Bobby Franklin, Christian Extremist

 

Wanna let this man make your choices for you?

Remember Bobby Franklin, the Georgia legislator who wants to criminalize miscarriage and re-name all rape victims “accusers”?  Turns out he really is a Christian extremist.  Franklin belongs to the Chalcedon Presbyterian Church, which openly affiliates itself with Christian Reconstructionism.  This Protestant movement, like its theological cousin, Dominionism,  envisions the United States as a Christian theocracy in charge of the rest of the world.

 

Inspired by R. J. Rushdoony, who wrote

The Christian man is the only true free man in all the world, and he is called to exercise dominion over all the earth,

Christian Reconstructionists would impose their particular interpretation of the Bible in order to bring (they say “reconstruct”) all aspects of public and private life in line with their understanding of Christian morality.  The oppose the separation of church and state and espouse a doctrinaire patriarchal ideology. As blogger Julie Ingersoll reports, Bill Moyers featured Bobby Franklin’s church in his 1992 documentary God in Politics: On Earth As It Is In Heaven.

While Bobby Franklin is certainly what Amanda Marcotte would call a “wing-nut,” he’s a particularly dangerous wing-nut who has been in office since 1996 and who exercises political power alongside many like-minded legislators.  These Christian extremists interpret the Bible to say that men really are superior to women, that men should rule women, especially their reproduction.  That is why they are not only against abortion, but also against contraception

Christian extremism is a lot like Islamic extremism–it is a reactionary response to modernity, to pluralism, to democracy, and to egalitarian movements such as feminism.  It bills itself as a “conservative” movement that would  ”conserve” certain social structures and traditions that modern culture has outgrown.

Reconstructionism’s very name makes it very clear that what these seeming “conservatives” are not interested in holding on to principles, such as the separation of church and state, or liberty for all, or religious toleration, that have become important American traditions, although they were considered radical ideas in their time.  They want to reconstruct, tear down and rebuilt, transform society according to their misogynist, homophobic, and racist principles.  And they are quite willing to admit that the world that they envision has never been seen before on this earth.

My point is, we should not mistake Christian extremism (or Islamic extremism, for that matter) as an old-fashioned, or primitive, or even traditional ideology.  It is a fearful, narrow and repressive response to the modern world.

On #Iran and the brave Iranian protesters

Last night I had dinner with a lovely Iranian woman whose family is still living in Tehran.  She is planning to go back in a few weeks to visit her parents. I will worry about her when she goes.

This morning I came across this video, posted Feb 26, 2011, and Josh Shahryar’s remarkable comment about the Iranian state. Here are some excerpts:

Imagine a country where when protesters are killed, their families have to pay something called a “bullet fee,” because the government expended resources to murder them. Imagine being a war veteran, standing in a morgue and begging the very men who are responsible for your son’s death to return his body to you because you cannot possibly pay the amount they’re asking for.

Yes, stoning is horrifying, but there are other things you don’t hear about much. Imagine a regime that doesn’t execute virgin women. Don’t get too excited. It doesn’t mean what you think. It actually means that when a woman who’s a virgin is condemned to death, she’s married off to a prison guard in a sham ceremony hours before her execution so he can rape her. Only then can she be executed.

Imagine a prison, where instead of cells, they have shipping containers out in the yard. Dozens of detained protesters are forced into a container until there is no more room, then shut in for days without food or water. But that’s the least of prisoners’ concerns when they cannot breathe in such a confined space under the burning sun and can only wait to die of asphyxiation.

Imagine a police force that will drag the dead bodies of your loved ones from the streets after shooting them in a protest, then, bury them in unmarked graves. Imagine finding your child’s grave after bribing a dozen officials, then coming the next day to find the grave gone. Imagine that.

But most of all, try to imagine a state where if you speak of regime change or go out to protest or even try to raise awareness about these brutalities, you are condemned and tried for “fighting against God,” because apparently, the state is governed not by human laws, but by the laws of the divine. You won’t be tried for sedition, but for daring to challenge God’s authority on earth because you wanted to speak your mind.

…

This is what a proponent of democracy faces when he or she goes out to protest in Iran. Almost certain torture, rape, and even murder in the event of arrest. Fifteen hundred protesters were arrested on February 14 and many more on the 20th.

Now, tell me what you would do if you were a hungry, unemployed, disenfranchised Iranian? Would you try to go and camp out in a public square? Or would you march around the city? The fact that thousands of Iranians went out to protest on Sunday wasn’t a show of discontent, but a show of unparalleled heroism.

I’ll warn you, your subconscious may try to block you from absorbing the atrocities that I have written about here — it is certainly easier to think of Iran as if it is on another planet or even in an entirely different dimension. Makes us all feel better if we are as far away from such inhumanity as possible. I won’t blame you for not believing any of it, though. Sometimes, I can’t believe it myself.

Feminists United #Walk4Choice

Austin @amelialong

One of my wonderful, beautiful, fascinating, and awesome readers attends high school in Pittsburgh.  This weekend, she and some of her classmates are getting together at a local community center to work on pro-choice tee-shirts and to protest the Pence Amendment.

They are not alone!  All across America feminists–women and girls and men and boys–who Stand with Planned Parenthood are walking for choice today.   Some of these fabulous feminists have posted photos on Twitter:

 

Massachusetts @alymaybe

 

 

 

Nashville @MyCatIsABunny

 

 

Washington, DC @NewsCat_in_DC

 

Chicago @Christine Cupaiuolo|cmc2

 

Chicago

Ohio

Houston

Atlanta

Atlanta

Austin

Why not to subscribe to Vogue

John Cook’s report on the priorities of the fashion world is priceless and worth reblogging in full:

Did you know that today is a “Day of Rage” across the Muslim world, where bone-weary citizens are finally taking to the streets against their corrupt dictators? Seems like as good a time as any for Vogue to publish a fawning profile of the “glamorous, young, and very chic” wife of Syria’s brutal tyrant, right?

Asma al-Assad is “a rose in the desert,” according to Vogue. She’s the first lady of “the safest country in the Middle East.” She’s “breezy, conspiratorial, and fun,” and she jets around the country in a Falcon 900. Her husband, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, is a “tall, long-necked, blue-eyed” man who “takes photographs and talks lovingly about his first computer.” He was elected president in 2000 with “a startling 97 percent of the vote” because “in Syria, power is hereditary.”

He has also filled “Syria’s prisons…with political prisoners, journalists, and human rights activists” and presides over a secret police that “detain[s] people without arrest warrants and torture[s] with complete impunity.” Oh wait, those last quotes weren’t from Vogue, they were from Human Rights Watch. Anyway, isn’t that purple shawl gorgeous?

 

Christian extremists behind the Tea Party

The media misrepresents the Tea Party as a libertarian movement solely interested in economic issues, but actions speak louder than words.  By introducing legislation to police women’s uteruses and eliminate all funding for family planning, HIV screenings, and sex education, newly elected Tea-Partiers demonstrate that their primary aims coincide with those of the Christian right.   Amanda Marcotte explains this very well:

It must have been quite a surprise, then, to have the new Republican-dominated House of Representatives, which rode in on a sea of Tea Party energy and funding, to immediately put most of their efforts into controlling the uteruses of America, through a series of bills that would defund Planned Parenthood, end all private insurance funding for abortion, and even allow doctors to refuse to save the lives of pregnant women if doing so would require performing an abortion.

Ruth Marcus wryly observes that

House Republicans voted to increase the number of abortions, raise federal health-care costs and swell the welfare rolls…

The Guttmacher Institute has estimated that Title X helps prevent nearly 1 million unintended pregnancies annually. The institute says these pregnancies would otherwise result in 433,000 unintended births and 406,000 abortions.

The inevitable result of eliminating Title X funding would not only be more abortions – it would also be higher bills for taxpayers footing Medicaid and welfare costs for poor children. Guttmacher found that every public dollar invested in family planning care saves $3.74 in Medicaid expenditures for pregnant women and their babies during the first year of care. Imagine the lifetime savings.

And then there is the other “important work” that Pence cited: 2.2 million Pap smears, 2.3 million breast exams, nearly 6 million tests for sexually transmitted infections.

Hardly a way to trim the budget. The GOP has gone further down the dark road of Christian extremism.  This top Tea Party agenda is deliberately designed to keep disempower women by keeping them poor, pregnant, and too burdened by children to go to work in the public sector.

As Marcotte notes,

What the Beltway media have failed to understand is that there are two Tea Parties: there’s the “Astroturf Tea Party”, the well-funded machine pushing a message of absolute rejection of all social spending; and then there’s the grassroots Tea Party, the everyday conservatives who actually show up at rallies, who demand to see the president’s birth certificate, and who oppose government spending while also demanding that no one touch their Medicare. Those folks are the voters, and Republicans know they must be fed. And those folks aren’t opposed to the religious right, since they are, to a large extent, the same as the religious right…

…as recent research by the Pew Forum demonstrates, Tea Party voters are far more socially conservative than the general public, and more socially conservative than the overall Republican party. Sixty-nine percent of voters who identified with the religious right also identified with the Tea Party. Unsurprisingly, 64% and 59% of Tea Partiers opposed, respectively, same-sex marriage and legal abortion, compared to 49% and 42% of the public at large.

Interestingly, the religious right has long had a theory that ties together their desire for a more theocratic state and the rhetoric of “small government” – or at least, ties together their anti-feminism with the small government rhetoric. The idea is that God has set gender roles for men and women, where women stay at home dependent on men. Feminists, the thinking goes, use social spending and reproductive rights to keep women from becoming dependent on men, which upsets God’s plan for women. So, in order to return to the natural order of male dominance – which they currently call “complementary roles” – the government should not only deny women reproductive rights, but also cut off social spending in order to force women become dependent on men. No healthcare, no welfare, no spending on education that gets kids out of the home and allows women to work outside of it. And now, of course, no spending on contraception that allows women to delay marriage and limit family size, preserving their independence.

Excellent Essay about Yemen in Foreign Affairs

For those of you who want to understand Yemen–and I don’t know why you wouldn’t–please see this clarifying article:

 

I Trust African American Women to Govern their own Reproductive Health

I reproduce this statement from the Sistersong website to affirm my solidarity with Black Women’s Choice

Statement of Solidarity with African American Women

We who trust women stand in solidarity with and support of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW!, SisterLove, Planned Parenthood of Georgia, and Feminist Women’s Health Center to affirm our belief that every woman has the human right to decide if and when she will have a baby, and the right to parent the children she already has with the social supports necessary. In our struggle for reproductive justice, African American women have a unique history that we must remember in order to ensure bodily sovereignty, dignity, and collective uplift of our community. The choices that women of color make are based on their lived experiences in this country and reflect multiple oppressions, including race, class, and gender, and their efforts to resist them. It is unacceptable to speak to the needs of any woman, or her children without taking into consideration the realities that exist in her home and local community.

We affirm that an African American woman’s ability to determine if and when she will have children demands that she control the conditions under which she will give birth and have the power to decide the spacing of her children. These freedoms speak to the power and necessity of the preventive care of women before they become pregnant and the importance of comprehensive sex education for all of our children to understand their human right to sexuality in an empowering and responsible way. It means fully funding public education, protecting the environment in all communities, and eliminating sexual violence for all women.

We affirm that an African American woman’s ability to determine if and when she does not have children must include a full range of options including the right to have an abortion. For women of color the privilege to exercise this right all too often hinges on other factors in her home and community. Abortion must be approached in the context of the individual woman and the circumstances surrounding her, such as poverty, sexual abuse, or the lack of health care. To extract a woman from the context of her life dishonors her lived experiences and the plight of a broader community of people.

We affirm that African American women have the human right to parent the children they already have. To ensure the full enjoyment of this right, they must also have access to the social supports necessary to raise their children in safe environments and healthy communities, without fear of violence from individuals or intervention by the government. A continuum of care is essential to protect the lives of women and children. And we must prioritize the needs of children after birth. This includes funding education, investing in health care reform for all, ensuring food security and prioritizing the unification of our families through the provision of social supports to protect the most vulnerable.

Protecting women and children requires a commitment to these principles. It is a matter of reproductive health, reproductive rights, and ultimately Reproductive Justice.

February 2010

YouTube – GOP Attacks Women : Weiner Responds

YouTube – GOP Attacks Women : Weiner Responds.

Here Congressman Weiner responds brilliantly to the GOP attempt to EXPAND the Hyde Amendment. I think I’m in love.

Glenn Beck Compares Reform Judaism to “Radical Islam” | Religion Dispatches

It’s true: on Tuesday, Glenn Beck compared politically-progressive Reform Judaism to radical Islam, while taking potshots at a letter signed by 400 rabbis from Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist denominations calling for his ouster from Fox News.

And on Wednesday, Beck led his radio program with a lengthy (and oddly self-congratulatory) apology for the comparison, calling it “ignorant.”

“I certainly had not done enough homework,” Beck said, “to go on the air and haphazardly make a comment like I did.”

via Glenn Beck Apologizes for Comparing Reform Judaism to “Radical Islam” | Religion Dispatches.

Huh?  He had to do “homework” to know the difference between Reform Judaism and radical Islam? Not that radical Islam is such a well-understood category.

Wikipedia:

Reform Judaism: various beliefs, practices and organizations associated with the Reform Jewish movement in North America, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.^[1] In general, it maintains that Judaism and Jewishtraditions should be modernized and should be compatible with participation in the surrounding culture. Many branches of Reform Judaism hold that Jewish law should be interpreted as a set of general guidelines rather than as a list of restrictions whose literal observance is required of all Jews.^[2][3] Similar movements that may also be called “Reform” include the Israeli Progressive Movement and its worldwide counterpart.

Radical Islam: Not defined.

Bikram Day 96: WTF?

Bronze mirror with the head of the Medusa, Greek, South Italy, 500 - 480 B.C.

One day while carrying out some business, the Mullah Nasruddin was asked to show his identification.  He directly pulled out a mirror from his pocket and soberly studied his reflection for a long time.  At length he exclaimed, “Yes, that is me!”

I have to say that meeting this challenge is the by far the best thing I have done with my life in a very long time.   When I signed up to attend 100 bikram yoga classes in 100 days I told myself that I was performing an experiment. I also reasoned that, since I am something of a couch potato,  I would never make it into a studio to perform difficult physical contortions while sweating profusely at 105 degree for 90 minutes at a time unless I tricked myself into it.  And once I put my name up there on the public board, where students who have taken on the challenge mark their progress each day, it was simply too embarrassing not to show up for class every day.  Other people had done it. Why couldn’t I?

When I began the challenge, at least five other people were completing their last 20 days or so, and shortly thereafter two other students declared their intention to do it, too.  It seemed that I had lots of company and that what I was doing was not so very remarkable.  The yogis ahead of me, some of whom were teachers, finished their 100 days.  There were then just two of us–I and a woman who began her challenge on the same day as I did.  We’d meet in the say “18!” and then “19!”.  She stopped coming.  It was okay because another woman who regularly came put her name up on the board.  She dropped away, too.  Then I was alone–but not really, since a small posse of yogis took at least once class a day, and plenty of other regulars showed up four or five times a week.  Their accomplishment seemed greater than mine.   A number of people began asking me “what day are you on now?” and seemed genuinely impressed.  I hadn’t yet finished and could not yet say with utter certainty that I would manage to finish. Congratulations will not be in order until I have ended my 101st class in a row.

But it no longer matters to me how many days in a row I have been coming to class, although I do still get a small charge when I mark off each day.  Indeed, I’m looking forward to not counting.  I guess you could say that my point of view has shifted.  Much more important that being able to say that I’ve met the challenge is the experience of practicing every day, whether I want to or not.

Paradoxically, I like the way I feel in general even though I don’t always feel good when I’m practicing.  Some days I can’t seem to balance.  On other days my stomach feels cramped, or packed, or bloated, which makes Pada-hastana particularly uncomfortable. On other days I can’t seem to stop yawning, or my legs are tired and weak.  Sometimes the heat bothers me more than at other times.  None of it matters.

Kaspar van den Wigngaard

As one of my teachers, the amazing Kaspar van den Wijngaard, told me: “When you commit yourself to a daily practice you learn to stop worrying about how well you did on any one particular day and to focus more on the process.” Or something like that.  I can’t remember his exact words.  Kaspar has taught me to divest from the need to be “good” or perfect all the time. There’s no capturing the moment, no saying, “I’ve done it, I own that,” or “I am x or y because I can do this or that.”  One does one’s best every day, and that is what one is doing.

Remarkably modest and sweet-tempered, Kaspar is simultaneously an especially exacting and forgiving teacher.  He encourages each student to work from where she or he happens to be at the time.  He saw me leaning back on my elbows in Supta-Vajrasana and said, “You can put your head on the floor and lean all the way back.”  I had it in my mind that I could NOT do that pose and found the suggestion irritating. Still, I dutifully laid back and discovered that I could indeed to the minor backbend, and get a nice stretch in my stomach at the same time.

Kaspar has been teaching at the studio for the month of February, and I’m really going to miss him when he leaves. When he first got here, he ran us through the postures without mercy, it seemed, allowing us much shorter breaks than we had become used to.  But we–I am not the only one–adjusted to his tempo and now like it better.  We’ve gotten better over time, through diligence, consistency, commitment.

Why has this been the very best thing that I have done with my life in a very long time?  Not simply because I have developed a discipline and proven to myself that I could do something that I didn’t know I could do.   Not simply because I have gotten a lot stronger and more flexible.  Not simply because I no longer have the pain in my back that I used to have when I lay flat on it in sivasana.  Not simply because I am far more toned throughout my torso and not simply because my jeans fit way better than before.   Not simply because I have made a lot of new friends and found a happy, supportive, and healthy community in Pittsburgh.  Not simply because the light and the heat have made this winter way more bearable.  Not simply because I’m probably getting taller.

All of these reasons help to make daily practice of Bikram yoga one of the best things I have ever done. But much more important to me than all of these reasons put together has been the daily moving meditation.   Yes, my body is changing.  But what is far more profound and interesting to me is the way that my mind is changing.  In a word, I am more courageous than I was before.   I’m much more willing to face things, issues, problems, predicaments, life-changes that scare me.  This does not mean that I am not still frightened.  What it means is that I am facing, acknowledging, dealing with my fear.  I used to flee from it.   My body is stronger, but so is my mind.

What am I afraid of?  All kinds of things.  Getting older, getting fatter, getting weaker, losing my memory, losing people I love.  I’m afraid of facing the world in which the people who I thought were my friends turn out to be quite unfriendly and mostly indifferent to me.  I’m afraid of letting go of the identity that I’ve clutched around me like a cloak, an impenetrable shield, a space-suit for the past twenty-odd years.  I’m afraid of facing myself and not knowing who I am or what I really want or what I am going to do about it.  All of these things.

I am walking away from the path that I have been on for a very long time.  The old road is well sign-posted, and the signs say “Climb this mountain!”  ”Cross this bridge!” “Cut and bundle into sheaves this field of wheat!”  They also say “When you succeed at this task you will be GOOD!” and “If you fail at this task you will be WORTHLESS.”  The path is old and rutted and bloody and lonely.  You must assess everyone you meet on the path and quickly decide if they will help or hinder your progress.  You cannot trust anyone fully.  If you leave the path and walk into uncharted territory, most of the people you met on the old road will forget about you, as though you never existed.

For the first time in a long while I am actually acknowledging the fear, as well as the grief that comes with letting go of a long attachment to something that was not really who or how I wanted to be.  I am letting myself consider possibilities.  I am following my nose.  Next week, for example, I will go through a week-long training at the Women’s Center and Shelter of Pittsburgh so that I can work directly with women in need.  I am looking for meaningful work.  I am looking for dignity.

I am facing my fear of being a very bad painter even though painting is something I have always wanted to do.  I am facing my fear of not living up to my parents’ expectations.  My fear of not living up to my graduate advisor’s expectations.  I didn’t have any mentors at my last job so I don’t worry about not living up any of my former co-workers expectations. But I am facing my fear of not knowing what the next job will be.  Whatever it is, I will not make the mistake of confusing it with my identity.

This will sound cliché because it is:  I am facing my fear of myself.  It’s not quite right to say that I don’t know who I am, since  I don’t believe in absolute selves or intrinsic identities.  I don’t believe in the soul, or in reincarnation, or heaven or hell.  So I finally don’t believe in not knowing who I am.  What I am dealing with is the challenge of letting go of the space-suit, the rigid identity and the insecurity that kept the stiff paper-board self in place.  The challenge of being a being rather than a doing.

Do you know?  Every day after Bikram I lie on my side in a semi-fetal position with my arms around myself until I feel a sense of love for myself.  I say, “I am here and I love,” and I wait until I feel connected with whatever it is, love, warmth, self-acceptance, gratitude.  It makes a difference.  Once a day, put your arms around yourself and be present with yourself with a kind-heartedness.   Try it.

Here is another story about identity and the Mullah Nasruddin, from Idries Shah, The Sufis.

Once, the people of The City invited Mullah Nasruddin to deliver a khutba. When he got on the minbar (pulpit), he found the audience was not very enthusiastic, so he asked “Do you know what I am going to say?” The audience replied “NO”, so he announced “I have no desire to speak to people who don’t even know what I will be talking about” and he left. The people felt embarrassed and called him back again the next day. This time when he asked the same question, the people replied “YES” So Mullah Nasruddin said, “Well, since you already know what I am going to say, I won’t waste any more of your time” and he left. Now the people were really perplexed. They decided to try one more time and once again invited the Mullah to speak the following week. Once again he asked the same question – “Do you know what I am going to say?” Now the people were prepared and so half of them answered “YES” while the other half replied “NO”. So Mullah Nasruddin said “The half who know what I am going to say, tell it to the other half” and he left!