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This should give you a good idea about Santorum's attitutudes towards the phrases "modern society", "healthcare", "education", "contraception" and "women's rights". 14th century, here we come!
And I would take this one step farther Dan. People like Bachmann & Santorum aren't just anti-abortion and anti-contraception, they're anti-SEX, period. Somehow they've gotten it into their pointy little heads that their God frowns upon non-procreative sex out of wedlock, and therefore any OTHER form of sex not performed by married couples for the purpose of making babies is immoral, and should be prohibited by force-of-law.
Hell, if they had their way, they'd put cameras in every bedroom in America, to make sure even married heterosexual couples weren't "doing it" except during the roughly two weeks per month when the wife is potentially fertile.
That's the basis of the Catholic prohibition against contraception, anyways; the men who formulated the rule didn't know about "sperm" and "eggs", and would have been appalled at the news. They believed that the only thing a woman supplied to the creation of children was a warm place for the thing to grow; it was already a person.
This view, and thus the Catholic prohibition, is grossly incompatible with modern science. Santorum might as well be demanding that schools stop teaching that the earth revolves around the sun (which wouldn't surprise me, actually).
I want to know. How come the fact that his premature baby died gives him extra anti-abortion righteousness?
Because you know, with all the advanced prenatal diagnostics and genetic counseling they have now, giving birth to a doomed baby, and all the suffering that entailed for the baby, his other six kids, and of course his wife who had to carry that doomed child, could have been avoided though abortion at an earlier stage.
Some of us have the courage to look squarely at those unhappy choices and take the better route. Instead of irresponsibly standing back and gazing at your navel while you let God decide how much avoidable pain and heartache to dish out to innocent people.
As Commander in Chief, if Sangorum were given the choice between two necessary actions that both lead to some pain and death, could he choose? Or would he stand back and do nothing and wait for God to deal with it? Because military leadership is all about choosing the lesser of two evils, typically in real time. It takes preparation and practice to make the right decision in situations like that. Ask any veteran.
Santorum doesn't "walk the talk", his wife technically had a late term abortion to save her life. It really goes down if the birth/miscarriage was "spontaneous" or was it "induced", given her doctors told her that her life was at risk in keeping the pregnancy...
He and his wife pretty much tried to get "government handouts" for their children by having Pennsylvania and the local SW Penn school board paying for their children education while living in Virginia. It is just pure hypocrisy. It is okay for Santorum and his family to have the government helped them, but not for the government to help you...
Santorum is just a mean, dumb hypocritical idiot, who deserves his frothy definition in spades.
Is that awkwardly phrased, or did I miss a major headline somewhere?
In theory, she and Newt either can't produce children (ZOMG, they can't be married!), or they use birth control.
the bitter old Slog hens are clucking early this morning....
People who feel they are god-directed and god-justified are very dangerous indeed. If you think that any of the repressive regimes of the past couldn't happen now because of—what? the existence of the internet?—you are fooling yourselves. Every new election cycle I think the crazies couldn't possibly get any crazier, and I'm always proven wrong.
What I really, really don't get is why the people who swoon for christofascists like Santorum are also so afraid of Islam. It's the same bloody god, if you're into that sort of thing, Muslims like Jesus and circumcision too, and their most reactionary elements are much more experienced in the present day in the fine points of repression and torture. Really, why not just invite the Taliban in? They could cut a deal that still sends some money to the pope.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kJHQpvg…
As I understand it, not only did they try to get Pennsylvania to pay for the children's education but several of them were being home schooled at the time and the others were in expensive charter schools. "Hypocrite" isn't nearly as strong as the word I'd choose.
But that's the entire POINT according to people like Santorum - God decides EVERYTHING; there's no "free will", it's all pre-ordained by Yahweh himself, and ANYTHING we do along the lines of proactive behavior is simply thwarting God's Will (tm).
That's basically the crux of their anti-abortion/anti-contraception argument: God invented sex for procreation, not for pleasure, and using it for the latter is an abomination in the sight of their Lord, because it goes against God's intent. And IF conception happens to occur regardless, then God MEANT for that to happen, and therefore any effort on the woman's part to terminate the pregnancy - for whatever reason - is also an abomination.
That being said, I never see them address the argument that IF everything IS pre-destined, then our "choosing" to act against God's Will (tm) MUST have been pre-ordained as well, and therefore IS God's Will (tm).
Because, I have the feeling that would just makes their head's 'splode in a shower of smoke and sparks, like Capt. Kirk arguing with a computer...
And yet if we look at history, a lack of contraception and a social stigma against sex outside marriage mostly only caused upper and middle class women to wait until marriage. More lower class women were hookers, and men from all classes patronized them.
So, yeah, let's criminalize contraception and see where THAT leads...
People like this aren't going away any time soon, but we are watching their decline as more serious problems confront all of us. Among the younger generations, there are more people who oppose his beliefs than support them.
If you don't believe in the right to privacy then let me see how tiny your dick is. I'll try not to retch.
We've allowed the two parties to threaten the long-term prospects for American Democracy by focussing their election strategies on single-issue voter blocks, especially when the issue is something that doesn't affect governance, such as DOMA. We should refocus on maintaining a healthy society for the next seven generations, which requires the basics:
Sustainable economy
Sustainable resource use
Sustainable education systems
Sustainable democracy
The approach to maintaining those is debatable (thus the two parties) , but most of us should agree that it's not sustainable for the federal government to be surveilling the personal habits of individual citizens.
dan, honey, it's GRISWOLD, not GRISWALD in your headline. fix, please.
Well played.
I'm not thrilled about even a mild form of "peace-loving" islam becoming dominant for obvious reasons, but I keep thinking all religion will gradually peter out as science and technology advance.
That, of course, makes me just as vulnerable to the delusion I describe @22.
But Mr Santorum informs us that no one, not even devout Catholic married couples have a right to privacy, so these medical records should be seized and made public.
@19, If you've got some proof, data, statistics or tea leaves to back up your bar room philosiphies let's see them. Your theory is equivilent to claiming that wearing a seatbelt makes one a better driver. Banning contraception will definitely result in the death of women in backstreet abortion clinics, and even more unwanted, unplanned and uncared-for children.
I do hope Americans recognize that Santorum and his lot of xenophobic home-schooling, patriarchy-loving, religious douchebags have turned the Republican party into the party of Fascism.
Note that, if changes in permissiveness happened in society as a hole (as you suggest Mr Santorum might claim), one should not expect poverty to be, by itself, a predictor. Unless one for some reason expects the poor to become especially promiscuous -- in which case poverty again looks like a factor, rather than permissiveness per se.
My gut says the opposite. When times are good women feel free to explore sex because they can afford their baby if the guy runs out.
That is why the 60s was the age of Free Love.
Cool. You read leftist blogs and repeat all the insane catchphrases. Bully for you.
Seriously- Christo-fascist? I mean, that one just makes you look really stupid. When you grow up and move out of the basement you'll look back on that one and cringe.
Mr. Savage, thanks so much for the de facto admission that you were entirely wrong to turn political opposition to some private jihad. (I know, you really really want Mr. Santorum to return your depraved love for him. He just won't. He's a man, you're a deviant. It isn't going to happen.) 4 or 5 posts attempting to defend your indefensible behavior with regard to a private citizen apparently strikes EVEN YOU as too much, hence the frantic defense.
Methinks the lady doth protest o'er much.
That is the case regarding the rate of out of wedlock births in the era when such births stigmatized both mother and child. Such children tended to be "born" to relatives or strangers, or not to be born at all. (You are to consider that contraceptives have brought *down* the rate of actual, as opposed to reported, abortion, for the same reason that abortion is less prevalent in the Netherlands than in the US.)
Now let's assume for the sake of argument your thesis that children being born out of wedlock is an intrinsically bad thing. That would argue for making the prevention and termination of pregnancies legal, easy, and safe, rather than the opposite, wouldn't it? (Note that our "conservatives" who want to recriminalize abortion convenient ignore that it was only criminalized relatively recently - in England that happened in 1803. Kinda puts a different perspective on things, doesn't it?)
Danny asserts that marriage is thriving as homosexuals advance their agenda but in fact the percentage of adults married is dropping rapidly and deeply.
Marriage is an institution on the decline in our society.
Rick Santorum is a Roman Catholic, not a Calvinist Protestant, you ignorant slut. If you're going to criticize these fucks you have to at least learn the rules they're playing by. Read a book or something.
A liberty that does not include control over your own body at the very minimum cannot be called liberty.
I just...can't...
And for what it's worth I don't really understand why you think Dan asserts that marriage is "thriving." One of his favorite talking points is that marriage is less popular among young people, and divorce rates remain high, and that since that shows that marriage actually IS in trouble, it's stupid to deny it to people who want it. It's almost like you're, I don't know, just making shit up.
aaah.......love!
Santorum may be a practicing Roman Catholic, but his avouched position on contraception at least is far to the right of most American R.C.'s, and in fact falls right in line with the much more conservative Calvinist Protestant doctrine. Which, when you think about it does make a certain amount of sense, because that's the electorate he's courting, not his fellow Catholics, so it's not surprising he would express his moral point-of-view using deterministic terms.
It's a habit with him.
The whole family is disgusted.
I've spent much too much time being considered as a furniture, when I was living with the jerk. As soon as you've popped out a kid, you start being treated like shit, because let's face it : the prospect of ending up in poverty as a single mom will give you pause - and the jerk will be able to do whatever he wants. You're not going anywhere once you've become a mother, even if you have an education and a job.
Children in loving households of two adults fare better than children of single moms. Divorce helps making households with two parents "loving households".
There was no divorce back when women were not allowed to divorce ; do you think that the children of undivorced households of yesterday, having grown up seeing day after day daddy beating down mummy, fared much better than the children of today's single mothers ? Those children became themselves abusers or abused in adulthood. At least, with divorce, the children of unhappy households can have a shot at growing up without too much violence around them.
As for poverty - what money was left when father and/or mother had drunk all the money ? Unhappiness leads to poverty, married or divorced. Unhappiness leads to violence, and divorce suppresses most of the violence. Forcing women to endure the violence, by removing divorce, doesn't help the children. The only one it helps is the abuser - more often than not the man.
Frothy Mix doesn't care about the welfare of kids. He cares about Men. Like Roman Catholicism : a religion made by men for the exclusive interests of Men.
Man's best interest is to have a lot of slaves around him, everyone he can dominate physically, so basically, women and children. That's what a woman is for : a slave herself, she gives birth to more slaves. If she tries to wriggle out of being a slave producer, by contraception, then it's "not the way it should be".
Frothy Mix is against divorce too, though I guess he won't say it too loudly. But I've never seen a Roman Catholic agreeing with divorce : it gives rights to women. Dangerous thing !
And all the while he tries to put back the big stick into the hands of the ones who should have it (the white male hands), he's secretly afraid of somehow ending on the receiving end of the stick. Frothy Mix is afraid of men maybe trying to probe his ass, because he knows he's a wimp, and though he advocates for Men having unlimited power over everything, he'd rather not be confused with a woman and see man power forced over his own body.
That's why he's a homohater, and of the worse kind : the kind that is deadly afraid that Dan Savage could come one day and anally rape him. He doesn't want to be treated the way he wants Men to be able to treat women. He'd rather preemptively put Dan Savage in prison on the grounds that "gay is morally wrong".
No, what this shows is that Rick Santorum is either lying about the Constitution, or knows absolutely nothing about it. The founders INTENTIONALLY made it vague and flexible so that it could adapt and change. Thats why the US government is the oldest continually operating government on the planet right now, by opposing this flexibility Santorum is essentially saying "I hate America"
There have been numerous surveys that show that people often over-estimate the % of obese people in a given population, while often grossly underestimating(or just lying) about their own BMI and how it is classified. Most obese people don't think they are obese....
Peace.
In fact, this line of "attack" is exactly what was defeated by JFK: As POTUS he would NOT be ruled by the dictates of God's representative on Earth, the Pope. Frothyman is going right down the papist party line however (but as far as the evangelicals are concerned, at least he IS a Christian).
Peace.
And now if you'll excuse me, I'll be on the can making an unconstitutional power grab.