Yesterday, people were appalled when it was reported that Rick Santorum, a man who holds such grotesque opinions on a host of topics that he repels all but the worst wingnuts, had seemingly outdone himself by telling Piers Morgan that women who become pregnant by rape should accept it as “a gift in a very broken way.” Here’s the quote:
Last Friday, CNN’s Piers Morgan asked Santorum to clarify his reasoning behind such a callous position. Insisting that “it’s not a matter of religious values,” Santorum explained that sexual assault victims should “accept this horribly created” pregnancy because it is “nevertheless a gift in a very broken way” and that, when it comes down to it, a victim just has “to make the best out of a bad situation“:
SANTORUM: Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn’t have this baby, if she kills her child, that that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice. I understand that. As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn’t, it will always be her child. And she will always know that. And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time, I’ve always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can’t think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.
The Lord works in mysterious ways, you silly ladies, and sometimes it comes in the form of a brutal rape! So saith Frothy. Or as Tbogg put it, Santorum is saying that “when life gives you rape, you should make rapeanade.”
Here’s video [viaWonkette] of that, and then some more thoughts:
My god. I must pause for a moment, quickly, to point out that just after 1:35, he says, “this is not an easy choice.” That is the point, wingnut! It’s a choice that only a woman can make! C-H-O-I-C-E!
But that gets to the larger point here. This is not about abortion. This is not about morals. This is not about religious belief. This is about men, like Rick Santorum, believing in a worldview that says that they, as white, straight men are superior, and the rest of us — women, people of color, LGBT people — are all subject to their control. I want to quote a lot of what Tbogg said on the subject, because though people know him as a “funny writer,” he’s remarkably on point on the greater implications of this worldview:
Twisted version of a living thinking human being Rick Santorum is not a “the uterus is half empty”-kind of guy. To him the uterus should always be popping out babies like a Pez dispenser because, what are women after all, besides elaborately constructed EZ Bake Ovens for man batter. And if you happened to be raped (which Rick, always angling for the lady vote, thinks is “horrible”) well you should look at the bright side of things: you might just get to be a mama!
[...]
God gave you a gift albeit through a horrible violent soul-crushing emotionally scarring way that you will carry with you every minute of your life until you die. And, if you choose to not accept God’s very mortal man-like awkward attempt at gift giving and you say “no thanks” and give it back to Him, well, you’re an ungrateful bitch. And probably a whore for leading your rapist and God on so you don’t deserve the baby, just the rape.
Exactly exactly exactly. And lest you think he’s being hyperbolic, think of many of the “typical” things people say on the subject of women avoiding rape. They’re all focused on the victim and suggest that, well, as long as the lady doesn’t wear a certain thing and as long as the lady doesn’t walk alone and so on and so forth, as if violating one of these rules means somehow that the lady had it coming. Perhaps what’s most striking about Santorum’s quote isn’t the general worldview behind it — we’ve lived around that for a long, long time in the United States, but rather that he is able to move from “brutal rape” to “gift from the Lord!” in a whiplash-inducing two minutes.
Amanda Marcotte suggests in a piece yesterday that modern fundamentalist Christians [whether Catholic or Evangelical -- they've really blurred together over the past few years over common hatred of others] don’t really believe in Jesus anymore, but rather in Sperm Magic. If the term doesn’t make sense to you now, it will in a minute. In writing about the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and where the pro-choice movement stands today [on shaky ground], she discusses the larger worldview of the cultural fight that is often reduced to being simply about abortion, using this image of the Duggars as a springboard:
Amanda:
…[I]t’s important to realize that this battle is not and has never been just about abortion. It’s about women’s rights and women’s roles, and whether we should be full citizens or be managed and controlled by fathers, husbands, ministers, etc.
[...]
In a single image, we get what anti-choicers believe men have lost, and what they believe stripping reproductive rights will return to them: Woman as pet dog.
We don’t even get the dignity that cats get, in their worldview. No wonder they don’t care if Gingrich told his second wife she should just put up with the third one. Your dog doesn’t get a vote when you get a new dog.
[...]
What Oppenheimer [the writer of the piece Amanda was criticizing] doesn’t talk about. but that picture illustrates so well, is what anti-feminists really feel is lost with what they call “contraceptive culture”: men’s god-given right to have a woman—perhaps several (though in a row, mostly)—who follow them around, worshipping their every move, submitting completely and joyfully. I suspect this fantasy never was a reality, but I suspect a lot of Christian fundamentalists have convinced themselves that giving women the power to say “no” to men is what made us so maddeningly unwilling to play the supplicant. No to sexual overtures, no to marriage, no to demands that we wait on you, and most importantly, no to letting your magical seed plant itself in our bodies whenever it wants. That’s why I believe that modern conservative Christians don’t worship Jesus so much as Sperm Magic.
So taking this belief — that women are, as Tbogg said above, little more than Pez dispensers for the products of what Amanda calls Sperm Magic — to its conclusion, it’s not at all surprising that Rick Santorum is more concerned that “God’s will” be done by forcing a woman who has been raped to carry that rapist’s child to term. Though he knows he has to appeal to at least a few female voters and remembers to say rape is bad, it’s obvious that once the idea of conception is on the table, Santorum is no longer thinking about a brutal crime, but about the great will of God to keep women in their place by relegating them to the status of babymakers and nothing more.
Indeed, they believe that this is the natural “gift” of women, that a woman’s highest calling is to churn out babies for God’s little army. Have you heard of the Quiverfull movement, of which the Duggars are members? The Santorums may be involved in creepy Catholic versions of these fundamentalist Christian movements [Opus Dei comes to mind], but it’s the same general idea. Women are the property of men, women are worth less than men, and if The Supreme God of All That Is deigns to use a man’s Sperm Magic to multiply the human race, then that harlot had better comply, regardless of how God decided to deliver that sperm magic, even if it was through violent rape or incest.
When you believe women are inferior, it’s not a big leap to punishing women for being raped. Look at much of the Islamic world, and continue to tell me how different their fundamentalists are from our fundamentalists. Sure, stoning women for being raped wouldn’t fly in the Western world, but I highly doubt it’s because our Fundamentalists wouldn’t find their way there if they didn’t have several centuries of the Enlightenment and the United States Constitution holding them back from exercising their true beliefs.
John wrote this morning about Herman Cain’s inexplicable belief that homosexuality is a choice, something that can be washed off on a whim. Indeed, just this morning I woke up and washed the gay right outta of my hair. It was back within thirty minutes, and I’m already back to making musical theater references, but y’know.
But in the same Piers Morgan interview John referenced, Herman Cain revealed that his attitudes toward choice go a bit further than that:
No, it comes down to is, it’s not the government’s role — or anybody else’s role — to make that decision. Secondly, if you look at the statistical incidents, you’re not talking about that big a number (abortion because of rape – LHW). So what I’m saying is, it ultimately gets down to a choice that that family or that mother has to make. Not me as president. Not some politician. Not a bureaucrat. It gets down to that family. And whatever they decide, they decide. I shouldn’t try to tell them what decision to make for such a sensitive decision.
. . .
No, they don’t. I can have an opinion on an issue without it being a directive on the nation. The government shouldn’t be trying to tell people everything to do, especially when it comes to a social decision that they need to make.
Uh oh. The new frontrunner for the GOP nomination is, um, ahem!, pro-choice. As in, about abortion.
Well, that was a nice run for Herman. Back to the old pizza stone…
My only quibble is that pro-choice policies do far more to protect fetuses than so-called “pro-life” policies, so the sign sort of gives them more credit than they deserve.
Hatred of gays and hatred of women’s rights to have autonomy over their bodies in all situations, including reproduction, are deeply entwined. Both are about the flouting of the patriarchy; both are about human beings living with integrity in ALL areas, including sexually, despite what the straight Christian men who fancy themselves our overlords might have to say about it.
So it’s useful, as a gay rights organization, to occasionally look over the fence and see what our common adversaries are doing to victimize women and families dealing with painful decisions regarding reproductive health. On that note, I’d like to highlight an extremely painful, but important piece about what happened to a straight couple who had to make the hardest choice they never wanted to make, and how they reacted to the Christian protestors in their midst. Read it all, but here’s the first little bit:
“You’re killing your unborn baby!”
That’s what they yelled at me and my wife on the worst day of our lives. As we entered the women’s health center on an otherwise perfect summer morning in Brookline, two women we had never met decided to pile onto the nightmare we had been living for three weeks. These “Christians” verbally accosted us—judged us—as we steeled ourselves for the horror of making the unimaginable, but necessary, decision to end our pregnancy at 16 weeks.
After extensive testing at a renowned Boston hospital three weeks earlier, we were told our baby had Sirenomelia. Otherwise known as Mermaid Syndrome, it’s a rare (one in every 100,000 pregnancies) congenital deformity in which the legs are fused together. Worse than that, our baby had no bladder or kidneys. Our doctors told us there was zero chance for survival.
Yeah, read it all, please. The fight for gay rights and the fight for reproductive choice are the same fight. I’ve quoted it before, but take it away once again, Amanda Marcotte:
After all, these two fights—for reproductive rights and gay rights—are the same fight. It’s about the right of people who aren’t straight men to have a sexuality without punishment or shame. We’re the ones who deserve the label “pro-life”, because we support the right for gays and women to survive and to thrive—to live. And make no mistake, we’re all up against a patriarchal right that is sadistic and violent.
That’s gotta twist the knife for social conservatives.
Not only does she express support for equality, but she even acknowledges the actuarial elephant in the room: the major remaining steam in the movement to deny LGBT people equal rights is among the elderly and soon-to-be elderly. Younger voters, on both sides of the aisle, are just fine with equality. In fact, they think it’s dandy.
I know, what a general post title. But I just can’t muster anything more interesting about the fact that that a “Terri Schiavo memorial concert” will be happening in Indianapolis in order to spread awareness about the “sanctity of life.”
“We’re holding this concert to do just that,” he said, “but not only to remember Terri, but to remind people that there’s tens of thousands other persons like my sister living with brain injuries today that need to be protected.”
Yes, there are tens of thousands of braindead vegetables out there, far beyond the point of a medical recovery even being possible, and we need to make sure we keep them plugged in, squandering the resources and, indeed, the lives of their loved ones in order to “protect the sanctity of life.”
It’s so strange and grotesque that they call themselves “pro-life.”
Amanda Marcotte was right yesterday when she wrote this:
In this contrast, you really begin to see the perversity of calling the anti-choice movement “pro-life”—it’ an oxymoron. They’re motivated, on a base level, by a hatred of life. Or, life as most of us define it, when we use phrases like “what I want to do with my life”, “living my life”, “life is good”, and pretty much every other use of “life” outside of anti-choice propaganda. Life, for most people, is about being in this world. It’ about enjoying food, enjoying sex, having goals, making plans, creating relationships, loving each other, developing beliefs, thinking thoughts, learning, enjoying a good night’ rest, listening to music, enjoying drama, enjoying quiet, kicking your feet up and petting the cat, diving into your work, making a difference, helping others, selfishly hiding away and doing for yourself, falling in love, grieving a loss, the thrill of winning, the sorrow of losing, the ambiguities of the human spirit, the bright light of reason, the joy of discovery, the curiosity inspired by mystery, a walk in the park, a Christmas with family, a loud concert, a good book.
But when anti-choicers speak reverently of “life”, they don’t mean this. They imagine things that are technically alive, but have no relationship to this word—Terri Schiavo laying in bed with no brain to speak of, a mindless fetus, a fertilized egg, a stem cell. They relate to these beings, who are not really living, and scrounge up nothing but anger and hatred at those of us who are perceived as actually living in the impure, disgusting, life-having world with connections to family and friends, brainy intellectual engagement with reality and of course, dirty, filthy, despicable sex. The impure wetness of real life disturbs them. They dwell endlessly on the medically disgusting aspects of abortion—aspects that exist in all medical procedures—because their minds are enraptured by hatred of the perceived filthiness of human bodies and life. The world with all its squirming, actually living life—it’ bothersome. Better to dwell on the imagined peace of the fetus, the immoveable quiet of a person in a vegetative state. Someone who is recognizably human but not really living—the purest, simplest, least disgusting way of being. Purity is always under threat, from fluoride to uncontrolled sexuality.
Yeah, read that whole piece.
Why am I writing about this on an LGBT blog? Well, for one, because we’re dealing with the exact same group of patriarchal Religious Right goons who seek to keep us from living our lives. Because it’s the same exact fight. To borrow from Amanda again,
…these two fights—for reproductive rights and gay rights—are the same fight. It’ about the right of people who aren’t straight men to have a sexuality without punishment or shame. We’re the ones who deserve the label “pro-life”, because we support the right for gays and women to survive and to thrive—to live. And make no mistake, we’re all up against a patriarchal right that is sadistic and violent.
Yep. The joke about anti-choice groups being “pro-life” right up until the moment of birth is clearly true. They “support life” right up to the point that they can no longer control it, project their insecurities and shame onto it, etc.
In a harsh rebuke of the increasingly extreme United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, a major Catholic health group backed the Senate’s health-care compromise on abortion. The Catholic Health Association said that the most important thing that Congress could do was pass a bill that would cover the nation’s uninsured.
Needless to say, the uncompromising, obstinate Bishops proclaimed the compromise “morally unacceptable.
I suppose the Bishops believe that leaving people uninsured to die in the cold in order to use health reform as a platform for abortion politics is the moral and ethical route.
The current crop of conservative Bishops appear hardhearted and clueless to the concerns of real people who desperately need help. They seem to believe that priestly polemics will solve the health care problem in this country.
“The Catholic Health Association does not represent the teaching of the Catholic Church on the non-negotiable defense of innocent life,” the conservative Catholic activist Deal Hudson said in a statement, calling the association’ move “utterly offensive.”
The difference between The Catholic Health Association and ideologues like Hudson, is that the hospitals actually deal with uninsured sick people. Well, Hudson and his ilk also deal with sick people – but in their case, a good shrink and medication is all that is needed.
Good for the Catholic Health Association for standing up to the extremists in the Catholic Church and the Republican Party.
In other Catholic News:
The Associated Press reports that two more Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland have resigned in the wake of a damning investigation into decades of church cover-up of child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.
The bishops, Eamonn Walsh and Ray Field, offered an apology to child-abuse victims as they announced their resignations during Christmas Mass on Friday. Priests read the statement to worshipers throughout the archdiocese, home to a quarter of Ireland’ 4 million Catholics.
In his Christmas sermon, Archbishop Martin said the church for too long had placed its self-interest above the rights of its parishioners, particularly innocent children. “It has been a painful year,” he told worshipers. “But the church today may well be a better and safer place than was the church of 25 years ago ‚Äî when all looked well, but where deep shadows were kept buried.”
Of course, we know this is nonsense. Until the Catholic Church does the following, there will be abuse:
1) Allow openly gay, sexually active priests. Doing so will attract psycho-sexually healthy gay men who will not use the priesthood to hide their sexuality – and in many cases use their power to take advantage of the young and vulnerable. Out gay priests will look for age-appropriate partners.
2) Allow women into the priesthood. This would immediately break up the good old closet boys network.
3) Allow married heterosexual priests. Just as it is imperative to attract sexually mature gay people, it is just as key to attract sexually healthy heterosexuals. Having a team of immature, pent-up priests is a recipe for disaster.
Until these rule changes are made, the Vatican is just spinning us.
