The neat thing about bad arguments is that usually they are layered in thick and fast that you don’t catch them the first time,so you have to slow down and rewind the tape to see the intersectionality of wrongness and then unweave the fail.
Today’s disservice is dedicated to a post by the Wayward Catholic, ostensibly extending the putrefied olive branch of religion to those who are drifting (I imagine it is code for people who are starting to think for themselves) to get them back into the feckless fold.
A noble cause indeed. But hey, if the arguments are good, then maybe there is a good point to be had. Riiiiight…anyhow, lets see how the Wayward Catholic does in his(assumption of gender) post “Killing is wrong“.
The argument was if I supported such a law and the law passed then that would be forcing my opinion on others. Of course the commentor fails to see that the opposite must also be true as well. Passing any law ca be considered one group of people forcing their opinion on another group.
Individual laws are forcing their “opinion” on other people. Cannibals are rightly annoyed that they cannot go to the local Uncle Wally’s and begin the all-U-can eat feast. Laws are in place in society to preserve order and promote fair treatment in society and usually, said laws are enacted based their utility and on the needs of said society.
A perfect example is the HHS contraception mandate. This mandate forces all employers (with a very narrow exception) to provide contraception, sterilizations and “morning after” pills to their employees whether they have a religious objection to them or not.
Ah, the persecution!! Not being able to propagate outdated and irrational beliefs on society, the horror! Welcome to civilization that does not kowtow to your magic book and delusional mind-set. Women use contraception and should have access to it when they need it, at any time. Reproductive consequences for women are serious and they need to have all the options available to them.
But then this is the typical secular argument. They see all issues from one side, and one side only. If they think something is right, it is right, end of story, and anything which has to do with religion isn’t right so it is bad and must be destroyed.
What a marvellous case of projection you have going there, never mind the sweeping generalizations about all “secular arguments”. I imagine the problem for you is that often, secular arguments are based on evidence and verifiable facts, rather than on mythology, magic and dogmatic adherence to bronze age bugaboo.
The fact is, access to contraception is good for society. The above links are just a small sample of the evidence that supports the benefits of contraception in society. Just because you do not believe in contraception does not mean contraception is a bad thing. You have every right to express your opinion. However, unsubstantiated opinion is pretty much next to worthless when it comes to the law and moral issues in society.
Belief weighs heavily in the next paragraph, a paragraph one sees much to often from those who worship the almighty fetus. But hey one more reiteration won’t hurt, especially when its being used for educational purposes.
Even though killing and murder is wrong they will defend it, doing everything they can to “soften” the fact that it is murder, that they are taking a life. An innocent one at that, one who doesn’t have a “choice”.
Killing and murder is generally wrong, especially when dealing with people. Blastocycsts, fetuses, fertilized eggs et cetera are not people. I’m going to assume, for the sake of argument that you think that “life” begins conception. It is an erroneous, problematic assumption at best. So, what this comes down to is whether or not you think women get to makes choices about what goes on in their body.
You don’t get a say if you need a kidney and I happen to have one that is suitable to donate. Bodily autonomy does not magically stop when it comes to uteri. What goes on in a woman’s uterus falls under the same measure, her body, her choice. It starts and ends there.
We can always thank religion for continuing the war on women.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
3 comments
August 12, 2012 at 8:05 pm
Reneta Scian
Militant totalitarian ideologies often use mentalities that sanction the use of women’s bodies, so that the male offspring produced by insemination can support the ranks of the military supporting said totalitarian regime. And in these cases it is often the intent of enduring and successful Militant Totalitarian ideologies to control as many resources as possible, because without “total control” totalitarianism is overthrown. Judea-Christian ideologies are essentially Military Government Control Systems based on mythology, tradition and rigid social roles (a caste system of sorts) catered to those ends pretending to be benign when it is actually something oppressive, fatalistic, and only beneficial to the meager few who stand at the top of it’s hierarchy. Ultimate Oligarchy, Ultimate Power, Ultimate Control and subjugation… The real “Wolf” in sheep’s clothing. Men and women’s bodies are just convenient tools for the one wielding that system. It might have worked to get us started, but now it holds us back. Perhaps it was the eggshell of humanity’s early phases of life, but now it suffocates us. These entities kill in the name of freedom, enslave in the name of justice, steal in the name of prosperity, and oppress in the name of equality.
But freedom, justice, prosperity and equality are not served by those actions. Murder and war, slavery and privilege, theft and conquest, and oppression and class systems destroy any semblance of the prior, and infuse any nation supported by them with inhumane, unjust, corrupted, and immoral values. So when they say they care about fetuses as human beings overriding the rights of women, but send men to kill other humans in foreign nations for profit it shouldn’t be a “surprise”. When they say they believe in Economic Freedom, but use those markets to steal from the weak and give to the strong and well-to-do you shouldn’t bat an eyelash. When they set forth laws governing the use of our bodies for “Our own safety, and happiness”, but abuse our autonomy you should know that this is just how they operate. Because in the end any system that supports such methods is only following it’s ideological goals to their inevitable ends, where people are tools to be used, bodies belong to the state, and everything is used to support those to whom that power has been handed down too through the ages. The covert royalty of totalitarian militant expansionist thought. It’s appetite is never satisfied, and those in power will do anything to remain there.
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August 13, 2012 at 8:24 am
The Arbourist
Waiting for the inevitable comparison to Feminism… in 3..2..1…
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August 13, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Reneta Scian
Why would someone compare feminism to that? The way I spoke about connections in government, economy, oppression (mainly patriarchy), and all of those connections most people assume are either non-existent or “conspiracy theory non-sense”. This is how I describe the system that operates in the way religious nations, or religiously infected policies do.
On second thought, I could see how an MRA or otherwise could flip that as a “critique of Feminists” and their totalitarian “anti-man” stances. That would be part one of the dumbest derailments in my opinion… “Feminists are wrong because they are just mean, mean misandrists”, they’d say. I don’t consider myself a misandrist, but I definitely act with awareness of the power of male privilege, and the misogyny of our culture in my dealings with them.
To be honest, with the way men treat women (especially feminists) it’s impossible to not feel some misandry, or to imagine women who aren’t brainwashed by the patriarchy to feel it. The difference lies in whether you let that misandry overwhelm you, and prevent you from making progress. Misandry doesn’t make feminism invalid, rather both are a result by the same problem. I am going to write more about this redirection/derailment and others later.
Systems like the above, and religious thought fail epically to even understand what it means to be human. I also had a minor epiphany when connecting the policies of my government to this, and the epiphany was realizing I was describing Fascism in a nutshell. It would not be hard to see that I am anti-fascism and anti-totalitarianism. Perhaps another slight epiphany is that historically speaking Patriarchies have also tended to be fascist in some degree, or lots.
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