Rather than voting up or down on the Senate’s Violence Against Women
Act, House repugicans counter offered with a watered down version,
which can be read
here.
The House version, predictably, excludes Native women and members of
the LGBT Community. Yes, this is a sort of dejavu moment. The last time
repugicans also objected to protecting immigrant woman from violence.
After gaining assurances that visas granted to abused women from
outside the United States would be limited, the repugican cabl decided that since
there wouldn’t be an “invasion” of abused immigrant women, maybe it
wouldn’t be so bad to include them in the Violence Against Women Act.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to conclude that this change of heart is
another attempt by the repugican cabal to convince people that they really are
pro-Immigrant, or at least less anti-Immigrant than they were before the
2012 election.
I’ve seen some outrageous attempts at explanations for why Senate repugicans voted against the VAWA.
According to
Senator Chuck Grassley (r-IA)
One provision that non-Native Americans can be tried in
tribal court. And why is that a big thing? Because of the
constitutionality of it, for two reasons. One, you know how the law is,
that if you have a jury, the jury is supposed to be a reflection of
society. [...] So you get non-Indians, let me say to make it easy, you
get non-Indians going into a reservation and violating a woman. They
need to be prosecuted. They aren’t prosecuted. So the idea behind [VAWA]
is we’ll try them in tribal court. But under the laws of our land, you
got to have a jury that is a reflection of society as a whole, and on an
Indian reservation, it’s going to be made up of Indians, right? So the
non-Indian doesn’t get a fair trial.
Marco “gulp” Rubio opposed the bill because, according to his statement,
it would divert funding from domestic violence programs to sexual
assault programs. We all know just how concerned repugicans are about
prosecuting rapists.
Last month, we observed.
Congress, Paul Ryan and Todd Akin attempted to redefine violent sexual assault in terms of the “legitimacy”
of a rape, and although the notion that violent sexual intrusion would
be considered illegitimate offended decent Americans’ humanity, wingnut
anti-life christians cheered the repugican cabal's language.
According to Rubio, it means Indian Tribes could have criminal
jurisdiction over non-Indians who abuse women, which like Grassley’s
“argument” is factually inaccurate.
There is only one substantive explanation for the omissions in the
House Bill. Just as repugicans defend the rape culture in America,
they are more willing to defend domestic abusers than their victims.
Then there’s that all important reason, as explained by
Rep. Rep. John Duncan (r-TN), the name of the bill sounds like too much like motherhood and apple pie.
Every bill is given a motherhood-and-apple-pie title …But
if you voted [based] on the title, you’d vote for every bill up here.
If we’d all done that, the country would have crashed a long time
ago… So this is another bill with a motherhood-and-apple-pie title …Like most men,
I’m more opposed to violence against women than even violence against
men because most men can handle it a little better than a lot of women
can.
This has nothing to do with an imagined
expansion of Tribal
jurisdiction. This is not about the bill’s name. Since at least some
repugicans are sensitive about that, how about a more appropriate name
for the House Republican bill. I proposes the Defense of Violence
Against Certain Women and All Men Act.
The Senate version of VAWA isn’t about protecting frail women from
violence because they “can’t handle it.” It does have everything to do
with the fact that no one should have to handle it, endure it and
eventually die as a result of it. I will concede however, that argument
coincides with the repugican mindset on so many levels. It infers that, like
rape, there are different classes of domestic violence. There are people
who deserve protection from violent behavior and others who don’t.
First, let’s dispense with Senator Grassley’s stated concern about jury pools.
According to
The National Taskforce to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women, ”Section
904 of S.1925 contains explicit language that tribes exercising
authority under these new provisions must draw from jury pools that
reflect a fair cross-section of the community and do not systematically
exclude any distinct group of people, including non-Indians.”
Marco Rubio’s claim that the VAWA unconstitutionally expands Tribal
jurisdiction is just as factually inaccurate as Senator Grassley’s
claim. From The National Taskforce to End sexual and Domestic Violence
Against Women. ”The civil jurisdiction found in Section 905 already
exists under the full faith & credit clauses of VAWA 2000. S.1925
simply clarifies the intent of this earlier reauthorization by making
clear that tribes have full civil authority to issue and enforce
protection orders against Indians and non-Indians alike regarding
matters arising in Indian country.”
In other words, the repugican cabal’s opposition to provisions protecting Native
American women is about as consistent with reality as rainbow colored
unicorns.
The House repugican’s poor substitute for the VAWA also excludes the LGBT community.
Marsha Blackburn had a moment of Sarah Palin logic, when explaining
her opposition to provisions protecting members of the LGBT community in
the Senate version of VAWA. ”It used to be women, and we wanted to keep
it focused on women … Many of those that we’ve talked to in law
enforcement have encouraged us to do that.”
Oh, I see. So then we don’t care about the
850,000 men
who are abused by their domestic partners every year because THEY can
handle it. Are we to believe that on Blackburn’s planet lesbians aren’t
women and there are no women who are bi-sexual?
If the issue
really was about focusing on women, Blackburn and the repugican cabal
would have seen fit to include provisions for Native American in
this version of their watered down VAWA and for that matter, immigrant
women who were left out of their previous defense of violence against
certain people act.
These excuses are malarkey.
We see it in state level repugican initiatives like “license to bully” laws in
Michigan, along with Duncan and Blackburn’s state,
Tennesee
Tennessee is also home of the
Don’t Say Gay
bill re-introduced (the previous version failed) by State Rep Rep.
John Ragan (r) who, in regard to same-sex attraction, told a constituent
“feelings do not control the behavior of a mentally healthy adult human
being.”
Who can forget
Michele Bachmann’s
response when asked why same sex couples can’t get married? ”They can
get married,” Bachmann responded. “But they abide by the same law as
everyone else. They can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can
marry a woman if they’re a man.”
One can also look to
how the repugican cabal treats gays and lesbians in their ever-shrinking “big tent.”
While being gay or lesbian and a politician within the repugican cabal is possible,
as Peter Beinart observes: “Gays
now serve openly in the Marine Corps, but being a gay or lesbian
politician in the repugican cabal still generally requires staying in the closet—at
least until you’re outed in some humiliating scandal.”
Nothing speaks more loudly to the repugican’s homophobia than the stated reasons
repugican lawmakers opposed the
repeal of DADT along with House Speaker Boehner’s costly obsession with
defending the Defense Of Marriage Act.
The House repugican’s watered down version of the VAWA is more about
preserving their bigotry than anything about protecting women or anyone
else from violence. In fact, according to a statement from NOW President
Terry O’Neill, “The new House bill purposely excludes LGBT survivors
and even rolls back existing programs and protections for all survivors
in the current VAWA.”
I can see their big tent shrinking from my house.
Warm
and cozy is for weak babies. To ensure strong Viking-worthy children, Nordic
parents regularly leave their babies to sleep outdoors in the freezing cold:
We
may have survived
the Large Hadron Collider, but the Higgs boson still has a trick up
its sleeves. According to new findings on the "Higgs-like" particle
discovered last year, the universe will end in a bubble of doom.
Siberia permafrost thaw warning
Sixty
years ago, the brown tree snake hitched a ride on US military ships to
Guam. With no predators to check their population, the snakes multiplied
in the jungle of the island and proceeded to drive many of the native
bird species to extinction.
