It is important for a nation’s leaders to prioritize their agenda for
the coming year, and it is expected they would assign importance to
issues regarding their country’s economic health, national security, and
benefits for its people. In his Inauguration Address, President Obama’s
priorities for his second term were immigration reform, global climate
change, sane gun controls, growing the economy, and he stressed the
importance of the nation coming together to assure the Constitution’s
guarantee of equal rights is extended to every citizen regardless of
gender, sexual preference, or economic station. It has taken a little
over a week, but finally as
repugicans floundered to find a specific
priority besides obstruction, corporatism, austerity, and gun
proliferation, they picked up where they left off from the last session
of Congress and officially announced their highest priority is imposing
policy shaped by wingnut christianity on Americans.
Speaker of the House John Boehner made the announcement to an
anti-choice group he addressed at a National Right to Life rally, and he
did not have to make it official after repugicans in Congress began
the 113
th session with a personhood bill, opposition to the
VAWA, and balking at immigration reform that includes same-sex couples.
Boehner
said repugicans were focusing on “
working to pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” and that it was the repugican cabal’s “
most fundamental goal this year” to “commit ourselves to doing everything we can to protect the sanctity of life” and pledged to make legal abortion a “
relic of the past.”
It is ironic that Boehner is using the christian bible, a true “relic
of the past” as the guiding force for making legal abortion a relic of
the past, especially since a majority of Americans believe it is a
woman’s personal choice and do not want legal abortion restricted via
overturning Roe v. Wade. However, the theocrats have a different
opinion, and they will waste more of Americans’ time and money to
replace the Constitution with the christian bible.
It was little surprise repugicans chose religion and the continuing repugican cabal's war on women’s reproductive rights as their top priority, especially
after failed vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan joined a gang of
theocrats to re-introduce a
ridiculous personhood bill soon after the 113
th Congress was in session with a view to banning abortion, contraception, and decriminalizing rape. In fact, in several
Dominionist states,
defunding Planned Parenthood and restricting abortion rights began in
earnest within a week of the general election and continued shortly
after the start of the new session of Congress.
Boehner is not alone in the repugican cabal’s push for theocracy as Kentucky
Senator Rand Paul told the crowd at the National No Choice rally
about his intention of pursuing a “
spiritual cleansing” and imposing “
a
gospel that cannot be resisted. We much preach a gospel so full of
compassion, a gospel so full of justice that it cannot be resisted.”
Senator Paul’s rousing Inquisition-era rhetoric informs what many
Americans have warned about for years, and it is the imposition of
Dominionist martial law and little else, and it does not stop at
attacking a woman’s right to choose.
The House of Representatives is still
balking
at re-authorizing the Violence Against Women Act because they object to
protection for same-sex victims of violence, and immigration reform
that includes same-sex couples. Obviously, the repugican objections are
founded in the bible’s prohibition on homosexuality and abortion, as
well as a twisted adherence to patriarchy that provides the bible view
that men are born to dominate women. What is telling about repugicans
is that they still have not learned one lesson from the voters’
rejection of their extremist religious views they are intent on passing
off as governance.
If one sets aside the repugican cabal’s insistence on pursuing an extremist christian vision of theocracy as a means of dominating women and gays in
their war on women and homophobic frenzy, there is the little issue of
exactly why they are in government to begin with. Their top priority of
imposing a “
spiritual cleansing, gospel full of justice, and preaching a gospel full of compassion” to protect the “
sanctity of life”
of a zygote, or defend the traditional definition of marriage, will not
create one job, reduce gun violence, grow the economy, bolster national
security, address climate change, or secure energy independence, but it
does
punish women
and gays for their part in re-electing President Obama; all under cover
of the Christian bible. Their top priority also wastes valuable time
and taxpayer money that is better spent creating jobs or growing the
economy because with a non-theocratic (Democratic) Senate and White
House, there is little chance their predilection for Dominionism will
succeed and, in fact, is doomed to fail.
Shortly after the November election, repugicans renewed their efforts to defund Planned Parenthood in the states and
Congress, and pass more abortion restrictions in states. Any sane politician would think that after spending the entire 112
th
Congress assaulting women’s reproductive rights and same-sex marriage,
that reiterating those theocratic issues is a horribly bad idea after
suffering an electoral defeat for attacking women’s reproductive rights
and same-sex marriage. Many theocratic right-to-life groups assailed The repugicans after the election for not engaging Democrats on the
abortion/rape
issue, despite that in races where abortion and women’s reproductive
health were attacked in full view of the voters, Dominionist candidates
were rejected by wide margins because voters understand woman’s
reproductive health is the not the purview of repugicans’ puritanical
sensibilities.
The repugicans have found themselves in an unenviable position of
lacking support from mainstream America that is not founded in extremist christianity or guns, and instead of abandoning their two-year war on
women’s reproductive rights, they have doubled down and made it their
top priority for 2013. Although the wingnut bible crowd is solidly
behind any politician promising to impose the bible’s sanctions on women
and gays, the rest of America is moving forward and supporting the
President’s agenda of addressing gun violence, the economy, jobs,
climate change, and most importantly, equality for all Americans; even
women and their right to choose their reproductive health.
The religious wingnuts, Dominionists and theocracy advocates, have been
attempting to impose their will on Americans for decades, and they have
always had willing partners in repugican ranks. It is curious that the
party that decries government intervention into Americans’ personal
lives insists on spending another session of Congress intervening in a
woman’s right to choose and it is down to one decision they determined
is the hill they are willing to die on, and it is their choice to
support and defend the bible as the law of the land instead of the
nation’s founding document. As more Americans understand that repugicans are working toward a theocratic institution dominated by
patriarchs wasting taxpayer money and precious time to punish women and
make their reproductive decisions for them, they will continue rejecting
them at the ballot box because at this point, rejecting repugicans is
rejecting Dominionism and its archaic theocratic edicts.
Blaer Bjarkardottir, 15, left, and
her mother, Bjork Eidsdottir, outside a court building
in Reykjavik. 
How owls swivel their heads
