Matters of Church and State

WHERE KOOKS COME HOME TO ROOST

         What is it about the Republican Party that attracts so many kooks?  I am not referring so much to rank and file Republicans as people in prominent positions in the GOP.

         Don’t get me wrong, we Democrats have our share of kooks and weirdoes, too, but in terms of sheer weirdness, we can’t hold a candle to the GOP.  Pound for pound, they win hands down.

         I was going to take you back to Joe McCarthy, the John Birch Society, Father Coughlin, the China First lobby, and people of that ilk, but let me spare you the history lesson.

         Let’s just start with this current crop in the spotlight, or those who have recently run or are now running for public office:  Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Michele Bachman, Christine O’Donnell, Todd Akin, Ann Coulter – to name just a few off the top of my head.  I’m sure that if I went to Google and typed in “GOP weirdoes” I would get more hits than I could deal with or that you would want to hear about.

         And, now, just joining this kooky group is Richard Murdock, a Republican running for the vacant Senate seat in Indiana to replace Senator Richard Lugar.  Lugar is the distinguished Senator who was kicked to the curb by the Tea Party for “selling out” and cooperating with the Democrats to get the nation’s work done.  Senator Bob Bennett of Utah suffered the same fate.  By and large, the GOP has kicked out of the party virtually all its moderate members.  The Republican Party and the Tea Party have become virtually synonymous.

But, I digress.  That’s a whole other scary story for another time.

         Let’s go back to Richard Murdock who is all over the news.  In case you missed it, in a recent debate with Democrat Joe Donnelly and Libertarian Andrew Horning, Murdock stated:

         “"I believe that life begins at conception. The only exception I have to have an abortion is in that case of the life of the mother. I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is a gift from god -- [so far, so good, Richard] -- and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that god intended to happen.”

         Just run that through your head again:  “I think … that is something god intended to happen.”  “… Hmmm, I wonder what god he is referring to.  Doesn’t sound like any God I know from reading the Old and New Testaments – or any other god I am familiar with through my readings.  Shows once again the human tendency to create God in our own likeness rather than vice versa.

         In the face of outrage and denunciations from across the political spectrum, GOP and Murdock’s campaign aides rushed to try to clean things up, and former Senator Rick Santorum tried gallantly to spin Murdock out of the bind he’s in.  But, there’s no airbrushing what Murdock said that would make it acceptable.  Not just to women, but to any reasonable, sensitive person regardless of their gender or faith.

         The statement itself is outrageous, of course, that’s a given, but what lies deeper is that Murdock’s pernicious attitude reflects a centuries-old patriarchy and subjugation of women even in areas that are unique to women such as their own reproductive rights.

         Governor Romney denounced Murdock’s statement, but wants to keep him in the race because control of the Senate is at stake.  We’ll see what women voters in Indiana have to say about this.  Women in Missouri also have to decide whether they want Todd Akin to replace incumbent Senator Claire McCaskill after his outrageous statement that in the case of “legitimate rape,” the woman’s body provides a shield against conception.

         But, again, it is important that this not become just a women’s issue.  Men need to step up en masse and repudiate it as well and reject candidates who spout such dangerous nonsense.  Otherwise, we’re just halfway where we need to be as a country in eradicating this underlying patriarchy and sexism that spawns such attitudes and, worse yet, promotes public policies that still treat women as less than full citizens without the same rights as men.

Gerald E. Lavey