Across the Aisle

I heard that State Senator Vincent Sheheen made an appearance at SC Pride yesterday.  Not surprisingly it has not been widely reported, especially by the Sheheen camp.  Sheheen made news earlier this month by reaching across the aisle to Governor Haley in his support of the ban on gay marriage.  The public outcry apparently stunned Sheheen, who wants more than anything to be governor, to the point of making the appearance at the Gay Pride event.

The problem with Senator Sheheen as I see it is that his values lie on the other side of the aisle, but his political affiliation is with us Democrats.

While Sheheen unabashedly seeks support from women's groups, unions, and gay rights groups, he wants to do it without making it too public, and without having to compromise his lack of support for same.

Pardon me but my rage is showing.

It would be a simple matter even for a proud Catholic like Sheheen to support women's reproductive privacy and freedom.  Even Pope Francis, who has to deal with the ultra-conservative archbishops who elected him, has figured out a work-around to the Church's obsession with contraception and abortion.

With Pope Francis, his own Church's leader, as the model, now is the time for Senator Sheheen to take a stand that sets him apart from the rabid Christian republicans, like Senator Lee Bright, who would bring back the Inquisition (for women only) which looks a bit like his fantasy of Sharia Law.

In other words, women's reproductive choices should be as private as are those of men.  They should be as fully covered as those of men (When was the last time you heard an argument that vasectomies should not be covered by our state health plan?).  Women's health care -- the promotion of discriminatory practices against women -- has no place in the legislature.

Abortion and contraception are private matters, to be addressed by the woman, her doctor, her family, her church, and not by government.  God did not appoint lawmakers to make God's rules.  In fact, there's that whole "render unto Caesar" idea that pretty much means the state should stay out of God's business, and God will do the same for the state.

Meanwhile, the state's business is to see that those who choose to have children are not made to suffer needlessly.  In other words, health care, education, a living wage, those are the issues that need to be addressed by government, not what goes on in the doctor's office, or in one's church.

We need to suggest this to Senator Sheheen, to insist in fact that he listen to us -- and to the Pope -- and stop obsessing about women's reproductive parts.  We need to let him know, on Facebook, on Twitter, by email and in person, that church and government, his religion and his role as a public servant, are separate entities.  We need to call and write to the media.  We need to light up this issue, while there is a chance that a Democratic candidate might listen.

Fear and Loathing

As I've talked among women about the insanity that is called Congress and its anti-abortion, anti-birth control antics, the question has come up, "Why do they hate us?"

I hadn't been able to find an answer; in fact, it seemed that "hate" was too strong a word.  It just didn't fit.  And I think the reason "hate" doesn't fit is because it is tempered considerably with denial.

My days of studying Freud are long gone, and there is a lot of derision for the man, but I believe he was brilliant in conceiving the battles within our minds.  So let me get a little faux-Freudian with this.

The most powerful object in an infant's life of course is its mother.  For a girl child, I think there tends to be more overt intimacy, and later, more overt battles for independence.  For a boy, I believe issues of dependency are far more insidious.

So, unlike with girls, a boy's anger is nearly certain to get convoluted.  Until, as an adult, you have rage that cannot be named.  That denial of rage becomes a need to protect that gets twisted all around to the most destructive forms of control imaginable.  I'm not talking about the obvious overt rage that comes in the form of rape and spousal abuse.  What I'm talking about is something I'm thinking of as "legislative rape."

It's amazing, but maybe not really, that as women become more powerful in business and politics, the push to confine us has become so much greater.  And indirect.  Of course a woman is entitled to the same job as a man, but she doesn't need a law saying she's entitled to the same pay.  And if she wants to work, then she needs to be a man and take responsibility for caring for her children -- she certainly has no right to expect the State to take care of her children for her.

And then there is the ever more abrasive and abusive anti-abortion movement.  I'm not talking about the whackos out there with there placards trying to intimidate women when they are at their most vulnerable.  I'm talking about the whackos elected into the 112th Congress on a "jobs, jobs, jobs" platform, who introduced 44 bills on abortion.  I'm talking about our own South Carolina legislators, who proudly -- and yearly -- introduced "personhood" bills and continue to try to put a monument to "unborn children" out on the State House grounds, which would have it in good company with the Confederate flag.

While these legislators look out for the interest of the "preborn" against us stupid and selfish women, they are also cutting funding to welfare, food stamps, education and health care.  And let us not forget that while they are stamping out abortion, they are also working hard to ban birth control.

That, my friends, is where the rage is evident.  This is not a case of wanting to help a woman through a hard time in bringing a baby into the world.  This is a pure and simple case of punishment.  Punishment for leading a man into sin.  God punishes the woman by getting her pregnant, and folks like SC Senator Lee Bright are going to make damned sure she pays the price.  For the rest of her life.

There is just not enough of calling things by their rightful name.  Men in power acting like they are protecting babies when they are in fact punishing women (and of course the eventual children).  Calling their motivation Christianity rather than "loathing."  And let's once and for all rebrand that "personhood" bill and call it by it's true name:  enforced pregnancy.