding moral compass to keep our "appetites" in check. Instead of the government, which in the least usually forms laws based on consensus and is morphable over time, we instead have the vastly superior authority of Christ dictating allowable and prohibited behaviors. Great.

So while Christian Libertarians believe in liberty and that we all should be free to make our own choices, women should be denied reproductive rights, sex education is for the (preferably married) 21+ crowd only, and the deviancy of homosexuality should not be recognized, condoned or rewarded by the state. The fact that homeowners and straight married couples are rewarded by the government, while not exactly libertarian, is not so much of an issue.

To be fair, I did find one somewhat moderate stance. Michael Bindner, author of the site "The Christian Libertarian Party Manifesto" makes the astonishing realization that

"As Libertarians, criminalizing abortion is forever off the table."

Hey, does this guy actually understand and embrace the principals of liberty? Well, no but he at least sees the hypocrisy so many others of his kind piously discount. Bindner basically says that abortion is morally wrong and we must work to stop it, but instead of outlawing the practice he wants to incentivize child-bearing and give special sliding-scale tax breaks based on the number of children in one's family. Unfortunately, this too goes against the foundation of Libertarianism by putting the government in the role of encouraging a large-family lifestyle and once again we have the government enacting procedures that effect all of its citizens based on the views of a particular group.

He also has the idea that businesses should be forced to advance and reward women who take a year off to have a baby in the same way they would for someone who worked that year. How this could ever be measured or implemented is unclear, and if it's good or not is not the point. This move makes him more Democrat or Socialist than anything else. The point is - it's not Libertarian!

Like I said, this is the"moderate" CL view on  non-Christian-friendly social issues.

The more common stance? Vox himself wrote an article for the Christian Conservative World Daily News in 2003, in which he explains

"The basic principle of Libertarianism is not anarchic. There are real limits. My free will ends where yours begins. Neither the community nor I have any claim whatsoever on your property or your life, and a libertarian legal system would be structured around that principle."

So far so good. And then...

"Do not be misled by the false "pro-choice" rhetoric of the infanticidal abortionettes; when one individual decides the fate of another, it is nothing more than the ancient law of tooth and claw. Still, their very terminology is the homage vice pays to virtue."

All the more disturbing because I basically agree with the first two-thirds of his article, which talks accurately about Libertarianism. And then he wallops you with this craziness at the end.

For some real self-contradiction and clumsy scramble of logic, check out Bindner's section on gay rights, where he tries to find cohesion with "everyone should have personal liberty" and "but gays are abhorrent and really shouldn't do those things."

Why did they even come into the Libertarian camp at all?

This is my point. "Yes, freedom. Freedom, except..." We all have our personal exceptions, and they are all different. If you allow any one person's, or group of people's exception to form a law restricting others, you are not for true freedom and liberty.

Okay, assault, theft, murder, fraud, personal violation, all these are punishable because they intrude upon the liberty of another. However, whether I wear a seatbelt in my car, or someone says fuck on the radio, or  two women marry and raise children, or whether my doctor and I (or my clergy and I, or my boyfriend and I, or just me alone) decide that I don't want to continue my pregnancy... The Libertarian stance firmly holds that none of it should be in the hands of a government that can take your money and/or lock you up not living the way it decrees.

Allowing Jesus to dictate the "exceptions" to liberty does not make the exceptions inherently okay. Your god is not my god so keep him out of my life!

So, Christian Libertarians, find a new term, you're corrupting what was once a perfectly legitimate political stance and sullying it with god. Damn it.

 

One more guy - I can't resist...

Okay, this guy is a nut-job, although reasonable enough to admit he doesn't speak for every Christian or every Christian Libertarian.

The self-delusion goes so far that The Fountain of Truth founder Doug Newman will talk all about liberty and individual freedom, and then detail all the ways that Bush has been too lenient on abortion and homosexuals. In fact, he seems to think Libertarianism means not wanting to pay your taxes and the "the government screws everything up." Inexplicably, though wanting to outlaw abortion and gay marriage, he seems to think the Branch Davidians should have been left alone...

In the midst of a nauseating number of pages of essays, quotes, and personal rants, I found this lovely poem called "The Old Paths" (anon), with stanzas such as:

I liked the old paths, when
  Moms were at home.
  Dads were at work.
  Brothers went into the army.
  And sisters got married BEFORE having children!

Moms could cook;
  Dads would work;
  Children would behave..

Women wore the jewelry;
  and Men wore the pants.
  Women looked like ladies;
  Men looked like gentlemen;
  and children looked decent.

Cursing was wicked;
  Drinking was evil;
  and divorce was unthinkable

The flag was honored;
  America was beautiful;
  and God was welcome!

We read the Bible in public;
  Prayed in school;
  And preached from house to house
  To be called an American was worth dying for;
  To be called a Christian was worth living for;
  To be called a traitor was a shame!

Sex was a personal word.
  Homosexual was an unheard of word,
  and abortion was an illegal word.

Laws were based on the Bible;
  Homes read the Bible;
  and churches taught the Bible.

If you believe no one should tell you how to live but others should be made to live the way you do - you're NOT Libertarian! YOU'RE A CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST WHO DOESN'T WANT TO PAY TAXES!

Stop using liberty as your premise, and make up a new damn term for your political leanings.

"Pro-Life begins at conception and ends at birth."

I don't believe that all pro-lifers are like this, but way too many of them are, as evidenced by this shocking piece by pro-life blogger Jill Stanek. In a review of the new Costner film Mr. Brooks, Stanek concludes that a serial killer who targets women is slightly "redeemed" because he doesn't believe in abortion. And in a similar post, a real man who discovers wife/girlfriend has had an abortion will slap the shit out of her (as opposed to the "wimps" of today who say "I'll support you in whatever you decide," - yay Michael Corleone!

You can't make this stuff up. Read about it in the very clear and succinct post by Jill on feminste.

By the way, the Godfather II scene is tremendously powerful. And when he slaps her after  she admits she aborted his child, it is the exact right action for that character. Michael Corleone, boss of a mob empire, kills when he needs to, maims, roughs-up as called for, spends his life in an effort to maintain utter control of the world around him. Old-school Italian man with a sense of ownership of wife and children - yours to provide for and yours to control. The world of the mafia is one where respect above all else, reigns supreme.

It is a tremendous scene in a tremendous film. It is NOT a blueprint for how to behave across the board today.

It is this extreme elasticity of reason that is such a frightening quality in many pro-lifers who, as Stanek so generously illustrates, will go to any lengths to pull together a case for their cause, even when the case they make advocates and/or excuses violence against and killing of women.

The value of life begins at conception and ends at birth. Horrifying.

Playing Politics With Womens Lives - Disappointing Hearing on Global Gag Rule

Ann on Feministing has some great, though enraging, coverage of a recent House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the effect of the Global Gag Rule, which denies US funding to any for any non-government organization that even mentions abortion. The effects of this have been devastating.

Unfortunately,

Most of the members who took time to attend the hearing were anti-choice Republicans who support Bush's policy of denying women and girls in developing nations access to family planning resources.

It did reveal the astonishing disconnect between what pro-life proponents zealously believe and what is actually happening. They truly believe they are doing the right thing and ignore all evidence to the contrary. How else can a "pro-life" believer ardently support a policy that leads to the deaths of women in developing countries without reducing abortion rates? Ann clarifies with the term "pro-fetal life," which excuses nothing but is at least more accurate.

More Reading on the Topic:

Nigerian Doctor and Reproductive Rights Campaigner Ejike Oji on Devastating Impact of Bush Family Planning Policies

Population Action International's 7-minute Online Documentary on the Gag Rule's Impact in Zimbabwe

The Bush Global Gag Rule: Endangering Women’s Health, Free Speech and Democracy

Putting Politics Before Public Health: The Global Gag Rule

PPFA: The Global Gag Rule

Blumenthal Finds "Values Voters" Growing More Extreme

Max Blumenthal on Huffington today:

On October 20 and 21st, I attended the Value Voters Summit, a massive gathering hosted by the Colorado-based Christian right mega-ministry, Focus on the Family, and its Washington lobbying arm, the Family Research Council. [...]

If anything, the movement seemed more extreme and paranoid than it did four years ago. [...]

Star Parker, a former welfare cheat who had multiple abortions, claimed to me that abortion is the leading cause of death among African American women between the ages of 25 and 34. Then she described her wish for the forced quarantine of all "sodomites." Parker was not a lone wacko milling around in the hallway; she was a speaker invited by the Family Research Council.

Check out his video report "Theocracy Now: In Search of Values at the 2007 Value Voters Summit" and see for yourself.