The God Of Small, Mean Things

If there’s a positive aspect in the recent skirmishes of the Contraception Wars, it’s the exposed, full Monty view of right-wing political theology.  Rick Santorum, a self-appointed moralist in this ancient battle, espouses views that neatly summarized the public’s [primarily men’s] viewpoint on women’s issues some 100 years ago.

When I listen to Rick Santorum and his carping supporters, who fervently believe that they and only they have a right to determine a woman’s reproductive destiny, I’m certain that the Comstock Laws [back in the day] would have suited them perfectly.

In the waning years of the Grant administration, Anthony Comstock waged a one-man crusade in the US against what he viewed as pornographic, obscene and lewd materials.  He was the judge and jury in this matter and after great effort and energy, the Comstock Act was written into law in 1873, amending the Post Office Act. It read as follows:

Be it enacted…That whoever, within the District of Columbia or any of the Territories of the United States . . .

shall sell…or shall offer to sell, or to lend , or to give away, or in any manner to exhibit, or shall otherwise publish or offer to publish in any manner, or shall have in his possession, for any such purpose or purposes, an obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, drawing or other representation, figure, or image on or of paper of other material , or any cast instrument, or other article of an immoral nature, or any drug or medicine, or any article whatever, for the prevention of conception, or for causing unlawful abortion, or shall advertise the same for sale, or shall write or print, or cause to be written or printed, any card, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any king, stating when, where, how, or of whom, or by what means, any of the articles in this section…can be purchased or obtained, or shall manufacture, draw, or print, or in any wise make any of such articles, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof in any court of the United States…he shall be imprisoned at hard labor in the penitentiary for not less than six months nor more than five years for each offense, or fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than two thousand dollars, with costs of court….

For the next forty years, Anthony Comstock wielded a censoring club on all things he deemed smutty and obscene.  That included any and all materials related to contraception, abortion, sex education, sex itself and managed to extend itself not only in posted materials but literature, suppressing the works of DH Lawrence and Theodore Dreiser as well as banning nudity in artworks, even images and text in medical books, describing and illustrating reproductive functioning.

This is where the push to purity takes one, a mindless rejection of the human body and human nature, an extreme Sin of the Flesh philosophy.

Comstock had a particular problem with women, particularly the likes of Margaret Sanger and her supporters, as well as the Suffragettes, who openly defied Comstock’s puritanical attitudes.  These women marched, sent pamphlets to supporters, opened health clinics, smuggled contraception devices into the country, went to jail, went on hunger strikes, put their bodies on the line.  And did not give up.

Women earned/won their right to vote in 1920.  Griswold v the State of Connecticut was decided by the Supreme Court in 1965.  The decision protected the right of married women to practice contraception and demand access to reliable reproductive services.  These rights were eventually extended to unmarried women, the right to privacy established, which later swung the door open to the Roe v Wade decision.

I have no doubt that Santorum and like-minded, right-wing adherents would have no problem, slamming that door shut, hopping into a time machine and revisiting the days of Comstock purity.  Let’s review the latest Santorum Hit Parade:

Telling a crowd at the Ohio Christian Alliance on Saturday that President Obama’s agenda was a “phony ideology” not “based on the Bible,” Rick Santorum has offered two  explanations:  the imposition of secular ideas on the Catholic Church and radical environmentalism that he claims the President specifically and Democrats in general have been pushing to the max.

Where to begin?

On the first charge, Santorum said:

The president has reached a new low in this country’s history of oppressing religious freedom that we have never seen before. If he doesn’t want to call his imposition of his values a theology that’s fine, but it is an imposition of his values over a church who has very clear theological reasons for opposing what the Obama administration is forcing on them.

This is clearly an example of contorted gamesmanship.  When there is no defense to your position, you claim your opponent is doing what you yourself desire to do, in this case, impose your beliefs on the greater population.  Very Comstock-like.

No one is forcing anything on Santorum, the Church or those who agree with their rigid position.   The ‘compromise’ the Administration offered has already been accepted by Catholic charities, hospitals and universities as reasonable and workable.  The fact that Santorum and the Catholic Bishops want to run their position into the ground does not make it right or timely.  It’s simply a narrow, constipated outlook that belongs to an age when women were securely under the thumb of men like Santorum and the whims of Catholic Church.  History has passed; attitudes and positions change.

In defense of the second explanation—radical environmentalism—Santorum had this to say to Bob Schieffer’s Face the Nation:

This idea that man is here to serve the Earth, as opposed to husband its resources and be good stewards of the Earth. And I think that is a phony ideal… I think a lot of radical environmentalists have it upside-down.

What pops out to me is the phrase ‘husband its resources.’

Change that phrase to the single word ‘extraction’ and we get the gist of what’s being said.  So, anyone opposing the Keystone Pipeline would be deemed a ‘radical environmentalist,’ even though the 1700 mile pipeline endangers America’s bread basket and a major aquifer, would not reduce our dependence on unfriendly oil suppliers [80% of the refined tar sands is contracted for export] and would offer, at best, 5000-6000 temporary American jobs. Even an amendment to this new bill, a proposal that would have ensured that at least the steel for the pipeline would have been from the US, was rejected out of hand.

Color me a Environmental Radical.  The Keystone project benefits no one but the rich financiers behind it.  They get the mega-profits; we [the public] get stuck with a wasted landscape and the cost of any cleanup.

Or perhaps, Santorum is speaking about the WH’s kibosh on the uranium mining deal for the Grand Canyon.  Splendid idea there.  Turn one of the Wonders of the World, a national treasure into a money pit for mining interests.  I’ve stood on the rim of the Canyon, marveled at the grandeur, the colors, the staggering expanse. And this, we would turn into a uranium mine?  What a small, stingy idea!

I suspect Teddy Roosevelt [one of those evil progressives] is turning in his grave.

But Santorum outdid himself with this comment:

He lambasted the president’s health care law requiring insurance policies to include free prenatal testing, “because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society.”

Culling the ranks of the disabled?

Don’t mistake this comment as a defense of religious liberty because this is a coded charge that what contraception and abortion [presumably determined through prenatal testing and care] really involves is a form of eugenics.  We will cull the herd of imperfections.  Or we will attempt genocide of minorities.  This is Glenn Beck hysteria.  Billboards in Georgia revived the old smear against reproductive rights, charging that African American women were being targeted for abortion services.  Black children, the claim stated, were an ‘endangered species.’

Funny that.  I thought we were all of the same species.

If we truly want to talk about minorities being endangered, why don’t we talk about our prison population, comprised primarily of people of color.  But, of course, that would be uncomfortable, deemed unfair by Republican politicians, who in their infinite wisdom want our prison system privatized, which will ensure maximum capacity for the sake of profits.

These arguments are old and pathetic.  They’ve been leveled against anyone and everyone who have supported basic health services to women.  Prenatal screening is a mainstay in the health of an expectant mother and the viability of any pregnancy.  Problems can be picked up early and corrected before a delivery. The health of an expectant mother translates into the health of the developing fetus. The idea that screenings should be done away with or not offered to low income women is cruel.

The religion that Rick Santorum and his ilk would like us to swallow whole is one dictated by religious fanatics, purists like Anthony Comstock, where it’s their way or the highway.  It is small.  It is mean.  It is unworthy of anything approaching the Divine.

We want a healthy society?  Then we offer health services to all our citizens.  Yes, even women, who deserve to be the arbiters of their own reproductive lives.

Garry Willis, historian, journalist and Catholic intellectual had this to say in a piece entitled “Contraception’s Con Men”:

The Phony “Undying Principle” Argument

Rick Santorum is a nice smiley fanatic. He does not believe in evolution or global warming or women in the workplace. He equates gay sex with bestiality (Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum). He equates contraception with the guillotine. Only a brain-dead party could think him a worthy presidential candidate. Yet he is praised by television pundits, night and day, for being “sincere” and “standing by what he believes.” He is the principled alternative to the evil Moderation of Mitt Romney and the evil Evil of Newt Gingrich. He is presented as a model Catholic. Torquemada was, in that sense, a model Catholic. Messrs. Boehner and McConnell call him a martyr to religious freedom. A young priest I saw on television, modeling himself on his hero Santorum, said, “I would rather die than give up my church’s principles.” What we are seeing is not a defense of undying principle but a stampede toward a temporarily exploitable lunacy.

I rest my case!