Republicans and their Tea Party shock troops say they want to "take America back". Progressives think they mean back to the 1950s, back to when men were men, women were ladies, and black folks only got into the White House by the back door. But Republicans are thinking big: they actually want to take us back to the Middle Ages, back to the "good old days" of sexual repression, regulation and punishment.
Forget the economy: this election is becoming a referendum on women's bodies, since it's women (according to the Republicans' Book of Holy Misogyny) who like to have sex without wanting to get pregnant, and, if they do get pregnant, might want to have an abortion; women who demand, as former Senator Rick Santorum says, a "license to do things in the sexual realm that is [sic] counter to how things are supposed to be."
You know, "sluts".
Republicans in Congress have launched a dubious investigation of Planned Parenthood, the century-old women's health organization, and tried to take away its funding. The Senate narrowly defeated an amendment that would have allowed employers to deny insurance coverage for anything the employer found morally or religiously objectionable: contraception, certainly, but perhaps also lung cancer treatment ("you should have stopped smoking"), HIV/Aids testing ("homosexuality is an abomination"), and pre-natal care for single women ("nice girls get themselves a husband before they get themselves a baby").
With the notable exception of Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, a moderate who announced last week that she'd had enough of the ugliness and would not seek re-election, the Republican party has regressed to a pre-modern state, making war on any woman who, to borrow Rebecca West's words, "expresses any sentiment that might differentiate her from a doormat or a prostitute". Just the other week, an Indiana legislator pitched a hissy fit over the girl scouts, the US version of the girl guides, accusing them of promoting lesbianism and feminismand, worst of all, working hand in glove with Planned Parenthood. » | Diane Roberts | Monday, March 05, 2012
