Women – This Is Your Last Chance, by Mike Gold Brainiac On Banjo #262; a.k.a. Chicken Little’s Polemic

February 13, 2012 Mike Gold 1 Comment

For the past several decades now I’ve been saying, writing, broadcasting, and muttering that the anti-abortion crowd had an agenda that went beyond bringing an end to abortion. And I got a lot of pushback. A lot.

I appreciate where these naysayers were coming from. Bringing about change involves hard work, personal risk, and massive inconvenience. When we win our point, we are happy and we tend to relax. But we can’t confuse the concept of winning the day with winning the war. We have to be vigilant about protecting and defending our advances lest we lose what we’ve gained. The logistics of organizing are simple: you get people on your side and you continue to grow until your collective voice is heard. Then you hold on to them even if you didn’t win your initial point.

Let’s say you’ve fought for overturning Roe v. Wade and, obviously, you’ve been unsuccessful at that. You’ve got all these people on your side, and if you’re smart you’ll keep them on your side. So you go to Plan B (pun sadly not intended). You push for the next item on your anti-woman agenda.

You go after birth control.

Maybe you’ll have some wins, but at worst you’ll be keeping your troops involved so you don’t have to go back and re-organize over abortion. You can say your hoary thunderer says “be fruitful and multiply;” sadly, the stupid old fart didn’t say “but when you’ve got over a billion people choking the planet, give the baby thing a rest.”

Some say “if you don’t want babies, don’t fuck.” Of course, few of them use such language because they are equally afraid that if they do so they’ll spend eternity with a red-hot pitchfork up their butt. These are people seriously in need of medication… unless they like that sort of thing, which is their right.

Some people – gender isn’t part of this argument – say “If you don’t want to fuck, don’t fuck. It’s up to you.” But you have absolutely no right whatsoever to impose your draconian, bigoted, anti-human zealotry upon the unwilling. If you think Rick Santorum is merely some sort of minority cultist, or he’s just repressed to the point where his eyes should pop out, then you haven’t been paying attention.

This bullshit about the government’s demand that Catholic institutions foist contraception onto their employees is a lie of Goebbelian proportion. It is as total, as complete, and as despicable as other lies we’ve suffered: “It is not truth that matters, but victory.” “Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice.” “Strength lies not in defense but in attack.” “The day of individual happiness has passed.” “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Each of these statements is an immense lie, as is the way the Religionists are phrasing the contraception argument.

The regulation says employers must provide coverage for those who wish contraception. It doesn’t say Archbishop Dolan has to keep IUDs in his cassock. To amend the regulation with “except for Catholics” or any other religious affinity is to discriminate against all other religions as well as those who are not fellow travellers. The Religionists’ peccadillos are not of our national concern in the least; even if they were, they are contradictory.

Most religious-sounding hospitals are owned and operated by private corporations. Most religions institutions do not restrict themselves to hiring employees of their own faith, and women should not have to give up their basic human rights in order to work there. Besides, 98% of all adult Catholics use or have used birth control, so these pompous arrogant bastards aren’t fooling anybody.

Having been a Chicagoan heavily involved in youth social services, I’ve worked with a lot of Catholic organizations and we’ve done a lot of good work together. I’ve done a lot of work with DePaul University, America’s largest Catholic college and – I might add – one that provides such insurance coverage to their employees. I still engage in such activity from time to time, but I’ll spend what’s left of my time working with organizations that truly respect the rights of women and who do not regard them as fuckholes for the faithful.

For the Catholic Church and others to say that this is an assault to religious freedom is to make the most Orwellian of all statements. Prohibiting religions from mandating their religious tyranny onto the masses is the exact opposite. I gather they think it’s okay to lie when they’re defending the all-father.

Look at the assault against Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Sure, they’re pro-abortion. Lots of people are. But when it comes to Religionists trying to shove their bastard beliefs down your throat, PPFA is one-stop stopping. They are pro birth control. Hell, they even sell birth control at prices (oh my god!) that poor people can afford. Here’s some history for you. The nationwide right to contraception was affirmed in the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision, and the Right Wing has hated

Justices William O. Douglas, Arthur Goldberg, John Marshall Harlan II, Byron White, and the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments ever since. Roe v. Wade came down only eight years later, and the vile, hateful Religionist totalitarians have been on the warpath ever since. These two decisions changed the world and did much to promote equality for women as they secured the ability to raise a family (or not) on their own terms, as a planned decision that allows them to organize their own lives.

These are not state’s rights issues, if, indeed, anything really is. Liberty and freedom are not subject to the varying whims of your local bigots. Technically, their definition of state’s rights would allow slavery in Mississippi but not in Massachusetts. State’s rights means there is no united states of America. At least one Supreme Court Justice agrees with this, and I’ll bet you can guess which one (if you can’t, see below). This filthy dogmatist says individual states can mandate their own state religion. Screw abortion; this attitude screws screwing.

Sex is nobody’s business except your own and that of your consenting adult partners, and maybe Rick Santorum’s doggie. Rick and Rover should just get a room and stop trying to turn America into Saudi Arabia.

It’s your womb, women. There are plenty men who are on the same side, but it’s your womb. You-all should be organizing demonstrations and actions that would make Occupy Wall Street look like a little league after-party. And, clearly, you don’t have a lot of time.

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Free Speech Huckster Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times) and available On Demand at the same place. And, yes, it’s Scalia.