Economic Stimulus, Straight Ted Haggard, And Revolutionary Road

Sloane Rosenthal on why family planning is economic stimulus. Also, a review of "Revolutionary Road" and a review of the Haggards' tour of the talk show circuit.

Sloane Rosenthal on why family planning is economic stimulus. Also, a review of "Revolutionary Road" and a review of the Haggards’ tour of the talk show circuit.

 

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Links in this episode:

The Haggards on Oprah

Gayle Haggard on Larry King

Ted Haggard Is Completely Heterosexual

National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association

Winslet and DiCaprio on "Revolutionary Road"

Bill O’Reilly: anti-choice in every way

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking to Sloane Rosenthal about why family planning needs to be part of economic stimulus, and how we can fight for expanded Medicaid coverage for family planning.  Also, I’ll be reviewing a movie that has a shockingly mature approach to abortion, and the unsurprisingly immature insistence that Ted Haggard is really straight.  And before I get into the show, I’d like to ask listeners if they could please go to the show’s iTunes page and write a review of the show.  The more good reviews we get, the easier it is for people searching to find the podcast.

And as a thank you for your generosity, I’m going to play an awesome clip of Stephen Colbert making fun of Rush Limbaugh for making fun of feminism.

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You’re welcome for the belly laughs.  And never say that RH Reality Cast doesn’t treat you right.

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Oh boy oh boy, Ted Haggard’s finally back in the news cycle.  He’s got some documentary coming out to promote, and we all win, because the more we get to see of homophobic right wing hypocrites who have sex with men, the better, I think.  One thing that gets lost a lot in the so-called debate over homosexuality is that the finger-wagging bigots are not the paragons of emotional health they purport to be, but all too often living examples of how the closet is the real danger to your mental health, not homosexuality itself.

The Haggards went on Oprah to defend themselves.  

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In other words, a therapist who was paid to say you’re straight found a BS-heavy way to say you’re straight.  I feel like Haggard is downplaying the situation dramatically here with the pseudo-psychology talk.  Now I’m not saying if Haggard is gay or straight, but I will say that politicized language from the gay rights struggle describes his situation better than the fake self help talk that dominates the mainstream evangelical movement.  "In the closet" describes him much better than "homosexual attachments".  Let’s face it.  He didn’t just have fantasies.  He was having sex with male prostitutes and using meth at the same time.  That’s not a mere attachment.

It is fascinating, though, isn’t it, the way that megachurch evangelical Christianity is swamped with psychobabble? I bet a random sampling of 70s era self help books compared to a random sampling of modern evangelical texts would show that they sound roughly the same, with the latter just dosing out more judgment.  

Gayle Haggard is being hauled around to talk about how her marriage and sex life is so great despite this, and alas, she’s effective at getting people’s sympathy.  The Young Turks were sympathetic, for instance.

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Blegh, I don’t have any sympathy for her.  Just as he’s made a career out of selling his sexism and homophobia, she’s made a name and a fortune of selling this submissive wife ideal to women.  The stand by your man act is about showing off that she’s a perfect wife, submissive to the end, and here she is getting congratulated for it.  Which is about reinforcing the message to women that they get rewarded and respect for demeaning themselves before men.

Worse for those of us in the audience, the Haggards had to make a big fuss over how great their sex life was, because otherwise you might think Ted Haggard is gay just because he has sex with men, thinks about sex with men constantly, seems to fantasize solely about sex with men, and has done so his entire life.  Thus, Gayle Haggard had to go on Larry King Live to talk about how much sex she’s having with her not at all gay husband.  

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So it’s okay to label people as straight, and label uncloseted gay people as gay and sinners, but if you’re in the closet, suddenly labels are unpleasant.  And sure, 99% of his sex is with you, but what percentage of the great sex that really satisfied him?  That’s the real question.  And maybe he got that with her.  Maybe he’s bisexual and has a sleazy, cheating side.  I don’t know.  But I do know we’re getting hoodwinked with this.

Gayle Haggard may be eliciting sympathy, but she’s also spreading two very dangerous and incorrect messages.  One is that wifely submission works out well, even if your husband is using drugs and cheating on you with prostitutes.  Pretending this is a minor blip in an otherwise ideal marriage is more than a little thwarted, and indicates what levels of horrible treatment that women are told to put up with in these conservative evangelical churches.  

Also, there’s a sexual health issue here that’s being completely ignored.  Monogamous, tested relationships are considered a safer sex practice, even without condom use.  But the religious right promotes marriage as the only safe sex practice.  But as this example shows, that isn’t always so. I would say that having sex with a man who has been having drug-laced sex with prostitutes is very unsafe, especially if you’re not using condoms, and I’m guessing most evangelical couples who think marriage makes you safe skip the condoms.  But the possibility of disease isn’t even touched, probably because this episode undermines the notion that married sex is automatically safe sex.

And with that, I thought I’d end the segment with Roy Zimmerman’s song, "Ted Haggard Is Completely Heterosexual".  

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  • interview with Sloane Rosenthal *

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Warning, this segment is full of spoilers of the movie Revolutionary Road.

A couple of months ago, I did a holiday movie preview segment, and said that the movie "Revolutionary Road" would come out around Christmas.  And it did come out then in limited release, but didn’t get a wide release until late January.  I finally saw it last week because of that and I have to wonder why it got punted like this, when I thought it was the strongest movie I’ve seen from director Sam Mendes.  Part of me has to wonder if it’s because the plot hinges on an abortion and there’s nervousness about that.

Not that it’s just about abortion.  That’s why it’s such a good movie, because it’s about a lot of stuff, and abortion is just part of it.  In fact, what made it so fascinating is that abortion functioned both as a symbol of the characters’ relationship and realistically as a medical issue that women have to deal with whether it’s legal or illegal.  As such, it didn’t come across as pedantic, just as is.

Here’s Kate Winslet talking about the movie.

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Because of all this, it’s the most responsible and intelligent portrayal of abortion I’ve seen onscreen in a long time, maybe forever.  Since it’s set nearly 20 years before Roe v. Wade, the characters who are hostile to abortion feel no need to demagogue about the fetus being a person.  No, there’s no hiding the truth, that abortion offends because it’s seen as a physical rejection of a man’s power and a sign that a woman is uppity.  But it’s complicated, too.  Here’s more for Leonardo DiCaprio and then again from Kate Winslet:

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One way the book differs from the movie is that the book slowly shifts the reader’s sympathies from Frank Wheeler to April Wheeler, and by the time April decides to have the illegal abortion that ends  her life, you can’t blame her, because it’s indisputable at this point that Frank constraining and stifling her, and that he’s using this unintended pregnancy as an excuse to do that.  In the movie, you’re pretty much on April’s side from the beginning, though both characters are fully realized, sympathetic human beings.  

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One of the great unspoken aspects about abortion that gets lost in all the political chatter and nonsense over it is that for ordinary people who go through this experience, it’s often not about the great questions of life so much as the equally great questions of love and family.  I blame the anti-choice movement for this.  They know it’s about family and love and male dominance, but they can’t say that, because it means that the question of rights is settled forever on the pro-choice side.  So they make it about fetal life.  And the public buys into that, and people’s real feelings about abortion get lost.

So I was deeply grateful that this movie centered itself on the real issues, not on the fake ones.  Abortion is important because it is, or at least can be, a statement on your relationship, on your freedom, and even on your very will to live your life fully.  In this movie it functions as that, and there’s no tedious guilt-tripping from the producers about the sanctity of fetal life over a woman’s life.  No, for once, the woman’s life is considered the relevant one for the purposes of the story.  So go see it.  Seriously, Hollywood needs to know that the audience can handle a mature approach to the topic.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, anti-choice means anti-choice edition.  Turns out that Bill O’Reilly thinks that he should have the right to decide that you should have children you don’t want, but also that you shouldn’t have children that you do.

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I stand by waiting for his statements claiming that the Duggar family that has 18 children should have the state intervene.  Okay, they’re a religious married couple, so apparently I’ll be waiting a long time.

Look, I think it’s highly probable this woman has major mental issues.  However, the state can’t just a priori decide that the mere act of having 14 children makes you unfit, especially if they are selective and don’t shut it down when it’s married religious couples.  This is a matter of rights, and you can’t just start taking people’s right to procreate away without it snowballing into a situation where women are declared unfit to procreate because of their race or socioeconomic status.  A right doesn’t just exist if everyone who uses it can prove they’re perfect.  Your freedom of speech isn’t taken away if you say some of the crazy racist stuff O’Reilly says, not should it be.