Yes on Prop. 8 … If you plan on telling me how much progress we’ve made since Prop. 22 or that Obama will make everything better or any other bullshit, stay away from me. I mean it. I am not merely angry. I am enraged.
I hold every person that was capable of voting and didn’t vote; every person that voted yes; and every person that did not work to defeat Prop. 8 responsible. It was going to be a damned close race and anyone that was following the news, the fundraising race, and the contradictory polls should have known that. I hold every person that was capable of volunteering, phonebanking, donating, or at the very bare minimum, talking to their friends, family, and coworkers, and chose not to do so, responsible. I hold every person that said, “It’s a difference of opinions,” and shrugged rather than answer the bigotry of their friends, responsible. It’s not a difference of opinions, it’s a judgment of my worth as a human being and my life. If you had another cause, another campaign you were working for, fine, whatever, we all have different priorities and I spent a lot of time working for No on Prop. 4. If you had no cause other than simple complacency, apathy, or disinterest, fuck you.
I donated hundreds of dollars and raised hundreds more (that thermometer to the left? Mostly donations I raised; I tracked my contributions separately). I called voters, came out to my parents because the personal is political, put up window signs, distributed window signs, talked to people that told me, “Domestic partnerships are enough,” (and that was the politest thing they said), and stood on a street corner for hours on Tuesday, waving signs, handing out cards, and talking to voters. I asked, then pleaded, and then begged my family and friends to come to a phonebank, to put up a damned sign in their windows and homes, to donate, to volunteer on Election Day, to talk to their friends. Very few of them did anything.
My state constitution now discriminates against me. It’s written into the very government of my state in plain, bold, unambiguous text. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.
Do you not realize what an enormous step backward that is, even if the CA Supreme Court finds that Prop. 8 is a constitutional revision and passes it on to the legislature? Or even if we mounted an initiative campaign to repeal Prop. 8 in 2010, there is no guarantee that it would succeed and it would be hugely expensive and difficult. It would also be fighting against the message that “California voters have already expressed their will!”
Or do you simply not care?
While volunteering at the polls yesterday, I had a lady smile and tell me, “You’re not going to like how I voted!” She smiled and laughed as she told me she voted to declare me part of an inferior class of human being. A man screamed, “Sinner!” as he drove past. Many more people shook their fingers at me, frowned, gave me the thumbs down, and yelled, “Yes on Prop. 8!”
I’m part of an inferior class of human being. This election could have been a significant advance for GLBTQI rights, the first time that a population approved same-sex marriage and equality with a popular vote, rather than resisting until a court forced it through. There would have been immense PR cachet and symbolic significance in being able to say, “The majority of voters decided to vote for equality,” and, “the majority of voters expressed their will.” It would have changed the discourse around the marriage equality movement and indisputably proved that a large number of people disapprove of homophobia.
One message that I heard over and over again from people that voted yes on 8 was that domestic partnerships were sufficient and that same-sex couples in California already had all the rights of marriage. They had civil unions and domestic partnerships, and that was good enough. They didn’t need marriage.
I absolutely hold President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden responsible for repeatedly perpetuating that homophobic and untrue message on a national level, at forums, in interviews, and in debates that were watched by millions of people everywhere in the country. Neither one of them ever had the courage to say, “Separate is not equal and by their very definition, domestic partnerships and civil unions are separate and insufficient. Marriage is a fundamental right and I do not support taking away rights from any people.”
Yeah, yeah, they would’ve lost the election if they stood up for equality and GLBTQI rights, blah, blah, they can’t be expected to show leadership, yeahfuckingrightexceptnot. The Dems won the election in a landslide and for all the talk about how Obama energized a movement, he repeatedly used his position as a leader and his national microphone to stomp all over GLBTQI people. He can talk all he likes about repealing DOMA if he thinks there’s support for it–and there’s a principled stand for you–but when push came to shove, he took every opportunity to emphasize that he doesn’t think marriage is necessary for same-sex couples. He even fed directly into the religious furor by stating that he thinks “God is in the mix” and talking about the “sacredness of sexuality” (I’ll bet anything you like that he didn’t mean nasty icky non-heterosexual sexuality). At every opportunity, both Obama and Biden spread the message that it’s possible to support same-sex couples while denying marriage equality. Given that a majority of Californians support some form of rights for same-sex couples while not supporting marriage equality, the failure of Obama and Biden to say that separate is not equal fed directly into existing homophobic attitudes. Some. Fucking. Leadership.
From the VP debates: Biden and Palin on marriage equality:
@1:57 Palin: –But I will tell Americans straight up that I don’t support defining marriage as anything but between one man, and one woman, and I think through nuances we could go round and round about what that actually means, but I’m being as, as straight up with Americans as I can, in my non-support for anything but a traditional definition of marriage.
Ifill: Let’s try to avoid nuance, Senator. Do you support gay marriage?
@2:21 Biden: No. Barack Obama nor I support redefining, from a-from a, civil side, what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically a decision to be able to be left to the faith and people that practice their faith, the determination of what you call it. The bottom line, though, is, and I’m glad to hear the governor, I take her at her word, obviously, that she thinks there should be no civil rights distinction, none whatsoever, between a committed gay people and a committed heterosexual couple. If that’s the case, we really don’t have a difference.
Ifill: Is that what you said?
@2:53 Palin: Um, your question to him was whether he supported gay marriage and my answer is the same as his, and it is that I do not.
Ifill: Wonderful. You agree. [emphasis mine]
In that debate, Biden–and Palin–laid out the host of rights that they support for same-sex couples, and reaffirmed the message that it’s possible to have those rights without same-sex marriage. Separate but equal. Biden and Obama coddled homophobes rather than challenge them.
One thing that infuriates me is the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments about how could the majority of Californians vote for Obama and also vote yes on 8?
How about his separate but equal comments at the Saddleback Forum?
WARREN: There’s a lot more I’d like to ask on that. We have 15 other questions here. Define marriage.
OBAMA: I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix. But –
WARREN: Would you support a Constitutional Amendment with that definition?
OBAMA: No, I would not.
WARREN: Why not?
OBAMA: Because historically — because historically, we have not defined marriage in our constitution. It’s been a matter of state law. That has been our tradition. I mean, let’s break it down. The reason that people think there needs to be a constitutional amendment, some people believe, is because of the concern that — about same-sex marriage. I am not somebody who promotes same-sex marriage, but I do believe in civil unions. I do believe that we should not — that for gay partners to want to visit each other in the hospital for the state to say, you know what, that’s all right, I don’t think in any way inhibits my core beliefs about what marriage are. I think my faith is strong enough and my marriage is strong enough that I can afford those civil rights to others, even if I have a different perspective or different view.
In other words: civil unions are good enough. Marriage is speshul and only for heterosexual people!
Remember Donnie McClurkin? Don’t act so surprised by the Yes on 8 and Obama-Biden votes. People made excuses for Obama when it came to McClurkin and when it came to Meeks and touted them as examples of his bipartisanship and his ability to reach out across the aisle and dressed it up however they could. The reality is that he was reaching out to the homophobic vote. And he got it.
While Obama said that he didn’t support Prop. 8, there is technically nothing, absolutely nothing wrong and untrue about the Yes on 8 mailer that had a huge picture of Obama on it and his own reprehensible quotes about marriage equality. His gratuitous comments about religion and God are and always have been repulsive, given the role of many churches in promoting homophobia and especially in light of the concerted effort by the Mormon and many Christian churches in and out of CA in supporting Prop. 8. His comments say, “Vote for me! I’m a church-going homophobe, just like you! You can grant those icky GLBTQI people civil rights AND vote for me AND ban same-sex marriage! Those positions are all totally consistent with each other!”
Back at the convention, Obama’s staffer said Obama wanted the gay vote–wanted the gay vote so much that he wanted GLBTQI people to convince themselves to vote for Obama and do outreach work for him.
I believe that our campaign has not done the effective job it needs to do to persuade and convince LGBT voters that Barack Obama is someone who will lead for them, who will fight for them, fight for us. That’s a failure on behalf of our campaign in my opinion, and I’ve played a role in it. What we need is for all of you to be our voices in our communities and to work tirelessly to give every single day, as much time as you can give, to know Barack’s record and to know John McCain’s failed record and to go out and talk to people who care about the future of LGBT people in this country.
Well, I never worked for Obama. Hell, I didn’t vote for him (no, I didn’t vote for McCain, either, so fuck off). But I have gay friends that campaigned for him in swing states–and so now what? Now what, Obama? Are you going to show that you “care about the future of LGBT people in this country?” Or are you going to continue on your current path and use us as convenient bodies to throw at the social conservatives so that you can win their votes and they can continue to discriminate against us? Fuck. You.
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More photos of political signage.
“YOUR VOICE VOTE REGISTER AND VOTE” advertisement on the side of a bus stop in the Mission, with the deadline for registration prominently advertised. The Mission is a rapidly gentrifying but still lower-income and predominantly Hispanic neighborhood–people that typically are very affected by politics–so I’m happy to see the SF Department of Elections making an effort to reach out to the inhabitants.
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A cafe window at Market and Castro.
Yes on Prop. K fliers on a pole on Market, near Embarcadero
Ferry Building Farmers Market: complete with McCain and Palin cutouts!
Ferry Building Farmers Market: opposite the McCain-Palin table, Obama-Biden (sadly, no cutouts).
Cindy Sheehan for Congress sign in an apartment window on Carl and Hilway.
I wanted photos of signs and political materials from around the city, but since I haven’t seen any No on Prop. 4 signage anywhere, here’s my window.
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Looking at a situation is enough to make you an expert on handling it. E.g. Since I’ve been to Italy [Iraq/Pakistan/Afghanistan/wherever else McCain said he'd been], I’m qualified to handle diplomatic relations with them at the presidential level. Can I be president now?
What did you learn?
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Last week, I wrote about why Obama and Biden need to fight the HHS rule change. During the course of researching whether or not Obama and Biden had done anything about the rule change, I found a grand total of two things: (1) Obama, but not Biden, signed on to Clinton and Murray’s July 22 letter to HHS Secretary Michael Levitt; (2) one statement that Obama made on the HHS rule change. Actually, that’s not quite correct. The link to Obama’s Senate site will take you to a page showing this text:
Statement of Senator Barack Obama on Proposed HHS Rule Changes
Friday, August 22, 2008
For Immediate Release
Contact: Michael Ortiz
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) today criticized the Department of Health and Human Services’ decision to propose a rule that would limit the rights of patients to receive complete and accurate health information and services, particularly access to contraceptives.
“In the waning days of his administration, President Bush continues to issue policies and proposals that put politics ahead of common sense solutions that help middle class Americans in their daily lives.
“This proposed regulation complicates, rather than clarifies the law. It raises troubling issues about access to basic health care for women, particularly access to contraceptives. We need to restore integrity to our public health programs, not create backdoor efforts to weaken them. I am committed to ensuring that the health and reproductive rights of women are protected.”
What I found on September 19, 2008, was somewhat different:
To further clarify, here’s an image of the same press release that went up at 7thSpace, complete with PhotoShopped editorial. 7thSpace was the only other place I found the press release, by the by.
Statement of Senator Barack Obama on Proposed HHS Rule Changes
Friday, August 22, 2008
For Immediate Release
Contact: Michael Ortiz
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) today criticized the Department of Health and Human Services’ decision to propose a rule that would limit the rights of patients to receive complete and accurate health information and services, particularly access
Notice something missing? A friend of mine called Michael Ortiz, the press contact listed at the 7thSpace site, and Ortiz promptly fixed the Obama.senate.gov version of the web page to display to full press release. We waited with bated breath to see what it would say…
…and got a pathetic, spineless press release. Obama’s press release does not lay out the many substantive problems with the HHS rule change, does not strongly lay out his objections to it, and does not say what he will do to fight the rule change. “Troubling issues about access”? How about “will greatly hamper access to information and care for millions of women and girls across the country”? “Troubling issues about access … to contraceptives”? How about “Will allow pharmacists, doctors, and other health care workers to refuse to provide contraceptives, prescriptions, and referrals to patients”? “policies and proposals that put politics ahead of common sense solutions that help middle class Americans in their daily lives”? What kind of mealy-mouthed, bland, generic statement is that? That could apply to any number of policies being put forth by the Bush government and the McCain-Palin campaign. It’s unspecific and makes the HHS rule change sound like a run of the mill Bush policy rather than something that speaks straight to patients’ rights, womens’ rights, and the right to health care (all of which are items in the Obama-Biden platform). Obama doesn’t clearly explain what the rule change is or go into even the barest of specifics as to what it will do and why it’s bad. Instead, he talks blandly about “[restoring] integrity to our public health programs.” He says that he is “committed to ensuring that the health and reproductive rights of women are protected,” but he lays out no specific plans for how he will ensure that.
It seems to me that the Obama staff couldn’t be arsed to distribute a correct, full-length version of the press release, given that it appeared in a truncated form on Obama’s own Senate site and on a third party site. It’d be ridiculous to hold Obama personally responsible for that failing, since it’s hardly his role to code pages or distribute press releases. However, I do hold him responsible for not making the rule change a big enough issue that his staffers would be on top of it. I do hold him responsible for issuing only one press release, not taking any public or substantive action against the HHS rule change, not calling out HHS Secretary Leavitt, and not bringing publicity to the scope of the rule change. The rule change will definitely affect the lives of millions, further undermine the much-vaunted protections of Roe v. Wade, undermine state laws regulating conscience clauses, and further undermine the separation of church and state.
SHOW. SOME. LEADERSHIP.
This press release is an example of exactly what I mean when I talk about Obama’s empty rhetoric. It’s all platitudes, no specifics, no specifics on why the policy is bad, what it will do, and what he is planning to do to fight it. It’s great to be committed to ensuring access to reproductive health care, but that verbal commitment means nothing if it’s not backed by substantive actions. The comment period for the rule change closes tomorrow, September 25. I’m still waiting for you to act, Senator.
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Cross-posted from Hillary 1000.
Following up on my last post on the HHS rule change, it would be really, really refreshing, persuasive, and a good turnaround from all of Obama’s hemming and hawing on abortion (also known as the right to determine what I do with my body) if Obama and Biden would take a stand on the rule change and fight it. No, seriously. It would serve a number of political and election purposes, as well as being the right thing to do and their jobs as senators and political candidates. By the way, I’m aware of Obama’s wishy-washy, mealy-mouthed statement last August and I’m planning to post about that later. But for right now, I’m focusing on why speaking up against more prominently against the rule change would be good strategically.
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Cross-posted from Hillary 1000. My other posts on the HHS rule change are here.
Via Liss, Senator Clinton and Planned Parenthood Federation of American President Cecile Richards have an op-ed in yesterday’s NYT, “Blocking Care for Women”. For a quick refresher, the HHS rule change would create a “conscience clause”* exemption allowing “health care providers”** at institutions receiving federal funds to refuse to provide “abortions” and “abortion-related services.”***
Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services. Women patients, who look to their health care providers as an unbiased source of medical information, might not even know they were being deprived of advice about their options or denied access to care.
The definition of abortion in the proposed rule is left open to interpretation. An earlier draft included a medically inaccurate definition that included commonly prescribed forms of contraception like birth control pills, IUD’s and emergency contraception. That language has been removed, but because the current version includes no definition at all, individual health care providers could decide on their own that birth control is the same as abortion.
The rule would also allow providers to refuse to participate in unspecified “other medical procedures” that contradict their religious beliefs or moral convictions. This, too, could be interpreted as a free pass to deny access to contraception.
Many circumstances unrelated to reproductive health could also fall under the umbrella of “other medical procedures.” Could physicians object to helping patients whose sexual orientation they find objectionable? Could a receptionist refuse to book an appointment for an H.I.V. test? What about an emergency room doctor who wishes to deny emergency contraception to a rape victim? Or a pharmacist who prefers not to refill a birth control prescription? [emphases mine]
In short, the rule change would
- be expensive;
- allow medical providers and health care employees ranging from receptionists to people who file insurance claims to pharmacists to doctors to refuse treatment, information, medication, and referrals for abortion and contraception at their whim. Whether you’ve been raped, whether you’ve had unsafe sex, whether you need that birth control because you already have children and don’t want more, whether you need it to regulate your period, whether you need it for endometriosis or PCOS – your access to health care is up to the whim of the doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc. involved in your treatment.
- as always, fall disproportionately harshly on the poor and uninsured. Women and girls who don’t have the option of seeking multiple doctors or multiple pharmacies to find someone who does their job will be forced to go without. Women and girls without the insurance coverage, money, time, transportation, and information to seek out multiple doctors or multiple pharmacies will be forced to go without. In this case, going without could mean carrying pregnancies they can’t afford or don’t want, with all the risks and dangerous consequences upon that, and losing the ability to make their own decisions about their lives and bodies.
Whether or not you would personally have an abortion, whether or not you personally use birth control (for birth control or other medical purposes), it behooves you to not force your beliefs upon another woman’s decisions. You have the right to make your choice; she has the right to make her choice and access the health care she needs.
What can I do?
Liss suggests,
If you’ve already sent a letter, please take a moment to call 1-877-696-6775 and say: “I am calling regarding the proposed regulatory changes released on August 21. I would like to register my strong disagreement with the proposed change.”
ACLU Action Alert to contact the Department of Health and Human Services
Online comment form at regulations.gov to send a comment. Put “Provider Conscience Regulation” as the subject.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: 202-225-4965 (DC)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: 202-224-3542 (DC)
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama: 202-224-2854 (DC)
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden: 202-224-5042 (DC)
Senators: Senate.gov
Representatives: House.gov
———————————–
*“Conscience clause”: I think it’s nothing more than an abdication of morality and one’s conscience to refuse to provide treatment for people in need of it, and to lie and provide misinformation about contraception and abortion.
**“Health care providers”: The rule change redefines health care provider to encompass every employee at a medical institution receiving federal funds – the clerks processing insurance claims (oh, won’t that be fun to sort out, if one of them has an objection to filing claims for birth control), the doctors, the nurses, the pharmacists, the aides that sterilize equipment, etc.
***“Abortions” and “abortion-related services”: The definition of abortion is left up to the individual, in the text of the rule change. This means that someone who thinks that birth control, emergency contraception, and any form of contraceptive is abortion, no matter what you’re using it for (e.g. PCOS, regularize periods, anemia, endometriosis), can refuse to provide those medications and services because they’re “abortion.” This includes writing and filling prescriptions and providing referrals to medical professionals who are willing to provide abortions and related services.
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I saw this article a few weeks ago in the FT but haven’t had time to sit down and write about it yet. FT, Gideon Rachman, “Why Obama Looks Vulnerable” (08/08/25) is a crappy op-ed that can be summed up thusly: Obama’s black/elitist/exotic/New England liberal elitist/BLACK BLACK BLACK and that makes me uncomfortable! So he’s going to lose.
The header graphic is what really pisses me off, though:
The race card. Hardy har har. The thesis of the cartoon is that using the “race card” is going to crush Obama and that there is such a thing as a “race card” and it’s used by people of color (POC).
That’s bullshit. The idea of a race card (or gender card or any other card) is that when POC, women, or any group that differs from the rich, white, straight, able-bodied, cisgendered male form in any way brings up their race, gender identity, sexuality, disabilities, they’re engaging in special pleading and making an unwarranted fuss about nothing, rather than raising legitimate concerns about the very real discrimination and prejudices they face. The idea of the race card denies that persons of color are systematically and constantly discriminated against and is in itself prejudiced, assuming that white is the norm. Not only does it assume that different experiences don’t exist, it also seeks to silence and shut down discussions about them.
That deck of cards ought to be labeled racism and it ought to be looming over McCain and the GOP, because they’re the ones engaging in racist tactics. May it blow up in their faces.
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Yesterday, Misty said,
[P]rinciples aren’t reserved just for people we like, agree with, and would “do for us” in kind. This concept? Not hard.
My rule of thumb lately has been that if you can abandon them when it’s convenient, they’re not principles.
I get that it’s appealing to pick up the nasty, poisoned barbs of sexism, classism, racism, and ableism and revel in using them freely because the target is one of those people. Someone you don’t like, someone who is considered an acceptable victim, someone who came at you with those same weapons in the past. After being attacked with those tactics, it feels positively heady to pick up those slurs and aim them at someone else. This is what power feels like! This is what it feels like to be the aggressor and in control, rather than the victim!
Unfortunately, principles are a code of behavior that you stick to when it’s inconvenient, when it’s hard, when it’s not fun and even when it means you’re ceding the easy ways to attack people. It doesn’t matter whether the people you’re standing up for are friends or enemies, whether they agree with you, or whether they’d return the favor, because principles are not about them. They’re about you and how you hold yourself accountable. That was one of the most difficult lessons of my life because I struggled against learning it. I still have to fight the temptation to use prejudiced slurs because the damned things are effective. They work because they’re words loaded with histories of hatred and although I know better, I still have to work to avoid shaming myself and falling prey to the ease and effectiveness of hateful speech. It gets easier with time and practice.
Oddly enough, maybe that’s my Christian background turning out to be useful. We were taught that salvation was not easy, that following Christ was not easy. If we wanted to be His and live Christian lives, we’d have to struggle and work at it every day, fully aware that we’d fail time and again. We’d never be perfect but we’d pick ourselves up after every failure and keep on going, striving to do better.
In the end, resorting to sexist, racist, classist, ageist, and ableist weapons only serves to legitimize those tactics in all instances. Using them means that even if you win the immediate conflict, you’re succumbing to bigotry and hatred. Those slurs are never ok, even if you think that it’ll be just in this instance…just against this woman…just because we’re so close…just because he called me a g**k first…just because it would hurt them badly…just this once and then you’ll go back to being a good progressive and standing up against prejudice, except for right now…
As the election season moves forward, I’m wondering how many progressives will be left by the end of it.
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Yes. More of this – via with_wings: In response to the disgusting, panty-sniffing rumormongering going on around Gov. Palin’s youngest child and the reported pregnancy of her daughter Bristol, Senator Obama said (ABC News):
At a brief press availability in Monroe, Mich., ABC News asked Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., if he had any response to Gov. Sarah Palin’s statement that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant.
“Let me be a clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits,” Obama said, “and people’s children are especially off limits.
“This shouldn’t be part of our politics,” he continued, “It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president.
“And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories,” he said. “You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and, you know, teenage children, that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that’s off limits.”
Asked about the insinuation from the McCain campaign that the liberal bloggers trafficking in rumors about Palin write for websites that mention Obama, the senator said, “I’m offended by that.”
The Democratic presidential nominee said, “There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us. I hope I am as clear as can be – so in case I’m not, let me repeat: We don’t go after people’s families, we don’t get them involved in the politics. It’s not appropriate and it’s not relevant.”
Concluded Obama before getting on his campaign bus headed to Milwaukee, Wisc., “Our people were not involved in any way in this and they will not be. And if I ever thought that it was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that, they’d be fired.”
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I keep seeing the claim being repeated over and over that the only things that Obama has done to evince sexism are the “sweetie” and “periodically…down…claws come out” comments.
Firstly, sexism is never acceptable, whether in small or large doses. Secondly, to claim that is to blatantly deny reality and minimize and erase the misogynist policy positions he’s staked out in comments, interviews, and forums. I’m tired of seeing that claim and so I’ve pulled links and quotes on some of Obama’s sexist positions and stuck them below the cut.
FYI: most of the links center around his problematic statements on reproductive rights, and that’s because I believe that the right to bodily autonomy is a basic human right and any hedging around restricting access to abortion is misogynist. I have a ton of other problems with him on progressive issues (GLBTQI rights, FISA, environmental policy, health care, economics, etc.), but I keep seeing the “So he said sweetie…can’t you overlook that considering that MCCAIN IS WORSE OMG?? What sexism??” comments sprout everywhere and I’m tired of people having to list things over and over, so these links focus specifically on sexism.
As for the reproductive rights focus, you can only believe that women do not have the right to control what happens to their bodies if you believe that (a) the fetus takes precedence over the woman carrying it, thereby disregarding the woman; (b) women don’t get to decide what happens to their bodies because they’re too dumb/emotional/uninformed/irrational to make their own decisions; (c) your religious objections to abortion take precedence over a woman’s bodily autonomy and control over her future. All these positions are rooted in the idea that women should not be independent, should not make their own life choices, and fundamentally do not have control over their own bodies. That is sexism.
These are just from a skim of my RSS reader; if you have more links, please send them to me and I’ll update this post. Also, I’m really not interested in having the OMGYOU’REVOTINGFORMCCAIN argument. The conflation of not voting for Obama with voting for McCain is illogical and stupid:
1. I’m not voting for McCain and have never expressed any intent to do so.
2. I’m not abstaining and have never expressed any intent to do so.
3. It’s a false dichotomy.
4. That conflation is premised on the assumptions that (a) the Electoral College does not exist; (b) every state is a swing state.
I’m also really not interested in having the OMGYOU’RECRITICIZINGOBAMADON’TYOUKNOWYOU’REELECTINGMCCAIN argument. Criticizing political officials is a necessary part of a healthy democracy. Holding them to progressive standards rather than letting them get away with bullshit or tossing crumbs is a necessary part of working for progressive policies.
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For those of you without TV or without the inclination to support the mainstream media’s shoddy reporting, Petulant is being so kind as to record and post the convention along with transcripts of the clips. If there’s anything in particular that you’d like to see, you can request it here.
This year is the first that I’ve followed politics so closely and it’s been interesting. I’ve enjoyed it, I’ve hated it, I’ve met some great people, I’ve been frustrated, I’ve been high on joy and excitement, and I’ve been enraged. Reading the convention transcripts, mostly I’m depressed. The gap between words and actions, historical and present, has never been so clear.
Commentary on a handful of the speeches below the cut.
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Michael Leavitt, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has formally proposed a rule change that would drastically curtail access to birth control, contraceptives, and abortions. The rule change redefines contraceptives as abortion and ties federal, state, and local funding for hospitals, clinics, researchers, and medical schools to the provision that they allow individuals to refuse to provide birth control, any form of contraceptive, and abortions (i.e. the “conscience” clause). In other words, funding will be cut unless those institutions agree not to “discriminate” against hiring or firing anti-choice, pro-forced birth individuals who want to deny women and girls access to reproductive health care on the basis of religion.
That means: pharmacists refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, doctors refusing to write prescriptions for birth control, and more.
That means: women and girls will have reduced access to emergency contraception and birth control, whether they need it for birth control, for endometriosis, for menstruation-related anemia, for dysmenorrhea, for polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), for acne, for regulating irregular periods, etc.
In most large towns, women and girls will have more than one option for accessing reproductive health care. However, their insurance might not cover a visit to another doctor if their primary care physician refuses to write a prescription for birth control. They might not be able to take the time off of work for multiple appointments searching for a health care provider who won’t deny them access to contraceptives. Once they have a prescription, they might not be able to find a pharmacist who won’t refuse to fill their prescription. In SF, there’s a Walgreens every couple of blocks. But where I went to school, there weren’t many options. There was the Department of University Health Services (expensive). There was the university-affiliated hospital (also expensive). There was the Catholic hospital (higher-than-average likelihood of classifying contraceptives as abortion and refusing to give or fill prescriptions). There was the Rite Aid. There was the Planned Parenthood. For most people in town, the Rite Aid pharmacy and Planned Parenthood were their only options. When access to basic health care is that dangerously restricted, people suffer. And not all towns have Planned Parenthood clinics. Not all states have Planned Parenthood clinics.
Ultimately, whether or not you can eventually find health care providers who are willing to do their jobs and give you the medications you need, this rule change will put more obstacles in the way of exercising your basic right to access health care and decide your reproductive future. It’ll make it more difficult. It’ll make it more time- and labor- intensive and not everyone can afford to waste those commodities. The final draft of the ruling is not yet up at regulations.gov, but it could potentially include insurance providers as well. Think about that–having to fight with insurance to get your birth control, emergency contraception, and abortions covered. Think about having to fight with them every time you need to refill your prescription, if someone involved with your case or with setting policy at the company should decide that they’re morally opposed to abortion, and by extension, all forms of contraception. This rule change automatically goes into effect after the 30-day comment period.
As Liss points out, measures such as these are why Roe is not the end all and be all of access to reproductive rights in this country. Measures such as these are why politicians who bleat about Roe while failing to do anything to actively support access to reproductive rights in actuality rather than in theory, are insufficient and are not pro-choice in any meaningful sense, 100% ratings from NARAL be damned. Measures such as these are why the Democrats are not automatically better than the Republicans on womens’ rights, so long as they do not stand up and actively work to defend our rights. Measures such as these are why anyone who’s fixated on the Supreme Court as the ultimate protection for reproductive rights is completely and utterly missing the battles that are going on right now about access to those reproductive rights.
Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Patty Murray (D-WA) have been fighting the good fight, as they did with Plan B, and are continuing to do so:
U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), who led the Senate’s efforts to preempt Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael Leavitt’s move to issue a rule that could have impacted access to comprehensive family planning for millions of American women, today decried HHS’s decision to move forward with a modified rule that would put ideology over women’s health by putting in place barriers to receiving quality, affordable health care and scientifically-proven, accurate information for those who need it the most. …
On July 16, the Senators sent a letter urging Leavitt to drop the proposed rule. A week later on July 22, they led a group of 28 Senators in sending yet another letter to the Secretary. Secretary Leavitt still has not responded to either correspondence. Following comments by Secretary Leavitt posted on his personal blog, Senators Clinton and Murray on August 8 called for a meeting with Secretary Leavitt to hear from him directly how HHS plans to ensure women continue to have access to basic healthcare. Secretary Leavitt has not responded to their request.
This is urgent: call and write your Senators and Representatives and urge them to stand up against this rule change. Urge them to do so publicly and actively, rather than just signing the letter.
Call Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) at (415) 556-4862 (SF) and (202) 225-4965 (DC).
Call Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) at (702)-388-5020 (Vegas) and (202) 224-3542 (DC).
Via Astraea, mail three copies of your letter to the agency at
Office of Public Health and Science, Department of Health and Human Services
Attention: Brenda Destro
Hubert H. Humphrey Building
200 Independence Avenue, S.W., Room 728E
Washington, DC, 20201
Astraea also suggests,
I’m sure I don’t have to tell anyone here that the comments need to be polite. It’s best to list very practical problems wiht the policy, and stick to cause and effect, not ideology. Respond to specific language in the proposed rule.
Via Melissa, also call Obama and express your hope that he has the audacity to fight for womens’ rights to contraceptives and abortion services, with or without the consultation of our pastors and families:
D.C. Senate Office:
(202) 224-2854
(202) 228-4260
Chicago Senate Office:
(312) 886-3506
(312) 886-3514
Campaign Headquarters:
(866) 675-2008
He has time to scold McCain about his multiple houses (SF Chronicle). Surely he has time to issue at least one public statement and take a leadership stance on this rule change. Simply signing onto Clinton’s and Murray’s letter, if he’s even done that, do not count as the brave, new, progressive politics he and his followers keep talking about. Ignoring womens’ rights and not giving a shit about our reproductive rights: that’s the old politics. That’s as old as the human species.
ETA: Liss points out that regardless of whether the rule change explicitly encompasses insurance providers, it will affect them:
Perhaps the least obvious but most important way is that if you need an abortion or abortion-related procedure, and there’s no one in your insurance network willing to do it, you’re out of luck. It won’t be covered by your insurance, because no one in-network can be compelled to do it.
Let’s say you’re carrying an encephalitic fetus that cannot live outside the womb, and you need or want to terminate, but no one in-network will do it, your choice will be to either carry it to term, or go out of network and pay for a costly procedure out of pocket.
And of course there’s no telling how far away you’d have to go to find someone who will perform the procedure. Depending on where one lives, it could be a damn long way, or around the block.
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I’ve started blogging at the Hillary 1000! Description of the blog and its purpose is here, its post-primary expansion of focus is here, and my introductory post is here. In the interests of keeping things organized, I’ll be cross-posting most of my stuff from there over here.
Cross-posted:
Check out Kate Harding’s post at Shakesville: In Case You Were Wondering! She discusses the OMG MCCAIN / OMG ROE stick (aka using the specter of a potential President McCain and his awful policies, specifically his positions on reproductive rights, as a scare tactic to browbeat women into voting for Obama. “OMG ROE” is the shorter version of OMG MCCAIN) and the general scare tactics used by the DNC / mainstream media / Obama campaign / Blogger Boyz / casual acquaintances / well-intentioned people / etc. with female voters. Basically, the Democrats have taken women for granted as a voting bloc for far too long, and while they’ve been the lesser of two shitty options, that doesn’t make them good. And women deserve better, and it is our Constitutional Amendment-granted right to demand better, as citizens with the vote.
Listen up, pundits, party, and bullying bloggers: It is not women’s job to “come home” to the party. It is the party’s job to make us fucking feel welcome in our own “home.” It is Obama’s job to earn our votes. Taking us for granted is shitty, and threatening us with the loss of our bodily autonomy is about a zillion times shittier. STOP IT. You are not helping. You are driving voters away.
The statement “It is Obama’s job to earn our votes” is particularly on point, because I think it’s something that goes over most peoples’ heads. Ever since the Reagan Revolution, the Republicans have been successfully destroying public trust in the government as an entity that serves society and does good things for it. They’ve made it a talking point that the government is a necessary evil that must be suffered and should be minimized (even as they bloat the military for wars of aggression). If that’s true, then it’s no longer the duty of candidates to compete for the voters’ votes and earn them through proposing policies to better their lives; it’s the duty of voters to apathetically determine which of the jerks running is going to screw them over the least, and vote for that person.
We need to challenge that kind of thinking. The president is responsible for addressing and resolving the many problems facing the country and voters are responsible for holding the president accountable for that. The presidency shouldn’t be a job where candidates merely have to meet the bar of “not going to make things worse,” it ought to be a job where the employers–you and me, ordinary citizens–hold candidates to the highest possible standards and then demand more. It’s the only way we’ll get our concerns addressed. And that’s why I’m not voting for Obama: he has not earned my vote on any of the issues I consider important (the economy, health care, foreign policy, the environment, womens’ rights, Iraq, GLBTQ rights). These thoughts pertain to candidates at all levels of government, by the way.
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Two approaches to addressing the AIDS epidemic in Africa:
Reprinted at Alternet, from Marcy Bloom’s article “What is a Woman Worth? The Feminization of AIDS” in On The Issues Magazine:
Many forms of violence against African women contribute to, and worsen, the devastation of women and girls from the HIV/AIDS virus. Women and girls are often ill informed about sexual and reproductive matters and are more likely than men and boys to be uneducated and illiterate. Physiologically, women are two to four times more likely than men to become infected with HIV, but they lack social power to insist on safer sex or to reject sexual advances.
Gender-based violence and harmful traditional practices are some of the major risks for contracting the HIV virus. These include sexual violence, marital rape, domestic violence, early child marriage of young girls to older men, forced marriage, wife inheritance, widow cleansing, polygamy, and female genital mutilation.
Poverty forces many women into subsistence sex work or transactional relationships that preclude negotiating condom use. For economic reasons, women are often unable to leave a relationship, even if they know that their partner has been infected or exposed to HIV. In many African countries, women are designated as minors, lack their own earning power, are unable to obtain credit and cannot own or inherit property.
The oppressive economic dependency of women on men is a core aspect of gender relations in this region. This critical issue must be taken on with real solutions and basic societal changes by governments, AIDS programs, non-profit groups, and, most importantly, the women themselves.
Thoraya Obaid, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said in 2006: “Women and girls are vulnerable to AIDS not because of their individual behavior, but because of the discrimination and violence they face, the unequal power relations. Even being married is a risk factor for women … Female HIV infections are on the rise in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, as well as in Africa. And AIDS is the leading cause of death for 25-34-year-old African-American women in the United States … only by addressing the needs and human rights of women and ensuring their full participation will we change the course of this disease.”
From presidential candidate and presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama at the COMPASSION forum (link to Kate’s post at Shakesville, full transcript here):
My view is, is that we should use whatever the best approaches are, the scientifically sound approaches are, to reduce this devastating disease all across the world.
And part of that, I think, should be a strong education component and I think abstinence education is important. I also think that contraception is important; I also think that treatment is important; I also think that we have to do more to make antiviral drugs available to people who are in extreme poverty.
So I don’t want to pluck out one facet of it. Now, that doesn’t mean that non-for-profit groups can’t focus on one thing while the government focuses on other things. I think we want to have a comprehensive approach.
I do think that — and I’ve said this when I was in Kenya — that there is a behavioral element to AIDS that has to be addressed. And if there is — if there’s promiscuity and we are pretending that that’s not an issue in spreading AIDS, then we’re missing part of the answer.
But I also think that — keep in mind, women are far more likely to be infected now between the ages of 18 and 25 than are men. And that’s why focusing, for example, on the status of women, empowering women, giving them microbicides, or other strategies that would allow them to protect themselves when they sometimes in certain situations may not be able to protect themselves from having unprotected sex [i.e. rape], all those things are going to be just as important, as well. (emphases mine)
That whooshing sound is either the wake left from Obama’s rush to pander to the social conservative “family values” crowd or the sound of the information clue by four zooming past his ears. Compare and contrast the pieces in bold text.
I’ve discussed my problems with these particular statements of Obama’s before (near the bottom of this post), but the Bloom article brought them to mind again.
Marcy Bloom, “What is a Woman Worth? The Feminization of AIDS” 2008/06/09 (link to Alternet, originally published in On The Issues Magazine
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