52 Comments

I'm 78 and I have a 78 year old friend who went to Catholic school where the nuns would watch after their virtue seems like every minute or two, down to when the little girls' knees would be slightly apart, the nun would point at them and declare: Close the gates to hell! I grew up with Methodist and Presbyterian ministers throughout my family and I am now an atheist. Too much guilt, control and recrimination these days. And so OT, Lucian, I saw a Fox guest in the last couple of days was lamenting on his visit to Montecello he had to hear all that talk about slaves. They don't want to h3ar about slaves. They just want to make sure they keep some of us as slaves.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
July 21, 2022Edited
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Is anything "real"?

Expand full comment

This is the entire argument that the Republicans and evangelicals have against any form of birth control, bodily autonomy or reproductive freedom for women:

" What they don’t like is women having the freedom to go out and have sex without risking the consequence: pregnancy. They really do see having a baby as the punishment you get for living a wanton lifestyle. Babies are not God’s will, they’re God’s wrath. "

These people are the American version of the Taliban, minus the clothing. They rejoice that they are finally gaining power to dictate their zealotry to millions of women who have fewer choices than when they were born.

What's next?

I don't really want to know, but I can damn well guess: Same sex marriage, equal rights for LGBTQ.

It's not really hard to figure it out-if someone is having fun while having sex, it's sinful and evil to the Republicans and evangelicals.

Pleasure is not what we're here for.-We are here solely to suffer and to die for our sins. We are born sinners, we will die sinners unless we accept their version of their punishing God.

As long as you understand that, you'll understand their mindset.

They won't be happy until everyone is suffering. They do for their lives, why don't the rest of us?

Expand full comment

There's nobody that seems to have more fun than evangelical ministers. And as a kid in a small Southern town, we could almost time how long a new Baptist minister was going to last since they all seemed to have an irresistible urge to sleep with a parishioner or two. And seems they liked it so much, they regularly got caught.

Expand full comment

And also raping children. As the SBC has found out to it's massive disgust.

Expand full comment

As bad as the Catholic "problem" that's been going on for years now. Then we turn around and find out so have these awful people.

Expand full comment

What's really repulsive is that these people regularly preach, "Do as I say, not as I do" then get upset when they're caught doing exactly the opposite.

I say it's time to tax all the churches. It's only way to make them all pay for their sins.

Expand full comment

I agree with you 100%. Everything is corrupted now. How heart wrenching and how terribly sad.

Expand full comment

I've always wondered about the women who hang out with these Repubes and their exaggerated make up and tight dresses. Do they want to look like a painted Barbie doll or are their husbands and bosses and presidents forcing them to look like that? None of it looks chosen, but "mandatory."

Expand full comment

I am willing to bet there is a direct correlation between opposition to abortion and sexual dissatisfaction/dysfunction. The worse a person’s sex life, the more rabid their opposition to abortion.

Expand full comment

I think it's more an issue of sexual repression. Most ardent religious people are very anti-sex, and see 'recreational' sex as sinful. People are not supposed to enjoy sex, for them-they're only supposed to have it to have babies with..nothing more. Fornication is their evil word for it. Anything that's pleasurable is a sin. No wonder they're always having fits in church!

Expand full comment

I agree. You cannot artificially suppress sexual attraction. Nature has seen to that. But interestingly, young people are not the ones having copious amounts of sex. The numbers are way down on these young people. Could it be the depressive effect and evangelical demonic judgmental religion excluding all but the worst have their future prospects so bleak they can't think of fun the way they would if their future was bright?

Expand full comment

I think the young people are depressed when they look at the future of the planet, and then wonder, 'why should I even have sex? I can't be personally responsible for a birth control failure if it should happen, and I'm not going to have children because we're so screwed." Although there have been studies that show more and more young people are leaving the church, the remainder have to live with it. (I'd be depressed too if I had to listen to hell fire sermons every single week.)

Expand full comment

It really is impossible to see a reason for opposition to birth control that isn’t to eliminate sex for pleasure. The belief that sex should wait for marriage and that sex should only be for procreation is really laughable especially coming from a religion whose solvency is endangered by the astronomical amounts it has has to pay to victims of sexual abuse by its clergy. The fact that the Republicans have embraced this should make nobody ever vote for them!!

Expand full comment

I’d like to point out that “birth control pills” are not only used to “control birth”, but to regulate hormones. Used this way they allow a woman to live a normal life. They allow women to concentrate and to learn and to avoid physical and mental anguish and to be contributing members of society. From what I’ve heard repugnants say, their goal is to eliminate women from “civilized” society. They have no clue as to the WRATH they have unleashed! Somewhere I hear Putin laughing with glee.

Expand full comment

Yes. While I subscribe to all of the comments on here, and to Lucian's no b.s., no useless euphemisms to spare anyone's oh-so tender sensibilities at being vigorously criticized contained in the OP, it's definitely worth repeating that "(t)hey have no clue as to the WRATH they have unleashed!"

These radical movements have surfaced before in American history, in world history, and they inevitably provoke a backlash. In the meantime, great harm is done, some of it irreparable, some which no direct, consequential and punitive damages ordered by a court can fully remedy by any means.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_mourn,_organize!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=czVtjfAxSp4

The youtube link is to Joan Baez's performance at the Joe Hill Centenary Concert in November, 2015.

Expand full comment

I don’t see anything close to enough wrath to make any impression on GOP sexual psychopaths. I wish I could recall where I read recently that only about 10 percent of American women are deeply concerned about abortion access — and that group consists of highly-educated, mostly white women in blue states.

Expand full comment

That could change fast, Judith, as the news spreads to "low-information" women.

Expand full comment

difny, I hope you’re correct!

Expand full comment

Eventually, the great granddaddy of all the substantive due process cases, Loving v. Virginia will be overturned.

It's the only way Clarence Thomas can shed 225 lbs. of adipose tissue without paying it alimony, of course.

Expand full comment

Yep, women are always at fault when it comes to sex. We’re so wanton and powerful, men are overcome by the devil in our presence. They just can’t help themselves. <eye roll>. The hypocrisy is so ridiculous within the church itself (Catholic and Evangelical) I wouldn’t know how to stop ranting, so I won’t begin now…

Expand full comment

Not only that, Lucian, unless I'm very mistaken Griswold freed only married couples. Extramarital sex, forget legal contraceptive use, and I don't think that ever got fixed except by custom. (Hope someone else will clarify. Hey, all you lawyers?) It sounds so wild, but in djt's wake nothing is too wild to be true.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
July 21, 2022
Comment removed
Expand full comment

Well, that's a relief ;) Thanks, TCinLA.

Expand full comment

I don’t remember which Republican it was, but it got my attention when he said the mother must be “accountable.” It’s her fault that she became pregnant. Fault. Hers, only hers. God should have ignored Adam’s loneliness and never created Eve, I guess, that slut!

Expand full comment

Frightening. When you have people so addicted to fear and rage and politicians so addicted to the blind support and money they offer up this is not going to end well.

Expand full comment

The Handmaiden's Tale is about to become non-fiction.

Expand full comment

It’s all coming true. The theocracy is upon us.

Expand full comment

You're all gonna love this! My motorcycle-riding husband, wild beast that he was, grew up in Miami in the 1950's. He knew a doctor who kept a suite in a fancy hotel where he secretly performed his specialty- ABORTIONS FOR NUNS. I was told he had a very successful side practice!

Expand full comment

Boy, these morons are lucky the Cold War is over. Imagine the flower of Southern manhood having to serve in all those wanton European countries back in the day!

Expand full comment

Whatever legitimacy religious radicalism had with the question as to when an embryo becomes a human baby falls to pieces when it comes to contraception. The Republican vote in the house against contraception makes it so clear - what they really want is theocracy. It's not about protecting a pre-infant human life. It is the imposition of their fundamentalism on everyone - religious or not, their religion or not. What kind of gaslighting Stockholm syndrome has occurred that the people showing signs like "Don't tread on me" are supporting the worst kind of big government imposition over the private lives of millions. Trumpism, the sickening loss of all civility and honor is morphing into the American Taliban at warp speed.

Expand full comment

Do all these anti-contraception republicans have a dozen or more children? No??? Oh— I understand now—they practice abstinence with their wives and have sex with their girlfriends. The GOP guys make sure those girlfriends are using birth control!

Expand full comment

I would suggest we draw up an addendum to our existing Constitution that would refine God’s given Rights to Life,Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness; to every Individual’s Corporal Autonomy.

That is the Right of Every Individual to choose Total Authority over their Own,Personal Body; and the Dignity owed to that of others. As in:

“Do unto others as you have done unto you.” J. of Nazareth

‘Then… It’s between you and God, ‘as it was in the beginning.

Expand full comment

That would never pass…too close to Reform Judaism, and we know what fascists do to “liberals” and “Jews.”

Expand full comment

Jayne Anne Phillips’ great line comes to mind: “This is not the South. It’s the goddam past.” This is not America. It’s the goddam past.

Expand full comment