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Taking Away Rights
Topic Started: May 25 2006, 08:43 PM (76 Views)
sqeezemasterflash
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Now you're boring us
Dan Savage has had Straight Rights Updates in his last few columns. He points out how the religious right doesn't just want to take away homosexual rights, but heterosexual rights too. This is some pretty crazy stuff.

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STRAIGHT RIGHTS UPDATE: I've been running around with my hair on fire trying to convince my straight readers that religious conservatives don't just hate homos. Their attacks on gay people, relationships, parents, and sex get all the press, but the American Taliban has an anti-straight-rights agenda too. As I wrote on March 23: "The GOP's message to straight Americans: If you have sex, we want it to fuck up your lives as much as possible. No birth control, no emergency contraception, no abortion services, no lifesaving vaccines. If you get pregnant, tough shit. You're going to have those babies, ladies, and you're going to make those child-support payments, gentlemen."

After raising the alarm for months back here in the sex ads, I was gratified to read Russell Shorto's brilliant cover story, "The War on Contraception," in the New York Times Magazine last weekend. To readers who think I'm being hysterical: So you don't think the religious right would seriously go after birth control? Fine, don't believe me. But maybe you'll believe Shorto when he lays out the American Taliban's plan to deny access to birth control—any and all types, folks, not just emergency contraception.

"In particular, and not to put too fine a point on it, they want to change the way Americans have sex," Shorto writes. "Contraception, by [their] logic, encourages sexual promiscuity, sexual deviance (like homosexuality), and a preoccupation with sex that is unhealthful even within marriage." Shorto quotes Judie Brown, president of the American Life League: "We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion. The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set.... We oppose all forms of contraception." And there's this from R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: "I cannot imagine any development in human history, after the Fall, that has had a greater impact on human beings than the pill... Prior to it, every time a couple had sex, there was a good chance of pregnancy. Once that is removed, the entire horizon of the sexual act changes. I think there could be no question that the pill gave incredible license to everything from adultery and affairs to premarital sex and within marriage to a separation of the sex act and procreation."

I'll say it again, breeders: The American Taliban is not just opposed to straight premarital sex, with their abstinence education and hilariously ineffective virginity pledges, or gay sex, with their "ex-gay" campaigns and their anti-gay-marriage amendments. The American Taliban doesn't think married heterosexual couples should be able to use birth control. If you care about your own freedom—not just your right to have premarital sex, but your right to decide whether, when, and how many children you're going to have—you need to read "The War on Contraception." And don't comfort yourself with the notion that these are just some antisex religious wackos: The Bush administration not only listens to these wackos, it appoints them to important positions all over the federal government—and let's not even think about the members of the American Taliban that Bush has already appointed to lifetime positions in the federal judiciary.

This is some serious shit, breeders. You're being attacked. It's time to fight back.


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STRAIGHT RIGHTS UPDATE: After tossing nearly half of last week's column away on a straight rights update, it was my intention to give it a rest. In fact, every time I write one of these I think, "Banning abortion, evicting unmarried straight couples and their children, moving to ban birth control—things can't get any worse, can they?" Oh, but they can: Not satisfied with meddling in the lives of the relatively small percentage of women who are pregnant, the American Taliban is moving to regulate the lives of all American women.

"New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves—and to be treated by the health-care system—as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon," reports the Washington Post. "[T]his means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control... t's important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed."

Color me paranoid, but ordering American women to regard themselves as "pre-pregnant" because they may harm a fetus they don't know they're carrying opens the door to prosecuting women who harm their fetuses by failing to regard themselves as "pre-pregnant." How long until "women should... refrain from smoking [and] maintain a healthy body weight" becomes "women must..." Does that sound paranoid? Well, so did a war on contraception once.

Oddly enough, Bush's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn't urge straight men to regard themselves as existing in a perpetual state of "pre-fatherhood." Smoking, obesity, asthma, and diabetes could seriously hamper a man's ability to do the heavy lifting that comes with fatherhood. But Bush's CDC doesn't seem that interested in regulating the behavior of all those fat, smoking pre-fathers out there.

Gee. Isn't. That. Weird.

There is a bright side in the CDC's announcement: If we're going to regard all females as pre-pregnant, then we can, as my friend Gomez points out, regard all virgins as merely pre-fucked.

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Caber McJock
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I agree
Give it a rest Jeff.

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religious conservatives don't just hate homos.


I'm a religious conservative. I don't hate "homos".
Your president and his compatriots don't represent all religious, spiritula or conservative people. You'd be pissed if I posted stuff painting atheists in broad strokes, right?

Keep it to humor and soft core pron please.
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MaxPower
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Follower of Branigann's Law
As the founder of "The church of the $2 Whore" i think all other religons are a path straight to hell.



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sqeezemasterflash
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Now you're boring us
Caber McJock
May 25 2006, 10:55 PM
Give it a rest Jeff.


Sorry Jeff, I didn't mean to offend. I tend to get carried away when I read about small groups trying to force their opinions of the minority. I just thought it was an interesting topic.
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