And you honestly think any of it has jack-diddly shit to do with "telecom companies" going "bankrupt because they did their patriotic duty." Are you SERIOUS? REALLY?

The telecom companies don't give a shit about the lawsuits. The ONLY people who seem to be worried are the folks in the Administration (and their enablers) who really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really DON'T want to have to answer any pesky questions like:

Who, precisely, were you spying on, that you couldn't be bothered to get a rubber-stamp FISA warrant that can be issued 72 hours retroactively AFTER the fact?

(Not to mention this old, crowd-pleasing favorite: "Why, if the sweeping spy powers were needed in the wake of 9/11, was the program instituted in February of 2001?")

Let's leave aside Hillary and Obama for a minute.. do you HONESTLY BELIEVE that allowing this Administration- ANY administration- to spy on whoever they want, whenever they want, under any circumstances they want, with--

ZERO OVERSIGHT WHATSOEVER

--constitutes the telecom companies doing their "patriotic duty"?

For real?

What if it turns out Karl Rove was monitoring John Kerry's phones and email in the run up to the 2004 election? Would it still be the "patriotic duty" of the telecom companies to comply with Bush's every weasely request?

Remember, even John Ashcroft had problems with this program.. so Gonzo was brought in, and he didn't have any problems with it. You trust THAT guy to have total unfettered access sans warrants or oversight to tap any phone or electronic communcation he would want?

That's not patriotism, Ben. There is nothing "patriotic" about selling civil liberties, the rule of law, and the United States Constitution down the river. That is the antithesis of patriotism.

And the ONLY way any of us are going to get any answers regarding what WAS done under these "programs" is if civil cases can be brought against the telecoms- and THEY are not the ones particularly concerned (much less in danger of being made "bankrupt") about these lawsuits.

I suggest you do a little more research into the subject.

You could have just posted #8. Unless you were trying to save my soul, in which case the polite thing to do would have been to ask first, at which point I would have choked my liberal elite latte up through my nose and told you not to waste your time.

I don't need to explain where the big bang came from, because my worldview isn't dependent upon having an explanation for things that involves them being "created", and I don't need to bother to extrapolate too much as to what came before the big bang, because there is no physical evidence upon which to base hypotheses-- and as such the question is out of the realm of anything but the most theoretical strains of science.

However, while there is ZERO scientific evidence for a magical invisible man in the sky who is obsessed with making sure people are married before they fuck, there IS evidence for the big bang, physical evidence in the form of 3 degrees of background radiation that permeates the universe. So, yes, I do "believe" that everything in our universe came from a big "explosion", because there is scientific evidence of it. As for what came before the big bang, no one knows, obviously, but that hasn't stopped scientists from making educated guesses as to what the larger situation might be which produced the big bang- for instance, the ekpyrotic universe is one such hypothesis.

But like I said- my worldview isn't predicated upon the idea that nothing can exist unless a big bearded white man deliberately put it there, so I don't really need to give a shit about what happened "before" the big bang. I believe under certain circumstances shit can just happen on its own.. (on a subatomic, quantum scale, particles are materializing out of nothingness -or uncertainty- and back into it all the time, if only for very brief periods).. And, really, the so-called "creationists" you quote believe shit can just happen on its own, too, as long as it's called "God" and has a vested interest in making sure they don't fuck before they're married.

The short answer to your question? What we see around us are natural processes. Life on Earth is a result of Natural processes. The sun, Earth, and rest of the solar system formed through natural processes. My guess is that the universe is a product of natural processes, too- natural processes which didn't need a giant white sex-obsessed man to put them there.

And I reiterate- for my money, if you want to claim to be a REAL 'creationist', I mean if the basis of your 'scientific argument' is "Shit, man, how did ANYTHING get here if some giant invisible dude didn't PUT it here?", I SAY you need to answer the question: Who created 'God'?

As for your Athanasians, if you ask me, they're squishy-soft on creationism and creation, because their 'creation' comes with an asterisk.

the bus, like after the 2004 election?

Remember? How about that endless stream of deeply "concerned" threads expressing heartfelt "concern" that, you know, by being so intransigent on issues like reproductive freedom or full equality for our GLBT citizens, we were (and are still, presumably) "alienating the values voter"...?

Oh, yes, the all powerful values voter. We must cower in fear of the all-powerful values voter, because the media tells us that the all-powerful values voter is all powerful, and the media never lies, right?

Never mind the fact that the MAJORITY OF AMERICANS ARE PRO-CHOICE, for instance.

Wait- What was that? The Majority of Americans are pro-choice? How can that be? After all, the media constantly tells us what a "loser issue" standing up for the rights of women to control their own bodies is...

Funny, I seem to remember a brisk April day in 2004, standing with 1.2 Million Other Americans on the Mall in DC, in the LARGEST PEACEABLE ASSEMBLY IN U.S. History- marching for reproductive choice. And what did the media do in response to such a tectonic event? Well, CNN spent the day at a racetrack chasing down elusively drunk "NASCAR Voters" who were inevitably pro-Bush... that is, when they weren't talking about Estee Lauder's very important death.

One could be forgiven for not knowing that THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS ARE PRO CHOICE, just like one could be forgiven for not knowing that large numbers of Americans protested the Iraq War before it started- the media doesn't want to remind you.

Meanwhile, the GOP plunges ahead with an agenda of outlawing not just abortion, but most forms of birth control as well... Clearly, they are in tune with where the great heartland stands on these issues.. right?

Yes. The values voter truly is all-powerful. That's why Terri Schiavo was such a stunning success story for the GOP.

Here's my definition of "purity", Will- and I know it's really, really unreasonable-

I don't care if People, or even my fellow Democrats believe with their heart of hearts that life begins at the second of conception, that a fertilized human egg is the EXACT SAME THING as a "baby", or that the birth control pill is little concentrated nuggets of dehydrated Satan. My "purity" issue comes in when people start trying to pass LAWS imposing the same on the rest of us. You can be as Catholic as you want, but The Pope's place is in the Vatican under a giant hat, or in the Popemobile- not my wife's Uterus.

Likewise, I try to understand if people aren't "comfortable" with Gay Marriage. That's why I'm extremely glad our Democratic Leadership dropped all those bills attempting to force non-gay social conservatives to BE Gay or HAVE gay weddings of their own...

...cough...

...Nevertheless, the idea that two gay people getting married has some kind of magical spooky-action-at-a-distance quantum effect on social conservatives who have never met them to the point where those social conservatives NEED to limit the marriage rights OF those gay citizens, I call bullshit.

Don't like Gay Marriage? Don't have one.

And lastly- and I realize I'm flirting with charges of "intolerance" or "bigotry", here- if someone wants to believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old, or Dinosaurs were on "Noah's Ark" (standard disclaimer: yes, I realize these are fringe positions NOT representative of most "Christians" or most theists, TYVM) if someone genuinely wants to believe those things, no one will stop them. But if they want to peddle those things as "science" or try to float unsubstantiated bullshit in a public school science curriculum, then Houston, we have a problem. If standing up strongly for the proposition of separation of church and state means I risk "alienating the (dreaded) values voter", then I guess I'm alienating the values voter, Sparky.

But I'm willing to compromise- I promise not to march into anyone's church and demand the right to start teaching Darwin there.

What can I say? I'm a Purity Nazi.

That's about all I can come up with.

You know, standard, penetrative sex between a man and a woman. With a camera. Following me, here? A graphic depiction of a heterosexual sex act. On film.

Can you explain, precisely, what theme of "violence and domination" is contained in such a representation? Or how about a picture of a naked woman. Or a naked man. Again. Please explain where "violence and domination" comes into it.

Now, I will ignore the lame implied insults in your post ("a relationship with a piece of paper or a video isn't really a relationship." - really? No shit.) except to say that I've been happily married for years, and before that I had many, many years of sexually active single-hood combined with several medium-term and long-term relationships.. with actual, flesh-and-blood women, even! Yeah, will wonders never cease. In fact, I would wager that the majority OTHER men (and women) on DU who oppose censorship of consenting adult erotica -something like 80-90%, depending on the poll- are also somehow capable of maintaining actual relationships with living, breathing members of the opposite (or same) sex, even if they have been exposed to porn! Imagine that!

Personally, while I've certainly looked at my share of smut for purely entertainment purposes -no denial there- I also spent years working for a medium sized chain of indie video stores, through which I worked around a decent amount of this supposedly evil, "oppressive" porn. What I saw gave lie to the axiomatic bullshit being floated by the MacDworkinite "liberal" crowd- I saw men, women, couples who enjoyed viewing adult erotica without turning into evil, violent beasts or even misogynistic fucks who could only relate to women as though they had a staple in their navel.

(People who watched a lot of zombie movies were somehow able to avoid relating to their fellow humans as zombies, too! )

I also did see some people who actually were, as you so charmingly put it, "dependent upon photos and film for their sex lives"- like the guy in the wheelchair, with AIDS. Please spare me the lecture about how this individual was harming "women as a class" by indulging in the only sexual outlet available to him. Seriously, I'm sure he should have spent his evenings at home studying his Dworkin, learning about how his male sex drive was intrinsically oppressive- certainly far better than "harming female equality" by partaking in material produced by, with, and for consenting adults.

And that's the rub, here- consenting adults. What consenting adults do with their own bodies is THEIR OWN BUSINESS. Period, end of story. That's the part the Dworkin crowd doesn't want to get. Andrea Dworkin- who quite probably suffered from serious mental illness and spent the latter part of her life consumed by paranoid delusions- Dworkin and her rants about the evils of heterosexual sex are held up as gospel by a small crowd, here. We know that. Dworkin and MacKinnon's "logic" and "arguments" were the basis of Canada's anti-porn laws. You want to talk about people with warped views of sex? The Dworkin gang takes the case. Where most people see consensual sex between adults, if it involved penetration with a penis, Dworkin saw oppression. Violence. Rape. Little wonder, then, than her acolytes see a film with a man and woman consensually, voluntarily, enthusiastically copulating, and they see oppression. Violence. Rape. Warped viewpoints on sex? You can't get much more warped than the angry, sulky delusion that heterosexual sex involving an erect penis is the source of all evil, sex as practiced by the vast majority of humans on this planet is done so under coercion and duress (without the participants realizing they're being coerced or under duress, of course) and that heterosexual relationships and sex are inherently abusive and degrading to women. People who look at nothing more than simple, erotic images of naked adults, alone or happily having sex, and project degradation, oppression and abuse onto them.

That's the warped approach to sex, if you ask me.

Of course kids can organize Christian Clubs and have prayer meetings during non-school hours. That's not what you said. In fact, you wrote your line in answer to my question which was, and I quote:

"Is there any school endorsed religious activity that wouldn't seem innocuous to you?"

See that word? Endorsed?

It's in the blurb you quoted from the ACLU:

"provided no elements of school sponsorship or endorsement are present."

Of course people are allowed to pray in schools. But school prayer is not allowed. Do you understand the difference? No, you don't.

Post #21, here's what I said, and I quote: "Organized, School-Led prayer is unconstitutional. Kids CAN pray in schools, but the school can't endorse it."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

That's what *I* said. In this thread. Yesterday. Yet, here, tonight, you think you're shining some kind of brilliant illuminating light of reason by informing me "Prayer is protected in schools, sorry but people are allowed to pray in schools." Well, gee whiz. Thanks for clearing that up. Did you hear on the AM Radio that mean ol' Atheists don't know that kids are free to pray in schools on their own volition, perchance? Right. Never mind what I actually said, you're having a grand old time arguing with some fucking straw man figment of your imagination, the God-hatin' Atheist who wants to rip the Bibles out of the wee childrens' hands.

Actually, given that there "is no evidence that there is anything resembling systematic suppression of religious activity anywhere in public schools." (your quote), we must ONLY exist in the imaginations of "some people"- probably those same full of shit "some people" who pretend they know more about the Constitution than they do.

Cough.

What you don't seem to get is the difference between the school allowing a Christian Group (or a Wiccan Group, or a Cthulu Group) to meet and pray, and the school HAVING organized, Christian (or Wiccan, or Cthulu) prayers as part of the Curriculum. The SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION posting a sign saying "In God We Trust" is a clear ENDORSEMENT of the idea that "GOD" exists. That is an ENDORSEMENT of a RELIGIOUS BELIEF. And as such, it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

And the ACLU, which you have liberally quoted as an authority on this subject, is going to agree with me on that.

i.e. the right of individuals to make their own damn decisions about their own lives and bodies- is a LIBERAL value.

Too many liberals (and Democratic Party leaders) have been unwilling to stand up against the right-wing culture war machine, in a misguided play to "woo the values voter". Instead of articulating a cogent, consistent, across-the-board socially or left-libertarian (please don't make me explain the difference between that and the big-L Libertarian Party, again!) argument that what consenting adults do with their own bodies is their own business insofar as they aren't harming or endangering anyone else- that government should stay out of citizens' bodies, bedrooms, and bloodstreams, our party has been lax in defining itself as the alternative to an increasingly theocratic, authoritarian, and downright nutty GOP.

This is a loss of a tremendous opportunity, because there ARE so many disaffected Republicans and independents who lean "libertarian" on personal freedom issues. The "conventional wisdom" chucklefucks are all wrong when they blather about how culturally conservative the American People are, and BOTH parties buy it. Remember how Terri Schiavo bit the GOP on the ass? They were surprised- I wasn't. There is a strong "leave my shit alone" streak in the American Voter.

We should take advantage of it, by articulating some brave and unapologetic principles, like:

An end the idiotic, wasteful, drug war.

Our GLBT friends deserve FULL equality, including marriage rights.

Protect the right to choose.

End the war on contraception and contraceptive access.

Stop wasting taxpayer dollars fighting things like consenting adult porn
(part of the problem the South Park crowd has, I suspect, is that they see too many so-called "Liberals" out there finger-wagging and advocating things like censorship, just as the Right Wing does.. so they probably figure that at least the Right Wing will give them a tax cut in the process)

Support the Separation of Church & State, unapologetically.

Etc.

But beyond all that, when all is said and done, I think Parker & Stone are given more credit than they're due. They're not terribly bright, and that show is tired. (Although the South Park Movie was a riot, and the musical numbers in that thing were brilliant)

Personally, I think Beavis & Butthead were FAR funnier. And give me the old Ren & Stimpy's (from John Kricfalusi) any day.

Let's cut to the chase, here. Andrea Dworkin may not have said "all heterosexual sex is rape" in so many words, but she did say that heterosexual, penetrative sex as practiced on Planet Earth is inherently oppressive, coercive, and downright evil. Essentially, her philosophy can be summed up in one sentence: That any time a male penis comes into contact with the body of a female, all women are harmed and all women are oppressed.

To some, she was "brilliant". To many of the rest of us, she was bat-shit crazy, or at least someone with some serious issues, and quite possibly a dollop of mental illness to boot. A sad figure, perhaps, but certainly not someone whose dubious 'insights' about the pernicious evil of the way the vast majority of the consenting adults on this planet happen to screw should be given a whole lot of credence.

She's right about one thing, (although I don't think she bothers to say it in so many words, busy as she is railing against the evils of penile penetration) homophobia and discrimination against gays and lesbians is wrong. Of course, as Pat Buchanan demonstrates, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And many gay men are also enthusiastic consumers of porn and guilty of "objectifying" other gay men, so one wonders how that plugs into Dworkin and her admirers' pet issue, namely, stopping consenting adults from getting off while looking at pictures of other consenting adults nude or screwing. (I bet you thought this thread was actually about homophobia- surprise! It's not, it's just yet another lame axe-grinding attempt to re-ignite the porn wars here at DU. You can thank me, later, for bringing that to your attention.)

Here are some more quotes from the "brilliant" Ms. Dworkin. Like the song says, Decide Yourself.

Oh, yeah. But the cult of Dworkin isn't anti-sex, or anti-male, or anti-heterosexual sex. Really! And how dare you even suggest such a ludicrous notion!

someone's religion", should they not be taught in science classes? If someone thinks it's a sin to do calculus, should math be taken out of the public schools?

Evolution- Evolutionary Biology, Evolutionary science- are FACTS. They are undisputed in the scientific community. They are a part- an integral part- of science and biology. (Right now we have antibiotic resistant bugs that have evolved resistance to various drugs through natural selection. If you come down with drug-resistant infection, do you want to get treated with "faith-based" information on the subject?) We're worried about people in China and Singapore and India taking our jobs? Maybe we shouldn't let creationist nutbars fuck around with science textbooks. As for "Schools should be allowed to teach both"- there is NO "Both".

Let me say that again, in big letters, because it's one of the worst logical fallacies out there:

THERE IS NO "BOTH".

There is no more "both" about evolution/creationism than there is "both" about the Moon being made of rock versus it being made of happy meals. There is science, and then there is a bunch of blather that has no -ZERO- scientific evidence to back it up. Here's a site that eviscerates that logic far better than I ever could;

http://venganza.org

Get it? It's not a case of "oh, either evolution is true or creationism, so teach both". It's either you can put forth unsubstantiated myth in science classes or you can't- but if you can, then you need to teach EVERY single creation myth or fantasy; from the book of Genesis to the paranoid ramblings of the schizophrenic under the highway overpass. Why should anyone be "forced" to learn something that goes against their religion? Um, because it's the TRUTH. A lot of fundamentalist Christians genuinely believe the Earth is 6,000 years old. You CANNOT have a natural history or geology class if you eliminate the 4.7 Billion year natural history of this planet, including EVERY SINGLE AVAILABLE SHRED OF PHYSICAL AND FOSSIL EVIDENCE WE HAVE. People who can't deal with that can take their kids out of public schools.

I'm sorry, but if people's beliefs are so fragile that they need to fuck with science curriculum in public schools, maybe they ought to spend a little more time in church, and a little less time screaming at school boards. Last time I checked, there wasn't a church shortage in this country; particularly if, as you say, everyone in your area is a christian, then there should be plenty of sunday schools available where kids can be taught alternate narratives about a 6,000 year old Earth, dinosaurs on Noah's ark, tin woodsmen, cowardly lions, wicked witches and flying monkeys.

As for the New Testament clearly stating that "homosexuality is wrong". I'm not sure it does. There are, as with everything else, differing views on that:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibc...

Now. As for ChristiaNet, I happen to believe they're full of shit. I happen to believe they're spouting offensive, idiotic, hateful gibberish. (As for Paul saying "women should submit". I dare you- I double dog dare you- to start a thread defending that premise. I will bring a big honkin bowl of popcorn) Yes, they're spouting garbage, and with crappy graphics to boot. Now, unlike the Republican Party and many members of the Christian Right represented by, among other things, websites like ChristiaNet, I'm a firm believer in the First Amendment.

That means, of course, they have the right to be as full of shit as they like. And I, likewise, have the right to call them on it.

Don't tell other people how to run theirs. Hate kids? Don't want kids? Want to be one of the gleefully self-righteous "childfree" who rolls their eyes at the mom or dad trying to get the stroller up over the sidewalk curb? Good for you. Here's a clove cigarette and a beret that matches your soul patch.

But this bullshit about "don't reproduce- for the environment".. I'm sorry, maybe it's a hopelessly anthropomorphic point of view, but the reason I WANT there to be an environment is so that our descendants have a planet to live on. And you know what? Hand-wringing about how awful everything is aside, life for most humans right now is a fuckload better than it was 30,000 years ago. 3,000 years ago. 300 years ago. I realize the move-into-a-yurt crowd likes nothing better than to flagellate themselves over evil technological planet-destroying inventions like indoor plumbing, but the same science that gave us the internal combustion technology which we now need to move beyond also has given us the ability to feed billions more people than we would have been able to even decades ago. Yes, we have some problems, and overpopulation is one of them. But, as no one who posts these bullshit threads ever wants to acknowledge, the overpopulation is NOT taking place in The United States, Japan, Europe or other advanced nations.. advanced nations where birth control is (for the time being here, although the GOP would change that) legal and more or less available, the standard of living is relatively high, people are fairly well educated and there is a degree of independence from control-minded, backwards-ass religious "authorities" who have nothing better to do than micro-manage and moralize about the most personal, intimate decisions people make in their own lives. (hmmmm... remind you of anyone?)

...Get it? In places where there is a decent standard of living, education and birth control are available, and people are FREE to make their own decisions, they reduce birth rates ON THEIR OWN. With no help from hectoring, bitchy, self-righteous, snotty "childfree" types who are mad because they got stuck on the red-eye from JFK with a crying baby.

Having kids is, for many of us, the most meaningful thing that we've done in our lives. FAR AND AWAY. Can't understand that? Don't understand that? Don't want to understand that? Fine. But I can't think of a more useless, much less pointedly fucking obnoxious activity than to sit around getting snotty and self-righteous about it, bitching about it, and hectoring people for it. It's like meat eating... even more so, because while there may have been periods in history when our ancestors were strictly vegetarian, they ALWAYS reproduced. So- sorry! It's a behavior that's not going away.

Get over it, already.

1. Thou Shalt Mind Your Own Fucking Business.

2. Thine Neighbor's business is none of thine own business, insofar as thine neighbor doth not make thine neighbors business your business, or is otherwise interfering with anyone else's business.

3. Sex is good. People like it. Deal with it.

4. If you absolutely have to be so fucking ridiculous as to make a plant against the law, criminalize poison oak.

5. Cluster Bombs and land mines are far more offensive to mine eyes than a titty at half time.

6. Evolution is a fact, the Earth is 4.7 Billion years old, and your closest relatives are the chimpanzees. Deal with it. Imagine how the chimps feel.

7. It don't mean a thing if it aint got that swing. The universe is a dance.

8. There's no excuse for domestic violence. Come to think of it, there's no excuse for any other violence, either.

9. Take care of the planet. For the time being, it's the only place you've got.

10. Stop looking to invisible, imaginary men in the sky to tell you what to do and give you the answers. Figure it out yourself, schmuck! The future's here. You are it. You are on your own.

Shitload more people there, too.

Bottom line: The "middle Merkin Values Voter" is nowhere near as numerous or powerful as the political consultant class would have some believe. That's why Terri Schiavo bit the GOP on the ass. The Majority of Americans are pro-choice. A lot more Americans are amenable to gay marriage than the positions of the big parties let on. And even if the issue of gay marriage doesn't "play in Peoria", it's the right thing to do.

This, among other reasons, is why:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

If you don't like Gay Marriage, don't have one. But if two gay or lesbian citizens want to get married, it's not anyone else's business. They should have the same right to marry as everyone else. There is no "wrong time" to do what's right.

I'm not just a pro-choice American with a decent understanding of the politics and science of reproduction. This issue is framed in a political and legislative context. The political questions around abortion invariably involve people either legislatively making that decision for others or not, and I fall on the side of people being able to make those decisions for themselves. Unapologetically.

But before you extrapolate who I am and what I do or don't understand on the basis of this thread, let me say that I'm also a parent. I, too, know what it is to be overjoyed at seeing the little line on the pregnancy test. I know what a rush it is. I know what it means. But I also understand that in my own case, that joy was always compounded by the fact that this was a deliberate move and a very wanted development. It didn't have any "oh, fuck" component to it. It didn't have any "Shit, we don't have health insurance and we're about to be evicted" component. It didn't have "What are we gonna tell your psycho-ass dad who beats you?"

There IS a human component to all of this, certainly, and if we really want to speak out about "life" and protecting it and valuing it, in my opinion some of the things to do would be to tirelessly support a Single Payer Health Care System and a Liveable Minimum Wage, so the idea of a poor single woman bringing an unplanned kid into this world wouldn't be such a cruel joke in this country. We (and our allegedly pro-life compatriots across the aisle, in particular) would be out there working to make sure contraception was covered by health plans. That sex ed in schools was reality, and not abstinence, based, and it included contraceptive availability. That the Birth Control Pill wasn't being held hostage by Jesus-drunk pharmacists, and instead was available OTC.

But I want to make one point exceptionally clear. First off, "We" don't "lose on this issue". That is a media-spun lie that goes along with this bullshit about the all-powerful "values voter". The American People are overwhelmingly pro-choice. That is a FACT. "We lose on this issue"? Who says? CNN? Fuck 'em. I was at the March for Women's lives in DC in April of 2004... 1.2 Million Americans Showed up, and it was the Largest Peaceable Gathering on The Mall In American History. CNN blew off the march and spent the day chasing around drunk Bush voters at a car race in a quest to profile the "Nascar Voter". The crap about how "we" "lose" because of the pro-choicers, or the gays, or the atheists is a lie. That's all it is- it's just a bald-faced LIE.

We WIN on this issue.

Not only that, but (as the Terri Schiavo fiasco proved to the GOP) the American People are far more socially libertarian than the conventional wisdom waterheads want to give them credit for. Where we fail, if at all, is not by being "too" stridently in favor of individual freedom and liberty, we fail by not being consistently and strongly enough in favor of them.

If anything, we "lose" on not standing up strongly enough for the very powerful mind-your-own-business keep-your-personal-views-out-of-my-shit streak in the American Electorate. In My Opinion.

Peace.

Wow. You just won the bullshit AWARD with that one!

And who does? The Pro-Lifers who are simultaneously working to outlaw the pill and "empower" physicians to deliver lectures about Jesus to women instead of filling their pill prescriptions?

Perhaps you've heard of the "Putting Prevention First Act"... How many big "pro-life" groups have signed on to that one? I'll answer it for you: NONE, because the anti-choice agenda is also almost universally ANTI-contraception. If it was really about "saving babies", you would think that supporting access to safe, effective contraception would be a no-brainer for the "pro-life" crowd. You know, supporting universal access to and health insurance coverage of contraception, birth control availability, research into newer, better, safer and different methods of contraception, and of course FACT BASED sex ed in schools WITH contraceptive availability, instead of this "abstinence only" bullshit.

But they're NOT. The "pro life" movement is pretty much across the board against all of that, because it's not about "saving babies" or preventing pregnancy so much as it is about trying to get people to STOP FUCKING for non-procreative purposes.

So don't give me this LIE about how "Planned Parenthood supports contraception but they don't make it a high priority to help women avoid unintended pregnancies." unless what you MEAN by that is, Planned Parenthood doesn't yell at young women to keep their legs crossed and get back to church.

Sort of like pot smoking.

The reason I harp on the ridiculous, whacked out agenda of the dominionist "brain trusts" who actually run the GOP is because, well, the people who actually run the GOP have this whacked out, dominionist agenda. They're the ones in charge. They're the ones making the decisions. That's why you have anti-contraception waterheads put in charge of Family Planning at the FDA.

The Corporate Media, whose intere$$$$$$t$ overlap with the Republican Party's, isn't terribly motivated to point out how completely nucking futs the GOP "base" is... whereas it is totally in their interest to portray the Democratic Party as somehow "out of touch" by supporting reproductive choice.

Problem is, bullshit noise about the all-powerful "values voter" notwithstanding, the American People are overwhelmingly pro-choice. And when it comes to contraception, the Republican agenda is even more massively out of whack with where the American People are at. Like you said, they're never gonna be able to outlaw screwing, and they're never going to outlaw birth control, either. But they have to keep this nutjob 2% or whatever that runs their party happy. Which is why, here, Scott McClellan REFUSED to answer whether Bush is "opposed to contraception".

I mean, shit- the guy only has two kids, and they're twins. Either we are supposed to believe he and Laura have had sex only a handful of times, or obviously there's some birth control going on. But Bush CANNOT say "I support legal contraception", because the nutter butters in charge of the GOP, their heads would fucking EXPLODE. So Scott Mcclellan had to ramble on about a "culture of life" and avoid the question.

But it's worth asking, if the pro-life movement isn't really about going after birth control, what a "culture of life" has to do with a question about contraception, anyway?

See, this is where I think we NEED to come out swinging with the GOP. They've been so busy trying to frame the abortion issue as "baby killing", why don't we have anyone on our side who is asking why the GOP wants to outlaw, for instance, the pill? And if not, why not- when the major "pro-life" organizations consider it an abortifacent? If they really want to make fertilized eggs citizens with rights under the first amendment, does that mean that folks working in IVF clinics will be brought up on mass murder charges? How about women with IUDs- "concealed murder weapons"?

Ask 'em. Point blank. MAKE them answer.

I'm sure you know this, too. I'm just ranting as well. Peace.