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92% of Iowans agree that gay marriage didn't hurt a bit
Michelle Obama on health care reform
Domestic violence is considered a pre-existing condition
Tom Delay gives me more nightmares
On this episode of Reality Cast, I'll be interviewing Valencia Robinson about the religion-heavy abstinence-only program in Mississippi and what the ACLU is doing to fight back. Also, the Values Voter Summit is a pile of laughs, and why health care reform is a women's issue.
Most of the time, I would like to applaud people who get out there and push for more and better sex ed for young people. But I'm afraid that this former schoolteacher who testified about the importance of sex ed at a Texas Education Agency hearing missed the mark and went straight into TMI territory.
- tea speech *
Unfortunately, the topic that night was history curriculum. So this woman admitted her virginity for no reason whatsoever.
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Over last weekend, America was subjected to yet another year's Values Voter Summit. The values they believe in can be summed up in one word: patriarchy. Okay, well there was also a huge dose of racism on the side, making the religious right's interest in not being seen as a racist institution seem all the more a pipe dream. But most of their attention was on sex, and how all these people just out doing it without permission is laying ruin to good Christian white manhood.
It's hard to say if the Values Voter Summit was nuttier this year than last. It certainly seems so, but then again, everything to do is so nutty that it's always fresh and surprising. It's hard to pick my favorite moment, but I think this one sticks out for sheer incoherence. This is Michael Schwartz, who is Senator Tom Coburn's chief of staff, talking about a supposed ex-gay friend of his.
- values 1 *
Yes, he said if you tell 11-year-old boys that looking at Playboy will make them gay, they'll stay away. I'm personally skeptical of his story, as I often am when someone slips into sermonizing like this. His mystery friend owns a hospital, and he implies that he mostly helps men with AIDS die, which made me realize that anti-choicers stop screaming about so-called death panels the second that it's gay men dying. But ex-gays exist more in mythology than in actuality, so I'd like to see some documentation of this guy's existence.
Right Wing Watch did a bang-up job of putting up videos of some of the speakers at the Values Voters Summit. I was particularly weirded out by Lila Rose, who spun a fantasy of punishing women who have abortion with some old-fashioned, titillating public shaming.
- values 2 *
When you hear something like this, it's easy enough to conclude that the Christian right would love it if we returned to having stocks in the town square. That way, women caught fornicating could be put in the stocks and they could throw eggs at them, and then go home and masturbate furiously while thinking of the hot, forbidden non-procreative sex. And then whip themselves for being dirty. Fun for everyone, but the woman put in the stocks.
You can really tell how high level intellectual this whole event is by the sort of people that are held up as the real heroes of the event. For instance, you have Stephen Baldwin, who is about a year away from insisting he didn't get an Oscar for "Bio-Dome" because Hollywood hates Christians. And of course, you had Carrie Prejean, a hero for inarticulately saying homophobic things straight to a gay man's face during a beauty pageant. Maggie Gallagher introduced her and the excitement was palpable. (http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/maggie-gallagher-introduces-carrie-prejean-values-voter-summit)
* values 3 *
I suppose they all aspire to speak insulting gibberish while wearing 8 tons of make-up and competing in an anachronism. Maybe next someone will rant about how the feminists are out to take their male heirs while doing Civil War reenactments. But I love how Gallagher literally cannot speak for 15 seconds without being dishonest. It's true that the voters are increasingly disinterested in gay marriage. But that's evidence that they are increasingly for it! They don't think it's right to interfere if your neighbor wants to get married. 92% of Iowans have decided that gay marriage doesn't really affect their lives.
The only people being inexplicable here are Gallagher and her homobigot crowd, because they are fighting gay marriage tooth and nail, while most of the public is moving on and realizing that it's not a big deal. Unless of course you're gay. Then it's a big deal to be a second class citizen. That the public doesn't fret about it means that Maggie Gallagher is the weirdo who needs to just let it go, not that the rest of us need to start getting our hate on.
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insert interview
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The Obama administration employed Michelle Obama to press a new tactic in selling health care reform to the public: Discuss how health care reform is a women's issue. I think her points are well taken and effective.
- women health 1 *
These past couple of weeks have been good for highlighting how women face discrimination through the current insurance system. A lot of credit goes to SEIU for digging through the various ways that insurance companies label something a pre-existing condition, and then use that as an excuse to deny you coverage, even after you've been handing them money for years. For instance, did you know this?
- women health 2 *
The profit motive here is, if you look at it from a cold, cynical, inhuman way, understandable. Domestic violence is a major cause of injury for women, but more to the point, it's a major cause of repeated need for health care. If a woman is hit by a man, he's likely to do it again. If he hits her hard enough that she gets care and the insurance company finds out, then it's likely been going on for a long time and he has her trapped through financial dependence and lowered self-esteem. This means she's at a strong risk of being hit again. In an actuary table, she's a high risk.
From a human standpoint, however, giving up on women in abusive relationships is monstrous. It's not their fault! And if they can just get away from the abuser, they often get better. The fact that this isn't even a disease, but something that another human being caused makes it even worse. How come the victim is held responsible, and not the abuser?
The Rachel Maddow show got into the program, looking at the various statistics on women's health care on a state by state basis. HPV vaccinations, infant mortality, teenage pregnancy rates, that sort of thing. The states with the worst outcomes were mostly concentrated in the South, unsurprisingly.
- women health 3 *
Insurance has a lot to do with this. Across the nation, around 15% of Americans are uninsured. But in Mississippi, that percentage climbs to 18%, and in South Carolina it's 19.4%. Obviously, with these high rates of uninsured people, you're going to see women with poor health outcomes. Reproductive health care is concentrated quite a bit on prevention, but prevention is what uninsured people tend to skimp on since it's not a pressing need. Less prevention means more cervical cancer, more premature births, and higher infant mortality.
Less access to contraception also means abortion, but unfortunately, those stats are hard to track by state because lack of abortion access often means that women have to leave the state, go underground, or simply go without abortion.
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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, you must share my pain edition. Tom Delay is on "Dancing With the Stars". Of course, you already knew this, but like me, you may have been in deep denial until you actually saw the travesty. Here's a clip.
- please god no *
His homophobic comments about his feminine side were appalling, but the trainer intrigued me. Not teaching Tom Delay to swivel his hips strikes me as a good idea, but not to spare him. To spare the rest of us from having to see that should be her first priority.
