Hat Tip for the graphic goes to Traveling Man Rick's Blog.



At least they are putting "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in quotes. DADT is a more draconian version of the military ban than the one that Reagan put into place. It has the force of law, rather than being an executive order too, which makes it more difficult to change. Thanks Bill Clinton.

Anyway, an aspect of the Obama administration's enforcement that is particularly galling is their law enforcement priorities. They are going full out to enforce the military ban and discharge queers, but Bush regime war criminals are not being prosecuted for crimes against humanity. There are plenty of banksters, broksters, and mortgage brokers who already should have been prosecuted for fraud, yet most of them are not facing any well deserved criminal charges.

When it comes to the military ban, the Obama Administration says the law is the law. When it comes to wealthy and well connected criminals guilty of truly heinous offenses, the Obama people say that we need to look forward, not backward.

This is total bullshit.

Photo: jurvetson

 

Pagan Sphinx is doing some interesting writing on the Peace Tree. She found an NPR story on the "Quiverful Movement" that merits concern. The article takes a features approach to this nuttiness, missing out on most of the hard news angles. What is the "Quiverful Movement"?

Among some conservative Christians, a movement is giving new meaning to the biblical mandate to "be fruitful and multiply."

The movement, called Quiverfull, is based on Psalm 127, which says, "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them."

Those in the Quiverfull movement shun birth control, believing that God will give them the right number of children. It turns out, that's a lot of kids.

How much breeding is going on here?

Their friends do, too. The average family at their evangelical church has 8.5 kids. They are children who the Swansons hope will spread the message of Christ.

The thing about this figure is that most of those fundamentalist families haven't stopped having kids. You can expect that many of these women have had over ten kids or will eventually.

Women dying in childbirth has been a tragically common thing through most of human history. Medical advances have played a major role in cutting way back on this cause of death, but so has limiting family sizes. If women keep having babies until menopause, you have to wonder how many of them won't make it to menopause.

Then, the whole issue of Global Warming comes into play. Having kids, especially large numbers of kids, is bad for the planet. At what point does society have to place limits on reproduction when excessive reproduction has terrible consequences for all the humans, and for our planet's ecology. That's why I laugh when Rick Warren pretends that he is concerned about climate change while opposing birth control and abortion. In the real world, you cannot have it both ways.

The motives behind this fundamentalist irresponsibility are both disturbing and encouraging. Nancy Campbell, a leader of this fundie movement and the religious extremist who wrote Be Fruitful and Multiply explains the mindset.

"The womb is such a powerful weapon; it's a weapon against the enemy," Campbell says.

Campbell has 35 grandchildren. She and her husband stopped at six kids, and it is her great regret.

"I think, help! Imagine if we had had more of these children!" Campbell says, adding, "My greatest impact is through my children. The more children I have, the more ability I have to impact the world for God."

She goes on to express her fears about the way that Muslims are outbreeding Christians.

This is a sicko mentality, but it does have an interesting aspect to it. The militant, Christian fundamentalists wouldn't be so concerned about breeding like rabbits instead of humans if they thought that their faith was persuading the world or even the US of its veracity. In many ways, the "Quiverful Movement" is an admission by the Christian Taliban that they are losing the battle to make American a fundie country via evangelism.

It also reflects disappointment on the Christian Right that the imperial conquest of Iraq did not lead to mass conversions to Christianity. The latter was highly unrealistic, but many in the Christian Taliban firmly believed this would happen, and it was one of their reasons for supporting the Iraq War.

The only way they ever have even the slightest hope of being a majority even here in the United States is to breed like crazy and hope their kids don't realize how crazy their parents are. The "Quiverful Movement" is a tacit admission that the Christian Right is losing the war, though they are hurting plenty of people needlessly as they continue to battle on.

There also is an interesting aspect of this. A woman writer is pushing efforts to objectify women and their reproductive systems. This should illustrate something that is true of other prejudices and systems of oppression. Male supremacy is not a genetic trait passes along with the Y chromosome. It is an ideology that far too many women buy into.

 

One lesson that people should learn from recent history (and from the distant past) is that we cannot rely on politicians to bring about real change in this country. If we want things to get better, the people are going to have to fight for it. Here are a few examples of things you can do to fight for real change.

Support the Unplanned Pregnancy Prevention Bill
The National Partnership for Women and Families has an online petition in favor of the Unplanned Pregnancy Prevention Bill. Here is their description.

The measure's goals are lofty – to tackle the unacceptably high rate of unplanned pregnancies in the U.S. Currently, half of pregnancies are unintended and half of those end in abortion. The bill would tackle the problem from several angles, by:

* Increasing family planning funding,
* Ending insurance discrimination against women,
* Improving awareness about emergency contraception, and
* Requiring programs to focus on medically accurate sex education.

The latter is an incredibly important AIDS issue as well. "Abstinence only" scams promote the spread of HIV just as they promote unplanned pregnancies. They all fit in with the fundamentalist desire to punish unsanctioned sexuality, especially among women.

Sign the Petition

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Support Domestic Partnership Benefits for State Department Employees
From an American Humanist Association email Action Alert

Send a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urging her to extend equal benefits to the same-sex partners of foreign policy workers.

There are a range of benefits and rights granted to the spouses of State Department staff but which are denied to gay or lesbian partners. For example, same-sex partners are denied paid travel to and from overseas posts, visas and diplomatic passports, and mail privileges. Worse yet, they are even deprived of evacuation in case of a security emergency or medical necessity.

This is unacceptable. Gay and lesbian foreign policy workers shouldn't have to choose between their families and service to their country. It's absurd that the State Department will reimburse the cost of transporting a pet overseas but won't do likewise for a same-sex partner.

Many other nations already extend a partnership benefit. It's time that the United States caught up with the times. Write to Clinton today and urge her to ensure that equal benefits are extended to all foreign-policy couples.

My only disagreement is that I think that the State Department should provide domestic partnerships regardless of the gender(s) of the partners.

The AHA is suggesting that people write Sec. Clinton at the State Department.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

You may also wish to go to the questions/comments page for the State Department. If you do so, you have my permission to giggle at the wildly inappropriate items placed on the final confirmation page under "The answers to the following questions may be relevant to your question: ."

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Oppose Hate Based Initiatives in the Stimulus Plan
The term "faith based initiatives" should be replaced by "hate based initiatives." Such diversions of government funding from inclusive charities to religious ones discriminates against atheists, and the whole scam is justified on the bigoted and silly notion that being religious makes people morally superior. Such initiatives also violate state/church separation. Americans United for Separation of Church and State is opposing the latest hate based legislation on Establishment Clause grounds in their Action Alert.

Protect Church-State Separation in the Stimulus Package!
Urge the Senate to keep funding for the Compassion Capital Fund out
The House recently passed its version of the economic stimulus package, which would provide funding for many services designed to relieve Americans from the burdens of our current economic crisis. Throughout this process, the staff of Americans United has engaged our many allies in Congress to ensure that this bill, which provides $819 billion dollars of funding, does not disrupt the important separation of church and state or diminish important religious liberty or civil rights protections that we hold dear.

We applaud the drafters of the House bill for their wise prohibition on the funding of private or religious schools. This is consistent with the Constitution and an important safeguard to place on the expenditure of our tax dollars. We are disappointed, however, that the House economic recovery package contains funding for the Compassion Capital Fund. The Compassion Capital Fund has a myriad of Constitutional problems. The Fund lacks oversight, sends money directly to Houses of Worship, and allows recipients to hire employees based solely upon their religion for government-funded jobs. Clearly, more taxpayer dollars should not be expended on this program.

Fortunately, the Senate version of the bill does not contain unwise funding for the Compassion Capital Fund - and we need it to stay that way! Please thank your Senators for eliminating this funding stream and urge them to use our tax dollars wisely in this important time. As we all know, now is not the time to continue unwise and unconstitutional practices of the Bush Administration. Please enter your information below to urge your Senator to maintain the ban on funding religious schools and the elimination of funding for the Compassion Capital Fund. With your help, we can ensure that the separation of church and state is unharmed in the first major act of the 111th Congress.

Contact Your Senators!

 

Photo: caseywest

It was bad enough when Obama involved Rick Warren, one of the most vicious and fanatical misogynists in US history, in the inauguration. Now, Obama's sexism is affecting policy. From ABC News 1/27/09:

House Democrats have agreed to drop family planning funds for the low-income from an $825 billion economic stimulus bill.

The contraceptive provision was dropped after President Barack Obama placed a call to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., on Monday. Waxman is the chairman of the committee that inserted the contraception provision into the stimulus package last week.

Obama asked him to remove the measure from the bill, according to a Democratic congressional aide familiar with the call, and the decision was made by House Democrats on Tuesday to do so.

Under the scuttled contraceptive provision, states would have been able to offer family planning services -- including contraceptives -- under Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, without having to obtain federal permission.

Contraception is just as legitimate as any other kind of healthcare. Keeping contraceptive funding out of Medicaid is pure sex discrimination against women. There is no legitimate reason for anyone to object to such funding.

Misogynists have tried to claim that the funding has nothing to do with stimulating the economy. This is a flat out lie. Keeping family planning clinics open and fully staffed protects jobs, stimulating the economy.

President Obama has shown that women's rights and women's lives are less important than pandering to far right Republicans who will resist his agenda no matter what he does. This leaves one question.

Why doesn't Barack Obama respect women?

 

While the corporate media are obsessively fanning racist hysteria over Bill Clinton's post-Lewinsky "spiritual adviser," Rev. Wright, the global food problem has become a crisis. Driven by unusual weather caused by global warming, increasing energy costs, increasing demand from India and China, and most of all, overpopulation, food costs are soaring while the incomes of the global poor are not. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has focused attention on one of the most pressing issues of our time.

Now comes another blow, seemingly out of the blue. But it is not totally out of the blue. It was known that we predicted even two-three years ago that this crisis would come. I am sorry that the international community had not listened more attentively. That is the challenge of rising food prices that is a crisis for the most vulnerable populations. It threatens to undo all our good work. If not managed properly, it could touch off a cascade of related crises -- affecting trade, economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world.

We are familiar with the causes: rising oil prices, growing global demand, bad trade policies, bad weather, panic buying and speculation, the new craze of biofuels derived from food products and so on and so on. We all know the effect on markets: how the price of basic food stuffs seems to hit new records almost daily, how the price of rice, in particular, has gone from $400 a ton some weeks ago, to now $1000 a ton.

Think of the impact on ordinary people. Even in Europe and the United States, consumers are grumbling. But imagine the situation of those living on $1 a day, who might spend two thirds of their income on food.

In Liberia last week, I heard how people have stopped purchasing imported rice by the bag. Instead, they increasingly buy it by the cup -- because that’s all they can afford. It is worth remembering that Liberia’s descent into chaos began, in 1979, with food riots.

In Côte d’Ivoire, political leaders told me how they worry about that the crisis in food could create social unrest and undermine their efforts to build real democracy -- at a time when they are so close to success.

In Burkina Faso, the President told me how desperately the nation needs help, where so many people live on simply $1 a day or less. One senior Government official spoke to me especially forcefully. The crisis in food, he said, is a greater threat by far than terrorism. “It makes people doubt their dignity as men,” he said. And he added: “The issues of hunger and survival and how to live have become burning issues for the international community.”

He is calling for immediate action:

First, we must feed the hungry people.

Together, we call on the international community to urgently and fully fund the emergency requirements of the World Food Programme (WFP). Those requirements currently stand at $755 million, and they will inevitably grow in the future. Without this emergency relief, we will see a sharp rise in hunger, malnutrition and disease around the globe. We will see increased social tension and economic decline.

What is Bush doing? He's drooling over all the money his investments are accumulating from war profiteering companies leeching off of the Iraq catastrophe. He doesn't have time to care about people making $1 a day. In fact, if he could take away half of that for himself and his rich friends, he would delight in doing so.

In a 5/11/2007 article from Catholic Online, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, a Vatican official, commented before the UN on Global Warming. Here are some fairly representative samples.

“The earth is our common heritage and we have a grave and far-reaching responsibility to ourselves and to future generations."

“Experience shows that disregard for the environment harms human coexistence."

“Through such education, states can help their citizens grasp the urgency of what must be done, teaching them in turn to expect and demand a very different approach to their own consumption and that around them.”

These comments are perfectly reasonable and are what one would expect responsible people say about Global Warming. They also are typical of the Vatican's position on climate change. However, there is a catch.

The Roman Catholic Church is the largest single cause of Global Warming and its policies promote climate change.

According to the Roman Catholic Church, there were over 1.1 billion Catholics in 2005. That number is growing and growing way too fast. One of the realities of the climate change debate that many would like to evade is that efforts to prevent ecological disaster are doomed if we don't get human population under control.

The last quote displayed above shows that the Vatican knows that human consumption is a problem, but it does not address the fact that reducing human consumption is an unrealistic hope if we keep dramatically increasing the numbers of humans. Before the Vatican tells the rest of the world what to do on climate change, that church needs to put out the burning fire in its own home.

Here are the kinds of policies that Roman Catholic Church, the world's largest sect, would have if they took Global Warming seriously.

• The Vatican would embrace birth control rather than condemning it. They would start distributing condoms during their church services, rather than interfering with efforts to distribute condoms by governments.


• They would stop lying and saying that abortion takes human lives. They would endorse abortion and make the kind of abortion sacrament that would exist if men could get pregnant.


• They would endorse homosexuality as part of a new church teaching that the primary purpose of sex should not be procreation. (Considering the well known fact in the gay male community that most priests are sexually active gay men, such a step really shouldn't be that difficult.)


• They would call on Catholic families to limit themselves to at most one child.

The Vatican's talk on Global Warming has been pretty cheap so far. Will they ever take serious action?

The pro-Global Warming policies of the Roman Catholic Church are hardly unique. Far too many other sects have similar or identical policies. They are an example of how religion is the single greatest source of human suffering.