Christian Leftist

Eight years and a day after Bush revived the law that prohibited the U.S. from giving governmental assistance to health clinics abroad that discuss abortion options or provide abortions abroad, President Obama overturned it with a stroke of the pen.

According to the L. A. Times:

President Reagan instituted the rule, also known as the “Mexico City policy,” in 1984, stating that the U.S. government would not contribute to groups that “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.”

The result, critics said, was that nongovernmental organizations working in the developing world could not refer women to safe abortion providers or even conduct family planning education campaigns that discussed the procedure.

This is one of the first acts of Obama’s presidency, and it signals to me and other progressives that he has not forgotten the most grievous of the past ills of the Bush Administration. Whether or not his White House will attempt to or even be able to dismantle all of the harm Bush has done remains to be seen. I would hope for an overal reversal, but I suspect that not allof the damage the neoconservatives have done in the name of so-called “patriotism” and “family values” will be as easy to erase from the legal system or our memories. Still, the future is looking better than it has for a long time now.

I think he will see us through this depression. I hope he will.

I could weep for joy. I have been waiting a third of my life for this day.

…Aaaand we’ve come full-circle.

I knew George W. Bush was going to give me a headache when in January 2001 he used his second day in office to deny African aid organizations U.S. funding if they chose to give women information about abortions. Never mind that the drugs to prevent spreading HIV to one’s unborn child weren’t usually available to women in poorer countries back then; they may not be now. The point was that regardless of the final decision women may have made, the mere action of discussing the option of aborting was enough to economically devastate non-profit aid groups who were giving health care to women who needed more than almost any other group in the world.

Now it appears that Dubya wasn’t done making his point.

Nicholas Kristof reported that USAID, or the United States Agency for International Development, has ordered that six African countries it serves not use any of its money to supply British aid organization Marie Stopes International with any condoms, I.U.D.s, birth control pills or any other contraceptive devices whatsoever.

The Bush Administration has falsely claimed that this action was a response to Marie Stopes Int’l.’s support of the Chinese government’s family-planning policies. Yes, China still madates that couples have only one child, and this law occasionally results in forced abortions, and it’s a horrible way to exert population control, but there is absolutely no evidence of MSI’s involvement or support for such measures. It’s outright dishonesty and misinformation.

GWB taking out the religious right’s issues with Planned Parenthood on some of the most vulnerable and destitute human beings in the world was not a responsible, moral, or ethical move seven years ago. It isn’t a good move now.

If you were watching ABC news on March 6th this year (I know, who can remember the news from yesterday, let alone two months ago?), then you caught wind of the new emerging phenomenon of ‘chastity balls.’ I realize the prominence of these balls isn’t hot news, but they irked me so much that I just had to share some thoughts about them. *shudder*

So, “chastity balls.” From Victorian times to the present, we’ve changed a couple of the letters in the last word and gone from metal belt-like devices that look like the sanitary napkin belts from hell to a figurative lock around the female groins of our progeny. Across the nation, faith-based groups (and in the Bush era, that means conservative ‘Christian’ groups) help these pseudo-Prom events sprout like daisies from local communities. The daughter takes a date to a high-school social event, all right – Dad. They share a first dance, sit around for a moral lecture or two and chow down on white wedding cakes, all in formal gown and tuxes. Then the couples exchanges vows – well, actually, only the daughter has to exchange a real vow – to stay a virgin until she marries. Does Dad make sure his daughter doesn’t eat more than one piece so that she can keep her size 4 figure, too?

Never mind that the idea of girls slow dancing with their fathers on any date other than their weddings is really, really creepy. Never mind that the sons aren’t expected to make similar vows to their mothers or attend chastity balls at all. The patently false idea hidden within the whole concept is much more chilling. As one father put it, if his daughter has premarital sex, giving away the bride is meaningless, “Because I wouldn’t have anything to give away.”

Hence the whole objectification of virginity as property that can be taken, stolen, sold, the act of which makes the girl ‘worth less’ than she was when she was a virgin. Or simply worthless.

I don’t need to go into the studies of how more than 50 percent of teens who take these chastity pledges end up having unprotected sex within three years, or how those teens end up practicing unsafe sex because they are taught that contraceptives mean they ‘planned in advance to sin,’ so it’s better to just let sex happen accidentally (and unsafely). These people buy into the concept that fathers own the sexual rights of their daughters: their bodies, their hearts, their souls.

Chattel, anyone?

 I bet the sponsors of chastity balls think that mothers promising to guard their sons’ bodies until marriage would reek of an Oedipal complex. But hey, the other way around is fine. Guess they didn’t read the story about Agamemnon’s kids.

Oh, will the trail of underqualified, overly righteous, neo-conservative appointees from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell’s colleges who commit political suicide never end?

As for Randall Tobias, the Boston Globe article that describes his past controversial positions on AIDS treatment programs really says it all in the first sentence:

“Randall L. Tobias , the Bush administration official responsible for foreign assistance who resigned late Friday because of his use of an escort service allegedly involved in prostitution, was ridiculed as a hypocrite yesterday because he supported US policies that forced overseas organizations not to help prostitutes.”

This is what happens when people try to play the moral police. Whatever happened to loving the least of one’s brethren? People are going to have sex whether you think it’s right for them to do so or not. Why did the Bush administration assume that they themselves were infallible pillars of morality?

I really couldn’t care less if Tobias received ‘massages’ in a house not his own from the fingers of a woman not his wife, or what specific types of therapy those massages entailed. That’s his problem and God’s. It probably throws his personal character into doubt, but the fact is that as long as he didn’t use government property to do it, it’s solicitation at worst, because morals aren’t the same as ethics.

At least, they’re not supposed to be. Now, because Tobias has injected his personal religious beliefs (and those of the Bush administration) into policy, he has made himself look like a dogmatic imbecile and a fraud. Deservedly so, in my opinion, but the point remains that no one can or should judge another’s private sex life. Abstinence education is an oxymoron because it presumes that using unfounded conclusions from biased think tanks to tell people to control their biological urges is more sensible than teachingthem how to use condoms.