madfloridian

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sun Jul-12-09 04:13 PM
Original message

A view is becoming more prevalent among Democrats that women's rights are expendable...

and those rights can be bargained away to get the religious right on board, that those rights can be bargained away to win and keep winning elections.

The basic assumption behind this kind of thinking would have to be that our party considers women to be incapable of making their own medical decisions. It means that women would be considered subservient to the men in the party.

I am very aware that this is a perfect type of post on which the newly added unrecommend function can be used. So be it. It is important enough to risk it. For days here I have had people arguing with me and saying it would be fine if our health care reform were compromised by stopping abortion from being covered. It could follow logically that the next decision would be to not cover birth control pills...and then other annoying rights might get in the way.

We have been talking a lot about the role of The Family, The Fellowship in our country's politics...and lately in our own party. We can see their agenda of control and power at work now.

When 19 Democrats in the House sign a letter saying they will not vote for health reform that pays for abortion...they are making a medical decision based on religious views.

Nineteen House members sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stating that they will not vote for health care reform legislation �unless it explicitly excludes abortion funding from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan.�

"We believe that a government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan, should not be used to fund abortion.

Furthermore, we want to ensure that the Health Benefits Advisory Committee cannot recommend abortion services be included under covered benefits or as part of a benefits package. Without an explicit exclusion, abortion could be included in a government subsidized health care plan under general health care. The health care reform package produced by Congress will be landmark, and with legislation as important as this, abortion must be addressed clearly in the bill text.

Let me see, our party has compromised away on the Iraq invasion, the bankrupcy bill, the immunity clause in the FISA bill, and our Dem majority even raised the amount for abstinence only training by 28 million dollars in 2007.

We do have the votes, we do have the majority to get a Democratic agenda through easily. We just are not willing as a party to do it. Compromise is easier.

We have an 83 vote margin in the House, and a 10 vote margin in the Senate.

Yes, we do have the votes.

We have an 83 vote margin in the House. We have a 9 vote margin in the Senate. Yet we can not seem to control a single agenda. There is something wrong with that picture.

When Howard Dean became chairman in 2005 he made a powerful statement. He said the reason we lost control to the Republicans was because we forgot why we were there in power.

...""Republicans wandered around in the political wilderness for 40 years before they took back Congress.

"But the reason that we lost control is because we forgot why we were entrusted with that control in the first place," Dean said in his acceptance speech.

The American people cannot afford to wait for 40 more years for us to put Washington back to work for them. It won't take us that long -- not if we stand up for what we believe in, organize at the local level, and recognize that strength does not come from the consultants down. It comes from the grass roots up."

In one of the articles recently mentioned about the Fellowship, a clear view of the subservience of women emerges.

When asked about allegations that the Fellowship, among its young volunteers, fosters a spiritually abusive and cult-like environment, a fellowship-employed evangelist and organizer told me, �the Fellowship is like the early Church. It is misunderstood.

�Recently, reluctance to criticize the Fellowship has begun to break down. An Evangelical leader with a lifelong Fellowship affiliation told me that, while on balance he thinks the Fellowship�s work is positive, he has concerns with the Fellowship�s spiritual elitism, its rejection of the institutional Church, and its lack of an organizational structure that provides accountability for Doug Coe and other Fellowship leaders.

In addition, some Christian leaders are beginning to raise cautious and thoughtful questions about the Fellowship�s attitude toward women. An Evangelical scholar told me of being troubled after a chapel service at the college where she works. Doug Coe�s sister, a Fellowship adherent, had delivered a message promoting a spirituality that the scholar described as being �overly prescriptive of men�s and women�s roles and differences in function.�

Such attitudes toward women often are lived out in the Fellowship with painful consequences. Despite the spoken promise that they are to be considered equal partners in the Fellowship's ministry and honored sisters in the Fellowship family, the women of Potomac Point are treated as servants and are reminded that their role, both in life and in the work of the Fellowship, is one of quiet, strong support for the work of the men. One gets the sense that in the Fellowship�s spiritual geography women are seen as roadblocks on the path to male spiritual enlightenment. One woman told me of her experience dating a man who was part of a Fellowship cell in Southern California. As her boyfriend�s involvement grew, he pushed her to the margins of his life. �In my life,� he told her �the guys from the Fellowship are at the center, and my wife, whoever that will be, will be somewhere off to the side.� In the waning days of the relationship she was approached by the wives of older Fellowship members. �Get out while you still can,� one warned. Another described her life as a Fellowship wife: �I�m always third. The Fellowship comes first in my husband�s life. Then our children. Then me.�

Many of the women with whom I spoke reported being treated, at the same time, as children in need of instruction and as sexual deviants worthy of reproach. Such perceptions are not unfounded. One deeply committed Fellowship member spoke of his marriage apologetically, comparing it to the marriage of the Biblical prophet Hosea, who was directed by God to marry a harlot so that the prophet might learn of the hardships God endures.

That was written by Ben Daniel, a Presbyterian minister and a writer of left-leaning, faith-based social and political commentary.

In the late 80s the think tank called the Democratic Leadership Council, also known as the DLC....started their mission to neutralize the party positions so as to keep us from losing.

Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."

Yes, giving in on women's rights to make medical decisions without the interference of government would most definitely be easier than taking a firm stand. This caving in and giving in to win is coming to the fore now with women's rights.

I am getting some very bad vibes about where we are going with this as a party. Feel free to let the unrecs commence if necessary.

A view is becoming more prevalent among Democrats that women's rights are expendable...

and not a polar bear, eh?