Tag: God hates women

  • You are the gardener

    Speaking of Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll…That article in the Stranger is interesting.

    To become a “member” at Mars Hill Church requires more than attending church. Becoming a full-fledged member—a process highly encouraged, and sometimes thunderously demanded, in Pastor Mark Driscoll’s sermons—requires months of classes and a careful study of Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe, Driscoll’s 463-page Mars Hill textbook. To seal the deal, the prospective member must formally agree to submit to the “authority” of the Mars Hill leadership.

    Driscoll, the church’s cofounder and public face, has made a name for himself with his strutting, macho interpretation of Christianity, one in which men are unquestioned heads of their households and “chick-ified church boys,” as he calls them, need not apply. He rails against mainstream Christians who imagine a “Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ… a neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy.” Instead, he has molded a doctrine based on manliness, sexual purity, and submission to authority: wives to husbands, husbands to pastors, and everyone to God.

    Patriarchal, in short. Like Quiverfull religion; like Mormonism and the FLDS; like Catholicism; like Islam; like all the monotheisms except the most liberal branches.

    One guy, given the pseudonym “Lance” in the article, was an enthusiastic Mars Hill member until he disagreed with a pastor about a building safety issue

    and the disagreement metastasized into a weeks-long debate—not about the safety issue, per se, but about whether Lance was being “insubordinate” and refusing to properly “submit.”

    “I began to question their authority,” Lance says, “and their ability to make good decisions.”

    In the midst of this, Lance had begun a long-distance relationship with a young woman in Colorado. Lance says that his pastor instructed him to end the relationship, even though their relationship was not yet physical and nothing improper had happened. Lance balked, but his pastor insisted: “I’m the authority over you,” the pastor said, according to Lance. “You agreed when you became a member that I am your authority, and you have to obey us.” Lance was torn—on one hand, he had signed that membership contract.

    On the other hand, this was ridiculous.

    In a final, tense meeting, Lance got fed up with the leadership’s harping about submission and authority. “How is this not a Jim Jones theology?” Lance remembers asking.

    So he was thrown out – and then they started hounding him. Other people have had similar experiences. The phrase “drink the Kool-Aid” turns up and is clearly not altogether metaphoric.

    At a service in January –

    After the band played two indie-rock hymns, Pastor Driscoll appeared on a live video feed from his Ballard church. His “Men and Marriage” sermon was relatively tame: A husband should be the firm and responsible head of his household, the leader of a “little flock called home and family.” He should think of his wife as “a garden” and himself as “the gardener.” If you look at your garden and don’t like how it looks, Driscoll preaches, just remember: “You are the gardener.”

    Tame? That’s tame? Saying a woman is a fucking garden and the man she’s married to is the gardener? That’s not tame! The reporter’s a guy, so maybe he didn’t think about it hard enough. That’s NOT tame. One, it makes the woman a thing and the man a person; two, it makes the woman a thing that has to be dug and otherwise battered and the man the person who does the digging and other battering; three, it makes the woman’s appearance something that it is the man’s job to alter to suit his liking; four, it’s basically permission for a man to use force and violence on “his” wife along with refusal of permission for the woman to refuse or resist. It’s not the least bit tame. It’s disgusting.

    The thing his sermon didn’t address—the thing I came hoping to hear about—was when submission to human authority goes too far.

    Well yes it did; the garden claim is decidedly a matter of when submission to human authority goes too far.

    Meanwhile – why does the Washington Post include Mark Driscoll on its On Faith blog? I wonder if the Washington Post would include a cleric who talked about black people as gardens and white people as the gardeners. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t. Why is stark overt male dominationism more socially acceptable than stark racism? I would love to know.

  • Stay where you are

    Speaking of Islamic Feminism…

    In Afghanistan, it’s a crime for women to leave home without permission.

    “Running away” is not an offense found in the Afghan Penal Code. However, women and girls in Afghanistan have long faced punishment from family and local governing bodies for leaving home without permission.

    In response to challenges to the practice of charging women and girls with the crime of“running away,” in 2010 and 2011 the Afghan Supreme Court issued an instruction to courts that “running away” is a crime…

    The authorities typically bring “running away”charges when family members file a complaint after women or girls have fled from spouses and family, often in the context of domestic abuse or forced marriage. There is no prohibition on men leaving their homes without permission. When men face charges related to “running away” it is due to their having assisted a woman in doing so.

    In 2010 and 2011 the Supreme Court issued statements that“running away” should be treated as a crime whenever a woman flees to a “stranger” as opposed to a “relative” or “legal intimate.” In the 2010 statement, the court stated that running away from family or spouses, even in cases of abuse, “could cause crimes like adultery and prostitution and is against Sharia principles” and determined that the act is “prohibited and prosecutable based on discretionary punishment.”

    Ah it’s against Sharia principles – well that’s all there is to be said then.

    The court called for women and girls facing abuse to “refer their cases to judicial institutions and to the government…and solve their problems via government channels rather than resorting to personal actions” such as running away. The Supreme Court concluded that “running away” is not a legitimate response to abuse: “For resorting to personal actions may create various crimes and violence rather than eliminating the violence.”

    So by the same token, if a stranger kidnaps you and rapes and beats you, you should refer your case to the government rather than running away?

    It makes every bit as much sense. Have you ever read anything so brutally stupid? If a woman or girl is being abused and beaten, how is she supposed to refer her case to the government without running away first? Men who abuse girls and women aren’t going to stand back and politely wait while they call the police, now are they.

    Human Rights Watch has case studies.

  • Mothers and daughters

    Via a tweet by the great Deeyah – a woman in India is murdered for refusing to “compromise” in her daughter’s rape case.

    I suppose I should warn you: it makes very ugly upsetting reading. That’s so often the case, but maybe I should give warnings more often.

    A month-and-a-half after a schoolgirl was reportedly raped in Betul, her mother was allegedly shot dead by the accused and his friends on Friday night. No arrests have been made so far.

    Imarti Uike, a 45-year-old tribal woman, had refused to withdraw the case related to the alleged rape of her 16-year-old daughter and had filed a written complaint about the repeated threats being faced by her family.

    Late on Friday, when the family of six was preparing to retire for the night, six persons, including Raju Gavli — the main accused in the rape case — his brother Bantu, Rajesh Harode, Praveen and two others, reportedly entered their house in Hamlapur locality.

    The 16-year-old girl, her father and three brothers were present when the accused reportedly shot Imarti, who had refused to agree to a compromise in the rape case. She was rushed to a hospital where she died during treatment late in the night.

    That upsets me.

    It reminds me of Leila Hussein, who was murdered for leaving her husband after he murdered their daughter for talking to a British soldier. Remember her?

    Leila Hussein lived her last few weeks in terror. Moving constantly from safe house to safe house, she dared to stay no longer than four days at each. It was the price she was forced to pay after denouncing and divorcing her husband – the man she witnessed suffocate, stamp on, then stab their young daughter Rand in a brutal ‘honour’ killing for which he has shown no remorse.

    Though she feared reprisals for speaking out, she really believed that she would soon be safe. Arrangements were well under way to smuggle her to the Jordanian capital, Amman. In fact, she was on her way to meet the person who would help her escape when a car drew up alongside her and two other women who were walking her to a taxi. Five bullets were fired: three of them hit Leila, 41. She died in hospital after futile attempts to save her.

    She had been up all night packing, and making a cake for the women who had sheltered her.

    It reminds me of Rona Amir Mohammad, the first wife of Mohammad Shafia, who tried to protect and support the Shafia daughters, and was murdered for her pains.

    It reminds me of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, who accused some militiamen of raping her, and was stoned to death for adultery in front of a crowd in Mogadishu. She was 13. Remember her?

    “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me,” she said, according to the man who wanted to remain anonymous. A few minutes later, more than 50 men threw stones.

    …

    Numerous eye-witnesses say she was forced into a hole, buried up to her neck then pelted with stones until she died in front of more than 1,000 people last week.

    This upsets me.

     

     

  • Bishop to hospitals: let women die, that’s an order

    Yes really. This isn’t my usual hyperbole, it’s exactly what the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, tells the president of Catholic Healthcare West in an official letter dated November 22, 2010.

    I now ask that CHW agree to the following requirements by Friday, December  17, 2010. Only if all of these items are agreed to, will I postpone any action against CHW and St. Joseph’s Hospital. Specifically, I require the  following in order for me to postpone any further canonical action directed  against St. Joseph’s Hospital:

    1. CHW must acknowledge in writing that the medical procedure that resulted in the abortion at St. Josephs’ hospital was a violation of ERD 47, and so will never occur again at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

    The medical procedure that resulted in the abortion at St. Josephs’ hospital was done to save the life of the mother when the only alternative was that both the mother and the fetus would die.

    People don’t believe this when you tell them.

  • December 2010: Episcopal evil

    Here’s the December 2010 post in which I became aware that it’s explicit Catholic church policy that women should be allowed to die rather than have a life-saving abortion.

    December 26 2010

    The ACLU letter to the administrators of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says something I hadn’t known, something quite staggering. The trouble is, I haven’t been able to find it anywhere else, so I can’t be sure it’s accurate. I would email the ACLU to ask, but they say they get too much mail to answer.

    …just last week it was revealed that the Bishop of Phoenix threatened to remove his endorsement of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center – where, as discussed in our previous letter, doctors provided a life-saving abortion to a young mother of four in November 2009 – unless the hospital signed a written pledge that it would never again provide emergency abortion care, even where necessary to save a woman’s life.

    You see why that’s staggering. It says that the bishop demanded that the hospital sign a written pledge not to do an abortion even where necessary to save a woman’s life – the bishop explicitly demanded that the hospital let a woman die rather than do an abortion. I knew he’d been saying that in effect all along, but I didn’t know he’d been willing to spell it out himself.

    [pause to say – fuck I hate these bastards. I hate them I hate them I hate them.]

    At any rate, even without confirmation of that part, he said way more than enough. The Phoenix diocese kindly makes his saying available to us. It’s disgusting.

    …earlier this year, it was brought to my attention that an abortion had taken place at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. When I met with officials of the hospital to learn more of the details of what had occurred, it became clear that, in the decision to abort, the equal dignity of mother and her baby were not both upheld; but that the baby was directly killed, which is a clear violation of ERD #45.

    There was no baby. There was a future baby inside the body of the woman who was on the point of death. It wasn’t possible to uphold “the equal dignity of mother and her baby” because the mother had fatally high blood pressure.

    In this case, the baby was healthy and there were no problems with the pregnancy; rather, the mother had a disease that needed to be treated. But instead of treating the disease, St. Joseph’s medical staff and ethics committee decided that the healthy, 11-week-old baby should be directly killed. This is contrary to the teaching of the Church (Cf. Evangelium Vitae, #62).

    That’s just outright dishonest. A healthy 11-week-old baby is just that, it’s not a fetus of 11 weeks. Does the bishop consider a newborn infant a 9-month-old baby?

    Not to mention of course that treating the disease without killing the fetus wasn’t an option, so it’s dishonest of this reactionary woman-hating theocrat to imply that it was.

    The president of St Joseph’s hospital, Linda Hunt, pointed out that it wasn’t an option.

    “If we are presented with a situation in which a pregnancy threatens a woman’s life, our first priority is to save both patients. If that is not possible, we will always save the life we can save, and that is what we did in this case,” Hunt said. “Morally, ethically, and legally, we simply cannot stand by and let someone die whose life we might be able to save.”

    But that is exactly what the bishop is demanding that they do, and exactly what he is making a condition of the hospital’s “Catholic” status. You don’t get to call yourself “Catholic” unless you’re willing to let a woman die along with her fetus rather than kill the fetus to save the woman. (Notice that the bishop neglects to mention that the fetus dies either way. He’s not even demanding that they let the woman die to save the fetus, he’s demanding that they let her die to make a point.)

    Dr. Charles Alfano, chief medical officer at the hospital and an obstetrician there, said Olmsted was asking the impossible from the hospital.

    “Specifically the fact that he requested we admit the procedure performed was an abortion and that it was a violation of the ethical and religious directives and that we would not perform such a procedure in the future,” he said. “We could not agree to that. We acted appropriately.”

    That’s close to a confirmation of the ACLU item. I don’t doubt the ACLU item, I just would like to see it in writing somewhere else.

    Catholic News Service gives a slightly evasive account.

    Amen.

  • Catholic thanatophilia, December 2010

    Some readers of the Texas Taliban post have expressed surprise that some rules against abortion can be downright murderous, so I thought I would go digging through the archive. I too was surprised in December 2010 to learn just exactly how explicitly murderous the policy of the Catholic church and in particular the US Conference of Catholic bishops actually is.

    Here is one post on the subject (click on the link to the original to read the comments) –

    December 28, 2010

    The US Conference of Catholic Bishops insists on exactly the same murderous policy that the rebarbative bishop of Phoenix does. The CCB is very clear about it. The CCB doesn’t mess around.

    “Surgery to terminate the life of an innocent person, however, is intrinsically wrong… Nothing, therefore, can justify a direct abortion. No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the Law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church.”

    No circumstance whatsover, including the circumstance that the fetus is already doomed and will not survive no matter what, can make it licit to remove the placenta to prevent the woman’s death, since it is contrary to something that does not exist.

    The bishops don’t know that there is such a thing as “God” or that it exists or ever has existed. They don’t know what the “Law” of that “God” is. They know nothing whatsoever about it. They know they’ve been told things, but anyone can tell anyone anything, and often does. Mere telling is not enough, especially when ordering medical workers to let patients die on the authority of the telling.

    The putative law of the putative God is not “written in every human heart.” It’s not written in mine, and the bishops have no business saying it is. They’re bullshitting, and they’re doing it in aid of backing up a rule that would let women die when they could be saved, on the grounds that their fetus can’t be saved too.

    Defenders of this revolting policy are bullshitting, if not outright lying, too: they are calling this policy a “right to life” policy, but of course it’s not, because the whole point is that it kills a woman and a fetus instead of only a fetus. That’s not “pro-life.” This policy results in the death of an adult, not life for a fetus.

  • A triumph for the Texas Taliban

    So there’s this couple in Texas looking forward to their second baby, a brother for their 2-year-old daughter.

    Yet now my doctor was looking grim and, with chair pulled close, was speaking of alarming things. “I’m worried about your baby’s head shape,” she said. “I want you to see a specialist—now.”

    My husband looked angry, and maybe I did too, but it was astonishment more than anger. Ours was a profound disbelief that something so bad might happen to people who think themselves charmed. We already had one healthy child and had expected good fortune to give us two.

    Instead, before I’d even known I was pregnant, a molecular flaw had determined that our son’s brain, spine and legs wouldn’t develop correctly. If he were to make it to term—something our doctor couldn’t guarantee—he’d need a lifetime of medical care. From the moment he was born, my doctor told us, our son would suffer greatly.

    And now you’re guessing the rest. You’re no fools; you didn’t miss the deadly “Texas” at the beginning.

    Their doctor couldn’t do the abortion, because the hospital she’s affiliated with is Catholic (as so many hospitals, and more all the time, are). They had to go to a clinic. They went straight there.

    My counselor said that the law required me to have another ultrasound that day, and that I was legally obligated to hear a doctor describe my baby. I’d then have to wait 24 hours before coming back for the procedure. She said that I could either see the sonogram or listen to the baby’s heartbeat, adding weakly that this choice was mine.

    “I don’t want to have to do this at all,” I told her. “I’m doing this to prevent my baby’s suffering. I don’t want another sonogram when I’ve already had two today. I don’t want to hear a description of the life I’m about to end. Please,” I said, “I can’t take any more pain.” I confess that I don’t know why I said that. I knew it was fait accompli. The counselor could no more change the government requirement than I could. Yet here was a superfluous layer of torment piled upon an already horrific day, and I wanted this woman to know it.

    But it couldn’t be helped.

    “I’m so sorry that I have to do this,” the doctor told us, “but if I don’t, I can lose my license.” Before he could even start to describe our baby, I began to sob until I could barely breathe. Somewhere, a nurse cranked up the volume on a radio, allowing the inane pronouncements of a DJ to dull the doctor’s voice. Still, despite the noise, I heard him. His unwelcome words echoed off sterile walls while I, trapped on a bed, my feet in stirrups, twisted away from his voice.

    “Here I see a well-developed diaphragm and here I see four healthy chambers of the heart…”

    I closed my eyes and waited for it to end, as one waits for the car to stop rolling at the end of a terrible accident.

    When the description was finally over, the doctor held up a script and said he was legally obliged to read me information provided by the state. It was about the health dangers of having an abortion, the risks of infection or hemorrhage, the potential for infertility and my increased chance of getting breast cancer.

    This is pure evil.

  • Currently in the news

    In Morocco on Saturday, a girl of 16 killed herself by swallowing rat poison. She was raped when she was 15, and then forced to marry her rapist.

    Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code allows for the “kidnapper” of a minor to marry his victim to escape prosecution, and it has been used to justify a traditional practice of making a rapist marry his victim to preserve the honor of the woman’s family.

    “Amina, 16, was triply violated, by her rapist, by tradition and by Article 475 of the Moroccan law,” tweeted activist Abadila Maaelaynine.

    Abdelaziz Nouaydi, who runs the Adala Assocation for legal reform, said a judge can recommend marriage only in the case of agreement by the victim and both families.

    Oh yes agreement by the victim; that’s all right then. It’s just like sharia “courts” in the UK, which (as Maryam pointed out with withering scorn at QED on Sunday) require the consent of both parties. That is bullshit. The “agreement” and the “consent” cannot possibly be considered reliable. It’s as if there were laws saying it’s ok to murder people as long as they consent.

    “It is not something that happens a great deal — it is very rare,” he said, but admitted that the family of the victim sometimes agrees out of fear that she won’t be able to find a husband if it is known she was raped.

    The marriage is then pushed on the victim by the families to avoid scandal, said Fouzia Assouli, president of Democratic League for Women’s Rights.

    So what you get is not “agreement” by the victim; you get the victim being victimized all over again, but this time for life. Amina Filali decided to cut that victimization short, the only way she could.

    The victim’s father said in an interview with an online Moroccan newspaper that it was the court officials who suggested from the beginning the marriage option when they reported the rape.

    “The prosecutor advised my daughter to marry, he said ‘go and make the marriage contract,’” said Lahcen Filali in an interview that appeared on goud.ma Tuesday night.

    Which makes perfect sense if you think the victim’s genitals belong to her family while her own hopes and wishes have nothing to do with anything. On the other hand it makes no sense at all if you think the victim is a person herself and thus that forcing her to live with the man who violently assaulted her is pretty much the worst thing anyone could do to her.

  • Secondary

    More about QED later, but meanwhile, something I missed while packing – Afghanistan’s Ulema Council issued a statement outlining “the rights and duties of women under Islam” and Karzai backed it. Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch reports:

    The statement said some good things. It prohibited a traditional practice of giving a girl to another family to resolve a dispute (“baad”). It spoke against forced marriage. It confirmed women’s rights to inherit and own property.

    On women’s duties, however, the statement took a turn for the worse: Women should not travel without a male chaperone. Women should not mix with men while studying, or working, or in public. Women must wear the Islamic hijab. Women are secondary to men.
    The last item is the most striking one, in a way, if only because the others are already familiar. Clerics and their stooges in other religions have learned not to admit that that last item is what underpins all the others; they pretend to think and affirm that women are equal to men but complementary, as opposed to unequal to men because “secondary.” They don’t mean a word of it, but they’ve learned to say it. Ulema Councils haven’t, and don’t plan to.

  • This god certainly hates women

    Another one gets away. Deborah Feldman was raised in the reactionary Hasidic Satmar community based in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. She escaped.

    In her memoir, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” out Feb. 14, she chronicles her oppressive upbringing and arranged marriage.

    At 23, emboldened by classes at Sarah Lawrence College, she left her husband and the community for good — taking her 3-year-old son with her.

    So often the way – college classes inspire and/or embolden people to escape. Fundamentalists are right, in their terms, not to want their children to get tertiary education.

    She was married at 17, to a man she had met once. Their sex life was creepy beyond belief.

    After the first time, you have to call a rabbi and he asks the man questions — did this happen? And he declares you either unclean, or not yet consummated. Once you’re consummated, you’re unclean, because you bled. So after the first time, your honeymoon is a no-sex period.

    For two weeks every month, he can’t touch you. He can’t hand you a glass, even if your fingers don’t touch. He has to put it down on the table and then you pick it up. Secondary contact can’t happen. If you’re sitting on a sofa, you have a divider between you. It makes you feel so gross. You feel like this animal in the room. If there’s a question about your period, you take the underwear and put it in a zip-lock bag, and give it to your husband. He takes it to the synagogue and pushes it into this special window and the rabbi looks at it and pronounces it kosher or nonkosher. It’s so disgusting.

    Maybe a little.

    She says things are getting worse.

    Over the past 10 or 20 years [the Hasidic community] has gone from being extreme to being ultra-extreme. They’ve passed more laws from out of nowhere, limiting women — there’s a rule that women can’t be on the street after a certain hour. That was new when I was growing up. We hear all these stories about Muslim extremists; how is this any better? This is just another example of extreme fundamentalism.

    And notice the common element: it’s all about controlling women. It’s all about making the restraints tighter…and tighter…and tighter. God is always A Man; men are always the people, and women are always the others; the people always have to keep the others down; down down down. The people always have to strip the others of all rights, all capabilities, all modes of escape and autonomy. This kind of religion seems to be about almost nothing but puffing up men and stamping down women. It’s religion as constructed by stags in rut.

     

     

  • On her own she will not be able to get her rights

    There’s a woman in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Apparently she’s there to spread the word to women. She does that.

    Speaking to the London based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper Saturday, Abul Hassan argued that “When a woman marches to defend her rights, this affronts her dignity.”

    She added that “Does she not have a husband, a brother or a son to defend her?”

    Because, to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, “dignity” for a woman means being passive and hidden and dependent on male relatives. That’s interesting, because to me that means degradation, not dignity at all. It means subordination, which implies inferiority. It’s hard to see how that can be “dignity.”

    “This march was a sectarian one, because all the groups of Egyptian society should defend women. She should not defend herself on her own. The man should stand beside the woman because on her own she will not be able to get her rights,” said Abul Hassan.

    Because the Muslim Brotherhood won’t let her.

    H/t Małgorzata Koraszewska.

     

  • This will feel a little cold

    Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, the move to erase women wanders even deeper into Bizarroland.

    The controversial exclusion of women from various settings in Israel because of pressure from ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders reached a new level this week with a major conference on gynecological advances that is permitting only males to address the audience.

    Yes you read that right. A major conference on advances in medical management of women’s plumbing excluded women. Well what’s it got to do with them, after all? If they don’t want a man’s arm up them, they shouldn’t have been born with female plumbing. If they don’t want men and only men telling them what’s what about their plumbing, they should…um…well they should sit down and shut up.

    Women are allowed in the audience, in a section separate from men.

    Ah, that’s nice. That’s very generous.

    As far as Puah is concerned, it operates on a strictly kosher basis, as required by the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate. While there are women on its board of directors, its public face is strictly male, and the two sexes are not allowed to mix at its events.

    Because the rabbinate is strictly male, because it always was strictly male, so it’s not about to change now, is it, so it says the public face has to be strictly male too, because it always has been, because let’s face it, women are dirty and weak and whoreish and stupid and treacherous, so obviously they can’t be part of the public face and they can’t mix with men and get dirty weak whoreishness all over them.

     

  • The crime of Moska

    So that’s how it’s possible to treat rape victims as perps.

    Just 21, Gulnaz had been released that week from prison, where she had given birth to her daughter Moska. Gulnaz seemed younger than her years, but she held my gaze almost defiantly as she told her story.

    She had been imprisoned in a Kabul women’s jail after her cousin’s husband raped her.

    The crime came to light when the unmarried Gulnaz became pregnant.

    The police came and arrested both Gulnaz and her attacker. Under Afghan law she too was found guilty of a crime known as “adultery by force”, with her sentence increased on appeal to 12 years.

    Oh, I see! Afghan law doesn’t have a crime of rape, apparently, it has “adultery by force” and both parties are the perps as opposed to one party being the perp and the other being the victim.

    That’s interesting. Usually we* think of serious crime as being a crime because there are victims; that’s why laws against actions that can be considered “victimless” are contested.

    Imagine everything rearranged in a way comparable to “adultery by force.” You would get…”Suicide by force.” “Redistribution of wealth by force.” “Cosmetic surgery by force.” “Home visits by force.” “Account transfer by force.”

    In what we would call murder, it’s not one person doing a bad thing to another person, it’s two people teaming up to do a bad thing to…….to whom? The owner of one of them? The owner of both of them, “god”? “The community”?

    Never mind. I’m just playing silly buggers. I know that’s not how it works with other crimes. It’s just rape that works that way, because rape involves a woman (except when it doesn’t – there are those dancing boys in Afghanistan), and women always belong to men, so whatever is done to a woman is actually done not to the woman but to the man she belongs to. It’s not an assault on the woman, it’s adultery which is a bad thing done to the woman’s husband (certainly not to the rapist’s wife – don’t go getting that idea).

    I suppose Gulnaz’s daughter – the one conceived as a result of the “adultery by force” – is guilty of “birth by force” and will be sentenced to 12 years in prison as soon as she’s old enough to use the potty by herself.

    *By “we” I mean people who try to think about things, not “we in the West” or the like.

  • Decent women don’t have “crisis pregnancies”

    And if we haven’t had enough religious bullying today, here’s another batch.

    As ThinkProgress has reported, so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” that claim to help women in need are actually established by anti-abortion activists with the sole objective of shaming women out of having abortions. Despite receiving federal and state funding, they have a history of preying on and misleading pregnant women who are seeking abortions and giving them false medical information to dissuade them from making their own decisions.

    After a year-long investigation, a new report to be released today by the pro-choice group NARAL reveals that those problems plague the vast majority of North Carolina’s crisis pregnancy centers. In addition to providing false medical information, many of the centers actively proselytize and tell women of non-Christian faiths to convert or face damnation…

    The number of centers in North Carolina has nearly doubled since 2006, and there are eight times as many of them as there are abortion clinics. Carey Pope, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina, said the group’s investigators found numerous instances where crisis pregnancy centers were misinforming and misleading women. “Staff and volunteers often use propaganda to dissuade women from abortions,” she said.

    Publicly funded; 8 times more of them than abortion providers; medical misinformation; convert or face damnation. One-stop shopping!

    North Carolina’s GOP lawmakers have flooded these anti-abortion centers with taxpayer money while defunding Planned Parenthood and taking money away from legitimate family planning centers that provide medical services. Two new state laws will drive even more funding and patients their way. Money from sales of the new “Choose Life” license plates will go to the centers, and starting this Wednesday, a state-run website will launch and list the places that provide free ultrasounds.

    Keep those pesky women down.

  • Holy misogyny

    More festive jollity, this time in Jerusalem Israel.

    Residents of an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Beit Shemesh called Israel police officers “Nazis” on Sunday, after they removed a sign ordering the separation of men and women in a street in that neighborhood.

    In response to the removal of the sign by police officers and city inspectors from Beit Shemesh, a crowd of local ultra-Orthodox residents gathered around them, shouting and cursing at them. One man hurled rocks at the police officers, but managed to flee the scene. No one was hurt and no arrests were made.

    Several hours after the police removed the sign, residents of the neighborhood reinstated it.

    Earlier on Sunday, a Channel 2 news team was attacked and beaten by 200 ultra-Orthodox men at the same location on the street where the sign that was removed had been hanging.

    Nice guys.

    Update: forgot to thank Stewart for the link.

  • More weasels

    I’m starting to think it’s a pattern. I’m starting to think it may be that only opponents (or at least non-fans) reported this particular bit of legislation honestly.

    Here’s the CNS version:

    The legislation would prohibit taxpayer funding for abortions and bar  women from using subsidies under the Obama health care law to buy  health insurance that covers abortion, except in those cases involving  rape or incest or when the mother’s life is endangered. Also, the  legislation would protect health care providers who are opposed to  abortion for moral or religious reasons.

    Again: that’s it. It doesn’t spell out that that means the legislation would make it legal for health care providers – including hospitals, not just individuals – to refuse to do abortions even to save the woman’s life. Given the preceding sentence about funding, which does include that exception, readers are primed to assume the opposite.

    This probably helps to explain the lack of outrage, and the people like the staffer in one representative’s office who say “oh no, of course hospitals won’t let women die.”

  • Weasels

    Interesting. The supporters of the “Protect Life Bill” aka the Let Women Die Bill are so ashamed of the let women die part that they conceal it in their press coverage; at least, the people at LifeSiteNews do.

    The measure would amend President Obama’s Affordable Care Act to reflect the Hyde amendment by prohibiting taxpayer dollars from funding any health plan that includes coverage of elective abortions. The measure retains Hyde’s exception for abortions performed due to the child’s conception in rape or incest or to save the mother’s life.

    The bill also makes clear that no health insurance carrier may be forced to provide coverage of abortion in any of its health plans, and strengthens the conscience rights of health care workers and institutions to reject abortion training, procedures, or referrals.

    That’s it – that’s all it says. Notice the complete failure to mention that this “strengthening” means legalizing the refusal to do an abortion to save a woman’s life. Notice it and think about what it implies. It implies that they’re ashamed of it, or at least realize that other people would think they should be. It means they don’t want their readers to grasp that that’s what the bill would do if it became law. It means they’re hiding what the law actually does.

    Disgusting.

     

  • Bishops run amok

    Laura Bassett on the power of the bishops.

    Terry O’Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women

     finds it troubling that a group of men that has historically denied women the opportunity to participate in leadership positions is exercising so much power over such a broad range of women’s reproductive health legislation.

    “Clearly there’s a problem when men take such an interest in the sexual function of women,” she said. “There’s something deeply off about it.”

    Especially those men – men who are officially celibate, men at the top of a men-only hierarchy, men who have spent their entire adult lives in an all-male profession – and, of course, men who think they’re taking orders from the Topp Man, God Himself.

  • Well, you see, it’s just women

    Dahlia Lithwick on the Let Women Die bill.

    The other noteworthy element of the bill is a “conscience” provision that would allow hospitals to turn away women who need abortions, based on policy set by religious leadership. The provision ensures that the approximately 600 hospitals affiliated with the Catholic Church will now be legally protected if they turn away women seeking abortions medically necessary to save their lives. Oddly enough, Pitts says the conscience provision is redundant, as it’s simply “preserving the same rights that medical professionals have had for decades.” So that makes both provisions of the bill redundant—or maybe only one is while the other literally gives hospitals cover to allow women to die. Rock on, Party of Life!

    House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has described the bill as “savage,” telling reporters that the legislation could ultimately lead women to “die on the floor of health care providers.” The president has promised to veto the bill if need be. (It needn’t be, because it won’t pass in the Senate). And Rachel Maddow has wondered how pointless anti-abortion legislation would create jobs, an issue on which the GOP is supposed to be laser-focused. Meanwhile, a national coalition of anti-abortion groups has announced it is pushing legislation in all 50 states that would force pregnant women to see and hear a fetal heartbeat before terminating a pregnancy.

    She goes on to ask why there isn’t more outrage. Good question.

     

     

  • The Church and her bishops have a heightened moral responsibility

    The following post from last year.

    December 26, 2010

    Mark Jones found the confirmation I was looking for, in the shape of the letter the bishop of Phoenix wrote to the president of Catholic Healthcare West. It is unbelievably disgusting.

    He’s pissed off that the president of CHW told him that this is a complex matter on which the best minds disagree – not, as one might hope, because he thinks there should be no disagreement on whether or not a pregnant woman should be allowed to die along with her fetus rather than prevented from dying at the expense of her fetus, but because he is The Bishop.

    In effect, you would have me believe that we will merely have to agree to disagree. But this resolution is unacceptable because it disregards my authority and responsibility to interpret the moral law and to teach the Catholic faith as a Successor of the Apostles.

    His responsibility, that is, to order doctors to let a woman die. Because he is a Successor of the Apostles.

    The decisions regarding life and death, morality and immorality as they relate to medical ethics are at the forefront of the Church’s mission today. As a result, the Church and her bishops have a heightened moral responsibility to remain actively engaged in these discussions and debates.

    So that they can do their level best to compel hospitals to refuse to save the lives of pregnant women.

    While the issues discussed in the moral analysis you provided are certainly technical and deeply philosophical, they are also foundationally “theological.” And the theology of the Catholic Faith, as concretized in the Code of Canon Law, dispels any doubt whose opinion on matters of faith and morals is decisive for institutions in the Diocese of Phoenix.

    Me! Me me me me me me me! Do you understand? Me, the Bishop! My opinion is decisive! Not yours! Mine! I am the boss and you have to do what I say.

    It goes on like that for four horrible pages. This from a church that protects priests who fuck children!

    I feel dirty.