While our state is trying to ban sex toys, the state in Sweden has started to sell them.
According to Linge Bergman, the element of popular trust in RFSU and Apoteket made the state pharmacies a good place to sell erotic toys.
“We want to have a broad perspective on health, and people would prefer to buy these items in Apoteket than online or in some other shop. We are seen as good trademarks that can guarantee quality.”
The great irony is that the Texas law has a bunch of educational and medical loopholes, but if you think about it, it’s always about health, even if that’s a secondary goal next to pleasure. It’s not just mental health, either. Frequent orgasming is good for the heart and good for the pelvic muscles, and keeping the latter strong could mean less peeing when you sneeze as you age. Maybe stores here could sell vibrators as incontinence-prevention devices?
This is a classic video about the ongoing sex toy battles in my fine home state of Texas.
Well, I celebrated the new-found legality of female masturbation in the state of Texas. One should never underestimate the lengths to which wingnuts will go to control female sexuality. The Texas AG Greg Abbott, who apparently has nothing better to do than to separate women from their dildos, has asked the 5th Circuit Court to rehear the sex toy case.
I’m trying to imagine the mindset of a man who doesn’t realize that when you try to take dildos away from women, basically everyone with a brain and/or a sense of humor is going to assume it’s because you’re afraid you can’t handle the competition.
But I am routinely assured by commenters here, at other feminist blogs, and at RH Reality Check that the opposition is not in this because they are misogynists that fear female sexuality or control freaks who can’t stand the idea of someone else having fun. No, they are in this to save the unborn babies. Opposition to the birth control pill and emergency contraception is about making sure that no microscopic babies that look remarkably more like formless balls of cells rather than infants get accidentally flushed by hormones. Nothing whatsoever to do with female sexuality, no siree. It’s all babies.
Well, I’m getting ready to do the one thing I never thought I would: Enter the weird, 19th century world of the political caucus. If I may be boldly partisan for Obama for a minute, a few thoughts:
*Texans—just show at your local precinct. The caucus should be in the same place as the precinct voting booth. I’d suggest being there by 7 PM, so for all but West Texans, you have an hour to get there. You can’t caucus if you didn’t vote, but if you did, you should have a stamp on your voter registration card that’s your ticket in. It’s a squeaker coming out of the exit polls, so get thee to your precinct.
*In Austin, at least, Obama’s ground game has been a lot better. We’ve been blanketed with Obama materials, and they’re really useful, with explanations on how to handle the “Texas two-step”, the primacaucus weirdness that hasn’t been a factor is forever. I’ve gotten like a dozen Obama mailers and fliers, and only one Clinton one, and it was better described as an anti-Obama mailer. I feel that the combination of upbeat messaging and education on how to handle the system will serve the Obama campaign well tonight.
*That said, apparently Rush Limbaugh is instructing Texas Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary for Clinton. I can’t begrudge them this strategy, since I’d probably do it if the tables were turned. But it does double up the importance of getting your Texas Obama-supporting asses to the precincts to caucus. Remember, 1/3 of the votes rest on what happens at 7:15 PM tonight, and in such a close primary, we can’t take any chances.
I’m excited. This will be the first and probably last time I’ll ever see a caucus. My mom even text-messaged me wishing me luck, this is so unusual. I know it’s sort of dorky to be excited, but you have to understand that we aren’t Iowa here. This whole situation is just unique, and that automatically puts a layer of exciting on it.
This is an interesting article in the Dallas Morning News. Given how dicey it is these days to be an LGBT-welcoming Baptist church, expect continued struggles such as the one Broadway Baptist Church faces. The church according to the article, was known to be inclusive of gays and moderate in its views (including women in leadership roles), but it hit a wall of tolerance when it planned to publish its church directory for its 125th anniversary with photos of members and their families
There was discord and disagreement as to how to treat its gay parishioners and their families, since all people would be identified in the publication. What did church members decide constituted a compromise?
In a 294-182 vote, members approved a recommendation by the church’s board of deacons to publish a directory that would include member photos in “candid, small and large group pictures” but not include family portraits.This is incredibly sad, as it brings to the fore the underlying homophobia and heteronormativity in Broadway Baptist Church. Rather than confront their feelings about what constitutes a family, for some members, the answer is to get rid of the pastor who called for honesty in reconciling their beliefs with LGBT members in their midst.The 125th anniversary pictorial directories “will identify the people in them by name and every effort will be made to include all members in the directory,” the deacon board said in its recommendation.
The board said members recognize that there are differing opinions on what constitutes a family. The proposal, the board said, did not endanger the church’s Baptist affiliations.
More after the jump, including what occurred when Barack Obama addressed yet another predominantly black crowd last week and forced them to face their homophobia.
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Sorry I didn’t post last night. It was a one thing after another kind of day, and right when things looked like they were going to calm down enough for me to write a post, I was reminded that the last day of early primary voting was not March 1st, as I thought, but February 29th. So I hopped on my bike and went down to campus to vote there, and was shocked, seriously, to see that there was an enormous line. I’d never waited in line to vote. Never. True, it was the last day and I’m usually not so tardy, but I ducked into the same building on the last day of early voting in October 2004, and the lines were not nearly this bad. I had to wait 45 minutes to an hour to vote. Part of the problem, it seems, was not that there weren’t enough booths, but there was a bottleneck signing people in, even though there were tons of volunteers. The bottleneck? The Democratic primary sign-up sheets. I think I saw one guy out of dozens vote Republican. The kid waiting in line in front of me, when asked his party affiliation, said, “Well, I’m a Republican but I want to vote in the Democratic primary.” (Which you can do in Texas; you don’t have a formal party affiliation.)
I don’t want to make too much of this, of course. I was standing in what’s quite likely the bluest line in early voting polling in the state. Apparently, the wait downtown was 30 minutes, for the same reason—that no one wanted to vote Republican, but again, we’re talking downtown Austin, which might as well be downtown New York for all that it’s Democratic. As for the kid, thinking you’re a Republican who is just crossing over just this once, or twice, or three times, because you were raised to think that you’re practically betraying your family if you vote Democratic, well, that’s practically a tradition. Eventually you give in and admit you’re a Democrat. By the time you’re in your mid-20s, your family comes to terms with it. Happened to me, happened to my first cousin. It used to be that way with the parties flipped, from what I understand, but with less youthful flipping.
With all those caveats in place, I left the place singing like the big fan of democracy that I am. People were talking excitedly about the chance to caucus, too. By the time I got home, it was dinner time and we had furniture we had to rearrange, and I didn’t have a chance to do much else but moderate comments. But I was stoked. I bet a huge percentage, like a quarter to maybe even half of the voters on campus were first-time voters (suspicion confirmed by who had to get instructions on how to vote), and it was neat that they had a chance to do this during what’s actually a nail-biter of an election for Texans. We rarely matter, and by “we”, I mean any one individual Democratic Austinite. You go vote, push the button for your Democratic candidates, knowing the locally elected will win and everyone else will lose your state. In the last election, voting for Kerry was invoking an impotent rage, because you knew that it was a truly symbolic gesture, and you needed to be able to make a real gesture in such an important election. But now, we have a real chance to really impact the presidential election. It’s exciting.
Oopsie. Chuck unfortunately got into a bit of a hypocritical mess after the discovery of sexually explicit videos on his office computer, along with racist jokes and sexy emails to his executive secretary. (Newsweek):
“I think that this Court having determined that there are certain kinds of conduct that it will accept and certain kinds of conduct it will not accept may draw the line at the bedroom door of the heterosexual married couple because of the interest that this Court has that this Nation has and certainly that the State of Texas has for the preservation of marriage, families and the procreation of children. “Even if you infer that various States acting through their legislative process have repealed sodomy laws, there is no protected right to engage in extrasexual - extramarital sexual relations, again, that can trace their roots to history or the traditions of this nation.”
– Houston District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal, in arguments to the Supreme Court in 2002’s ‘Lawrence v. Texas’ case.
Last December, as part of a federal civil rights lawsuit into how justice is meted out in the county, he turned over the (partial) contents of his government e-mail account. And what a batch of e-mails it was. Black ministers called for the Republican to resign because of racist material, including a cartoon depicting an African-American suffering from a “fatal overdose” of watermelon and fried chicken. There were adult video clips and love notes from Rosenthal to his secretary, his mistress during a previous marriage. “I love you so much,” Rosenthal says in one. “I want to kiss you behind your right ear,” he says in another. “Go spend time with your family,” she admonishes him back.Now listen up you Republican Sexual Hypocrites out there — when you get busted doing hanky panky on the office PC, you can’t delete the contents — they are subject to e-discovery. Hand Rosenthal the Royal Duncecap, since he thought his massive e-deletions were not going to be detected, then he lied about it. So he’s out of a job AND faces going the clink. So sorry…
Read it after the jump.
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You know, the last time I typed out heteroSEXual, I seemed to have hit those same three keys when I typed homoSEXual, so I’m not sure why Texas Governor Good Hair Perry said this insanity to New York Times reporter Deborah Solomon when asked about his support for the ban on gays in the Boy Scouts, the subject of his book, On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For.
PERRY: …Scouting ought to be about building character, not about sex. Period. Precious few parents enroll their boys in the Scouts to get a crash course in sexual orientation.SOLOMON: Why do you think a homosexual would be more likely to bring the subject of sex into a conversation than a heterosexual?
PERRY: Well, the ban in scouting applies to scout leaders. When you have a clearly open homosexual scout leader, the scouts are going to talk about it. And they’re not there to learn about that. They’re there to learn about what it means to be loyal and trustworthy and thrifty.
SOLOMON: But don’t you think that homosexuals might also be interested in being loyal and thrifty?
PERRY: The argument that gets made is that homosexuality is about sex. Do you agree?
SOLOMON: No.
PERRY: Well, then why don’t they call it something else?
It’s finally legal to be a masturbating female in Texas. Praise the lord and pass the AA batteries.
It’s appropriate because my first thought when I read this quote:
Asked by The View executive producer and Walters business partner Bill Geddie whether it’s true that coveted endorser John Edwards doesn’t like Hillary Clinton, Halperin responded …
“Yes, that’s right. And I can tell you, he’s really skeptical of her ability to be the kind of president he wants. But, he kinda thinks Obama is….he thinks Obama is kind of a pussy … He has real questions about Obama’s toughness, his readiness for the office … he has real doubts about Obama, not just as a president, but as a general election candidate….”
was that with all the abuse of the deeply pleasant feminine organ you hear, it’s probably a good thing for women to buy theirs toys on a regular basis to introduce some balance into the world. And now it’s legal to do so in Texas!
Too delicious. Because it’s all about TEH NASTY SECKS — only if two homos are engaging in it. Unfortunately pious Chuck Rosenthal, who defended the Lone Star State’s sodomy laws may lose his job over decidedly family values-free content on his state-owned computer.
– Texas District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal, in arguments to the Supreme Court in 2002’s ‘Lawrence v. Texas’ case.
The district attorney who defended the Texas law criminalizing homosexuality before the US Supreme Court is desperately trying to keep his job following the discovery of e-mails containing sexually explicit videos, racist jokes and what is described as torrid love notes to his executive secretary.Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal (R) is facing a state investigation into the emails which were discovered on his office computer.
If he is found in violation of “official misconduct'’ he could be removed from office. The office computer also contained evidence he had used it for political purposes.
The e-mails were found during discovery in a federal civil rights lawsuit. The plaintiffs in the case forced Rosenthal into a deposition where he was required to answer questions about the e-mails under oath.
Reading that the Texas Board of Higher Education is considering accrediting The Texas Based Institute for Creation Research made me have to lay down for awhile, which meant I got behind on my work, which makes me fucking crabby. I blame the god botherers directly for my problems today, therefore. If Texas does this, then we rightfully deserve repercussions of the sort described by PZ Myers.
I hope Texas scientists can slap that Board into wakeful reality before that meeting, because if this goes through, the trust I can give Texas-trained teachers is getting flushed right down the sewer. And if Texans can’t fix this, the rest of the country has to step up and deny certification to anyone trained in Texas — their diplomas and degrees will be worth about as much as Monopoly money.
I’ve been meaning to post about this for a few days, due to my dedication to Molly Ivins’ belief that Texas is a state to be watched, because so many right wing ideas and strategies hatch here only to be exported elsewhere. It appears that the director of the statewide science curriculum Chris Corner was fired for having the nerve to forward an email that indicated that she might just believe that the science classroom is for science and not for religious indoctrination. (Needless to say, I am pretty sure the “uppity bitch” element played a part in this—Texas both has a long tradition of smart-assed liberal women and the men who will do anything to make sure we get the smackdown.) From the Statesman:
Chris Comer was director of the science curriculum for the Texas Education Agency for nearly a decade when she was forced to resign recently. Her offense, as unbelievable as it is to relate, was forwarding an e-mail message about a presentation by an author critical of the intelligent design approach to science education.
The education agency, of course, portrays the problem as one of insubordination and misconduct. But from all appearances, Comer was pushed out because the agency is enforcing a political doctrine of strict conservatism that allows no criticism of creationism……
Robert Scott, the new education commissioner, is not an educator but a lawyer and former adviser to Gov. Rick Perry. This presents an excellent opportunity for the governor and his appointee to step in firmly to put an end to ideological witch hunts in the agency.
The person who called for Comer to be fired is Lizzette Reynolds, a former deputy legislative director for Gov. George Bush. She joined the state education agency this year as an adviser after a stint in the U.S. Department of Education.
In her memo criticizing Comer, Reynolds said that Comer’s passing along the e-mail “assumes this is a subject that the agency supports.” That’s absurd, of course, but it is in keeping with enforcing a doctrine that says creationism must not be criticized.
In the shadow of our alarmingly and charmingly pink capitol building, bloggers will be gathering in July for the annual Netroots Nation conference, right here in Austin, TX. Thanks especially to the fine folks at Democracy For Texas for putting together a proposal for why our city is perfect. One huge advantage we have over Chicago is that 95% of what you’d probably want to do if you’re in from out of town for after hours entertainment is in the downtown area; everything is quite walkable. (I can’t figure out from the website what hotels and convention centers they’re using, but if they’re using our actual convention center, it’s three blocks from the famous 6th St. area.) Wireless is abundant here, food is cheap, and so is beer.
I saw not one, but two fires at ACL Festival this weekend, and luckily the motherfucker didn’t burn. One fire was apparently started when an RV hit a propane tank, and it was looking touch-and-go for awhile, like they might have to evacuate the place. Luckily, the got it under control, though 4 people were injured. The other fire was during my favorite show of the festival. Here’s my 3 favorites in order:
1) Bjork
We ended up skipping the Kaiser Chiefs to get closer for Bjork, and boy was it worth it. Bjork is just a world class talent. What amazed me was that she’s popular at all, since she’s such an odd duck and as much an avante garde artist as a pop star. For the first half of the show, she mostly stuck to her ballads, which are strange and beautiful and somehow rock the house even though by any measure, they should scare people off. Then of course she came around to playing more danceable stuff, which is when the speakers on stage left caught fire. They evacuated the stage and it was touch and go if the show would continue for a minute, but they got the fire out, and Bjork came on stage and shouted, “The speaker catches fire and we don’t care!”
One thing I found endearing was how Bjork and her all-female horn section pretty much defied any ability of the camera to objectify them—she wore an oversized gold tunic and her band wore shapeless tunics, and the only skin showing was basically her bare feet. Which was funny, because the cameraman focused on her feet like 4 times. It was like they don’t quite know what to do with a female presence on stage without body parts to focus on.
Bjork simply blew us away. She has this immense voice and somehow she manages to actually run around the stage, dancing like a fool, and still belt out these tunes. Her body must be half lungs.
You don’t need brains when you have beer.
My home state of Texas has much to apologize for, and our wretched contributions to the state of education politics is not the least of it. Decades ago, the right wing strategy of stuffing school boards full of right wing wackos—which is easy to do, since most people don’t research their school board candidates before voting—was invented and perfected in Texas. A string of nightmares followed in terms of right wing propaganda being pushed in science, history, and health classes. Some swear in East Texas they still call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression in the classroom. I know that we weren’t allowed to read about evolution or the Big Bang in my high school science classes, though my teacher got around the injunction by assigning us to read a biography on Charles Darwin, which just so happened to have the theory of evolution in it.
Present trends promise to get worse with the appointment of repugnant wingnut Don McLeroy to the president of the state school board. He’s got some sketchy ideas on the value of knowledge for a man that’s supposed to be in charge of passing it on to the young. Check out his response on the question of whether or not Texas wants to continue withholding information about contraceptive use from high schoolers, now that we’re #1 in the country in teenage pregnancies.
My home state lost a great liberal American yesterday, one who was well-loved in this area for all that she gave back to Texas in terms of environmental protection and beautification. Salon has a round-up. So does Christy Hardin Smith.
I’d do the random ten, but my iPod is packed. We start the second leg of our journey across the hellholes of Texas, starting in Midland (your President’s claim to West Texas roots!) and moving on to Lubbock today, which is, I’m fairly certain, where the silver virginity ring trend started. Lubbock has much to recommend it—flatness, you have to drive to the city limits to buy alcohol, and their dedication to abstinence-only education has netted them one of the highest STD rates in the country. Oh well, the wedding should be fun.
I mock Lubbock, because being from real West Texas, where there are mountains, it’s my duty. But as the IMSes in the audience are surely telling themselves, Lubbock has one thing to recommend it—it managed, through the miracle of rock and roll, to spawn the most enduring hipster fashion trend of all time.
Granted, Elvis Costello helped it along, but the video is worth watching because Buddy Holly is something of a deserving rock and roll legend. (Things that suck: Look for “buddy holly” on YouTube, get a bunch of Weezer.)
Another giant upside to all this—even though I am a bridesmaid, I won’t be subjected to the ritual humiliation.
No, my sister has blessedly decided to let her bridesmaids pick their own dresses. It’s an approach that has much to recommend it, unless you have some sort of desire to have your closest friends resenting you on your wedding day. Because my religion (Discoballmousetarianism) forbids opposite-sex marriage, this is as far as I can go in condoning the events of this weekend, but I have to take the time to applaud the decision to allow the bridesmaids the chance to wear something dignified.
In a move that seems on its surface to be designed to a) embarass Texas yet again and b) insult women, Texas State Sen. Dan Patrick is attempting to set the price of making a baby at $500, payable only to those women who give up their babies for adoption. I whipped out my handy calculator and figured out what Patrick is setting as the hourly wage for baby-making, and it’s at $.07 an hour. So whenever you hear an anti-choicer get all misty-eyed and sentimental about the gift of life and how it’s a woman’s most important role, remember, they value that gift as less valuable than the gift of recycling cans. And they value a woman’s “most” important role in life at 1/100th the minimum wage.
To make absolutely sure no one mistakes this bill as anything but an insult to women that Patrick deems to be big old immoral sluts, he’s only offering the $.07 an hour to women trying to have abortions. From a labor standpoint, then, what’s going on is that Patrick views women who have abortions as striking workers and is offering to counter his initial offer (you make babies for no money) with a pittance.
He hasn’t stated whether or not he wants the taxpayers to reimburse women for the wages lost to pregnancy and childbirth who forgo the abortion and put the baby up for adoption. My guess is no. Maybe he thinks women don’t work? That seems to be the only possibility, if he thinks that women will be jumping at the bit to make a whole $.07 an hour making a baby to give up for adoption.
Of course, all this really just draws attention to the rather problematic practice of adoption. It’s no secret that the number of babies available for adoption plummeted after 1973, and not just because pregnancies that would result in adoption were getting aborted. The number of single women who started keeping their babies climbed at that point as well, which may have actually done more to cut off the supply side of the adoption market than legalizing abortion, since the abortion rate didn’t really change all that much because it was legalized. What hasn’t changed is that we have a strange situation where couples who want to adopt have to “buy” the baby, often for tens of thousands of dollars in fees, but in order to take the weird transaction feel out of the situation, the woman who actually does all the labor of making the baby that is adopted doesn’t get one red cent of the money. It’s grossly unfair and tends to have the effect that you see here of simply contributing to the devaluation of women’s lives and labors.
But selling babies outright, while fairer to birth mothers, is indeed unsavory. And people who do set up the adoptions will have administrative costs that need to be covered, though I’m still unconvinced that they need to be in the tens of thousands of dollars. What to do?
The taboo solution is to ban legal adoption, especially between strangers. This doesn’t necessarily mean the end to adoption, but it would be a direct assault on a system where people spend thousands of dollars to get a baby and yet somehow women who give up babies for adoption aren’t compensated at all for their labor or for the wrenching loss of their child. Prior to the system we have now, custody was passed around, often between family members but baby selling wasn’t completely out of the question. I’m not sure that a ban on adoption as it currently exists in the U.S. is the solution, but the very fact that it never seems on the table as an option in these discussions makes me wonder why.
Open adoption seems to be a good step in the right direction. Mothers are still not getting compensated for their loss, but often, they are getting medical care and housing from the would-be parents, and they aren’t losing as much because they still have contact with their babies. Maybe open adoption will keep evolving to a point where birth mothers don’t get the short end of the stick. By the way, none of this is an attack on people who’ve adopted—you’re working in a gamed system that doesn’t even allow birth mother compensation on the table.
I was too lazy to get up this morning to watch the Intel Building implosion, but according to the newspaper, it went as planned. Six years ago, Intel started building this huge ass building in downtown Austin, and when the dot com boom busted, they left it unfinished. The skeletal frame of the building has just stood there, being an eyesore and a makeshift homeless shelter since 2001 until this morning. It’s been something of a symbol to this whole time to old school Austinites of the vapidity and stupidity of people who want to suck the life out of our town and make in another McCorporate City. As you can imagine, a lot of people turned out to enjoy watching it fall.
Over dinner last night, we talked about the Austin Chronicle’s contest to redesign the Intel building. This was agreed upon as the favorite redesign from the contest:
You can see the rest here. The actual site will be used for a federal courthouse.
Bypassing the Legislature altogether, Republican Gov. Rick Perry issued an order Friday making Texas the first state to require that schoolgirls get vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer…..
Beginning in September 2008, girls entering the sixth grade — meaning, generally, girls ages 11 and 12 — will have to receive Gardasil, Merck & Co.’s new vaccine against strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV.
When I first saw this at Feministe, I had my reservations. I have no quarrel with the idea that every young woman should get this vaccine to protect her from getting HPV and therefore cervical cancer, but the shots come in at $360 a pop, so requiring this of every young woman to get into school could mean that a lot of young women could be denied an education if their families can’t afford the shots. But in this article today, my concerns were alleviated.
Perry also directed state health authorities to make the vaccine available free to girls 9 to 18 who are uninsured or whose insurance does not cover vaccines. In addition, he ordered that Medicaid offer Gardasil to women ages 19 to 21.
What I find interesting about this article is it’s assumed outright that Perry’s support of the HPV vaccine is incongrous with his “pro-life” beliefs.
Perry, a conservative Christian who opposes abortion and stem-cell research using embryonic cells, counts on the religious right for his political base. But he has said the cervical cancer vaccine is no different from the one that protects children against polio.
Simply put, if anti-choicers were motivated to be anti-choice for the reason they say they are—i.e., their supposed adoration of “life”—they would give unchanging, unequivocal support to this vaccine because it saves lives. The position opposing the vaccine is not consistent with being “pro-life”, but it’s absolutely consistent with being anti-sex, and to the degree that you think death from cervical cancer is an appropriate “consequence” for having sex.
What astonishes me is that we’ve gotten to the point where we’re astonished that the governor of a major state would demonstrate enough common sense to say with his actions that he’s aware that most women have sex at some point in their lives, that they are not bad people because of this, and that they certainly don’t deserve to die because of this. Perry’s decision to oppose women dying needlessly from cancer shouldn’t be controversial. But I’m glad that anti-choicers are making a fuss over this, because it shows how radically misogynist they really are.
What Texas legislators imagine the world outside their front doors is like.
The Texas Lege is back in session and naturally, the legislators are back on the most important business they could possibly ever think of—trying to compete with each other in the race to be the most misogynist prick in the Lege. Sen. Dan Patrick and Rep. Warren Chisum are out of the gate to show how much they hate women, since it’s very important you don’t forget it for a second.
Freshman Sen. Dan Patrick, the Republican talk-radio host from Houston, made the abortion ban the subject of his first bill, SB186, which he filed Wednesday.
Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, filed an identical bill, HB175, in the Texas House on Nov. 13, the first day to pre-file.
The bills would ban abortion except to “prevent the death” of the mother — if Roe is overturned. They contain no exemptions for rape, incest or to protect the health of the mother.
Chisum has also tried to get rid of no-fault divorce. He’s rather obsessed with the idea that women might escape the clutches of the patriarchy, apparently. Every vagina should be under lock-up with Warren Chisum as the prison guard. In fact, as Norbizness has noted earlier to me this week, legislating the use and disposal of vaginas and the bodies they are in is a much, much higher priority to our legislature than small potatoes stuff like health care or education funding. Cunts in general are being used in ways that keep our legislators tossing and turning at night. Why right this minute, there might be a woman using her cunt as if it belonged to her for all sorts of solitary pleasures! We can’t have that. And let’s not forget one of the highlights of a prior stupid season, when a Democrat was so deeply concerned about the way that the fleshy things around teenage cunts we call “girls” were dancing that he suggested diverting state money to appoint a man in every community to be a morality cop and carefully watch the gyrations of the high school cheerleaders to make sure he didn’t find them overly arousing. (Only a 7 on the Peter Meter, not a 10, I guess.)
Seriously, the entire thing is humiliating. Sometimes, I find myself wondering how it is that we can have a legislature that seems at times so single-mindedly obsessed with the injustice that is vaginas being under the control of the women who just happen to share a body with said vaginas. Someone screwed up somewhere with this plan of letting women control their bodies like this and the Texas Lege is out to correct the screw-up. If the school system falls to hell while they do it, it’s just a regrettable casualty that could have been prevented if the evil liberals hadn’t gotten the bright idea long ago that women should be free as if they were men or something.
Outside of Texas, it appears that James Kopp, another anti-choice terrorist who is in jail now for killing Dr. Barnett Slepian, is still delusional about whether or not he’s a moral person. (Answer: no.) This little bit of self-aggrandizing behavior from him in the latest trial is just more evidence that even the worst, least defensible characters out there shouldn’t be allowed to represent themselves in trial.
An anti-abortion extremist defending himself against charges of killing a doctor apologized to the man’s widow and declined to cross-examine her Tuesday after she described how her husband fell against her after he was shot in their kitchen.
The apology came on the first day of James Kopp’s trial on federal charges that he violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances act by killing Dr. Barnett Slepian, who provided abortions.
He is already serving 25 years to life on a state conviction of second-degree murder, but a federal conviction would carry a maximum sentence of life without parole.
“Mrs. Slepian, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I respect you and your family,? Kopp, 52, said quietly.
Lynne Slepian, who had just recounted the Oct. 23, 1998, shooting for the jury, looked at Kopp but did not react.
Yeah, that he said that to her face is prime evidence he’s not sorry in the slightest. That he would hurt her again shows how little he gives a flying fuck about anything but his own ego. People like him make me sorely reconsider my opposition to the death penalty.
The drive back from my parents’ home—they live outside of Midland, TX, where George W. Bush claims to be from—features a drive straight through one of the major wind farms of the nation. It’s really neat to see all these wind-powered turbines decorating the moutaintops around my childhood home. And, not unironically, around them are the oil pumps of West Texas. These pumps have sat without moving much for years and years, but recently they’ve returned to moving slowly up and down, bringing up the energy-rich remains of ancient, decomposed animals to the surface where we can burn them off in our cars and hot water heaters.
My sister says that people are making $20 an hour rough-necking the oil rigs. This is a lot of money out there, where you can buy a passable home for $30,000.
My father has a new hobby, now that he has retired from being a firefighter. He flies a Cessna. He came down from Lubbock in his plane to visit us for an afternoon on Christmas Eve. We flew up in his plane for half an hour and landed it. I mentioned briefly that my mother’s ex-husband used to let me land his plane to Marc. He was surprised. I was surprised, too. Though I shouldn’t have been, since I remember doing it—pulling the wheel closer to my chest slightly right before we landed, feeling the weight of the plane leaning on the wheels, my stepfather grabbing the controls and making sure we came to a safe stop at the airport in Marfa. The little jerk of mass meeting wheel, gravity coming true, the fear of screwing up meeting the comfort of knowing you made it to the ground safely. Marc had never flown in a Cessna. I assured him that if anyone could fly, it would be my father, who drove a firetruck for 30 years without an accident.
Pointing past the oil pumps to the wind farm on the way to I-10, Marc says, “It would be neat to fly over the wind farms.” I agree.
My mother told me that it’s hard to get waitresses lately for the restaurant. “They quit their jobs. Their husbands make $20 an hour this year rough-necking. They don’t need to work. They can be housewives. This year.”
I signed up a couple of years ago to be on the green electricity program for Austin Electric, which pulls from the wind farms in West Texas. It cost more then, but they locked you into a price, so over time, I saved a lot of money as fossil fuel prices crept up. I tell people this. I tell them they should sign up now, because fossil fuels are never coming down in price. And back home they hope they never do, that gas stays at $2.50 a gallon and that it moves up and that those jobs rough-necking stay there as long as there’s oil in the ground.
“They voted for Bush,” I say to Marc. “They didn’t stop to think he doesn’t care if they live or die. That he sees them as hands working oil pumps, and that tomorrow if the oil is cheaper somewhere else, he doesn’t care if they don’t have work.”
He points out that oppressive regimes need the support of the oppressed to work. I look at the windmills standing on top of mountains.
“People say they are an eyesore,” I say. “I think they are beautiful.”
He agrees.
“They look like a line of crosses on the hill,” I say.
He laughs. “But you’d have to be a Titan to be crucified on one.”
I nod. I don’t say anything else. I think about how weirdly beautiful a series of crosses must have looked on a hill if you don’t look at the corpses hanging on them. I think about how the Romans crucified so many people that they would have been lined up in a row on a hill like that—or on a roadside—as a reminder of what would happen to you if you don’t obey the Roman Empire. I wonder if that would scare me into silence. I hope not.
I think about how inappropriate this is, because the windmills are not the crosses of our oppression, because the oil pumps are.
I respect everyone who rolled over for tyranny in the past because it’s so hard to see it coming.
It’s bothersome that Christians fetishize the suffering of Jesus when his torture was a part of everyday life for Romans, a decoration for their roads. If Jesus was alive today, he would be getting silently raped in a prison because he was caught with an ounce of pot in the glove compartment of his car. If he was alive, his torment would be out of sight.
The people who say wind farms are eyesores are themselves eyesores. To me, right now, they are a sign of hope.
Who knew? Apparently Austin better look out for its reputation as the Sodomite capital of the Lone Star State, because the fundies think Dallas is going to hell in a handbasket because of all the homosexual success in the election. Amanda, save Austin’s rep!
A pro-family activist in Texas says recent elections served as a wake-up call for Christians in the Dallas area. Earlier this month voters in Dallas County elected Lupe Valdez, a known lesbian, as county sheriff, and gave Democrats control of a majority of county offices.Cathie Adams, president of Texas Eagle Forum, says voters in that county must not be afraid to take politically incorrect stands on moral issues. She believes that in the wake of the recent election results, Christians activists will now start speaking out about such issues. “Hopefully we can start turning this ship around in order to do exactly what God has called us to do,” says Adams, “which is to humble ourselves and turn from our wicked ways, to seek His face — and then He will heal our land.”
Concerned Christians, she contends, must seek God’s guidance. “I can remember 30 years ago, Dallas was considered the ‘buckle’ of the Bible Belt,” Adams recalls. “What has happened? We as Christians have got to humble ourselves and turn from our wicked ways. We cannot be timid.” On Election Day earlier this month, the GOP in Dallas County surrendered 42 judgeships, the district attorney’s office, and the county judge’s seat.
Texans David Aguilar and Ernie Aguilar tied the knot in a commitment ceremony. They were featured in a three-page spread of the Sunday edition of The Galveston County Daily News, “Gay couple celebrates vows.” This wasn’t a legal marriage, since Texas has an amendment on the books, but the editors at the paper wanted to open a few eyes and tell the story from the perspective of the couple living in a state where their union isn’t recognized.
This coverage of the ceremony was, unfortunately, enough to send the bigots over the edge. The public response was swift and harsh; subscriptions were canceled and irate homo-hating letters were fired off. It was so bad that the editor, Dolph Tillotson posted a follow up column on the vitriol. Emphasis mine:
A couple of letters are after the flip.My first e-mail that morning praised the story. “It’s heartening to see that the Island remains open and tolerant …?
After that cheery start, we received scores of angry phone calls criticizing the decision to publish the story. At last count, several dozen readers had canceled their subscriptions.
Most asked why we chose to do such a story in the first place.
The answer is simple. Newspapers write about issues of topical interest that are controversial, compelling and interesting. If it appears on your ballot and if you’re likely to discuss it over coffee, we’re likely to write about it.
Gay marriage, which has been on the ballot in 20 states (including ours) and has been debated recently and hotly in the U.S. Congress and the Canadian Parliament, meets all those criteria.
Some readers criticized our telling the story through the eyes of two gay men.
To me, that perspective from inside a gay union is one of the things that gave the story value. We all know what opponents of gay marriage think, but what about those most affected by the debate?
Some readers said the ceremony we reported is illegal and banned in Texas.
Actually, it is not. Here’s the distinction. The state of Texas and the U.S. government do not recognize gay marriage, but anybody can have a ceremony declaring themselves married, or declaring just about anything.
For me, this has been an eye-opening week. Not all our callers were unreasonable. Many were thoughtful and asked good questions. However, a surprising number were blindly, nastily and profanely hateful.
In the case of a few, I saw bigotry and unreasoning hatred that would make the Ku Klux Klan blush. Then they often told me I’d offended all good Christians.
More than a few questioned my sexual orientation. Typical of these, one woman left a sneering, anonymous message on voice mail: “You must really be a queer yourself. You act like it, and you sound like it, and you’ve proved it by putting this in the paper.?
A few had the guts to come right out and ask if I’m gay. If you’re interested, my response was and remains, “My sex life is none of your business.?
I am sorry many readers were offended. I understand that, in the eyes of many, we may have overdone the story, and maybe that is so.
However, I am not sorry we published the story.
It created a needed discussion, and answering my phone this week provided new insight into the frightening degree of hatred homosexuals face routinely.
I now understand the need for hate crimes laws much better.
(more…)
Another question for the hive mind: Are Democrats functionally unable to stand up for themselves in the face of asinine Republican criticisms? I might be off-base here, but this story that’s coming out of Houston about a Democratic cave-in really got under my skin. Basically, the city health department started a campaign where they provided free flu shots at polling locations. You did not have to vote to get a shot, and you certainly didn’t have to agree to vote a certain way to get the shot. You just had to be over 50. The article says the program was targeted “in predominantly Hispanic and black neighborhoods”, which is bizarro journalist code for lower income areas. Naturally, the Republicans threw an absolute shit fit at the idea that elderly poor people could both vote and get their flu shot in one outing. Well, and to be fair, they knew as we all do that such a program might increase turnout in Democratic-voting neighborhoods.
So the mayor of Houston Bill White, who is a Democrat, yanked the program. Which means, according to this story, that people who were expecting a flu shot are going without.
Harold Dickey, 81, already had participated in that process by voting several days ago but missed out on a flu shot when he arrived at the Sunnyside Multi-Service Center on Wednesday about 10 minutes after White’s order took effect.
“Well, that’s just a bunch of so-and-so,” Dickey said when told the vaccine program was closed because of accusations that it was politically motivated. “That’s a hell of a thing to do.”
“The shot wasn’t tied to my vote in any way,” he said.
I think Mayor White is probably being disingenous when he says there was no political motivation to this program, but I guarantee that wasn’t the only motivation. Here’s what bugs me about this: Political motivations aside, the twin goals of getting the flu shot out and the unspoken goal of increasing voter turnout are two things the government does all the time, and are generally considered good things. When the Republicans started doing their usual squawking, White had a good opportunity to demonize the hell out of them by asking why they oppose racial minorities voting and/or why they oppose flu prevention. Put them on the defensive. Sure, it’s all a load, but that’s politics. Granted, he might be rolling over to make them look bad, but you could accomplish the same goal by putting them on the defensive while keeping a program going that serves two important public services.
It’s clear that this program is within the bounds of the law, according to the article.
Scott Haywood, a spokesman for Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, also a Republican, said in an e-mail that “there is nothing wrong with a health clinic being located at the same site that voting is taking place,” provided that people weren’t required to vote to get the service.
A big time Republican approved it, so there you go. Early voting places are often set up in places where people are running other errands, like grocery stores. It’s a good idea; Texas has some of the highest voter turnout rates in the country for a reason. It’s a shame to see the Republican party attacking our long tradition of prioritizing high voter turnout and letting our elections commissions think of creative ways to encourage voting. But they are doing the usual whine-a-thon routine.
“I think the program was completely motivated by a plan to turn out Democratic voters,” said Harris County Republican Chairman Jared Woodfill.
Woodfill said the program violated a provision in state law that prohibits any benefit or consideration in exchange for a vote. He said the local GOP is pledging $1,000 to provide free vaccinations the day after Election Day, and he called on the city and the localDemocratic Party to match the pledge.
$1000 probably doesn’t buy you a lot of flu shots, so basically, he’s just be an ass and wants a cookie for it. Which is Politics 101, so no big deal. The real level of assholery here has to do with the fact that the Republicans are clutching their pearls and acting just so damn offended that the idea that the Democrats might be a little extra supportive of a good program because it might result in a few extra votes for them, when it was practically yesterday that the Republicans spearheaded a full-scale gerrymandering nightmare on this state the resulted in congresspeople fleeing the state, lawsuits that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and eventually the indictment of Tom DeLay for illegal fund-raising for this effort. All of this has a not-subtle racist air to it, from the gerrymandering which targeted black and Hispanic neighborhoods to the sense that Texas Republicans are running around freaking out about the recent surge in the population of Houston of transplants from New Orleans. Now this. The underlying tension here is that for all that Texas is a huge red state, we’re becoming increasingly urbanized, and urban areas tend to swing to the left. Things are looking dark for Texas right now, but the Republican hold on this state might not be as strong as the common wisdom would dictate.
Pandas, being Satanic, love Halloween. (Uploaded by Kumicho Sean.)
Sorry about the lack of posting. I had a bit of burnout, but I’m back and ready to go.
Reading Pam’s post below, I’m put in mind of the way the fundies in Alpine, where I grew up, had this long-standing vendetta against Halloween, and more importantly, the town’s promotion of it. At the center of the controversy that should have never been was the Halloween carnival at the elementary school every year. It was actually thrown by the elementary, junior high and high school and it was generally to raise money for the band. The evening started off with a costume contest of all age divisions and then for the rest of the night, the elementary school was dominated by high school kids running around different booths like the dunking booth and all the games.
This was the sort of harmless fun that simply would not do, in the minds of the fundies of our town. In fact, I long suspect they had a suspicion of the concept of fun itself, based on an incident where a good friend of mine (who was the kid of a minister for a more liberal church) and I were invited to a youth group night at one of the thumpier churches. Lured by the prospect of punch, cookies, and cheesy parlor games, we instead found ourselves at the receiving end of a lecture on how basically everything was Satanic, but especially those long-haired hippies with their peace signs. You see, the fundies sincerely believe that the peace sign is a not-so-secret symbol of Satan worship because it’s supposedly a broken cross. When my friend, the preacher’s kid, pointed out that it’s actually a symbol for nuclear disarmament and then had the audacity to point out that Jesus Christ actually preached the value of peace, well, let’s just say it got a little frosty and we had to hustle out of there in a hurry. Now mind you, all this was happening in about 1993, which was what you might call a long ass time after the end of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam era. So why all the paranoia about long-haired hippies and peace signs, even still? My guess is it was residual guilt, a need to keep telling themselves that their support for war-mongering Republicans was okay despite their supposed religious commitment to peace. Because peace was a trap set by Satan, you know.
But I digress. I do believe it was that very same church that undertook the efforts to ban Halloween from our town, or at least our school system. The school was the place to concentrate the efforts, because the carnival was so popular that kids didn’t really do anything else. Trick-or-treating was unheard of. (In retrospect, probably due to the very real fear someone would give you a religious tract instead of candy.) My senior year of high school, the school system finally caved under the pressure and tanked the carnival. No more dunking booths or cake walks, and no more fund-raising for the band. They had a compromise of sorts—the elementary school could have a modest costume contest, but there couldn’t be any costumes of anything but pre-approved historical figures. No animals and absolutely no fairy tale-esque characters, on the notion that dressing like those things was somehow demonic.
The good news is I checked the elementary school’s calendar and the Halloween carnival looks like it’s back. I have no idea how long the reign of Bible-thumping, anti-Halloween terror lasted. My sister said the high school tried to revive it a couple years after I left, but it didn’t work out as well. Maybe they finally grew the necessary spine to stand up to the religious fanatics.
At the time all this was happening, I think we all thought that it was something of a West Texas anomaly. When I was growing up, the region had a little bit of an issue with paranoia about Satanists. Which is to say that we had a lot of people who sincerely believed that a bunch of their neighbors were secret Satan-worshippers, and that this was a problem that one had to guard carefully against. Some paranoids have the Masons, some have the Illuminati, but we were one of those places that had the mythical Satanists, who were apparently drawn to working in day cares, for some reason. (I kid around, but this belief did land innocent people in jail in El Paso.) So we had reason to believe it was the result of the agitations of our own special brand of Satanist paranoid loonies.
In retrospect, we were actually ahead of the curve in a lot of ways, which would probably be the first and last for Alpine. In the mid-90s, the fundie freakouts were safely contained on a local level, with the battles between them and reality-based people happening in the arena of school boards and city councils. Nowadays, the fundies have governors threatening to call the National Guard out to kidnap comatose people and the President of the U.S. willing to wink at their beliefs that he’s conducting a holy crusade on the Middle East. The good news is that the crazies don’t do so good when they’re in the spotlight where their nutty beliefs can actually be examined.
Happy Halloween, and here’s another picture from reader Halfmad, from her brother’s art show:
Just the sort of thing that could start another round of Satanic panics. Art by Ojimbo.
Election season, my favorite time of year.*
Boys and girls, the moral of my sad tale of the past two days is twofold: a) Early voting is a very good thing indeed and your state should adopt it and b) update your voter registration if you so much as move furniture in your house. You will thank me for this advice.
Lesson #3 is that I am not above a little bit of paranoia. And I know that this post will inspire the standard issue “Amanda is stoopid” trackbacks, but the idiot bar was set pretty high today, so anyone who does that should be at bare minimum creative about it. Yesterday, inspired by the sheer hawt sexxxiness of the act, I went to vote early, which you can do in Texas. It’s very nice and easy—unless you get told you can’t vote, as I was. “Gargle blom snerkle wah?!” was my answer and they grabbed my card and ID and ran off to the corner to make a series of intense phone calls. At the end of the intense phone call period, I was informed that I was registered in Williamson County in 2005, when I have lived (and been registered and voted) in Travis County since 2004. Steam poured out of my ears. The very nice lady at the polls gave me a phone number to follow up with our county election office, and so I followed up on that this afternoon.
After placing three phone calls to both counties and the secretary of the state’s offices, I finally pieced together what happened. Contrary to what they told me at the polling place, no one had updated my registration in Williamson County in 2005. They had mailed me a “Y’all still living here?” card to my old address and just didn’t get returned mail, so they assumed that I did still live there. However, moving from Mouse Manor to the Mouse Pad did generate returned mail in Travis County, so they purged me from the rolls. You know, where I actually live.
Now that I had that figured out, two days and 2 hours of work later, I had only to go to the county elections office and ask for a super special dumbass limited ballot. This entailed filling out more forms, calling my sister to get ancient address information from like 3 residences back (she has a memory like an elephant), sitting on my ass staring at some weird electronic stapler of some sort while I waited, and finally being presented a paper ballot to vote with. Total amount of time establishing that I had a legal right to vote, getting my ballot and voting: over 3 hours. Time to actually vote: The two seconds it takes to fill out the bubble for “Straight Democratic” at the top of the ballot.
There were times when I felt like giving up, sending in a new registration card and just hoping that it would somehow manage to make it so I could vote in the next election. Over and over again, my brain kept reminding me that mine is only one vote out of thousands in the county, millions in the state and country and it really isn’t that important, mathematically speaking. And then I remembered all the people that stood in line in Ohio last federal election in order to register a vote on machines that they knew damn well might be fixed. Because of early voting, I’ve never had to stand in a line like this:
This man feels he owns your vagina.
Thanks to Tristan for sending me this hysterical 11 minute segment from “The Dildo Diaries“. This section at least is about the ridiculous heights that are reached when politicians feel that controlling sex is a good vote-getting political football. Molly Ivins is hilariously interviewed, and the title is a quote from her.
Watch the whole thing; it’s hysterical. The sex toy store they go into is the neighborhood one for me and has been forever. It’s called Forbidden Fruit and if you’re in the Austin area, give them your business both for being good sports and also for being a female-owned, genuinely woman-positive company. They are on North Loop next to Monkey Wrench Books, which just happens to be the bookstore Kos hit on his book tour, which is totally a coincidence.
Anyway, on their visit to Forbidden Fruit, they get to deal with the bizarre array of regulations that just got upheld by the Supreme Court on what kind of dildoes one can buy and why. In case you think the visit to Forbidden Fruit in the movie is exaggerated for effect, I assure you that I happen to know for no reasons that you need to know that it’s not exaggerated at all. You really do have to sign a bunch of releases stating, basically, that you buy rabbit-shaped vibrating sex toys in order to learn how to put on condoms. Luckily, that’s an important skill to practice. Watch the whole thing. It captures a little of the paradox of living in Texas. On one hand, we have many very funny people. On the other hand, if it slips a little at the wrong point in time, you might be doing time.
Interesting case percolating through the Texas courts.
In 2000, Peggy Lee Penley’s marriage had hit the skids. She and her husband went through marital counseling, but Penley was being pulled in another direction. She was having an affair (with a man she would later marry), and she wanted a divorce.
She confided in the man she considered her therapist. Trouble was, C.L. “Buddy” Westbrook also was Penley’s pastor, and church law compelled him to pursue discipline against Penley, including informing the congregation of her adultery and instructing members to shun her.
The lawyer for the church is Kelly Shackelford, a name that crops up a lot in Texas. He’s a one-man wingnut warrior, trying to constantly make special provisions for religions while also seeking ways to erode the church/state separation insofar as chipping away at the state’s responsibility not to establish religion. He’s opposed to religious freedom when it’s your freedom not to be a Christian, but all for it when it means Christians are subject to the same laws as anyone else.
Representing Westbrook, Kelly Shackelford of the Liberty Legal Institute in Plano made a case for religious liberty, saying that if the courts interfere with the discipline doctrine of Crossland Community Bible Church, they will undermine church autonomy provided by the First Amendment and open the floodgates to disgruntled parishioners suing their pastors simply for following church doctrine.
“Who decides church discipline?” Shackelford proposed. “Judges or churches?”
I usually find myself at odds with anything that Shackelford is defending, from the 10 Commandments on courthouse lawns to his need to file nuisance suits against Planned Parenthood. But in this case I can’t help but think that he’s right, that the state has no business telling a pastor what his responsibilities to the congregation are in terms of confessional stuff.
Of course, Shackelford frames it as “discipline”, which is nonsense. If the church is actually disciplining people, it’s overstepped its bounds. The pastor has no legal right to discipline this woman; legally what he did was simply betray a confidence and kick her out of his club. The issue at stake is whether or not pastors who act as therapists should be held to a professional standard. Shackelford argues no, but he does so in such a way as to dodge the implications of that, which is that if pastors can’t be held to a professional standard, they also don’t deserve professional rights.
So really, this is self-defeating. People trust in their pastors in no small part because they assume someone with that amount of authority is being held to just such a professional standard. If this pastor wins, that sets a precedent that could be used to overturn rights to be a confessor, which means prosecuters could compel priests and pastors to testify something told to them in confidence. As it is, that sort of right and responsibility recognized by the government is exactly the sort of thing that bolsters their power. Without it, pastors are just club leaders, no more or less powerful than the head of your bowling team. Somehow I don’t think that’s what Shackelford wants.
This expose in the Texas Observer is a must-read. It’s on how, under the auspices of national security, the Rio Grande border is being militarized, and the focus is on a small town I know pretty well call San Elizario, which is right outside of El Paso. Fighting terrorism isn’t just an excuse to invade Iraq, it seems. It’s also an excuse to treat a friendly neighboring country like it’s an enemy, and worse, to treat our fellow Americans like they’re criminals for the crime of being Hispanic in a heavily Hispanic area of the country.
From January to June, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department jumped the firewall between local and federal authority, setting up Operation Linebacker blockades in colonias and towns like this one, asking even U.S. citizens who looked Mexican to present papers…..
On a July morning, as Rubio spoke under a shade tree outside the family’s trailer home, his 11-year-old son, Jose Luis, tinkered with a car engine, and a lone, white egret was the only other creature visible in the expanse between Rubio’s yard and the line that marks the border. “What if a Minuteman mistakes me and shoots me?? he asks. Then there’s the Guard. “They can make a mistake with somebody taking a stroll, because now there’s too many guns and too many people. Somebody will say, ‘I’m an American, you can’t tell me what to do,’ and there’ll be trouble. Sometimes you get mad when you get asked so much for papers. You feel racism starting to climb. You can feel the tension.? Being asked for papers to go to the store “felt like those countries you hear about where soldiers and police are taking over and can search you,? says Rubio, whose parents immigrated from Chihuahua when he was six. He votes, and like other residents, is pleased when he reads the Border Patrol has busted drug runners. “They could hurt my son,? he says. But Rubio feels less ownership of his neighborhood now, questions why it’s feeling like a front line, and senses danger. “In a war situation you’re looking at people and asking, ‘Friend or foe?’ Well, now you’re getting people coming in from different parts, the Guard and Minutemen, and here we all look the same. In a war zone they don’t know who is who.?
The fear of violence is not a hallucination. But it’s not just about the problems of the Guard harassing citizens who have darker skin than Michelle Malkin deems appropriate for U.S. citizens. It’s also a matter of the relative innocence of the vast majority of undocumented people that are hanging out on the U.S. side of the border. San Elizario is east of where the Rio Grande looks like it’s the river version of the Berlin Wall, and like most of the sparsely populated desert areas of West Texas, the border has a long tradition of being permeable. People on the border often have family living on both sides of it and there’s a lot of moving back and forth, which has roughly the same dint of evil to it as if you were talking about New Jersey and New York.
But despite the fact that in the reality-based world, people move back and forth constantly over the border for innocent reasons like seeking work or being with family, Gov. Perry is hidi