The Nightstar Zoo

I have noted that the ruling clique in the Republican Party is trying to return America to age of William McKinley and Calvin Coolidge. Apparently part of that program is returning us to the days when talking about or providing women with birth control was illegal.



"Now, see here, little lady, I can't give you back this piece of paper. You might do something immoral with it. A decent woman shouldn't even be thinking about things like this." What next, slashing their tires if you think they might try to drive to a Family Planning Clinic?

Addenda: Dr. W. David Hager is Bush's appointee heading up the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. He not only thinks birth control is a sin, he has the power to do something about it; he has ignored the findings of his own scientists to veto approval of a new contraceptive drug.

Ah. I hold this right up at the same level as those who want to protect "traditional marriage".

You ask em what that means. They will respond,

"It means a man and a woman! Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!"
The really good ones will throw in, "God hates fags!" at the end.

"So. You'll be picketing at the offices of divorce lawyers too, then?"

"Huh?"

"Marriage is a holy bond for all eternity, isn't it? Doesn't the existence of people whose entire living is to dissolve these bonds really chafe your hide? Hell, I knew one woman who had been divorced twice by the time she was 25. Oh, and I'll bet those "hollywood marriages" really grate your teeth. So, you'll be hanging around the SoCal churches, and the next time a pop-tart says she's going to tie the knot, you'll be the one driving the limo out? And when they think they are having a time, you'll pop up and say, 'This one's forever, and a woman's place is in the kitchen'?"

Somehow, they do just want to go right back to talking about homosexuals.

Sometimes, for fun, I can start deriding their selective faith in God. Sometimes they make it easy--by wearing glasses. God meant for you to be blind, chum, gimme those.

This demonstrates again the political skill the religious right has demonstrated over and over again the last few years. A passive-agressive action of this sort puts the moral onus of talking action on the legal system, allowing the movement to portray its people as martyrs. Meanwhile, they are one step closer to delegitimizing birth control socially; that it, they want to make being against birth control the cultural norm and being for birth control something you have to be defensive about when discussing it in public or in court. You can expect the right wing pundits to take this attitude on their TV appearances at some point.

As another example, at the height of the anti-war movement in the late sixties and early seventies, military service recruitment was vigorously delegitimized by the anti-war movement. One manuever consisted of law suits and petitions by activists demanding that anti-military information be made available to students whenever military recruiters appeared on their high school career days, to counter the recruiters sales pitch, one-sided portrayal of military life, etc. The aim was three-fold; first, the direct one of providing arguments against joining the military. Second, to create nuisance work for school administrators planning career days. Third, to establish the idea that military recruitment was not like other job recruitment; that it was something abnormal, requiring a special warning label in the form of an anti-war booth at the show.

You can pick up this pattern in a lot of the legal and propaganda manuevers of the religious right.

Remember, Already lost battle vs. Battle still being fought.

This is all very well and good, but what does the activities of a few activist pharmacy workers have to do with the republican party?

Plus slashing tires hyperbole is just idiotic. That would be Actively harming someone else's property, while what they're doing is simply refusing to render services. Really, the only horrible thing they did was refuse to return their prescription paper. This wouldn't be a problem except for the totalitarian/tyrannical FDA regulations around prescription drugs.



Ahh, so you're tossing in an unrelated republican that isn't even mentioned above doing something much more mild so that your audience will associate them with the much worse acts of a couple of unrelated activist pharmacists?

Er . . . you didn't get the word that Evangelical Christian activists are a well organized national political force---and how their surge in voter registration gave the Republicans their edge in the national elections? Or that the Republicans have promised to promote their anti-abortion agenda in exchange for their support? Also, that many of the most powerful Republicans in the nation (starting with President Bush, Attorney General Ashcroft, and house majority leader Tom Delay) are all Evangelicals themselves and fervent supporters of this agenda?

Come on, I'm pretty sure you read the newspapers! Not to mention their speeches.

And what is "mild" about a federal appointee censoring legally required scientifc research to force his personal religious views into a regulation that affects fifty or so million American women?

That is entirely not the point. You claimed that the republican *PARTY* leadership was doing it without backing it up with any evidence in your article. When you can get specifics of the republican party leadership as a whole advocating this, THEN you can say the republican party is advocating this. At most you can say "A few republican leaders are." Your argument is also weakened by the fact that 1/3rd of your "most powerful republicans" just lost his job. Interesting that Bush has just recently said he would appoint a pro-abortion lawyer for district attorney if he fervently supports that agenda.



It's mild because it's only a new drug. He did not remove any existing drugs from the market. In a few years they'll try it again with a friendlier administration. It's just a delay. They aren't denying birth control to anyone. The activist pharmacists are denying legal drugs to women with prescriptions by withholding their prescription slip. That's the major offense.

Observation: The right to not reproduce is called a reproductive right.

(Yes, I know it's refering to the reproductive system, and not to the act of reproduction. It's just a funny observation, I'm not trying to be inflammable.)

That's right.

Unless, of course, you're from the Religious Right.

(of course, there's a similar but opposite confusion regarding one's OWN life: apparently, say many, you have the right to keep it--fair enough--but not the right to end it. That's why Dr. Kevorkian is in prison right now.)

Just be glad you're not in China. Over there it's called a "Reproductive Privilege"