You're probably wondering why I'm (not) here!

I haven't stopped posting. I've simply moved to what I believe is a better location:

http://open.salon.com/blog/thefuddler

Check out my most recent postings there! I'll be looking for ya!

A funny thing happened on the way to point B...

With a Ku-Klux muu-muu in the back of the truck

If you ain't born-again they wanna mess you up, sayin'

“No abortions, no siree,

Life's too precious can't you see!”

What's that hangin' from the neighbors' tree?

Why, it looks like colored folks to me!



Would they do that?

They've been doing it for years!

Seriously!



- Frank Zappa, “Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk”



Note: This article was written before the assassination of Dr. Tiller.

Last week I had an epiphany. You know, one of those moments where something goes "click", and your ideas about something fundamentally change forever. It happened while I was driving down a rural road in upstate New York.

As you might have gathered from reading some of my previous postings, I happen to be very much in favor of reproductive justice. (I've never been comfortable with the popular label, “Pro-choice”. It's not specific enough. Anyone who who likes deli mustard instead of the regular yellow kind on his hamburgers, or puts up light-fuchsia drapes in her living room rather than red ones can be called “pro-choice”.) Nonetheless, like a lot of people of my persuasion, I sometimes had doubts about my beliefs, born of cultural and religious indoctrination, not to mention the unceasing crocodile-teared guilt-barrage of religious (or perhaps more accurately, quasi-religious) blowhards, cracks in my will where pronatalist slogans and ideology could infiltrate. Therein lies the chief difference between those in the “pro-choice” and “pro-life” camps. Those of us in the former camp may experience occasional doubts about the validity of our beliefs just as those in the civil-rights movements of the 1950's and 60's may have at times doubted the wisdom of theirs (I wonder how many African-Americans back then dealt with internalized racist indoctrination?). Let's face it, it's tough going against a prevailing ideology, especially one which is backed up by millions of dollars and power on a national scale. Most of those in the “pro-life” camp have no lingering doubts about their beliefs. Life is a lot simpler when you're told what to believe (or else).

Any such doubts and misgivings all but vanished from my mind in the moment of which I spoke earlier. Since I was driving a car, I obviously wasn't reading “feminist” literature. I wasn't listening to a “liberal” talk show. What I was listening to was a podcast called Storylife, an audio magazine hosted by Chris Bolton. It is modeled along the lines of This American Life. The particular episode in my car stereo was called The Underwater Birth of Francis Henri. It showcased a birthing procedure popular in some circles called water-birthing (which is definitely not to be confused with waterboarding) and it featured a live recording of such a birth as it happened. The newborn infant's first cry shattered the relative quiet of my car and any illusions I might have had about the “pro-life” movement being the least bit concerned with the welfare of young human beings. It wasn't simply my mind that got made up at that moment, it happened at a body level; it was a gut reaction. From that point on, I could never again take seriously the notion, the fallacy, that any so-called pro-life pundits, pastors and politicians and their sheep- or pit-bull-like followers say what they say and do what they do out of anything remotely resembling love. (At least their allies in the Westboro Baptist Church are honest. They put their cards smack-dab on the table; their God, they declare, is a hateful God). Put another way, when was the last time you heard of anyone from Operation Rescue showing up at the front door of a single parent's home with a case of disposable diapers and a voucher for five years' worth of day care?

Addendum 1: The “pro-life” movement of today is a lot more radical and dangerous than that of thirty years ago. Back in the day, they were merely anti-feminist groups. According to Chip Berlet on Democracy Now, today's pro-lifers have solid connections with neo-Nazi groups.

Addendum 2: Susie Bright has posted the story of one of Dr. Tiller's patients on her blog. I highly recommend it.

Back to the Middle Ages?

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

-- H. L. Mencken

Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.

-- D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Ministries and advisor to President Bush.

As badly as I would like to, I'm not going to vent and rant and write a rambling screed about the sheer wrongness of the Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the misleadingly-named and incredibly unrealistic Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, shepherded through a rubber-stamp congress by certain Republicans and their conniving, tax-exempt and sometimes closeted political allies a few years ago. There are plenty of bloggers, editorial columnists and others who are going to do a far better job of documenting and analyzing this outrage against our wives, our daughters and our mothers than I ever could. What I would like to briefly discuss instead is the slowly creeping dark cloud of joyous ignorance, glassy-eyed fanaticism, and malevolent, ends-justify-the-means cynicism that's not only at the root of the current "culture-war" jihad against not only abortion, but apparently sex itself.

You're probably already familiar with Focus on the Family, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and like-minded individuals, and all the interesting things that they have been doing over the last 25 years or so. Your town's family-planning clinic has probably played host to a pro-life be-in over the last three decades. You may have even winced at the antics of the Westboro Baptist Church's congregation at the funerals of Iraq war soldiers. What you might not have heard of is The Christian Embassy, a radical ministry which has actually taken up permanent residence inside the heart of the Pentagon.

You also might not be aware of the so-called “megachurches” which have sprung up at an alarming rate all over America, actively recruiting law-enforcement officials and local politicians with little or no media coverage. Far from being just extremely large places of worship, they are training facilities for future generations of culture-warriors and breeding grounds for religio-fascist thought. These organizations sponsor summer camps which are indoctrination pressure-cookers for children as young as early-grade-school. One such camp is examined in unsparing detail in the documentary Jesus Camp.

Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel, The Handmaid's Tale was a scary read back when it came out, but most of us believed that the constitution (and the Democratic party) would save us from the theocratic dystopia which it depicted. I don't have to tell you that a lot has changed since the mid-80s. If the current Supreme Court upholds abortion bans which contain no exceptions for protecting the life of the mother, what other established, fundamental rights are they capable of erasing?

Instead of attempting to detail the very real threat of theocracy myself, I have provided links, throughout this posting, to web sites which have examined and analyzed the situation in far greater detail. Check them out if you care to. Do some web-searching of your own. If you are a mainstream Christian, you might want to consider what these quasi-religious radical-right movements are doing to the faith that you were raised with. In any case, we need to think about what might be done to preserve what rights and liberties we still have.

Above quotes from - http://edkrebs.com/herb/