QUOTE
Is it a choice?
By E.J. Graff | bio
Does that headline sound slightly confusing--making you wonder whether I'm about to write about the Roe v Wade 33d anniversary today, or about the question of whether homos (whoops, I mean lesbians and gay men--my bad!) are born that way or make a decision about it? Well, there's a reason for that confusion: the question of reproductive freedom and the question of gay rights are the same question. And--you're going to hear this theme from me repeatedly--progressives cannot win if they try to throw the "sex" issues over the side of the boat.
Family matters. To most people, family--i.e., the people you love and toward whom you feel you have moral and emotional obligations--is the reason to get up in the morning, to go to work, to vote for or against this policy or that. When, whether, and with whom you get to form a family is what the marriage debates are all about. Unless progressives insist that at the root of our values is the belief the individuals involved should have the moral responsibility and freedom to make those decisions (right, wrong, incomprehensible, or otherwise) for themselves, then we will not be able to move on with the rest of our beliefs:
beliefs about community responsibility for caring for people who are too young, aged, weak, poor, alone, or ill to fight for themselves--i.e., about the work v. family dilemma, the minimum wage, etc.
The right wing wants one mandatory family structure, with all other family structures considered shameful, their members cast out from legal recognition or social safety nets, left to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Our side must be for family pluralism and reproductive freedom. This can be cast in libertarian terms: it's not the government's decision who you marry or when and whether you bear a child. Or it can be cast in terms of what it means to be a good citizen: citizenship means respecting and embracing everyone, even (especially) when you disagree. These are crude abstractions, and of course we can all think of many exceptions to those generalizations, but this is a blog, after all, not a dissertation. In these short posts I'm trying to follow Brecht's suggestion: "Crude thinking--that is the thinking of the great."
I know that for many progressives, reproductive freedom and gay rights are "girl" issues, not "red meat" politics. I disagree. These are family issues. Family issues are red meat issues. The right wing sure has figured that out. It's time our side did too.
More on Roe's 33d anniversary:
...Over at PopPolitics, Jaclyn Friedman makes an interesting (if rhetorically overheated) argument against talking about "choice."
...Above, before the jump, I linked to Bush v Choice, which has some fascinating legislative facts.
...Amanda over at Pandagon rolls her eyes at the fact that Bush has proclaimed today National Sanctity of Human Life day. He actually boasts about the global gag rule, in which overseas groups will not receive any US funding if they so much as mention the word "abortion" -- a policy that has deadly results.
One last addendum to this rambling post on family life, reproductive freedom, and gay rights. On Friday I got an email from a dear old friend who runs an abortion clinic. Before the quote, try to remember being 12 and having your body change in bizarre Alice-in-Wonderland ways, swellings hither and yon, soreness in every new swelling, and your period coming three times in 6 weeks and then not at all for 8 months and ... Okay, here's the quote:
"Too bad you weren't here a minute ago when we did an ultrasound on a 13 year old African American girl who is over 25 weeks pregnant. She figured out last night she was pregnant.
She did not want to have sex. We can't help her. Who the f*** will?"
And yes, my friend did report the child's rape to the appropriate authorities.
By E.J. Graff | bio
Does that headline sound slightly confusing--making you wonder whether I'm about to write about the Roe v Wade 33d anniversary today, or about the question of whether homos (whoops, I mean lesbians and gay men--my bad!) are born that way or make a decision about it? Well, there's a reason for that confusion: the question of reproductive freedom and the question of gay rights are the same question. And--you're going to hear this theme from me repeatedly--progressives cannot win if they try to throw the "sex" issues over the side of the boat.
Family matters. To most people, family--i.e., the people you love and toward whom you feel you have moral and emotional obligations--is the reason to get up in the morning, to go to work, to vote for or against this policy or that. When, whether, and with whom you get to form a family is what the marriage debates are all about. Unless progressives insist that at the root of our values is the belief the individuals involved should have the moral responsibility and freedom to make those decisions (right, wrong, incomprehensible, or otherwise) for themselves, then we will not be able to move on with the rest of our beliefs:
beliefs about community responsibility for caring for people who are too young, aged, weak, poor, alone, or ill to fight for themselves--i.e., about the work v. family dilemma, the minimum wage, etc.
The right wing wants one mandatory family structure, with all other family structures considered shameful, their members cast out from legal recognition or social safety nets, left to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Our side must be for family pluralism and reproductive freedom. This can be cast in libertarian terms: it's not the government's decision who you marry or when and whether you bear a child. Or it can be cast in terms of what it means to be a good citizen: citizenship means respecting and embracing everyone, even (especially) when you disagree. These are crude abstractions, and of course we can all think of many exceptions to those generalizations, but this is a blog, after all, not a dissertation. In these short posts I'm trying to follow Brecht's suggestion: "Crude thinking--that is the thinking of the great."
I know that for many progressives, reproductive freedom and gay rights are "girl" issues, not "red meat" politics. I disagree. These are family issues. Family issues are red meat issues. The right wing sure has figured that out. It's time our side did too.
More on Roe's 33d anniversary:
...Over at PopPolitics, Jaclyn Friedman makes an interesting (if rhetorically overheated) argument against talking about "choice."
...Above, before the jump, I linked to Bush v Choice, which has some fascinating legislative facts.
...Amanda over at Pandagon rolls her eyes at the fact that Bush has proclaimed today National Sanctity of Human Life day. He actually boasts about the global gag rule, in which overseas groups will not receive any US funding if they so much as mention the word "abortion" -- a policy that has deadly results.
One last addendum to this rambling post on family life, reproductive freedom, and gay rights. On Friday I got an email from a dear old friend who runs an abortion clinic. Before the quote, try to remember being 12 and having your body change in bizarre Alice-in-Wonderland ways, swellings hither and yon, soreness in every new swelling, and your period coming three times in 6 weeks and then not at all for 8 months and ... Okay, here's the quote:
"Too bad you weren't here a minute ago when we did an ultrasound on a 13 year old African American girl who is over 25 weeks pregnant. She figured out last night she was pregnant.
She did not want to have sex. We can't help her. Who the f*** will?"
And yes, my friend did report the child's rape to the appropriate authorities.