Honestly, what is the problem with rape and Republican candidates this year? First, Rep. Todd Akin loses a lock on a Senate seat by holding forth on “legitimate rape” and how women possess some magic ability to prevent pregnancies by rapists. Now, Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (who defeated respected Senator Richard Lugar) has proclaimed with only a few weeks to go in the election that the impregnation of women in rape is part of God’s plan. What happened to the good old day when GOP candidates primarily followed a formula campaign based on lower taxes and longer criminal sentences?
Mourdock was asked in the final minutes of his debate with his opponent Joe Donnelly about abortions in cases of rape and proclaimed that when a woman is impregnated during a rape, it is all part of God’s plan — a type of divine family plan via sexual assault. Mourdock proclaimed: “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that’s something God intended to happen.”
Donnelly promptly after the debate took the position that such pregnancies through rape are not part of what “my God, or any God, would intend that to happen.” Mourdock soon realized that he had pulled an Akin and may have aborted his campaign. He clarified that he did not believe God intended the rape: “Are you trying to suggest somehow that God preordained rape, no I don’t think that. Anyone who would suggest that is just sick and twisted. No, that’s not even close to what I said.” Really? Here is what you said: “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that’s something God intended to happen.” Sounds a lot like God intended the rape victim to get pregnant. The best that Mourdock could claim is that God did not intend for the rape to occur, but, once it did, decided that it was important for the woman to become pregnant by her rapist.
I am also unclear on why God preordains the pregnancy but not the rape that caused it. This is often a matter of theological debate when people insist that prayer caused God to spare their lives in a tornado but that he decided not to spare the lives of their neighbors or their own home from the tornado. It is the tension that arises from a view that God controls all events as part of a divine plan as opposed to a divine plan that allows free will and/or fate to govern events.
Pat Robertson recently insisted that God does not send tornados but that victims would still have been spared if they prayed more:
However, Robertson does believe that God at times sends natural disasters to punish us as with Hurricane Katrina. That may reflect the more nuanced view of Mourdock that God may not have sent the rapist but did want you to become pregnant by your rapist. The question is whether, if God micromanages such events, did he intend GOP Senatorial campaigns to implode across the country?
Source: Big Story
I’m wondering….. if someone were to shoot this piece of EXCREMENT, did ghod mean that to happen?
So, does my car go down the street because of gasoline explosions, or because God pushes the pistons up and down?
It never ceases to amaze me how “God is all-powerful” but also “isn’t” when it is inconvenient to someone’s beliefs (or political stance) on a particular subject: “God abhors homosexuality so He gave AIDS to gays.” “God abhors violence, especially sexual violence, but makes raped women pregnant because ‘all life’ is precious to Him.” (except the woman’s?) The God Card can be counted on to act like the Shadow to “cloud men’s [sic] minds.”
It’s god’s will is code for I’m not responsible for my behavior, it’s all god’s plan. btw, if everything is god’s plan, why do we need cops, courts and jails.\? everything is justified.
Maybe it’s related to the creationists’ hardcore Darwinian belief that the only real purpose of sex is procreation and the propagation of genes…
Maybe it’s related to the creationists’ hardcore Darwinian attitude that the only real purpose for sex is procreation and therefore the propagation of genes…
The gift that just keeps on giving
…” we’re only 22nd best.”~Elaine M.
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Just ahead of Barundi….
Romney’s pro- Mourdock ad is continuing to run in Indiana.
Elaine,
I know it won’t work with the song, but it is sick Indiana, sick Indiana if they vote this creep into the Senate. Someone hinted at it earlier when they referred to the zipper taliban. This guy is the head of the American Taliban that has infected the Republican Party.
Ending Rape Illiteracy
Jessica Valenti
October 23, 2012
http://www.thenation.com/blog/170767/ending-rape-illiteracy
Excerpt:
This week, a DC-based feminist group projected the phrase “rape is rape” onto the US Capitol building. The action was meant to highlight survivors’ stories and bring attention to the way rape is often mischaracterized. The sentiment may seem an obvious one—who doesn’t understand what rape is?—but the message, sadly, is much needed. It was only this January that the FBI updated its archaic definition of rape, male politicians’ “gaffes” about rape have become par for the course, and victim-blaming in the culture and courts runs rampant.
Feminists have done a lot to change policies, but not enough to change minds. Despite decades of activism on sexual assault—despite common sense, even—there is still widespread ignorance about what rape is, and this absence of a widely understood and culturally accepted definition of sexual assault is one of the biggest hurdles we have in chipping away at rape culture.
When Todd Akin uttered his now-famous line that women rarely get pregnant from “legitimate rape,” he didn’t misspeak. This was something he thought was true—both the bizarre logic about pregnancy and the idea that there is such a thing as a rape that isn’t legitimate. Last year, Wisconsin state representative Roger Rivard told a newspaper reporter that “some girls rape easy.” Now under fire, Rivard attempted to clarify his comments, claiming they were taken out of context.
What the whole genesis of it was, it was advice to me [from my father], telling me, “If you’re going to go down that road, you may have consensual sex that night and then the next morning it may be rape.” So the way he said it was, “Just remember, Roger, some girls, they rape so easy. It may be rape the next morning.”
Rivard obviously thought this explanation would lessen the damage of his original statement; he assumed his belief that women regularly lie about being raped was a commonly held one. What’s depressing is that he’s probably right.
To too many people, “rape” and “rape victim” are not accurate descriptors but political shorthand—the product of an overblown, politically correct interpretation of sex. As Tennessee Senator Douglas Henry said in 2008, “Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse.”
If you’re married, you’ve contractually agreed to be available for sex whether or not you want to. If you’re a woman of color, you must be a liar. If you don’t have as much money as your attacker, you’re just looking for a payday. If you’re in college, you shouldn’t want to ruin your poor young rapist’s life. If you’re a sex worker, it wasn’t rape it was just “theft of services.” If you said yes at first but changed your mind, tough luck. If you’ve had sex before, you must say yes to everyone. If you were drinking you should have known better. If you were wearing a short skirt what did you expect?
The definition of who is a rape victim has been whittled down by racism, misogyny, classism and the pervasive wink-wink-nudge-nudge belief that all women really want to be forced anyway. The assumption is that women are, by default, desirous of sex unless they explicitly state otherwise. And women don’t just have to prove that we said no, but that we screamed it.
Recently the Connecticut State Supreme Court overturned a sexual assault conviction for a man who attacked a woman with severe cerebral palsy. The woman cannot communicate verbally, and according to the court’s documents, has the “intellectual functional equivalent of a 3-year-old.” Still, because of how the state defines rape in cases of physical incapacitation, the court decided that the victim was capable of “biting, kicking, scratching, screeching, groaning or gesturing,” and therefore could have communicated a lack of consent and didn’t. Basically, she didn’t fight back hard enough in order for what happened to her to be considered rape.
Waiting to see if Romney flips on his endorsement of Mr. Mourdock. He flip flops on everything else so why not?
“Elaine M.
1, October 24, 2012 at 8:16 am
Bron,
This is not the Republican party that I recall from my earlier years. What’s especially scary is that some of these candidates get elected to office.”
You are pretty hep on these questions:
What do we call this? Advanced propaganda?
Can we suppose that many of the electorate might support him on Republican grounds? And that some will on his main message grounds? And that SOME will catch the code words like “God intended…”?
And this guy was stupid in using two extra code words which were given attention by two fractions, those being rape and pregnancy.
Fire the scriptwriter—-won’t save the election I hope.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FKnKcpqorU
Many Kudos to the young person singing this song. now on to my point, or lack of. 🙂
FairlyBalanced, you left out a word.
Scary Indiana Scary Indiana Scary Indiana.
Global Gender Gap Report 2012: The Best And Worst Countries For Women
The Huffington Post
Posted: 10/24/20
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/global-gender-gap-report-2012-best-worst-countries-women_n_2006395.html
Excerpt:
Gender equality has been more of a national focus than usual in the United States over the past few months, thanks to the 2012 presidential election. Republican nominee Mitt Romney recently discussed the “binders full of women” that he tried to hire when he was governor of Massachusetts, and President Barack Obama touched upon the importance of “protecting women’s rights” around the world during the third and final presidential debate Monday.
But how does the United States stack up against other countries when it comes to said gender equality? According to the 2012 Global Gender Gap Report, released on October 23rd by the World Economic Forum, we’re only 22nd best.
Written before reading comments:
“The question is whether, if God micromanages such events, did he intend GOP Senatorial campaigns to implode across the country?”
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How about giving brains to candidates?
As fairly conservative, religious person who has voted Republican most of my life this type of rhetoric from Republicans just disgusts me as I shake my head and sigh. Not sure where I’m going to land but find myself being drawn to more Libertarian ideals the past couple of years.
this is a true root of the need for legal abortions…
Indiana needs to stick to corn and basketball.