2 posts tagged “christianright”

In addition to the LGBTQ contradiction, the zealots of the church are just as nonsensical with their beliefs about contraception. Much like their ridiculously staunch anti-choice stance, the Christian right's radical opinions on contraception are now impacting the nation in horrific ways.

The conservative mouthpiece of the church - none other than George W. Bush - is there to try and make the radical opinions of the church appear as if they aren't radical, and are completely logical opinions.

The church is anti-choice. The church is also anti-birth control. This second stance is a much less popular one, probably due to the fact that since it's arrival on the market, birth control has been seen as freedom from many things. And I'm not talking about unwanted pregnancy specifically, although that is one of the benefits. The original intention of the birth control pill - and the intention for many girls when they begin taking it - was to regulate the body's monthly cycle to a traditional (and more convenient) 28 days. Not to mention birth control can also help with acne, cramps, appetite control, and many other more significant medical conditions.

And now, Bush has appointed an anti-birth control (and anti-choice) advocate as the head of the nation's family planning office. A former champion of the right wing research hack, the Family Research Council, Susan Orr has been manipulating statistics (and women) for many years. This woman is of the highly incorrect opinion that birth control is used by every woman for the same reason: to prevent fertility.

We're quite pleased because fertility is not a disease. It's not a medical necessity that you have [contraception].

It is, actually, a medical necessity for some women to have contraception. Some women cannot afford to get pregnant due to the numerous health risks it could impose upon them. This then loops back to one of two arguments: if you can't be pregnant, don't have sex and if you get pregnant and it could be harmful to you, who cares because the baby's life is worth more than your own. So, of course, in this case, the right wing volleys for the more popular abstinence/celibacy argument. Which, of course, can fall apart easily for even the most conservative married couples.

But, in a sense, she is right: fertility is not a disease. Once you remove sexual activity from the equation, birth control is no longer used for contraceptive purposes: it is used for legitimate medical reasons, something Ms. Orr is completely blind to. I am one of the many women in this country who take birth control for medical reasons not related to contraception. Even though I do take it for contraception, it is not my number one concern.

For starters, I have PCOS. My PCOS happened to cause more frequent, painful, and heavy periods: one every 2 weeks that lasted 6 days where I was almost immobile. I didn't have a choice - the doctor's said I had to get on birth control or the cysts would damage my fertility. I highly doubt that Ms. Orr cares - even though I'm sure she knows - that there are people out there preventing fertility now in order to preserve it for later when we actually plan to have children. Which, I mean, is her job. Family planning and all.

I actually stopped taking birth control when I was 19 in an effort to allow my body to re-stabilize itself. This is when I made a choice that threatened my life. One of my cysts developed into a specific kind of cyst, and grew to something about the size of a cantaloupe or soccer ball. I had surgery and they removed the tumor, one ovary, one fallopian tube, and about 10 pounds. Had I not gone into the doctor within that month they believe that the tumor could have seriously imposed on my bladder, liver, and kidney function. To this day, I still have bladder problems that can't be remedied due to this tumor. I now have an 8 inch vertical scar stretching from tummy to naughty bits, and only one ovary. Because I stopped taking birth control and allowed my body to develop a cyst, I lost my half of my eggs. My fertility was severely threatened by this tumor. This also means I will most likely go into the menopause sooner. Which, really, isn't a factor because endometriosis is pretty much guaranteed in my future.

I can acknowledge that my case is fairly extreme. However, I was born this way, and I did nothing that science could ever actually pinpoint that caused this to happen. There are other women and girls with similar problems or more life impacting health issues. Amenorrhoea, PMDD, abnormal or irregular bleeding (of the too frequent and too painful variety), and other concerns can be resolved with the simple application of birth control. For some women, like myself, taking birth control from your mid teens to mid 20s (or whenever you are ready to have children) can often preserve your fertility by preventing ovulation and allow you to give birth from a fertilized egg that is young and healthy rather than old, stagnant, and potentially full of genetic mutations.

But Susan Orr doesn't care. She so blindly applies her doctrine that she can't see the very real and very negative impacts it will have a large population of women. So yes, Susan, birth control and contraception are a medical necessity. Her opinion that it is not could end up putting will put many lives in very real (and potentially life threatening) danger.

And in case my limited credentials and strong political opinion don't sway you, this should:

Mary Jane Gallagher, president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, said in a statement that her organization was "appalled" at Orr's appointment and observed that "While her resume suggests a commitment to child welfare and children, her professional credentials fail to demonstrate a commitment to comprehensive family planning services for all men and women in need."

If there’s one thing in the United States you can say to a room with pretty much any demographic and get an extremely negative response from a large amount of people, it’s “tell me how you feel about special rights”. We have this obsession with denying people “special” rights, which kind of goes against American individualism, but that’s an entirely different topic.

I never really could put my finger on what it was that bothered me about the Christian Right being so against LGBTQI rights. Other than the fact that they’re being complete bigots with no respect for human variance, I couldn’t really figure out what about their arguments bothered me so much.

And then I read this book*, and it all made sense.

The Christian Right argues that LGBTQI individuals should not be allowed access to marriage, adoption processes, and other civil rights due to their sexuality**, which they see as a sin. They also see a homosexual orientation as being a choice. Because they see this “behavior” as wrong (at one point, it was criminal) and preventable, they view the LGBTQI community as asking for special rights that allow them access to the insitutions that privilege heterosexuals. The process goes something like this: if sin as a choice, and homosexuality is a sin, then homosexuality must be a chosen path. This argument is, essentially, flawed because it is based on the idea that being LGBT(QI) is a choice. (For the sake of time and length, I am not going to go into LGBTQI as being inborn v. chosen v. environmental debate. My reasons for this are because the Christian Right does not, so I do not need to do so to deconstruct their argument.)

The flaw was not obvious to me at first. And then I saw it.

Religious identity is a choice. And according to the Christian Right, being LGBT(QI) is also a choice. If religious identity wasn’t a choice, it would be assigned in the ways that gender and race are. Religion is, however, a chosen identity.

Religion is, also, protected by the Consitution. Sexuality is not. This is special rights. The Christian Right’s response to this accusation is that they are not special rights because the designers of the Consitution put them in there, so they shouldn’t be removed. While it is true that religion was added into the Consitution and is protected by law, this response to the argument that religious identity does not dodge the issue of special rights. This still doesn’t answer the question of why religion gets protection but sexuality does not.

Now, this contradiction could be avoided entirely if the Christian Right changed their position on the origin(s) of homosexuality. However, if the Christian Right changes their position on homosexuality from that of choice to something else (either inborn, environmental, or a myriad of other factors that are still under debate), they can no longer blame the homosexual individuals for their “sins”. If homosexuality is no longer a choice, then same-sex sexual acts are no longer a sin. If homosexuality is no longer a choice, then it should be just as protected as other identities, including race, sex, gender, ethnicity, class, education level, religion, etc.

There are no federal laws preventing job discrimination based on sexual orientation.

There are no federal laws to protect hate crimes against LGBTQI individuals (there are, but they are very limited and only apply if the crime is committed during/after a federally protected act or on federal property). Hate crimes are not thought crimes. Hate speech? Well that’s a fine line I’m not prepared to walk (again, time and length), but not everything you say is protected by “freedom of speech” and there’s nothing wrong with that.

As of 2004, there are 1,138 federal benefits of marriage that are denied to same-sex couples as civil unions or domestic partners.

These aren’t special rights, they’re equal rights. I don't understand the hatred.

* Please take note that this book was written published in 1999, so it doesn’t have information on Lawrence v. Texas or the goings on in Massachusetts.

** I use the acronym LGBQTI to encompass the entire community, which the Christian Right as rallies against as a whole. While the propoganda on “sexuality” targets LGBTQ individuals, it does not talk about intersexed people. Intersexuality is not a sexuality, it is merely a biological welding of the male and female genders together in some way. Even though the Christian Right does not explicitly mention anything against intersex individuals in their anti-gay rhetoric, I’ve included it in the acronym because they church targets the entire community with their tactics.