Commentary: Putting religious group's campaign against contraception into context

[rug]

Posted on Sun, Nov. 13, 2011 01:32 AM
Sarah Lipton-Lubet
American Civil Liberties Union

First marketed in 1960, the birth control pill soon became the most popular form of contraception in the United States.

However, the pill was still not available to every woman who wanted it. Religious groups lobbied in favor of laws that banned all contraception, and it was not until 1965 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Griswold v. Connecticut, that the right to contraception was protected by the Constitution.

Today, virtually all sexually active women — no matter what their religion — have used contraception.

Remarkably, contraception has recently come under attack with new vigor. Earlier this year, the House of Representatives voted to eliminate Title X, the federal program that makes contraception accessible to low-income people throughout the country, and to defund Planned Parenthood’s family planning work. Mississippi was contemplating a constitutional amendment that would outright ban some of the most common forms of birth control. And now, important new federal guidelines that will ensure insurance plans include coverage of contraception are being targeted.

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/11/13/3260401/commentary-putting-religious-groups.html

[LiberalFighter]

1. The right should be explicit that a woman has the right not to get pregnant or be pregnant.

If a woman was a country it would have the right to shoot and kill anyone that invaded their space.

It would have the right to deport anyone that was illegally within its border.

[Angry Dragon]

8. The solution is to incorporate

republicans love deregulation of corporations

[LiberalFighter]

9. Incorporate women?

[NMMNG]

11. Why not

If we were corporations we'd be considered people. :shrug:

[Angry Dragon]

14. YES!! ............. Each woman could incorporate

they could lobby congress for tax breaks,
women today are looked at as second class
citizens by the PTB, and by incorporating
they would move to the head of the class.

Congress just loves deregulation for corps
so women could throw off the shackles of just
being a woman.

[MarkCharles]

2. IF following Christ is supposed to be "the way, the truth, and the light" by which

all Christians should live their lives, why do so many Christians come out on the wrong side of equality and freedom for women or minorities?

That Bible book there isn't very clear on a message if so many people continue to get it wrong.

[Humanist_Activist]

3. Because Jesus didn't really advocate for any of those things...

people project modern values on a 1st century apocalyptic Jewish preacher who thought the old testament law was being ignored.

[MarkCharles]

4. But I was taught by Christians that the Bible is a book for all ages and

all times. I have heard from contemporary Christian leaders of all stripes and varieties saying that the answers are all in the Bible.

Now, you are claiming it's a quaint book with antiquated references simply dealing with religious philosophical writings that preceded Jesus' time on the planet?

Which is it? The most widely distributed book in print in western civilization or an obscure group of stories of one man who some claim was God incarnate who preached against the hypocrisy only having to do with his own day and times?

[Humanist_Activist]

6. Not obscure, but definitely doesn't apply to people today either...

Jesus himself could be best described as a cult leader and preacher.

And that's just going by the words attributed to him, technically Christianity isn't his, and he never intended for it to exist.

[zbdent]

5. eliminate the possibility of using ANY federal dollars for

erectile dysfunction, fertility drugs, fertility clinics/procedures, etc ...

and then you'd hear howling ... especially from the old white men who can't get it up ...

[darkstar3]

7. So, to summarize, the Catholics are working to eliminate birth control

while the ACLU recognizes this as just another in a long line of religious opposition to civil rights.

If only more people would realize this...

[MarkCharles]

10. Eliminate birth control, the equality of women in the church, the equality of

LBGT folks anywhere in the world, even in "liberal", largely Catholic Massachusetts or other US states, Canada, etc.

Let's give Catholics some applause for their impulses to take us back a hundred years or more.

Surely the decision-makers in the church deserve some applause for this latest effort to over-run rationality with age-old superstition, bigotry, and plain old dogma!:sarcasm:

[NMMNG]

12. Despite the propaganda we keep getting here,

The Catholic church (like many religious organizations) is no friend to human rights. They're at the front-lines of every battle to oppose, if not eradicate, them, whenever they get the chance.

[laconicsax]

13. +1

[rug]

15. What propaganda?

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rug]

17. I'll ask you again. What propaganda?

Let's see it.

[freshwest]

18. More to the point, is the reason for all of this from the right is in these links:

This is playing out in all the elections that dumbfound progressives, they are the primary opposition to secular democracy and against individualism. They are against women's rights in any form, because they want to reduce them to the level of concubines, to use them to create armies. Remember the Jesus Camp story, like so many others that made people scratch their heads? They are the background to much of what's happening. Here's a few links and notes about a book by a woman who writes for Salon.

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism

http://www.kingdomcoming.com/

http://www.michellegoldberg.net/blog/

And from Amazon, the quick story in the review:

"A potent wakeup call to pluralists in the coming showdown with Christian nationalists."—Publishers Weekly, starred review Michelle Goldberg, a senior political reporter for Salon.com, has been covering the intersection of politics and ideology for years. Before the 2004 election, and during the ensuing months when many Americans were trying to understand how an administration marked by cronyism, disregard for the national budget, and poorly disguised self-interest had been reinstated, Goldberg traveled through the heartland of a country in the grips of a fevered religious radicalism: the America of our time. From the classroom to the mega-church to the federal court, she saw how the growing influence of dominionism-the doctrine that Christians have the right to rule nonbelievers-is threatening the foundations of democracy.

In Kingdom Coming, Goldberg demonstrates how an increasingly bellicose fundamentalism is gaining traction throughout our national life, taking us on a tour of the parallel right-wing evangelical culture that is buoyed by Republican political patronage. Deep within the red zones of a divided America, we meet military retirees pledging to seize the nation in Christ's name, perfidious congressmen courting the confidence of neo-confederates and proponents of theocracy, and leaders of federally funded programs offering Jesus as the solution to the country's social problems.

With her trenchant interviews and the telling testimonies of the people behind this movement, Goldberg gains access into the hearts and minds of citizens who are striving to remake the secular Republic bequeathed by our founders into a Christian nation run according to their interpretation of scripture. In her examination of the ever-widening divide between believers and nonbelievers, Goldberg illustrates the subversive effect of this conservative stranglehold nationwide. In an age when faith rather than reason is heralded and the values of the Enlightenment are threatened by a mystical nationalism claiming divine sanction, Kingdom Coming brings us face to face with the irrational forces that are remaking much of America. .

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393060942

We ignore this movement at our peril.