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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAkin’s Spiritual Mentor: Women Occasionally Invite Rape, Victims Are ‘Hysterical’
Rep. Todd Akins (R-MO) spiritual mentor Reverend D. James Kennedy harbored extreme and sometimes flatly misogynistic views about rape and abortion, according to a ThinkProgress review of Kennedys sermons on the topic. The Senate candidate, who set off a massive controversy by claiming this weekend that victims of legitimate rape dont get pregnant, has deep ties to Reverend Kennedy, having cited some of his sermons as key intellectual influences and having been named in Kennedys book How Would Jesus Vote? as one of the Reverends favorite statesman.
Kennedy, who the Anti-Defamation League has termed a Christian supremacist, repeatedly railed against legalized abortion, calling it the American Holocaust and suggesting that it would lead inevitably to genocide in the United States. But Kennedys discussions of rape and abortion in particular betray extraordinarily disturbing views about rape victims:
1. Kennedy believed that rape victims who chose abortion are hysterical. In Abortion: Myths and Realities, Kennedy labels victims of rape who chose unsafe abortions when safer procedures are illegal hysterical, saying We are told by some of the radical feminists that the women will become hysterical, that they will abort themselves with coat hanger. Abortion rates are, in fact, higher in nations where the procedure is criminalized, and men describing women whose choices they disapprove of as hysterical has a storied sexist history.
2. Kennedy suggests rape victims can be responsible for being raped. In Life: An Inalienable Right, Kennedy expresses concern that rape victims who chose to get an abortion are occasionally responsible for their own rape, saying that Even if they want to say the woman had some part in itwhich in most cases they probably dontsurely the baby did nothing wrong, so the only innocent party is killed and the rapist often goes free. He doesnt elaborate on how this might be true, but another Kennedy sermon says the immodest woman is contributing to the lust of other people by wearing revealing clothing.
3. Kennedy held that the Bible should set our laws about rape and abortion. Kennedy is very explicit on this point, saying In the Bible, the child of rape was allowed to live and the rapist was put to death. Today, we find that the penalties against rape have become more and more lenient, whereas the child is now the subject of capital punishment. Justice has been totally destroyed and perverted in that the guilty are practically allowed to go free and the innocent are killed. This fits with Kennedys general view that we should rebuild America based on the Bible.
4. Kennedy thought husbands should determine if their wives can have abortions. Though not specifically addressing rape, Kennedy approvingly cited a Roman prohibition on abortion motivated by the husbands should have control over womens reproductive choice, saying That newly created life is as much the husbands as it is the wifes. Historically, it is interesting to note that when the Roman Empire did away with laws that allowed abortion, it was done not because of the woman or the harm that abortions were doing to women (and indeed they do vastly more harm than most people are aware of), but because the husband was being defrauded of his progeny. Interestingly, Akin has worried that criminalizing marital rape provides women a legal weapon to beat up on the husband.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/08/20/713571/akins-spiritual-mentor-women-occasionally-invite-rape-victims-are-hysterical/
lapfog_1
(29,191 posts)to always follow their husbands and never be outside the home without a close male relative and to wear this to prevent being raped by men who simply can't control their urges:
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,955 posts)"another Kennedy sermon says the immodest woman is contributing to the lust of other people by wearing revealing clothing."
That's the reasoning the Taliban and the Wahabis use for forcing Burhkas on women.
Men controlling women's sexuality, again and again.
Kennedy and Akin, the finest minds the 13th century could produce.
bulloney
(4,113 posts)Men like Akin come across as being a pretty stupid in most other things, but in something like a woman's mental health after something as traumatic as rape....they know all, at least that's what they want to believe.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,955 posts)seabeyond
(110,159 posts)no means yes
no means more beer
one of the big issues is thinking this is just about the right.