The late Jerry Falwell once claimed in one of his newspapers that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Jesse Jackson and Ted Kennedy all had  earlier held one political position they agreed on.  They were all pro- life.  An L.A. Times author once asked me about W.A. Criswell's early pro-choice position.    Criswell was once president of the Southern Baptist Convention.  At the time he was president he held pro-choice views.  Years later, when pro-life became the trend in his circles; Criswell changed his views and used his influence to bash any politician who advocated tolerance for abortion choices.  The head of the Christian Life Commission during this time, Foy Valentine, was supportive of abortion rights and spoke openly of such.  In historical context, Baptists at the time were in opposition to Vatican claims that saving the life of a mother was not a moral choice. Baptist doctrinal statements often were based on opposing Catholic views.

There is an old parody of a Beach Boys song that goes something like this; "The Presbyterian girls are hip, I really dig those clothes they wear, and the Methodist girls with the way they kiss, they keep their  boy friends warm at night..but I wish they all could be Southern Baptist girls..."

There is an effort underway by Rev. Michael Bray, a convicted terrorist and a leader of the underground Army of God network to free one of their captured members. Shelly Shannon, (aka "Shaggy West") is serving a long sentence for the attempted murder of Dr. George Tiller and for a series of arsons across the West in the 90s. Bray is organzing a petition requesting that president Bush pardon her before his term expires. In his letter to the president, Bray describes Shannon "as a biblical Deborah or Jael or a Joan of Arc."

I have written a great deal about Bray and the Army of God, which has played a central role in the politics of abortion in our time, and has been driving force behind many of the 17 murders and hundreds of bombings and arsons that have ravaged womens reproductive health facilities and staff over the past few decades.  And while I doubt that Bray's effort will succeed in getting Shannon released, the campaign serves as an opportunity to highlight just a few aspects of this particularly dark side of the war of aggression being waged by the religious right against the civil and constitutional rights of others -- that pundits euphemize as "the culture war."

Rev. Carlton Veazey  president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), recently sent an e-blast to friends and supporters. It was part of an end-of-the-year fundraising pitch in which he linked to a "vision" for reproductive justice for the Obama era and the new Congress.  

I am honored to say that the vision he posted on his organizational web site is an essay "Reproductive Justice and A Comprehensive Social Justice Ethic" that he and Marjorie Signer contributed to  Dispatches from the Religious Left:  The Future of Faith and Politics in America.  

Their chapter, like others in the book, is written from the stand point not only that it is important to know what we are for as well as what we are against; (that is too easy a slogan) but from the standpoint of a clear-eyed understanding of our moment in history and the politics of our time. It is a politics that necessitates and takes into account the Religious Right and the overlapping  comprehensive worldviews behind their anti-reproductive justice political agenda.

You can read Veazey's e-blast on the flip and follow the link to his chapter from Dispatches from the Religious Left.

Back in February, there was a fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Asheville, North Carolina.  Investigators said that there was no sign of arson, but the violent, anti-abortion driven Army of God was celebrating anyway.

Army of God spkesman Rev. Don Spitz also wrote that the "Fire at Planned Parenthood abortion mill is deemed not arson, but not everyone is sure."  He then posted a video on God Tube (not to be confused with You Tube) where he also raises the question as to whether the cause was other than arson; and wondered whether Planned Parenthood itself might have been responsible.

Earlier this year, antiabortion revolutionary theocrats celebrated the tenth anniversary of the crimes of Paul Hill, the ex-Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) minister who, on July 29, 1994 assasinated abortion provider Dr. John Britton and James Barrett one of his escorts, and seriously wounding another, June Barrett, outside a clinic in Pensacola, Florida. Hill was convicted of his crimes and was executed by the State of Florida.

The festivities were called Paul Hill Days. The underground Army of God organization is now promoting a video of the celebration's reenactment of the murders.  The following post on the Army of God web site, is apparently written by AOG spokesman Rev. Donald Spitz.

We are honored welcome Dr. William F. Harrison, a distinguished physician from Fayetteville, Arkansas as a guest front pager. Dr. Harrison saw first-hand the terrible personal and social consquences of illegal abortions during his days as a medical student and resident prior to Roe vs. Wade. He has since then, continued to live his commitment to provide high quality medical care including abortion care: death threats and violence not withstanding. -- FC

This AP headline appeared in at least a few newspapers the morning after Christmas -- and was given a two sentence recognition on CNN.

Albuquerque authorities investigate fires at abortion clinics
Associated Press - December 25, 2007 8:45 PM ET

For many of us, it brought back memories of events in Pensacola, FL on Christmas Eve, 1984 when 2 abortion clinics and one ObGyn office in that city were firebombed by 2 young men and their girlfriends, who called those bombings "a birthday gift for baby Jesus."  I am sure Heysus was grateful for his gift. Just as He must be pleased by GWB's modern day "crusades" against the infidels in Afghanistan and Iraq.  

After all, He isn't called "the Prince of Peace" for nothing.

I did an expanded version of this at Daily Kos and Blue Mass Group, and decided to import it back to Talk to Action. -- FC

The U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops is too poor, according to The Boston Globe, to send to its local parishes, its traditional instructional mailing on how to approach politics and public policy. The Globe did not explain why the Bishops are broke and buried the point in the last paragraph of the story -- but we can guess that it probably has something to do with the massive payouts the church has made to settle lawsuits related to the priest pedophilia scandal.

Traditionally, the document has been mailed to all parishes in the United States; this year, to save money, the cash-strapped bishops' conference will e-mail the document to parishes and post it on a website.

However, the Globe headlined the story, O'Malley draws line with Democrats:  Backing abortion rights candidates 'borders on scandal'.

"Forget SICKO," writes Time OUT NY. Lake of Fire, Tony Kaye's megadocumentary on the politics of abortion is "sure to raise a conversational ruckus."

If the film is as big or bigger than SICKO it will certainly transform the discussion of abortion in America.

It may do so anyway.  Or not.  We'll we'll soon see.  

The long anticipated film premeirs at the Film Forum in New York on October 3rd for an exclusive run until it opens in Los Angeles on October 12th, and then throughout the U.S. in October and November.

Guest front pager Ann Rose is, among other things, a partner in the National Women’s Health Organization, a group of 5 abortion and family planning clinics in the Eastern and Southern United States. She is also the co-founder of Hot Flash Report. -- FC

Convicted anti-abortion terrorists Don Benny Anderson, and brothers Matthew Moore and Wayne Moore, were released from jail and into a halfway house yesterday, September 11, 2007.  

Don Benny Anderson was convicted in 1982 of kidnapping the owner of an abortion clinic and his wife in Illinois.  The doctor was forced at gunpoint to make an audio recording urging then President Reagan to oppose abortion, even though Reagan already did.  After 8 days in fearful captivity, the couple were released unharmed, but have remained relatively low profile since then.  Anderson was released yesterday from Federal Prison into a halfway house near the clinic after spending 24 of his 30 year sentence in jail.  The infamous Army of God claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

While the media is obsessed with foreign terrorists and the Petreaus report and the fear of Iraq, Iran, AlQuida, Osama Bin Laden, and other boogey-men, these three bonafide convicted terrorists will be walking the streets.  But wait, these dudes are "White Christians", so never mind.  The chilling details of their crimes are below the fold.

DFLA's "Trojan Donkey" effort, to advance the Christian right's reproductive rights agenda within the Democratic Party seems to be well en route to success, judging by this latest abdication, by House Democrats, of responsibility for the health of young Americans. As James Waggoner, President of Advocates For Youth writes at RH Reality Check:

Today, the House Democrats will waltz into the mark-up of the Labor HHS Subcommittee and proudly present a bill that puts their stamp of approval on domestic abstinence-only-until-marriage programs--an ideological boondoggle that threatens the health and well-being of America's youth.

The most appalling aspect of this sell-out is that that the Democrats will not only fully fund the worst of the failed abstinence-only-until-marriage programs--they'll give them a $27 million increase--the first in three years!....  [note: for more details, see this SIECUS press release]

The "Community Based Abstinence Education" program in question was initiated, under President Clinton, as a bipartisan effort although, in reality, most of the federal money dispersed under the program, now proven ineffective, actually funds activists on the Christian right. I have to wonder about who was advising the Democratic Party on this, but in light of what certain campaign consultants favored by some Democratic Party insiders have recently stated, the HHS Subcommittee's behavior seems less suprising. On November 16, 2006 at a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life roundtable event, co-founder of the hot new political consultancy "Common Good Strategies" Eric Sapp declared that "I'm pretty sure the pro-life Democrat package also had significant funding for abstinence [education] - which we all know is the most effective way to reduce unwanted pregnancies."

Our Theocrat of the Week, Joseph Scheilder, head of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN) won on a technicality. But oh, what a technicality it was!

But that is not the reason he is our Theocrat of the Week.

We are very pleased to welcome Rev. Rebecca Turner, the executive director of the Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, as a guest front pager. She will appear on Anderson Cooper 360° on CNN on Monday, April 9, at 11:00pm EDT. (the show runs from 10-12) They will discuss what it means to be a Christian in matters of science and sexuality. They will also address the religious right's pseudoscience of post "post-abortion syndrome." The religious right does not own religious or even Christian perspectives on these things, as the RCRC demonstrates every day. -- FC

In the days immediately following an abortion, a woman may experience dramatic shifts in her emotions. She may feel relief, joy, sadness, shame, freedom, and fear all at once or within a short time span. She may be quite confused by the conflicting emotions. Some of this can be attributed to pregnancy hormones, but she may interpret it as regret or even as God trying to tell her something. It is very important that a woman have trusted people to whom she can turn during these days.

"Note the irrationality of the left's rhetoric," wrote Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D, a senior fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, the think tank for Concerned Women for America, in a recent column on the rightist Townhall.com. What caught Crouse's ire was a report published late last year by Pam Chamberlain of Political Research Associates, on the Christian Right's anti-abortion, anti-contraception campaign at the UN.  

Chamberlain refers to the left as "human rights activists" (as though their radical agenda is based on human rights; their mantra is that "women's rights are human rights"). She assumes that international meetings are an exclusive club for elite leftists and that those "bizarre" conservatives -- the people that the Washington Post labeled the uneducated, easily-led religious right -- are crashing the party.

Of course, Chamberlain and PRA do not view international meetings as exclusive or elite; nor do they agree with the Post's long ago, one-time mischaracterization of the members of the Christian right. Crouse's version of rationality does not seem to include the necessity of getting facts right. The word "bizarre" is used in reference to conservative beliefs or actions nowhere in Chamberlain's report.    

Still, there is much there for Crouse to be upset about -- since the report nails what she and her cronies are up to in seeking to disrupt the formation of good and necessary international consensus on a host of important matters.  Crouse's response?  Blow smoke and change the subject.

Longtime antiabortion activist Steve Ertelt, editor of Life News, is worried about the forthcoming release of Tony Kaye's documentary film Lake of Fire.  Due for release in October following a series of appearances at film fests, Lake of Fire is a 152 minute documentary on the politics of abortion in the United States.  The apparent source of Ertelt's concern is that the film features a side of the antiabortion movement he would rather us not see: religiously inspired domestic terrorism.

In November, I published a story in The Nation about a Christian pro-natalist movement called Quiverfull that, until recently, was little known outside of either fundamentalist or reproductive rights circles, or among progressive watchdog groups and websites such as this one. (Talk 2 Action's DogEmperor   and Carlos  explored the subject in these pages on several occasions.) The Quiverfull families I profiled had between four and fourteen children - the result of their belief that contraception is a form of abortion and that all family planning decisions should be left to Providence. But as a movement, Quiverfull has a scope far broader than individual beliefs.

Its word-of-mouth growth can be traced back to conservative Protestant critiques of contraception--adherents consider all birth control, even natural family planning (the rhythm method), to be the province of prostitutes--and the growing belief among evangelicals that the decision of mainstream Protestant churches in the 1950s to approve contraception for married couples led directly to the sexual revolution and then Roe v. Wade.

The authors of the founding texts of the movement believed that turning the tide back on the feminist and sexual revolutions would have to start with something more basic than abortion: with the notion of family planning itself.

As University Of Florida historian Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis writes, "By the 1920’s, Soviet scientists had gained international recognition for their pioneering work in many fields of biology". Then came the disaster of Lynsenkoism: "A persecution of genetics and geneticists began in the early 1930’s. It was fueled by the rhetoric of Trofim Lysenko (1898-1976), an agronomist with little education and no scientific training, but with grand ambitions for Soviet agriculture based on his mistaken belief in a Lamarckian mechanism of inheritance and organic change.... The Soviet policy against genetics and evolution had disastrous consequences for the Soviet people."

Contemporary Christian right ideologically driven initiatives such federally funded  "Abstinence Only Until Marriage" programs ( slated for $240+ million in funding for domestic US abstinence programs in 2007 ) bear considerable resemblance to Stalin era initiatives arising from the now discredited school of Lysenkoism that was endorsed by the Soviet state for decades and led to both a recently uncovered, freakish Soviet breeding effort to cross humans with apes (more on this in full story) and also to famine and starvation. Even as billions of federal dollars have been slated for the effort, evidence on the widespread failure of "Abstinence-Only Until Marriage" programs is just beginning to emerge, and a new study calls into question the utility of preaching abstinence ( let alone "abstinence-only") education. Both domestically within the US and also internationally, the results of the push for "abstinence-only" look similarly dubious. Purported scientific theories based in ideology - Soviet ideology or Biblical Fundamentalism - can only amount to pseudoscience, and methods derived from such pseudoscience will almost inevitably fail. Bush Administration appointee Eric Keroack, tapped to head the Health and Human Services Office Of Family Planning, follows in Lysenkoism's dubious footsteps.

In the mid-1920's, the culture wars were dominated - as they are today with "intelligent design" - by the debate between creationism and evolutionary thinking. In 1925, John T. Scopes had been found guilty of teaching that mankind arose from something other than divine creation. But the United States was not the only country passionate about the issue. The young Soviet Union, in its effort to stamp out religion, was determined to prove that men were descended from apes. In 1926, a Soviet scientist named Ilya Ivanov decided the most compelling way to do this would be to breed a humanzee: a human-chimpanzee hybrid. [NYT, "Kissing Cousins", Dec. 12th, 2005]

PART I: Homosexuality under the governments of religious fundamentalism, fascism, and Stalinism

Uncomfortable as it makes people to compare religion with dictatorships, the most dangerous dictatorships of the 20th century were also radically socially conservative in regards to family values and sexuality. Whether it was the Motherland, the Fatherland or the Christian Nation, the same rigid moral message of intolerance runs through them.

Like religious conservatives throughout history and indeed, in the present, they used the state as a coercive tool to force their version of a conscience upon the rest of people. While only one-third of people generally tend to be socially conservative, this does not make a difference to those possessed with the compulsion to force their morality upon all others for their own good. This is not to say fundamentalists and other religious extremists are Nazis or Stalinists, but that they hold very similar views on these 'family values' and sexuality subjects and employ similar language in their positions and propaganda. They represent similar dangers to free societies as they always have throughout all of western history.

The abortion bans recently enacted in South Dakota and Louisiana seem to have taken a lot of people by surprise. A bill emerges suddenly from some statehouse packed with ornery right-wingers, some mediocre governor signs it, and progressives spend the morning after wondering what the hell happened, or simply dismiss the state as a distant redoubt of fundamentalism. Analysis of the long-term strategy that made it possible for such draconian bills to become law is hard to come by. And without an understanding of the origins and history of this kind of legislation, it is difficult to map out a way to stifle it. Meanwhile, more and more states seem poised to pass bans of their own.

In a number of articles in this section--particularly Life and Death: Just Don't Think About It, "Every Zygote Is Sacred", or "Can I have my birth control, already?" and Dominionism: pro-cancer, pro-birth-defects, pro-domestic abuse--we've focused on efforts by dominionists to prevent FDA approval of a potentially lifesaving vaccine against human papilloma virus.

In what is becoming a rather good week for us folks fighting dominionism, it appears that Gardisil, the first effective vaccine for HPV, has received FDA approval despite dominionist attempts.

Crushing news out of Uganda last week. The Bush administration's $1 billion experiment in using abstinence messages as the basis of HIV prevention has born its first fruit: In a public speech on May 18, Uganda's AIDS Commissioner Kihumuro Apuuli announced that HIV infections have almost doubled in Uganda over the past two years, from 70,000 in 2003 to 130,000 in 2005. And despite this chilling wake-up call, Bush has empowered Christian right activists to continue to push their abstinence-only agenda at a UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS, to begin next week. According to a State Department email I obtained, the official U.S. delegation is stacked with some of the very people who contributed to the debacle in Uganda.

(This is a repost of an article I have previously posted in my diary here, which contains original comments.)

Of particular interest is a new article in the (Seattle) Stranger which involves yet another case of "moral refusal" involving pharmacists, the first time a women's clinic is filing malpractice claims to protect the rights of their patients to receive care...and some ugly confirmation of trends that I've noted in two previous articles in this series.

Women all across the country continue to walk into pharmacies, present prescriptions for emergency contraception, common birth control pills, or even medications such as antibiotics, and find themselves at the mercy of a growing number of graduates of the Faith-Based School of Pharmacology.  

In most states besides Illinois -- where Governor Rod  Blagojevich outraged the Operation Save America-affiliated Angela Michael and other self-appointed guardians of "Christian" morality by requiring pharmacists to do their jobs -- women continue to be denied prescribed medication with seeming impunity. This, despite the fact that only Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Dakota have passed laws protecting pharmacists who refuse to dispense emergency contraception.

In 2005 such a piece of legislation was introduced in Texas, where it might have been expected to barrel through our rabidly anti-choice legislature like the Wabash Cannonball. But strangely enough, the bill was swiftly killed off in committee - and by avowedly "pro-life" Republicans. In an unexpected twist of irony instructive to those fighting for a woman's right to contraception in the face of the religious right's campaign against birth control, an abortion statute already in existence dealt the death blow to a "conscience clause."

(This is a repost of a story originally featured in my diary here, which contains original commentary. I have taken the time to include a bit of additional commentary originally in the comments in this post.)

One of the major "hot topics" regarding dominionism and women's issues is that of "conscience clauses"--laws that allow various medical professionals to "opt out" of anything they feel may be an "abortion procedure"--and how this has become a major problem now in something as simple and basic for women as getting a birth control prescription filled.  (See how your own state fares on this issue.)

What I hope to do is give a bit of background as to how this is a much larger and older issue both of how dominionists see (to mildly mangle Monty Python) "every zygote's sacred" and how this is part of a larger strategy where they hope to be able to eventually refuse medical services to anyone they disapprove of altogether...or disregard your living will, if you want them to "pull the plug".

In this previous article on Talk2Action I have reported on "moral refusal" clauses in general, and how they are being used increasingly not only to deny birth control to women (even if birth control is prescribed for medical reasons unrelated to contraception such as polycystic ovary disease) but even potentially lifesaving medication like antivirals--simply because those antivirals can be used to treat certain forms of STDs.

"Moral refusal" is now expanding to not only include telling women they cannot be treated for herpesvirus infections (including, notably, chickenpox) or use birth control, but it's now expanding to allow doctors to refuse treatment to entire classes of people--in particular, gay and lesbian individuals--simply because of their sexual orientation.

In a landmark case now in litigation in California, two lesbians are suing a clinic that has used the "moral refusal" clause to refuse to provide insemination services--because the clinic's employees feel lesbians are "living in sin".  If the clinic wins, this could have drastic--potentially deadly--consequences for pretty much all non-dominionists.

(This is a repost of an article which originally appeared in my diary here and original commentary is on that post. I have included some information from the comments in that post.)

Someone on the Dark Christianity community (in reference to dominionist groups opposing the new HPV vaccine--which would essentially eliminate both cervical and penile cancer if children were immunised) made the very appropriate comment that these dominionist groups are, in fact, "pro-cancer".

It goes a little deeper--not only are they pro-cancer, but they are pro-birth-defects and even pro-spouse-abuse--based on policies they are promoting which in part are explicitly based on urban myths popular in the dominionist community.

In this previous article on Talk2Action I have reported on "moral refusal" clauses in general, and how they are being used increasingly not only to deny birth control to women (even if birth control is prescribed for medical reasons unrelated to contraception such as polycystic ovary disease) but even potentially lifesaving medication like antivirals--simply because those antivirals can be used to treat certain forms of STDs.

"Moral refusal" is now expanding to not only include telling women they cannot be treated for herpesvirus infections (including, notably, chickenpox) or use birth control, but it's now expanding to allow doctors to refuse treatment to entire classes of people--in particular, gay and lesbian individuals--simply because of their sexual orientation.

In a landmark case now in litigation in California, two lesbians are suing a clinic that has used the "moral refusal" clause to refuse to provide insemination services--because the clinic's employees feel lesbians are "living in sin".  If the clinic wins, this could have drastic--potentially deadly--consequences for pretty much all non-dominionists.

We all have heard South Dakota State Senator Bill Napoli's description of a woman who might qualify for an abortion under the rigid strictures of South Dakota's draconian abortion law - an exemption now immortalized as the Sodomized Virgin Exception.

Bob Nelson, a contributor to the Rapid City Journal's Mount Blogmore, considers the plight of those young women less fortunate.

It was an easy rape, she said
(Though not the way she hoped to wed)
The stones were sharp against her head,
(Not her dream of a bridal bed)
And the dress he tore as he thrust her down
Was not her idea of a wedding gown.

But really, it was not complex.
Just some simple brutal sex.
And though her young life had other plans
She would bear the child of the gentleman.
And try to love each smile and dimple,
And be thankful that the rape was simple.
And thank the men who made her free.
Simple men like Napoli.

No thanks are necessary, little lady. It was their simple pleasure. As Napoli himself says, "If I, as a legislator, can make life better, really help somebody, that's a wonderful feeling."

If you live in Iowa, read the Des Moines Register or other state papers, in the past week you have most likely come across this advertisement of an Iraqi woman holding up her ink-stained finger. Upon closer inspection, the ad reads:

"Iraqi's have the right to vote.  Why not Iowans? When it comes to marriage, the people of Iowa should be seen and not heard.  At least that's the way Sen. Michael Gronstal would have it, as he refuses to let the people of Iowa vote on the Iowa Marriage Amendment."

Iowa has not suddenly disenfranchised its citizens.  The ad is sponsored by Focus on the Family, and the issue, as they see it, is the right to bring a state gay marriage amendment to the general polls.  Iowa already has a Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) stipulating that the only legally-recognized marriages in Iowa are those between a man and a woman.  However, after Lambda Legal Defense filed a lawsuit to overturn that law, Focus on the Family and its local affiliate, the Iowa Family Policy Council, spearheaded a drive to push through an amendment to the Iowa state constitution, which they argue would prevent "activist judges" from ruling against the state DOMA.

Your wife, your mother, your sister, your daughter . . . or somebody else's criminal?  A woman you love, or what Covenant News calls just another murderous mom?

Thoreau said, "The soul of man exists in the Contemplation of the nature of women behind bars."  In this, as in so many other things, he appears to have been right.