They can't stand what they can't control. That's why they oppose birth control, women's rights, and so many other things that we value these days. My wife and I just had a book published called "Department of Homeland Decency: Decency Rules and Regulations Manual" that satirizes all this. We hope we can laugh until we get these people out of power. What they want is to take us back to a simpler time. A time where:

"Men worked all day without overtime or Social Security. They were fit and strong and paid their debts on time and didn't go to government offices for handouts if they lost their jobs or were injured while performing them. They raised large families with their wives and didn't expect others to pay for their health care. Good and decent, they lived their decent lives to the fullest, until one day - from God-given exhaustion - they would fall over dead. They didn't linger, whine, or sue anyone over the unfairness of it all.  They just dropped dead and went on to their eternal reward.

"Their wives were just as decent. They stayed home and cooked and cleaned and made themselves look pretty for their husbands, just as our Intelligent Designer intended them to do. They did not complain about their numerous household and child-rearing duties. Nor did they ever find anything but joy in being pregnant over and over again. And when their men fell over dead suddenly, leaving them no pension or bank account, they didn't go to the government expecting money for nothing. They took in sewing to make ends meet, all while raising their children to become decent hard-working, non-complaining adults.

"The children of these decent parents grew up to be decent. They did what they were told, spoke only when spoken to and didn't pierce their body parts. They understood they could be spanked repeatedly because it was their parents' right and obligation to do so. Spanking, when administered through the benevolent authority of a decent man, always turned children into decent adults."

The past may never have been that simple, but that is the kind of future they want for most of us.

by bfranky on Mon Mar 20, 2006 at 03:29:51 PM EST

Then, there's The Petition to Repeal The 19th Amendment

The following sums up this mentality. The original copy of the quote below had a number of links which seemed to be references to allegedly sustantiating material but none of the links worked and so I didn't bother replicating them here.

[ source ] "The Nineteenth Amendment caused government spending to skyrocket, which converted the United States, its Constitution, and its Bill of Rights, into a totalitarian state.  Professor John Lott of the Law School University of Chicago proved statistically that it was women's suffrage, and nothing else, which caused this unbridled government growth.  Spending too much for government destroyed private property rights, plunged the US into huge debts and destroyed Personal Savings.   Professor Lott demonstrated that the reason the increase in federal expenditures resulting from the First World War didn't return to its previous historic level was due solely to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1921.  This unbridled government growth is why one third of the men in the world who are behind bars are American men, why an American man is 1,000 times more likely than a Japanese or an Italian or a Greek man to be convicted of rape, why more Americans per capita are incarcerated for just drinking and driving than Japanese are for all crimes combined even though a non-drinking woman driver is five times more likely to have a fatal accident than a drinking man driver, why existing adultery and sodomy laws are not upheld, and why the US is the only industrialized nation with a negative Personal Savings rate.

Until the Nineteenth Amendment is repealed, Christian women are invited to sign the following proxy statement, file it with their local county recorder, and fax the signed statement to 866 721 5995:

    "I, as a submissive woman of God, and of sound mind, do hereby give my vote to this man offlower.gif (48918 bytes) God: ______ to exercise for the glory of Yahvh, our Creator. I make this statement publickly as an example for other godly women to emulate, and for the edification of the world through which we are passing.

    I make this statement bona fide dei gratia, for Christ Jesus my Lord. Amen."

    Signed: _________

    Sponsored by: Women for God's Law"

I've run across one female state legislator associated with the Christian right - in either Kansas or Oklahoma - who believes that the 19th Amendment should be repealed. It's very odd when a female politician holds such views. Indeed, it's bizarre.

by Bruce Wilson on Mon Mar 20, 2006 at 01:54:17 PM EST

I read the article over the weekend, and it's well worth anyone's time to click on the "day pass" ad at Salon and read the whole thing.

by moiv on Tue Mar 21, 2006 at 08:22:54 PM EST

When organizations like this push a radical agenda and win a victory, I always ask, "What next?"  There is never a specific point where they will be satisfied.  Even if they win everything they want and actually manage to somehow repeal the 19th amendment, ban all birth control, and relegate women back to being chatel there will still be a push for something else.  Perhaps at that point these radical religious idiots will want to make it legal to kill their wives rather than have to divorce them for not producing a male heir.  

Their push so far to ban birth control hasn't reached the military from what I've seen although Tri-Care did go to a more generic birth control pill recently to save on costs.  I haven't heard any feedback on it's effectiveness.  I wonder when these groups will set their sites on us and try to make it impossible for women in the military and female dependents to have access?  Our pharmacists are usually military and so are bound by military law to dispense medication without prejudice.  We'll see how long this lasts.

by Ross Raymond on Thu Mar 23, 2006 at 11:41:50 AM EST