My God, What Is Going On?

Remember that horrible song from the 1980s, The Politics of Dancing? Here, let me make you hate me –

Ah, the eighties. Those banal toe-tapping synth-tinged ditties that combined words like ‘politics’ and ‘dancing’ into the same sentence. Fun.

Those days are long gone. Now we have – are you ready –

The politics of rape.

Somehow, this presidential election, the one that was supposed to be about jobs, has been (not surprisingly) hijacked by tinheaded Neanderthal men on the far right who can’t seem to help themselves but to wade into the swamp of what constitutes rape.

You have Todd Akin talking about what is ‘legitimate’ rape. You have Richard Mourdock talking about how, if a woman is raped and gets pregnant, that it’s God’s will.

And what both these knuckleheads have in common is, one, they’re Republicans. And two, they’re men.

Here’s my view. To begin with, if you are running for political office, I don’t want to hear what you think about rape. It redefines the term irrelevant. Ah, but it is relevant, because these guys also want to make abortion illegal. And if you want to make abortion illegal, you have to wade into inanity (and into women’s uteri) and state what abortions you would let stand. And that’s where rape comes in, since some want to allow abortion in the instances of incest, health of the mother…or rape.

So they now have to discuss what is, ahem, ‘legitimate’ rape or what God intended.

It bears repeating at this point – these men are running for public office. An office that, should they be elected to, should be used for representing their constituents. And my guess is, about half of their constituents are women.

But they are men. Which brings me to my second point. Men should be disqualified from even chiming in on this issue. Unless they’ve been raped. Chances are they weren’t.

Now, I am not naïve. This is all about a party platform that is chained like an anchor to making abortion illegal. Anchor is a good analogy. Because it will sink them.

Why? Because we are talking about governing, not morality. What a woman decides to do with her body is her business and whomever she wants to bring into the discussion. People like her pastor or parents.

Not a fucking politician.

There are a couple of tangential issues here that really grate me. The first of which is invoking ‘God’ into any political discussion. I don’t give a damn what a politician’s religious beliefs are – they are irrelevant to performing the job. You don’t need strong faith to pass a budget or shepherd a bill through committees. I am beyond sick of hearing about how strong a politician’s faith is. What I want to know is, how good of a politician he or she is, because that is what they are being elected to do. Pray on your own time.

The other issue is this unquenchable thirst that male politicians have in wanting to tell women what they can or cannot do. Which brings us back to abortion. I have a real simple question to any politician that wants to make abortion illegal, and it’s this –

How much time in jail should the woman get for having an illegal abortion?

Because, Mr. Akin (and Ryan and Romney), you can try to make abortion illegal, but you will never eliminate abortions. They will happen, legal or not.

So again – how much time in prison for the women?

And don’t give me ‘We will only put the doctors that perform them in jail, not the women.’ Uh huh. And we only incarcerate drug dealers and not drug users, right?

Republicans have painted themselves into an ideological corner by doggedly holding onto an issue that our Supreme Court decided almost forty years ago. The highest court in the land had its say on the matter. And not to mention that you are pissing off half the electorate by inserting your views into their private parts.

It has been decided. So move on to something that is actually relevant.

That is, if they can actually be relevant.

I doubt they can.