Me & my doctor make my healthcare decisions , not ‘Joe Pro-Lifer’ and his contingent of politicians. Insurance companies have to pay for female infertility like they do for ED (after all, equal rights for all Motherf*ckers) Personhood has to be defined by first breath. They need to decriminalize women’s healthcare.
You are so right, pregnancy and viability are so complex they can’t be handled adequately in legislation. I think some politicians are in bad faith aware of this and using that knowledge to achieve their nefarious goals and others are so indefensibly and incurably, defiantly, purposefully ignorant that they should be removed from office for incompetence if not for the death and damage they cause with their reckless actions. Law is practicing medicine and it doesn’t work.
I feel the same about the regulations surrounding pain care. Proposed bill H.R. 4093 would like remote monitoring of patients prescribed opioid treatment. It’s close to that bad now (just because you are lucky enough to have an incurable, progressive disease, you have to sign a contract stating you will stay in a 40 mile radius of your clinic at all times so you can report for surprise pee tests and pill counts-even if you’ve never used drugs, abused a medication, don’t drink, never had an unexpected result, and perhaps you have a parent in hospice outside the 40 mile range, let’s say) but we don’t yet have ankle bracelets and house arrest. I’m not ok with this. Law is practicing medicine and it doesn’t work. We have simply made really sick people and their physicians into criminals in the eyes of the public and law.
I agree with you but maybe it's also possible to argue that viability doesn't just refer to gestational time but also to a fetus' ability to grow into a healthy baby. At least that's the interpretation I would argue for where we haven't been able to eliminate viability language.
But it absolutely has to be explained in our case, and I believe the best way is storytelling it. Otherwise they get by with making people believe a lot of people wake up well into the 9th month and say, ‘gee, I don’t think I want to be pregnant anymore.’
I think the best answer, regardless of the timing of the abortion, is to say that abortion should always be between the person who is pregnant and their doctor.
When they counter that with some half baked response about how women get abortions in the ninth month because of some flippant, ridiculous reason, I point out out not just the facts about the number of abortions done late in pregnancy, and the reasons they are performed, but a couple of other things for them to chew on.
They are implying women are moral monsters, and that needs to be pointed out to them.
In this society, the bulk of caregiving for children, the disabled and the elderly is left in the hands of women. If we don’t trust them to make good decisions about pregnancy, why do we think letting them care for all those vulnerable people is a good idea? If they claim *some* women are moral monsters, again, who is preventing those moral monsters from caregiving?
We allow doctors, in consultation with their patients, to make all kinds of medical decisions which are life altering. We allow them to prescribe end of life care, even if they are balancing keeping the patient alive, and keeping the patient out of excruciating pain. We do this while recognizing that keeping the patient comfortable may actually shorten their life. We also allow them to use life extending care, in consultation with the patient/family, even if that care may be incredibly costly. We do so without accusing doctors of “being in it for the money.”
If that’s the case, why don’t we trust doctors to make good decisions about later term pregnancies?
I also point out that pregnancies that jeopardize a woman’s life or health that happen at full term do not end in abortion - they end in birth.
I think the underlying issue is that abortion offends men's perceived God-given property rights over women and children. These rights used to be guaranteed both by the bible and the law. Women having rights offends their basic sense of morality, which grows directly from a deeply felt sense of their own supremacy. The rest of what they say is just window dressing.
I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere, but our media immediately goes to John Seago of Texas Right to ‘Life,’ a more despicable human being I don’t think exists, to give comments. The women suing are given some time, but he’s getting his way to ‘it’s God’s will’ and doctors know what they should do camp with little or know pushback.
We’ll never convince the fringes. The point is to provide reasonable answers to those in the middle. This is going to take some time. We need to be patient and consistent in our messaging.
This is so true; I’m a TFMR Mom and ended my pregnancy at 26 weeks. When I tell people my story, many of them don’t realize that bad things are only discovered later into a pregnancy; it’s big a surprise to them and really challenges the black and white thinking around pregnancy.
I’m pretty strong willed and haven’t faced any backlash for speaking out, but I know it’s not always safe for other people with TFMR stories to tell theirs, especially given the GOPs thirst for prosecution. But I’m safe and will continue to speak out for those who can’t.
If nothing else, I want to normalize talking about pregnancy loss because that’s a huge assumption on the right that - that all pregnancies are healthy and will result in a live birth/ healthy baby.
Although anti-abortion leaders don't share that assumption; they just don't care. They are so enamored of suffering and "the will of "God" " that they claim that these traumas are healthy good things. Forcing them to make that argument in public is probably helpful to us though.
I’m so sorry you went through that. I have two friends who lost eight month pregnancies, and the experience left them with a lot of trauma to work through.
There are a lot of wacko bills introduced into the Texas legislature (and occasionally, like the bounty Hunter bill, pass) but the sponsor of the website bill was told they have ‘no appetite’ for bills like these (nor bills clarifying what doctors can do).
I understand to a certain extent the pushback against ‘viability’ standards but what do you tell someone in person who accuses you of third trimester baby-killing? I say ‘brain at 24 weeks’ and letting patients and their doctors make the decision when a pregnancy has to end. Texas is not necessarily reflective of national polling.
The story about the Texas judge and Southwest is *bananas*. I just read Ruth Marcus’s opinion piece on it in WaPo. It’s unreal what these Trump judges are trying to normalize. ADF is a hate group! I didn’t think that any Texas judge was as bad as Kacsmaryk, but, as always, I underestimated the gravity of the situation. Trump truly did a number on the judiciary. It’s like a plague.
Yes. I think they've been working on this for decades, and it was only after the disaster on 11.08.16 that they were finally able to achieve it, and that's why we're now in our worst crisis since the civil war. They used Trump for their own ends (because the only thing he cares about judges is which ones will send him to jail) and it was very very effective. I don't know to what extent Americans realize this, because there seems to be this idea out there that Trump is the problem, when he's not; he's just one of many symptoms of the problem.
The distinction is less important if Trump is the Republican nominee next November. It's hugely important if they should somehow find a way to nominate someone else (precluding Trump on the ballot as third party), and that's the scenario that's concerning. A Trumpless Republican party is every bit as dangerous as one with him at the head.
Calm down, boys - I’m reasonably confident any male employee who has to travel to get an abortion would be eligible for reimbursement too.
Honestly, ladies - at this point I don’t understand why you’re not slitting our throats while we sleep. I mean, it’s not like you don’t know where we sleep. It’s also not like we don’t have it coming.
The Guardian had an informative story on Leonard Leo, founder of the Federalist Society and involved in Alliance Defending Freedom. It’s the kind of story I wish we saw more. It perfectly highlights how the right uses legal terms like free speech: They want to give themselves the right to say anything while silencing all speech they don’t like.
So the male workers were upset when women workers were getting expenses paid to go out of state for an abortion because the men felt they should also get that benefit? Or, because this seems like a Darwin Award qualifier, maybe the men should be offered a free out of state vasectomy, one time opportunity.
It’s much like those who deeply resent parental leave because they don’t have children. They argue that they should get extra leave for whatever they like, since having children is a choice.
While I understand the point they are making, I think 1. having children is now not a choice in forced birthing states and 2. physically recovering from childbirth intakes longer than many realize, so much of the leave granted is medical.
Good point. If the men weren't resenting the women for traveling for abortion, they would resent the women for the inconvenience caused to them by their co-workers taking time off to give birth. Also, they resent women who don't have children, because of hysteria about the birth rate. There is no way to avoid being the target of male anger. Another example of this attitude is anti-choice lawmakers throwing a hissy fit over proposed bipartisan workplace protections for pregnant women: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/08/abortion-fight-threatens-to-spoil-bipartisan-pregnant-worker-protections-00110261
Humanity will never build a just society so long as religion exists. It is an enemy and it needs to be eliminated. While not sufficient (as present day China clearly demonstrates), it is a necessary step. (Although we will probably never achieve it as our species is more likely to destroy its planet first).
That depends on the religion. The big five? Yeah, we are probably better off without them. But some smaller faiths are based on equality and justice. I don’t really have a problem with them.
In an apatheist, so the existence/non-existence of deities and religions don’t matter to me, unless they want to make laws.
Thank you for sharing. I didn’t know there was a name and definition for it. I like to think I keep a very open mind on the subject because not for me to say.
I don’t know if it’s an ‘official’ name, but it’s what makes the most sense to me. I have total apathy when it comes to religion. I don’t care one way or another. If someone proved there were no gods, that wouldn’t change how I live. If someone proved the existence of gods, that also wouldn’t make any difference to me, either. It’s just not something I care about one way or another.
I guess I put it this way. An atheist doesn’t believe in deity. An agnostic isn’t sure. An apatheist doesn’t care. 🙂
That sounds like a good designation for you to use then, based on the definition of apathy. I need to find a slightly different terminology for myself. I am interested in religions because I am interested in people and how we create policy and procedures manual to govern how we should live peacefully in community. We designate a CEO that nobody can see, including the self appointed interpreters of the manual, and then this is all supposed to hang together through faith, which is a circular argument at best. Religions may begin with the best of intentions, but, because they are human constructs, they are vulnerable to corruption as a useful tool for manipulation and control. In the end not sure what this has to do with god/no god.
Religions interest me from an academic standpoint, particularly the faiths of the ancient peoples. They seemed to be trying to make sense of the natural world around them, more than trying to control human behavior.
Somewhere along the line - maybe the early Bronze Age, religion seems to have shifted from something in which humans were honoring deities they thought controlled the natural world, into fear/rules based worship of deities who were there to judge and punish human behavior. There are exceptions, of course - it’s not a straight line, and cultures varied in the timing. But it seems like humanity reached a point where religion was there to provide a “supernatural” means of controlling human behavior which reinforced the structures of control humans created in their societies.
The only “freedom” that the completely misnamed “Alliance Defending Freedom” wants to defend is the freedom for Christian theocrats to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us.
I’ve started calling them theocratic fascists. I no longer think they merely want to impose their interpretation of faith on society. I believe they intend to incarcerate those who refuse to fall in line; force people into bullshit ‘religious sensitivity training’ at their own expense (see the TX example in Grace’s roundup but this is happening all over the country with almost no reporting); and ruin businesses and lives.
Certainly, the least they want to do is establish tiers in society- the favored and the unfavored. That will impact employment opportunities, how children are treated in school (if they haven’t managed to entirely eliminate public schooling), social organizations, etc.
I’m kind of used to dealing with an informal version of this. I’m an apatheist, but I grew up with an openly pagan mother - she started doing media and such back in the early seventies, long before most people were familiar with witches (not Wicca - old fashioned family based witchcraft). It definitely impacted how I was treated in school, and early employment. If I had a nickel for everytime someone asked me if I really ate babies, retirement would be a lot more comfortable.
I'm sorry you've been feeling poorly this week, Broce. Damn chronic illnesses. And I'm also sorry you faced that kind of discrimination.
The sect I grew up in would go further than societal tiers (and it feels like their offspring have overtaken many state legislatures today.) Once the left grasps that the urge they condemn the loudest is the same urge they or someone close to them have, their behavior becomes a lot easier to predict. They must stamp out all "temptation," lest they themselves give in. That's why we see Texas men being forced to pay thousands of dollars for religious "lust eradication sessions" to avoid jail time for soliciting prostitutes. It's the whole backbone of "gay conversion therapy." It's the concept behind attorneys being coerced into "religious sensitivity training." When these things don't work or cow people enough, they'll make those behaviors illegal and jail people to avoid the things that tempt them. They really are THAT afraid of their own urges. Practically everything is sin to them.
Thank you. Summer is hard for me, because of extreme heat sensitivity. It makes my MS act up.
I know you’re right, Andra, but I shake my head as I read. Having grown up in Massachusetts, just north of Boston, I never even met an evangelical until I moved to California in my early twenties. It’s just such a bizarre mindset that it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around.
Occasionally, before my dad died in 1979, he’d get on a “we need to go to church kick,” and we’d go for a while. He was the child of a British Baptist preacher, and at least nominally Christian. But he chose his church because it was closest to the house, not by denomination. A New England Congregational Church back in those days was much like a town meeting with candles. No talk of sin, or hell, or any of that stuff. I honestly didn’t know people took that stuff seriously until I was an adult.
When I first began researching all this back around 1980ish, I was appalled. It is extremely frightening to consider the amount of secular power these folk have amassed in the last 45 years.
I don’t care if they believe a spotted hippo created the universe, and they worship her hopping on one foot. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them tell me how to live my life. It seems to me that they don’t trust themselves, or their god.
It's notable that they couldn't amass that power on their own because there aren't enough of them. It was only when Trump showed up and secular white non-college educated folk began voting Republican en masse that they had enough numbers. There were times in the past when it looked as though an alliance between those two groups would be strained, but instead it's become stronger than ever. It would be really helpful if they would turn on one another more.
Me & my doctor make my healthcare decisions , not ‘Joe Pro-Lifer’ and his contingent of politicians. Insurance companies have to pay for female infertility like they do for ED (after all, equal rights for all Motherf*ckers) Personhood has to be defined by first breath. They need to decriminalize women’s healthcare.
It was bad enough banning books. Now professors. Sh#t!!!
Yes - including viability limits is a HUGE mistake. That will devastate parents who are facing medical tragedy in a pregnancy.
You don’t know shit about development until the 20 week anatomy scan. 4 weeks isn’t enough time to get a complete diagnosis and decide what to do.
Get rid of viability language. It’s too subjective and like everything else in abortion bans, ignores how complex pregnancy is.
You are so right, pregnancy and viability are so complex they can’t be handled adequately in legislation. I think some politicians are in bad faith aware of this and using that knowledge to achieve their nefarious goals and others are so indefensibly and incurably, defiantly, purposefully ignorant that they should be removed from office for incompetence if not for the death and damage they cause with their reckless actions. Law is practicing medicine and it doesn’t work.
I feel the same about the regulations surrounding pain care. Proposed bill H.R. 4093 would like remote monitoring of patients prescribed opioid treatment. It’s close to that bad now (just because you are lucky enough to have an incurable, progressive disease, you have to sign a contract stating you will stay in a 40 mile radius of your clinic at all times so you can report for surprise pee tests and pill counts-even if you’ve never used drugs, abused a medication, don’t drink, never had an unexpected result, and perhaps you have a parent in hospice outside the 40 mile range, let’s say) but we don’t yet have ankle bracelets and house arrest. I’m not ok with this. Law is practicing medicine and it doesn’t work. We have simply made really sick people and their physicians into criminals in the eyes of the public and law.
I agree with you but maybe it's also possible to argue that viability doesn't just refer to gestational time but also to a fetus' ability to grow into a healthy baby. At least that's the interpretation I would argue for where we haven't been able to eliminate viability language.
But it absolutely has to be explained in our case, and I believe the best way is storytelling it. Otherwise they get by with making people believe a lot of people wake up well into the 9th month and say, ‘gee, I don’t think I want to be pregnant anymore.’
Kim,
I think the best answer, regardless of the timing of the abortion, is to say that abortion should always be between the person who is pregnant and their doctor.
When they counter that with some half baked response about how women get abortions in the ninth month because of some flippant, ridiculous reason, I point out out not just the facts about the number of abortions done late in pregnancy, and the reasons they are performed, but a couple of other things for them to chew on.
They are implying women are moral monsters, and that needs to be pointed out to them.
In this society, the bulk of caregiving for children, the disabled and the elderly is left in the hands of women. If we don’t trust them to make good decisions about pregnancy, why do we think letting them care for all those vulnerable people is a good idea? If they claim *some* women are moral monsters, again, who is preventing those moral monsters from caregiving?
We allow doctors, in consultation with their patients, to make all kinds of medical decisions which are life altering. We allow them to prescribe end of life care, even if they are balancing keeping the patient alive, and keeping the patient out of excruciating pain. We do this while recognizing that keeping the patient comfortable may actually shorten their life. We also allow them to use life extending care, in consultation with the patient/family, even if that care may be incredibly costly. We do so without accusing doctors of “being in it for the money.”
If that’s the case, why don’t we trust doctors to make good decisions about later term pregnancies?
I also point out that pregnancies that jeopardize a woman’s life or health that happen at full term do not end in abortion - they end in birth.
I think the underlying issue is that abortion offends men's perceived God-given property rights over women and children. These rights used to be guaranteed both by the bible and the law. Women having rights offends their basic sense of morality, which grows directly from a deeply felt sense of their own supremacy. The rest of what they say is just window dressing.
That sounds about right to me, Metis.
I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere, but our media immediately goes to John Seago of Texas Right to ‘Life,’ a more despicable human being I don’t think exists, to give comments. The women suing are given some time, but he’s getting his way to ‘it’s God’s will’ and doctors know what they should do camp with little or know pushback.
We’ll never convince the fringes. The point is to provide reasonable answers to those in the middle. This is going to take some time. We need to be patient and consistent in our messaging.
This is so true; I’m a TFMR Mom and ended my pregnancy at 26 weeks. When I tell people my story, many of them don’t realize that bad things are only discovered later into a pregnancy; it’s big a surprise to them and really challenges the black and white thinking around pregnancy.
I’m pretty strong willed and haven’t faced any backlash for speaking out, but I know it’s not always safe for other people with TFMR stories to tell theirs, especially given the GOPs thirst for prosecution. But I’m safe and will continue to speak out for those who can’t.
If nothing else, I want to normalize talking about pregnancy loss because that’s a huge assumption on the right that - that all pregnancies are healthy and will result in a live birth/ healthy baby.
I’m so sorry and thank you for speaking out !
Although anti-abortion leaders don't share that assumption; they just don't care. They are so enamored of suffering and "the will of "God" " that they claim that these traumas are healthy good things. Forcing them to make that argument in public is probably helpful to us though.
I’m so sorry you went through that. I have two friends who lost eight month pregnancies, and the experience left them with a lot of trauma to work through.
There are a lot of wacko bills introduced into the Texas legislature (and occasionally, like the bounty Hunter bill, pass) but the sponsor of the website bill was told they have ‘no appetite’ for bills like these (nor bills clarifying what doctors can do).
I understand to a certain extent the pushback against ‘viability’ standards but what do you tell someone in person who accuses you of third trimester baby-killing? I say ‘brain at 24 weeks’ and letting patients and their doctors make the decision when a pregnancy has to end. Texas is not necessarily reflective of national polling.
The story about the Texas judge and Southwest is *bananas*. I just read Ruth Marcus’s opinion piece on it in WaPo. It’s unreal what these Trump judges are trying to normalize. ADF is a hate group! I didn’t think that any Texas judge was as bad as Kacsmaryk, but, as always, I underestimated the gravity of the situation. Trump truly did a number on the judiciary. It’s like a plague.
Yes. I think they've been working on this for decades, and it was only after the disaster on 11.08.16 that they were finally able to achieve it, and that's why we're now in our worst crisis since the civil war. They used Trump for their own ends (because the only thing he cares about judges is which ones will send him to jail) and it was very very effective. I don't know to what extent Americans realize this, because there seems to be this idea out there that Trump is the problem, when he's not; he's just one of many symptoms of the problem.
Zach, agreed. Ive always said Trump isn’t the problem, he’s *a* problem that is the result of *the* problem, if that makes sense.
The distinction is less important if Trump is the Republican nominee next November. It's hugely important if they should somehow find a way to nominate someone else (precluding Trump on the ballot as third party), and that's the scenario that's concerning. A Trumpless Republican party is every bit as dangerous as one with him at the head.
This.
Calm down, boys - I’m reasonably confident any male employee who has to travel to get an abortion would be eligible for reimbursement too.
Honestly, ladies - at this point I don’t understand why you’re not slitting our throats while we sleep. I mean, it’s not like you don’t know where we sleep. It’s also not like we don’t have it coming.
Men, not all, can be such crybabies.
The Guardian had an informative story on Leonard Leo, founder of the Federalist Society and involved in Alliance Defending Freedom. It’s the kind of story I wish we saw more. It perfectly highlights how the right uses legal terms like free speech: They want to give themselves the right to say anything while silencing all speech they don’t like.
Fascists behave this way.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/aug/09/leonard-leo-federalist-society-manipulates-free-speech?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Thanks for flagging this - I'll highlight it in the next newsletter!
Andra,
Thanks for posting this. I’ve been sick all week, and I’m way behind on reading & writing! I missed this one entirely.
Thank you!
So the male workers were upset when women workers were getting expenses paid to go out of state for an abortion because the men felt they should also get that benefit? Or, because this seems like a Darwin Award qualifier, maybe the men should be offered a free out of state vasectomy, one time opportunity.
This made me laugh so loud I scared my dog lol
It’s much like those who deeply resent parental leave because they don’t have children. They argue that they should get extra leave for whatever they like, since having children is a choice.
While I understand the point they are making, I think 1. having children is now not a choice in forced birthing states and 2. physically recovering from childbirth intakes longer than many realize, so much of the leave granted is medical.
Good point. If the men weren't resenting the women for traveling for abortion, they would resent the women for the inconvenience caused to them by their co-workers taking time off to give birth. Also, they resent women who don't have children, because of hysteria about the birth rate. There is no way to avoid being the target of male anger. Another example of this attitude is anti-choice lawmakers throwing a hissy fit over proposed bipartisan workplace protections for pregnant women: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/08/abortion-fight-threatens-to-spoil-bipartisan-pregnant-worker-protections-00110261
Exactly.
Good point. And who do they think would be taking care of them in long term care if no one has children.
Humanity will never build a just society so long as religion exists. It is an enemy and it needs to be eliminated. While not sufficient (as present day China clearly demonstrates), it is a necessary step. (Although we will probably never achieve it as our species is more likely to destroy its planet first).
That depends on the religion. The big five? Yeah, we are probably better off without them. But some smaller faiths are based on equality and justice. I don’t really have a problem with them.
In an apatheist, so the existence/non-existence of deities and religions don’t matter to me, unless they want to make laws.
Thank you for sharing. I didn’t know there was a name and definition for it. I like to think I keep a very open mind on the subject because not for me to say.
I don’t know if it’s an ‘official’ name, but it’s what makes the most sense to me. I have total apathy when it comes to religion. I don’t care one way or another. If someone proved there were no gods, that wouldn’t change how I live. If someone proved the existence of gods, that also wouldn’t make any difference to me, either. It’s just not something I care about one way or another.
I guess I put it this way. An atheist doesn’t believe in deity. An agnostic isn’t sure. An apatheist doesn’t care. 🙂
That sounds like a good designation for you to use then, based on the definition of apathy. I need to find a slightly different terminology for myself. I am interested in religions because I am interested in people and how we create policy and procedures manual to govern how we should live peacefully in community. We designate a CEO that nobody can see, including the self appointed interpreters of the manual, and then this is all supposed to hang together through faith, which is a circular argument at best. Religions may begin with the best of intentions, but, because they are human constructs, they are vulnerable to corruption as a useful tool for manipulation and control. In the end not sure what this has to do with god/no god.
Religions interest me from an academic standpoint, particularly the faiths of the ancient peoples. They seemed to be trying to make sense of the natural world around them, more than trying to control human behavior.
Somewhere along the line - maybe the early Bronze Age, religion seems to have shifted from something in which humans were honoring deities they thought controlled the natural world, into fear/rules based worship of deities who were there to judge and punish human behavior. There are exceptions, of course - it’s not a straight line, and cultures varied in the timing. But it seems like humanity reached a point where religion was there to provide a “supernatural” means of controlling human behavior which reinforced the structures of control humans created in their societies.
And probably took on an increasingly patriarchal trajectory. Have you ever read The Red Tent by ? Or Lavinia by Ursula K. le Guin?
The only “freedom” that the completely misnamed “Alliance Defending Freedom” wants to defend is the freedom for Christian theocrats to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us.
I’ve started calling them theocratic fascists. I no longer think they merely want to impose their interpretation of faith on society. I believe they intend to incarcerate those who refuse to fall in line; force people into bullshit ‘religious sensitivity training’ at their own expense (see the TX example in Grace’s roundup but this is happening all over the country with almost no reporting); and ruin businesses and lives.
Certainly, the least they want to do is establish tiers in society- the favored and the unfavored. That will impact employment opportunities, how children are treated in school (if they haven’t managed to entirely eliminate public schooling), social organizations, etc.
I’m kind of used to dealing with an informal version of this. I’m an apatheist, but I grew up with an openly pagan mother - she started doing media and such back in the early seventies, long before most people were familiar with witches (not Wicca - old fashioned family based witchcraft). It definitely impacted how I was treated in school, and early employment. If I had a nickel for everytime someone asked me if I really ate babies, retirement would be a lot more comfortable.
I'm sorry you've been feeling poorly this week, Broce. Damn chronic illnesses. And I'm also sorry you faced that kind of discrimination.
The sect I grew up in would go further than societal tiers (and it feels like their offspring have overtaken many state legislatures today.) Once the left grasps that the urge they condemn the loudest is the same urge they or someone close to them have, their behavior becomes a lot easier to predict. They must stamp out all "temptation," lest they themselves give in. That's why we see Texas men being forced to pay thousands of dollars for religious "lust eradication sessions" to avoid jail time for soliciting prostitutes. It's the whole backbone of "gay conversion therapy." It's the concept behind attorneys being coerced into "religious sensitivity training." When these things don't work or cow people enough, they'll make those behaviors illegal and jail people to avoid the things that tempt them. They really are THAT afraid of their own urges. Practically everything is sin to them.
Thank you. Summer is hard for me, because of extreme heat sensitivity. It makes my MS act up.
I know you’re right, Andra, but I shake my head as I read. Having grown up in Massachusetts, just north of Boston, I never even met an evangelical until I moved to California in my early twenties. It’s just such a bizarre mindset that it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around.
Occasionally, before my dad died in 1979, he’d get on a “we need to go to church kick,” and we’d go for a while. He was the child of a British Baptist preacher, and at least nominally Christian. But he chose his church because it was closest to the house, not by denomination. A New England Congregational Church back in those days was much like a town meeting with candles. No talk of sin, or hell, or any of that stuff. I honestly didn’t know people took that stuff seriously until I was an adult.
When I first began researching all this back around 1980ish, I was appalled. It is extremely frightening to consider the amount of secular power these folk have amassed in the last 45 years.
I don’t care if they believe a spotted hippo created the universe, and they worship her hopping on one foot. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them tell me how to live my life. It seems to me that they don’t trust themselves, or their god.
It's notable that they couldn't amass that power on their own because there aren't enough of them. It was only when Trump showed up and secular white non-college educated folk began voting Republican en masse that they had enough numbers. There were times in the past when it looked as though an alliance between those two groups would be strained, but instead it's become stronger than ever. It would be really helpful if they would turn on one another more.