OKAY, so I'm hardly the only person who wishes Tout le Beltway would just shut th' fuck up. And marriage equality is hardly the only issue where I'd appreciate compliance. But, really, just shut th' fuck up.
I don't wanna hear about "how rapidly public opinion has changed." Public opinion is an ass, kept around to do mule work when you people need it. Ten or fifteen or forty or fifty years of denying civil rights has gone on with your help. Hell, Ralph Fucking Reed is still on the Sundays, and if there's a stronger argument against the existence of a benevolent God at the moment I can't think of it. If th' teevee news had had the balls to call this--or much else--as it is, it's a good bet those Americans whose opinions are changing fast enough to make their heads spin, assuming their heads are involved in their decisions, would have been forced to make the choice years ago.
But we couldn't treat gay rights as an ethical slash legal problem with a pretty straightforward answer in The Land of Freedom because the Republican party wanted to use it as an issue. Now that much of the party's "intellectual" platoon wants out from under the clear Public Good of marriage equality has suddenly become inevitable, somehow, "no matter what the Court decides."
Fuck that. This is getting on the right side of history before it rips a hole in your pocket. (Fuck the Clintons, while we're at it.) Go on insisting that politicians aren't supposed to show courage, or independent thought, if you want. Just don't hand 'em a Bush Presidential Medal of Approval after the fact.
The Republican party cannot live without its Backwoods Bronze Age wing. At least not on election day. It's in desperate need of cover. Unlike forty years ago, it doesn't have a race card to play. It wants to do nothing and be applauded for its progressiveness. Talking about how public opinion has transformed itself, or how cool and happenin' all the Youngs are, ignores who made all this necessary.
Half the population of the country is having its established Constitutional right to reproductive freedom eaten away on an almost daily basis; there's a pretty clear consensus about that as well, as if that mattered. But the Republican party still wants to use that one. So does the Catholic Church. Start getting on the right side of that, motherfuckers.
As I see it, the difference between the way a woman's right to choose, and gay rights, have been handled, is that, with more and more gay people publically coming out of the closet in the past 30-20-10 years, more and more felt comfortable about coming out even more PUBLICALLY, and we now have what I'll call "2 Degree's of Senator Portman Seperation" start to happen - while he wasn't gay himself, his son was, and he has some incentive in seeing him have the same rights that the rest of us enjoy.
ReplyDeleteSo, now he's the ONLY Republican Senator who say he approves of gay rights.
Progress!
So, more and more coming out, publically, meant more and more exposure od people who were gay to the homophobes - who saw that some of their friends and family members were gay, or co-workers, even some church members, and, outside of sexual orientation, weren't some sort of child-molesting deviants, but were people just like them, with the same hopes, dreams, and fears.
Gay people came out publically.
Abortions are decided, for the most part, PRIVATELY, between a woman and her doctor - and, the significant other - but not always.
And the Reich-wing has been successful in changing that 'scarlet letter,' "A," from 'Adultery,' to 'Abortion.'
And they kept the same religious stigma attached.
They had to drop the stigma on 'Adultery' because it's something that Conservative politicians, from Gingrich to Vitter to Sanford, have been routinely guilty of it.
So, end of major stigma - FOR THE MEN.
Women don't typically "come out" about having abortions, like gays did - opening up the way for more of them to say it was ok.
That's the stigma, still at work.
Besides, abortions are seen, not only as punishing "wanton sluts," but more specifically, non-white "wanton sluts."
The "wanton sluts" involved with, or related to, WHITE rich and powerful men, will always have access to abortions - just like they always have.
All it'll take is some money, and a discreet doctor, here, or overseas.
So, while the aim of denying abortions-on-demand for women wasn't just to keep women under mens thumbs, but more specifically, to punish minority women especially.
Kicking people when they're already down is a Conservative trait.
Until enough grandmothers, mothers, aunts, wives, girl-friends, sisters, daughters, and granddaughters of wealthy WHITE men come out and explain how the right to have abortions-on-demand not only saved their lives, but were critical to their families and their futures, abortion will remain, where available, something that's decided in PRIVATE between the woman, her doctor - and her significant other - but not always.
Gay people were eventually allowed to celebrate "Gay Pride."
Until women can celebrate "Abortion Pride," we'll be stuck with this wedge issue for a long, long time to come.
Stigma's remain, as long as people don't think they hurt folks like them.
Them's my $0.02.
'Nuff said...
(Fuck the Clintons, while we're at it.)
ReplyDeleteAnd why not Obama?
The corrupt right-wing fuck didn't "evolve" until some deep-pocketed gay donors insisted on it.
SO why don't we insist on more decent policy from the asshole, rather than running around like a bunch of cowards telling everyone who points out what a right wing shit he truly is to "shut up, because the lesser evil, that's why!!!"
~
Go Fuck Yourselves.
ReplyDeleteThey would probably enjoy it too much.