Next up: Scarlet Letters

This morning when I read this I felt a strong need to go over and see what Amanda was saying about it.

A New Mexico man's decision to lash out with a billboard ad saying his ex-girlfriend had an abortion against his wishes has touched off a legal debate over free speech and privacy rights.

The sign on Alamogordo's main thoroughfare shows 35-year-old Greg Fultz holding the outline of an infant. The text reads, "This Would Have Been A Picture Of My 2-Month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To Not KILL Our Child!"

Fultz's ex-girlfriend has taken him to court for harassment and violation of privacy. A domestic court official has recommended the billboard be removed.

But Fultz's attorney argues the order violates his client's free speech rights.

"As distasteful and offensive as the sign may be to some, for over 200 years in this country the First Amendment protects distasteful and offensive speech," Todd Holmes said.

The woman's friends say she had a miscarriage, not an abortion, according to a report in the Albuquerque Journal.

Holmes disputes that, saying his case is based on the accuracy of his client's statement.

"My argument is: What Fultz said is the truth," Holmes said.

The woman's lawyer said she had not discussed the pregnancy with her client. But for Ellen Jessen, whether her client had a miscarriage or an abortion is not the point. The central issue is her client's privacy and the fact that the billboard has caused severe emotional distress, Jessen said.

"Her private life is not a matter of public interest," she told the Alamogordo Daily News.

Jessen says her client's ex-boyfriend has crossed the line.

Damn fucking right. We are living in a country in which unhinged people are killing abortion doctors, and one state is talking about investigating women who have miscarriages. If this guy had put up a billboard saying "Please Kill My Girlfriend Because I Don't Have the Balls To Do It Myself", his goal could not be more clear.

So I went over to Pandagon, as is my wont when encountering such stories, to find that while she hasn't mentioned this story in particular, she has written two very goods post that those of you who perhaps think that the story of Anthony Weiner's schlong is really worth bumping the clusterfuck at the Fukushima nuclear plant, drug-resistant e-coli, and the dangerous situation in the Middle East out of the news entirely might want to read. Because the pearl-clutching over Anthony Weiner's penchant for online sex isn't taking place in a vacuum, but in a culture in which the worst kind of judgmental prudery -- the kind we read about in high school when we read The Scarlet Letter -- has become mainstream. Some of this is just the obligatory hippie-punching, some of it from Gen-Xers who will spend the next thirty years hating baby boomers who got to have lots of sex before AIDS came along because they think we had all the fun. But much of it seems to be coming from highly sexually-confused people with serious power issues who want to work out on women's reproductive systems their own self-loathing and need for power in a world in which ordinary people are becoming more powerless. Because every time a Washington Republican talks about "family values", it almost always seems to be accompanied by a Deep Dark Secret. In Anthony Weiner's case, it's about a sexual peccadillo involving consenting adult females that is iin no way in conflict with any issues for which he has fought in office. And that's something that should not be forgotten, even though we don't want to start heading down the road that Randi Rhodes did last night in her non-nuanced defense of Weiner, in which she started painting the women involved as some kind of terrible people for participating in this with him. Do we really have to paint the women who were involved as whores in order to provide some perspective? Af course the fact that one of them, Megan Broussard (from Texas, of course) immediately went running to Fox News makes the word "setup" worm its way into my brain and is an ominous indication that in America, where celebrity is the only currency that has any value, it's difficult to resist the 15 minutes an involvement in a story like this gives you. I would hope that the dollar bills being thrown around doesn't result in consenting adult women trying to paint themselves as helpless victim of a powerful man. Because then we get right back to prudery and to Amanda's OTHER article, about just how much damage culture warriors can do simply by putting their nonsense out into mainstream public discourse. We saw it in the Clinton foofarah of the 1990's, in which an adulterous House Speaker tried to impeach an adulterous president. God knows we see it in Rick Santorum, who's the most virulent anti-contraception advocate out there.

Which of course brings us back to Greg Fultz, the man who bought a billboard because his girlfriend dares make a decision about her future without giving him final say-so. Right now Greg Fultz is news. But in a climate in which any sexual activity that doesn't involve missionary position heterosexual intercourse within marriage for the sole purpose of begetting children is regarded as perverse and unseemly, it's only a matter of time before Greg Fultz and what he did become simply part of a revival of woman-suppression in our country.

UPDATE: it seems that Greg Fultz has a history of violent rhetoric against women on Twitter (screenshot and examples here). Why am I not surprised?

If this keeps up they'll be "spreading the Word" to used tampons by mid-year

Surprise, surprise: It turns out that NOT ONE of the Haitian so-called "orphans" that a group of Baptist missionaries tried to take over the Dominican Republic border earlier this month was actually an orphan:

There is not one orphan among the 33 children that a U.S. Baptist group tried to take from Haiti in a do-it-yourself rescue mission following a devastating earthquake, The Associated Press has determined.

In the rubble-riddled Citron slum where 13 of the children lived, parents who gave their children away confirmed Saturday that each one of the youngsters had living parents.

Their testimony echoed that of parents in the mountain town of Callabas, outside of Port-au-Prince, who told the AP on Feb. 3 that desperation and blind faith led them to hand over 20 children to the religious Americans who promised them a better life.

Now the Citron parents worry they may never see their children again.

One Citron mother who gave up all four of her children, including a 3-month-old, is locked in a trance-like state but sometimes erupts into fits of hysteria.

Her husband and other parents said they relinquished their children to the U.S. missionaries because they were promised safekeeping across the border in a newly established orphanage in the Dominican Republic.

Their stories contradict the missionaries' still-jailed leader, Laura Silsby, who told the AP the day after her arrest that the children were either orphans or came from distant relatives.

[snip]

The pastor said his deeds are often misunderstood by people in the developed worked who don't realize that more than half of the 380,000 children in Haiti's orphanages are not orphans. Many have parents who -- even before the quake -- were simply unable to care for them.

The problem is that some of the ''orphans'' end up as sex slaves or become domestics who work for food and shelter -- and sometimes school. Fearing more such abuse of children after the quake, Haiti's government banned all adoptions except those approved before the disaster.

Sainvil said he went to Citron for children because he knew people there were desperate: He had been sleeping under tarps with them. Food was barely trickling in, medical care was just becoming available and hundreds of decomposing bodies were buried beneath the neighborhood's collapsed homes.

Under one of the blue tarps sheltering the Chesnels' homeless neighbors, 27-year-old Maletid Desilien lay Saturday on a bed of two soiled rugs. Only her eyes peered out from under a bedsheet.

''She has been like that ever since someone told her she will never get the kids back,'' said her husband, Dieulifanne Desilien, who works in a T-shirt factory.

This is Christianity? Taking advantage of desperate people and lying to them to give up their children so you can put them in an "orphanage", where you can make them a captive audience to religious proseletyzing and conversion?

Before you tell me that it's noble to take children from their parents under false pretenses if it means "a better life" for them, consider that the "adviser" to this group of Predators for Jesus is at the center of an Interpol investigation for sex trafficking of underaged girls.

Has it become so difficult to gain converts by "spreading the Word" to consenting adults and American teenagers in public schools that you have to resort to exploitation of a natural disaster to wrest kids away from their parents? What's next, proseletyzing pregnant women's bellies? Used tampons?

John Ensign's inability to keep it zipped has provided an unexpected benefit

I can recall reading about "The Family" before, probably this 2003 article from Theocracy Watch, which profiled Jeff Sharlet's undercover journey into this quasi-Christian fellowship of amoral greedmeisters -- a journey that led to Sharlet's 2008 book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. I've been interested in the power of these kinds of secretive Christofascist Zombie Brigade groups in government ever since Ronald Reagan tore down the wall between church and state which Jimmy Carter started to dismantle in the late 1970s. The reason I always shout loud and hard about these groups is that they are never, ever just about freedom of religion for "people of faith", they are about a usurpation of this country by these groups' corrupt and bastardized twisted version of religion. Whether it's United States Senators attending the crowning of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon as the Messiah in a Senate office building (chronicled by John Gorenfeld in his book about Rev. Moon) or the National Prayer Breakfast (which is run by "The Family") or Sarah Palin's recasting of herself as Queen Esther, the drive towards theocracy is very much with us. It may already be too late to save our secular nation, as theocrats (including, I'm starting to believe, the current President of the United States) have already dug in their heels in the corridors of power.

It's hardly surprising that a nation founded by Masons would give rise to Christofascists forming their own secret societies to infiltrate and take over the government. It seems to be in our national character, or at least in the character of the men who choose careers in government. I happen to think the world would be a better place if the National Prayer Breakfast were replaced with an annual Red Hat Society luncheon, but then there wouldn't be a need for Keith Olbermann to do John Ensign Puppet Theatre.

But l'Affaire Ensign has served one useful purpose, and that is to blow the door off of the "C Street House", which seems to be the headquarters of "The Family"'s efforts to replace American democracy with something akin to Divine Right of Kings:

The C Street House is run by a secretive Washington ministry known as The Family, or The Fellowship. Over the past year and a half, The Family has gradually come to public attention, mainly due to journalist and Harpers contributing editor Jeff Sharlet's ground breaking book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. The Family  runs the yearly National Prayer Breakfast and maintains a network of Capital Hill prayer groups which have enjoyed the participation of both top GOP but also top Democratic Party Congress and Senate members.

The Family runs but does not own the C Street House. According to a  June 26th, 2009 Washington Post story, by Manuel Roig-Franzia, "The Political Enclave That Dare Not Speak Its Name: The Sanford and Ensign Scandals Open a Door On Previously Secretive 'C Street' Spiritual Haven", the C Street House is owned by a "little-known organization called Youth With a Mission of Washington DC."

Youth With a Mission is a global Christian evangelical organization founded in 1960 which, declares YWAM, is "currently operating in more than 1000 locations in over 149 countries, with a staff of nearly 16,000."

As Cunningham introduces Reclaim 7 Mountains of Culture, "It was August, 1975... and the Lord had given me, that day a list of things that I had never thought about before. He said, 'This is the way to reach America, and nations, for God.' "

The video continues with a narrator who declares, "In every city of the world, an unseen battle rages for dominion over God's creation and the souls of people. This battle is fought on seven strategic fronts, looming like mountains over the culture, that shape and influence its destiny. Over the years, the church slowly retreated from its place of influence on these mountains, leaving a void now filled with darkness. When we lose our influence, we lose the culture and when we lose the culture we fail to advance the kingdom of God. And now, a generation stands in desperate need. It's time to fight for them and take back these mountains of influence."

Reclaim 7 Mountains of Culture then outlines seven areas of influence for Christian fundamentalists to reclaim:

• The Mountain of Government, "where evil is either restrained or endorsed",
  
• The Mountain of Education, "where truths, or lies, about God and his creation are taught.",
  
• The Mountain of Media, "where information is interpreted through the lens of good or evil",
  
• The Mountain of Arts and Entertainment, "where values and virtue are celebrated or distorted",
  
• The Mountain of Religion, "where people worship God in spirit and truth, or settle for a religious ritual",
  
• The Mountain of Family, "where either a blessing or a curse is passed onto successive generations and,
  
• The Mountain of Business, "where people build for the glory of God or the glory of man."
  

The last is the key mountain, proclaims the video: "those who lead this mountain influences what controls our culture."

The interesting aspect to John Ensign's midlife crisis blowing the doors off the C Street House is the blogosphere has become far more prominent than it was when John Gorenfeld was writing about United States Senators attending the coronation of a Korean cult leader as the Messiah; and we also now have two late-night news/comedy shows and two prime-time cable news hosts who can deliver the information to those who don't read blogs. Rachel Maddow in particular has been all over this, and of course the brilliance of Rachel Maddow is that she explains the meaning of such things to people who think that this is just a nice men's dormitory for good Christian Senators:

I hope that this doesn't go away, because this is just the tip of the political iceberg where the march towards theocracy is concerned. And in case you think that "The Family" is just about Republicans, guess again.

Another reason to be an atheist

God Himself wants Norm Coleman in the Senate. Hey, it's true. Norm says so:

When asked about the recount and how it is affecting him personally, Coleman said he starts every day with a prayer and that he knows “God wants me to serve.” Coleman did later temper those rather immodest remarks by adding that he “is not indispensable” and that others can serve as well. Coleman closed the interview with an appeal to Gallagher’s listeners for contributions to his campaign website.

Since Coleman is Jewish, perhaps he might consider that his God also wanted Abraham to take Isaac up to a mountaintop and kill him before saying "Kidding! I just wanted to see if you'd do it!"

(via Bradblog)