Did ALL Conservatives FLUNK Sex Ed?

We’ve recently seen new gains for the LGBT community, notably for marriage equality in Pennsylvania, Idaho and Oregon this week. I can only imagine the uproar now that the Harvey Milk stamp came out today.  There was a White House ceremony and everything.

So, it follows that we see greater insanity from the radical right in response.

In California, anti-gay groups equate Marriage equality activists with the Klu Klux Klan, in a law suit. No, not that the “Kluckers” have ever been pro-gay, they are just flailing around grasping at anything no matter how ridiculous. This follows the persistent pattern shown by conservatives of:

1. believing things which are not true; and
2. seeing themselves as victims when they are not.

Then we have Rep. Charles Van Zant, a Florida Republican, who has doubled down on his insistence that Common Core will turn every child in our public schools gay. As noted by Think Progress,

“I don’t believe that that has any place being introduced into Florida’s schools,” Van Zant said. He called for Florida’s curricula to only teach courses like history and civics, subjects which he seems to believe are wholly devoid of gay people.”

I’m particularly struck by the notion that anything in any school curriculum COULD alter someone’s sexual orientation. The very premise of that is so badly flawed and without any credible substance or factual merit.

While this was somewhat dealt with by Politifact.com earlier this week, which gave a pants-on-fire rating to Van Zant who had claimed [Common Core would] “attract every one of your children to become as homosexual as they possibly can.”, I was struck by the notion that Van Zant appears to hold that there might be degrees of same sex orientation — which is as odd as being ‘ a little bit pregnant’ or a little bit heterosexual.

Meanwhile, in Houston, the radical religious right (who REALLY seem to have a warped and anti-ALL sexual bias) are back at it, pushing the false notion that gay and transgender people are all perverts and sexual predators.

In an analysis published a few weeks ago, ADF claimed that the ERO will place “women and children at risk of voyeurism, photographing and video recording, and sexual assault” because of “men in women’s” facilities. The memo also claimed that individuals and churches could be prosecuted — in both cases because they discriminated in either providing services or employment.
These same arguments are apparent in talking points that have been distributed to would-be opponents of the ERO at city council meetings. It blatantly suggests that the protections will lead to rape, “more perverted men to become bold in acting out their perversion,” “sex offenders to roam around public bathrooms,” “physical, verbal, and sexual abuse,” and the promotion of “sexual intercourse in a public setting.” This, the hand-out warns, could expose children to behavior “that should not be so” and may lead them “to start experimenting different acts or things in which they normally would never have done.”
According to Texas Values, the state’s prominent Christian conservative group (and a state affiliate of the Family Research Council), the ERO also “falsely equates race with sexual conduct,” suggesting that sexual orientation is not an “inborn, involuntary, and immutable trait” like race, national origin, sex, and — ironically — religion. The Family Research Council (FRC) chimed in this week as well, describing the bill as celebrating “a radical definition of sexuality.
FRC also highlighted how local conservatives have dubbed the ERO “Mayor Parker’s Sexual Predator Protection Act.” Jared Woodfill, Chairman of the Harris County Republican Party, believes that it “provides an opportunity for sexual predators to have access to our families.” State Rep. Dwayne Bohac (R) similarly believes that the ordinance will protect “men ‘dressing up’ as women to enter and terrorize women and children.”

And like the conservative opposition many years ago the Equal Rights Amendment, the radical and religious right nuts have terrible potty hang ups. Back in the day of the ERA the fear promoted by the right was that we would have ONLY unisex bathrooms – you know, like the ones you have in YOUR HOME – that could be used by either sex.

This is an issue that arose in California, in the context of school bathrooms as a reason to intrude radical right big heavy-handed oppressive government into individual sexual orientation, and it was an issue in other cities with their anti-discrimination ordinances. They seem to be dealing with it, in spite of the hysterical conservatives in their midst.

From Think Progress (or should I just abbreviate it to TP for this link?):

Despite how contentious Houston’s fight has been, the public outcry and unfounded concerns about the consequences of allowing transgender people to safely use the bathroom are identical to when the same fight played out in San Antonio last year. San Antonio’s City Council passed its ordinance, with no exceptions for discriminating against transgender people, by an 8-3 vote.

Exiting the world of bathrooms for the moment, in Michigan conservatives are struggling with the facts of disease and sexual orientation, demonstrating the same failed thinking that they espouse in abstinence only sex ed – that if you don’t give people accurate information or if you express disapproval, no one will have sex… except for minimal efforts at procreation. Because apparently for Conservatives, if no one tells you how, you will never, EVER, figure out how sex works.:

ThinkProgress reached out to the Liberty Counsel Friday morning for clarification as to how maintaining the status quo for marriage might impact the health of people who identify as gay, lesbian, and bisexual. Mandi Campbell, a litigator for the organization, explained that in general, homosexuals cannot — or at least do not — commit to relationships that are both exclusive and permanent. Thus, they cannot enjoy the benefits of marriage. The government’s actions communicate what is “right and wrong” and “good and bad,” and so because of the health consequences associated with gay sex, it should not encourage or endorse that behavior. Campbell confirmed that the Liberty Counsel believes that even though banning same-sex marriage will not change the number of people who identify as gay, it will discourage people from engaging in same-sex sexual behavior.

Meanwhile, in heterosexual news, a conservative judge, running for re-election unopposed, demonstrated the lack of concern by conservatives for the victims of ACTUAL same sex rapists and sexual predators, in contrast to their hysteria for factually deficient concerns about hypothetical same sex offenders:

David Wise was convicted of six felony counts for drugging his wife, raping her in her sleep, and videotaping the rapes. But he won’t spend a day in jail.
Wise was sentenced by an Indiana county judge to eight years of home confinement, and the remaining 12 years of his 20-year sentence suspended. Prosecutors asked for 40 years in prison. His former wife, Mandy Boardman, called the sentence “unfathomable.” “I never thought that he would be at home, being able to have the same rights and privileges as I do,” she told the Los Angeles Times.
Boardman recalled years in which there would be powder residue in her drink. She would wake up with a half-dissolved pill in her mouth. After she found videos of sexual encounters on Wise’s cell phone and confronted him, he wrote in an email to her, “I was taking advantage of you in your sleep and you kept coming to me and telling me it was NOT ok. I needed to stop.” The rapes went on for more than three years unbeknownst to Boardman.
Marion Superior Court Judge Kurt Eisgruber declined to explain his reasoning, particularly because Boardman is appealing the sentence. But he did ask Boardman to forgive Eisgruber during the sentencing hearing, saying, “I hope that you can forgive him one day, because he’s obviously struggled with this and struggled to this day, and I hope that she could forgive him.” He is running for re-election unopposed this November.

Given the inappropriately LIGHT sentences we have seen recently by conservative judges for other sexual predator crimes committed by heterosexual perpetrators, and the lack of any significant conservative outrage, one has to wonder if it is ONLY a pretext on the part of bigots who are homophobic and looking for excuses to discriminate. What cases? In Texas, a judge sentenced a man to 45 days of jail time and some community service at a rape counseling center (without consulting the center first) after he pleaded guilty to raping a 14 year old. In Delaware a really rich guy got just probation for raping his 3 year old daughter. In Montana a teacher got 30 days in jail for raping a student, and in Alabama another sentence of probation for raping a young teen - more than once.

Where is the outrage, the fear, the public pressure for this kind of heterosexual predatory behavior, when it is men viciously committing sexual assault on women and girls, in one case a toddler?

Crickets.

So much for family values. And the right wonders why women don't see them as treating women as equals, or respecting them as human beings?

It is real:Forced pregnancies, pro-rape culture = GOP War on Women

The right wing culture war is totally real, it is not a 'lefty' contrivance or myth, however much the right tries to deflect attention from it.

GOP candidate Lance Kinzer wants women with severe mental health issues to add pregnancy stresses to their problems.


Yeah, because what could possibly go wrong with that..........

h/t to the Blue Street Journal on FB for this - and Miss R evolution aries:

Horrible Histories: The Suffragette's Song

I was mentioning The CBBC programme Horrible Histories to Dog Gone, this series was based on the Terry Deary book series of the same name .

Here we have the  Suffragette's Song, which I dedicate to Dog Gone:

A Feminine Perspective on the Culture War on Women

Apparently we have returned to those glorious days of yesteryear, as old-timey radio used to say.

And we have George Carlin's riff on the War on Women, that right wing attempt to keep us barefoot, and pregnant, and in our place, the one that wants to weaken the description of rape, the one that wants to repeal equal pay for equal work laws, the one that wants to make it more difficult and costly to control our reproductive rights.

There is a great deal to be said for the push-back against right wing reactionary politics using humor.

We have the Virginia state senator, Janet Howell who tried to amend legislation that would force costly, non-medical procedures on a woman by linking a similar measure that would force men who wanted erectile dysfunction medication to get a rectal exam.  Actually, that makes sense, because of the typical age of men who actually need, rather than simply want for recreational purposes, that kind of medication and prostate cancer and other diseases.  Lets call out the hypocrisy of the pro-freedom from government intrusion crowd for what they are, liars and hypocrites for interfering with medical care and legal procedures to force their religious beliefs on the rest of us.

Now we have another female state senator who has beautifully used humor again in a similar way.  Constance Johnson, a state senator in the Oklahoma legislature, addressed the insanity of trying to give equal personhood to zygotes at the instant of conception.  As a point against the legislative attempt by the right to wrongly redefine personhood, I would point out that we don't and cannot ever determine the moment of conception.  I could write here at some length about the process known as spermatozoon activation or the acrosomal reaction, because I actually read about things like this extensively in pursuing my interest in theriogenology.  But this blog is about politics and current events (and anything else we feel like writing about) so I will save my other hobbies for a different niche.  The point is -we don't know, and with the exception of some very specific kinds of artificial insemination, NEVER know in the natural course of things, when the moment of conception occurs.  It takes us a while to be able to tell THAT it occurs, and that requires separate processes, including uterine implantation.  So on the face of it, the very premise of this legislation is poor.  But Howell does tie in to the obvious attempt to force on the rest of us, in a violation of church and state, one of the premises of the catholic church, that masturbation is a mortal sin.

I agree with my high school biology teacher, who gave us the most comprehensive sex ed classes imaginable; 95% of men admit to masturbation, and the other 5% are liars.  I would posit that the numbers for women are similar.

Good for Senators Howell and Johnson, we need more humor, we need more reason, and we certainly seem to need more women in our legislative government at all levels.