Tag: Phyllis Schlafly

God’s Gift of Rape | The Real Republican Rape Platform

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in God Rape, Godly Rape, GOP Clown Car, GOP Crazies, GOP Idiots, GOP Wankers, Republican Rape

The real Republican rape platform

It’s no accident GOP candidates can’t stop talking about rape: the party view is women are mere vessels subject to men’s will

    • Via:- Jill Filipovic
Richard Mourdock, Indiana

Richard Mourdock, Republican Senate candidate from Indiana, who has not retracted his debate remark that a pregnancy caused by rape ‘is something that God intended to happen’. Photograph: Michael Conroy/AP

Dear GOP candidates and party members,

I’m going to give you some free campaign advice: stop talking about rape.

The latest Republican rape commentary comes from Romney-endorsed Indiana senatorial candidate Richard Mourdock, who tells us:

“I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

Cue outrage, then cue “apology” from Mourdock – not for his comments, but for “any interpretation other than what I intended”. National Republican senatorial committee chairman John Cornyn voiced his support for Mourdock and added that he also believes “life is a gift from God.”

I would hate for Mr Mourdock to think I’m misinterpreting him here, so let’s be clear about what he said: he did not say that rape is a gift from God. He did say that an unwanted pregnancy is a post-rape goodie bag from the Lord.

And that the Lord intended it to happen that way.

Perhaps God should rethink his delivery system. And perhaps Mourdock should rethink his interpretation of divine will.

What this umpteenth rape comment tells us isn’t that the Republican party has a handful of unhinged members who sometimes flub their talking points. It reveals the real agendas and beliefs of the GOP as a whole.

These incidents aren’t isolated, and they aren’t rare. Sharron Angle, who ran for a US Senate seat out of Nevada, said she would tell a young girl wanting an abortion after being raped and impregnated by her father that “two wrongs don’t make a right” and that she should make a “lemon situation into lemonade“. Todd Akin said victims of “legitimate rape” don’t get pregnant – an especially confusing talking point, if God is giving rape victims the gift of pregnancy. Maybe God only gives that gift to victims of illegitimate rape?

Wisconsin state representative Roger Rivard asserted:

“Some girls rape easy.”

Douglas Henry, a Tennessee state senator, told his colleagues:

“Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse.”

Republican activist Phyllis Schlafly declared that marital rape doesn’t exist, because when you get married you sign up to be sexually available to your husband at all times. And when asked a few years back about what kind of rape victim should be allowed to have an abortion, South Dakota Republican Bill Napoli answered:

“A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”

Rape lemonade. Legitimate rape. The sodomized virgin exception. A rape gift from God.

Some Republicans, like Mitt Romney, have tried to distance themselves from their party’s rhetorical obsession with sexual violation. What they’re hoping we won’t notice is the fact that their party is politically committed to sexual violation.

Opposition to abortion in all cases – rape, incest, even to save the pregnant woman’s life or health – is written into the Republican party platform. Realizing they can’t make abortion illegal overnight, conservatives instead rally around smaller initiatives like mandatory waiting periods, transvaginal ultrasounds and mandated lectures about “life” to make abortion as expensive, difficult and humiliating as possible.

Republicans bow to the demands of “pro-life” organizations, not a single one of which supports even birth control, and the GOP now routinely opposes any effort to make birth control or sexual education available and accessible. They propose laws that would require women to tell their employers what they’re using birth control for, so that employers could determine which women don’t deserve coverage (the slutty ones who use birth control to avoid unwanted pregnancy) and which women do (the OK ones who use it for other medical reasons).

Mainstream GOP leaders, including Mitt Romney, campaign with conservative activists who lament the fact that women today no longer fully submit to the authority of their husbands and fathers, mourn a better time when you could legally beat your wife, and celebrate the laws of places like Saudi Arabia where men are properly in charge. Senate Republicans, including Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan and “legitimate rape” Todd Akin, blocked the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. And Ryan and Akin joined forces again to propose “personhood” legislation in Washington, DC that would define a fertilized egg as a person from the moment sperm meets egg, outlawing abortion in all cases and many forms of contraception, and raising some serious questions about how, exactly, such a law would be enforced.

Underlying the Republican rape comments and actual Republican political goals are a few fundamental convictions: first, women are vessels for childbearing and care-taking; second, women cannot be trusted; and third, women are the property of men.

Mourdock’s statement that conceiving from rape is a gift positions women as receptacles, not as autonomous human beings. This view of women as vessels – vessels for sex with their husbands, vessels for carrying a pregnancy, vessels for God’s plan – is a necessary component of the kind of extreme anti-abortion legislation most Republican politicians support.

So is the idea that women are both fundamentally unintelligent and dishonest. Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment and Rivard’s contention that “some girls rape easy” rely on the idea that women routinely lie about rape and shouldn’t be believed; blocking VAWA relied partly on similar logic put forward by men’s rights activists, that women lie about being abused in order to secure citizenship and other benefits. Hostility to abortion rights similarly positions rightwing lawmakers as the best people to determine whether or not any particular woman should be legally compelled to carry a pregnancy to term.

Women, they seem to think, don’t know their own bodies or their own lives, and cannot be trusted to determine for themselves whether continuing a pregnancy is a good idea.

Rape treats women as vessels, disregarding our autonomy and our right to control what happens to us physically and sexually. The Republican position is that women are not entitled to make fundamental decisions about our own bodies and our own sexual and reproductive health. When that position is written into the GOP platform and is a legislative priority, can we really be surprised when it’s further reflected in Republican legislators’ comments on rape?

These aren’t a few errant remarks from insensitive politicians. They’re at the heart of the Republican party’s agenda.

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New Contest Looks To Find The Most Insane Right Wing Retch To Obama’s Gay Marriage Quip

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Gay Marriage, Gay Politics, Religious Wankers, Right Wing Nuts

Contest: I’m looking for the most insane response to Obama’s gay marriage stance

As many readers know, I do not favor gay marriage. My preference would be to see heterosexual marriage abolished. That’s fair, innit?

That said, one wonders if the hysterical Republican reaction to Obama’s announcement is genuinely felt or simply pro forma. (“Pro forma hysteria”? Is such a thing even possible? Yes. In fact, I’d say that phrase pretty much summarizes the entire Fox News business plan.) It certainly is amusing to see the GOP — the party of Mitt Romney — castigate Obama for changing his position.

Let’s make a contest out of this. Which Republican can come up with the most insane response to Obama’s announcement?

First, the reliably wacky Phyllis Schlafly:

“I think the passage of the [North Carolina] constitutional amendment is a good indication of where the country is right now, but the gay lobby has taken over the public schools, they have inserted their propaganda very much in the schools and we do see the evidence of that,” she said. “I’m worried about what kind of mischief they’re teaching in the schools. It isn’t just the gays, it’s some other groups. The schools are a real threat to the future of our country.”

Gays control our schools! Yep, it’s gonna be hard to beat Phyllis. But a commenter named Al Redwood achieves orbit:

That he is a Gay, Communist grifter the Gays know, a modern day Caligula light, after buying for him the presidency they are tired from promises and want a tangible result, fearing his second term is in flames they want an advance on their original payments, and he knows that they know that he is Gay. It does not take a genius to figure it out, because many of his bundlers, appointees, friends and close associates , going back to Occidental College, Columbia University, his trip to Pakistan are mainly associated with sex perverts. With the help of the Unions and the Chicago Left these organized crime Alinsky style mob-methods have been in use since 2007 . More than 5 persons died in the process of the 2008 election cycle, two gay men he had an affair with in Chicago, (choir boys who sing no more) 2 persons of the Electoral College, one Gay, Catholic author, one passport office clerk, wasted in his own car, as well two persons associated with Breitbarts demise that are gone ( the last person who saw him and the Coroner-RIP). Therefore, the gays know that they could be targeted and perhaps they are making their case now? If he does not deliver he could be OUTED.

It goes on and on like that. You should read the whole thing. It’s just…glorious. I was particularly pleased by the way Big Al brought in the Alinski menace.

And now Dennis Prager displays his Masters degree in cognitive dissonance:

In addition to labeling conservatives and Republicans “anti-woman” (for opposing government-mandated free contraception), “anti-black” and “anti-Hispanic” (for advocating photo identification for voting), and “anti-science” (for skepticism regarding the belief that man-made carbon emissions will destroy much of the planet), Democrats now regularly label Republicans “anti-gay” (for opposing same-sex marriage).

All these charges are demagogic.

Yes, Dennis. Of course they are.

The coverage on Hot Air evinced some thoughtful responses:

Obama curtsies as he drops the soap. And does so quite naturally, though with a wide stance.

Obama comes out of the closet

I think all I said was that Michelle Obama looks like a tranny to me. That statement is not racist, homophobic or ignorant. It’s my opinion, based on her manly looks.

Angry White Dude:

There are a whole hell of a lot of black people that are against gay marriage and Obama needs every one of them to vote….at least three times each.

The Dude strikes a triumphalist note commonly heard throughout right-wingerland. Many conservatives are declaring that Obama, by endorsing the right of gay people to marry, has given up all chance at winning in 2012. Stick a fork in him; he’s done.

And yet conservatives are also saying that Obama supports gay marriage because he is pandering for votes. Well, which is it? Is he ceding the election over a matter of twisted principle, or is he taking this stance for purely tactical reasons? Conservatives have fallen so deeply into a “hate trance” that they can’t even notice such contradictions. Cognitive dissonance strikes again!

(In my view, the “pandering for votes” explanation gets closer to the mark. The truth is that Obama, having sold out the left repeatedly, feels obligated to give progressives something. Alas, conservatives cannot allow themselves to state that obvious fact. In their alternative media universe, Obama has given “left wing extremists” everything they could ever want.)

Back to our contest…

Fox Nation disappoints. Their first headline (widely quoted) was “OBAMA FLIP FLOPS, DECLARES WAR ON MARRIAGE.” The less nutty revised version reads: “OBAMA FLIP FLOPS ON GAY MARRIAGE.” If Fox had allowed the first headline to stand, they might have won our little tournament.

Fans of high loopiness will, of course, want to visit Alex Jones’ Prison Planet, where a sage named Chuck Baldwin asks: “Does Homosexual Marriage Signal America’s Final Undoing?”

Beyond that, the willingness of our political and judicial leaders to embrace homosexuality reveals their rejection of God’s moral law and authority. It is no coincidence that within a matter of weeks after the White House and federal courts collaborated to remove the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery that the entire nation would be embroiled in a fever pitch effort to legalize same sex marriage. God will not be mocked. When one sows to the wind, he reaps a whirlwind.

By accepting homosexuality, America is now fueling the flames of debauchery. When homosexuality is finally and fully accepted by American law, pedophilia and other more onerous behavior will not be far behind. As such, America is on the verge of a self- induced implosion.

Chuck argues that conservatives, ill-served by the GOP, should support the Constitution Party, whose presidential nominee is Michael Peroutka.

So, who wins the award for Nuttiest Conservative Response? For me, the answer is clear: Big Al Redwood deserves the gold medal because he brought in the Alinski meme — the crowning moment of crazy. Chuck Baldwin gets the silver, and Phyllis gets the bronze.

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