THEOCONIA: A CENTRAL OHIO THEOCON REPORT

Did Bill Clinton Invent Oral Sex As We Know It Today?

2012-01-29T16:44:00.001-05:00

Al Gore may claim to have invented the Internet, but now we've got Bryan Fischer from the American Family Association claiming (almost) that Bill Clinton invented oral sex. Not only that, but he is personally responsible for an alleged increase if HPV "neck and head cancer" in the US caused by , according to Fischer, oral sex..

See, an entire generation of "young people" who had never even thought of sex of any kind, decided to take up oral sex as a hobby after hearing about the Oval Office diversions of Bill Clinton and his devil in a blue dress, Monica Lewinsky.

If Bryan Fischer thinks that teenagers imitate what the president does, then we hope more than we already do that Newt Gingrich isn't elected in November.

Roe Turns 39: Columbus Protests

2012-01-24T02:42:00.000-05:00

This now appears in the Columbus Free Press in a slightly different form.

Monday marked the 39th anniversary of Roe v Wade. While most local anti-abortion big shots were doing their annual March for Life in Washington with accompanying photo ops, Greater Columbus Right to Life held down the fort here with a 45 minute rally on the steps of the statehouse.with few photo ops. Except for me, Channel l0 appeared to be the only local media covering the event, but there's nothing on the station's news site.With Occupy Columbus camped out on the corner of S. High and E State, I imagined interesting possibilities, but the occupiers, unlike the Occupy folks in Washington, DC who disruppted a "youth event" held by Brian Kemper, Patrick Mahoney, Lila Rose, and friends, decided to sit this one out.

I've attended several of these January outdoor events in the last few years. Usually, within 10 minutes my fingers, even in two pairs of gloves are ready to call it off This year, however, the temperature was in the lower 50s and the crowd knew it . About 175 adults and a couple dozen small children celebrated as Grove City State Rep.and keynoter Cheryl Grossman (R H23) ran off a list of abortion-curbing bills that either passed last year or are now in the hopper. Ohio ProLife Actoin's Heartbeat Bill, (HB 125), which aims to ban virtually all abortion in the state, got special props. While Ohio Right to Life and Ohio ProLife Action duke it out over turf in the press and in the lobby, GCRTL and Grossman, gave big hugs to the state organization and the Ohio ProLife Action break-offs. .No seams showing..

Speaker Denise Salyers a self-defined "victim of the abortion industry," following the de riguer line of "abortion harms women"" described with great detail and occasional tears how her 1984 abortion ruined her life with drugs, drinks, and suicidel until she was redeemed by God 24 years later.

The rally, as usual, embodied ecumenical catharsis. The Protestant element of Parsley-type exurbanites and parents with neatly turned-out daughters in Modest Apparel jumpers were joined by three nuns actually dressed like nuns, and a gaggle of deSales High School jocks and cheerleaders. But this year, adults ran the show. Unlike past January Roe events, billed as youth events, there was no throng of girls and boys from Fostoria and Marion comparing Planned Parenthood to Hitler and making euphemistic prayer huddles;.and no middle school adoptees at the podium pimping adoption as a cure for abortion. Strangely, adoption wasn't mentioned at all.

All photographs by the author

Support Occupy Columbus - January 23, 2012

2012-01-23T16:35:00.000-05:00

I dropped by the Occupy Columbus compound for a few minutes today on my way to the Columbus Right to Life rally. . Due to COTA construction of a much-needed bus shelter in front of the Statehouse, (though it will spoil the view) the occupiers have moved to the far south end of the block, (S High and E State) which strikes me as a more strategic location, at least as far as public interaction is concerned. The bus-waiting wallsitters never seemed very engaged with OC when they were next to the McKinley Memorial. and the bus stop. The weather was unseasonably warm, the compound looked well organized, and a small library has been added.When I was there three people work staffing the tent or the sidewalk. While I thought the proximity of the the compound to the CRTL rally had interesting potential Occupy Columbus decided to stay out of it; probably a sound decision, though it could have been fun....

Please consider stocking the Occupy Columbus larder. I dropped off a jar of cranberry juice and a box of Earl Grey. They also need need money and PEOPLE. After the rally I'd planned to hold a sign while I waited for the bus, but the bus arrived about on minute after I did.

I took a couple pictures which I'm posting here.

I'll have a short report on the CRTL rally up later today.

Ohio Right to Life PAC Primary Endorsements

2012-01-06T16:27:00.000-05:00

Ohio Right to Life PAC, has published its list of endorsements for the March 5, 2012 Ohio primary. . The endorsements are for contested seats only. Since endorsement lists sometimes disappear from webpages after elections, I'm posting the list below for the record. .Incumbents are in italics.

1. Ohio has been redistricted and some incumbents may currently represent a district other than what they are now running in.

2. Some incumbents may be term limited and are now running for the opposite house.

For more than 15 years, Ohio Right to Life has been the chief opponent of the restoration of the right of all Ohio adoptees to access their own original birth certificates.

Ohio Right to Life PAC Endorsements for the March 6, 2012 Primary Election

Ohio Senate Endorsements

Republican State Representative Randy Gardner - Senate District 2
Republican State Senator Peggy Lehner (Honor Roll Status) - Senate District 6
Republican State Representative Joe Uecker (Honor Roll Status) - Senate District 14
Republican Candidate Paul Hall - Senate District 14
Republican State Senator Jim Hughes - Senate District 16
Republican State Senator Tom Patton - Senate District 24

Ohio House of Representatives Endorsements

Republican State Representative Peter Stautberg - House District 27
Republican Candidate Mike Wilson - House District 28
Republican Candidate Lou Blessing, III - House District 29
Democratic Candidate Terry Tranter - House District 31
Democratic Candidate Daniel Troy - House District 60
Republican Candidate Randy Law - House District 64
Republican Candidate John Becker - House District 65
Republican Candidate Doug Green - House District 66
Republican Candidate Rick Herron- House District 66
Republican Candidate Nick Owens - House District 66
Republican State Representative Andrew Brenner - House District 67
Republican State Representative Margaret Ruhl - House District 68
Republican Candidate Rick Perales - House District 73
Republican Candidate Ron Hood - House District 78
Republican Candidate Monty Lobb - House District 78
Republican State Representative John Adams - House District 85
Republican State Representative Jeffrey McClain - House District 87

If you're in House District 78, watch out for Monty Lobb. A few years ago he was Ken Blackwell's shadowy chief of staff and mini-me. I wrote about him here: Ohio Christian Alliance: Ohio Asst. Sec. of State Monty Lobb and "Swiftboat" Jerry Corsi to Raise Money for Re-formed Christian Coalition of Ohio.

David Barton: oopsy!

2011-12-19T03:34:00.000-05:00

Looks like somebody not only needs a history lesson but a spelling leson, too.

The Adoption Journey: Adoption is an Act of Obedience

2011-11-30T23:36:00.001-05:00

To celebrate National Adoption Awareness Month, Bethany Christian Services, Lifesong for Orphans ("Bringing Joy and Purpose to Orphans"), and Lifeline Children's Services.have unselfishly launched a new webpage, The Adoption Journey Project. a resource for couples "starting to think about adoption" aka reeling in more fish.

The November 30, 2011 Adoption Journey Project press release informs us that most adoption agency websites don't post information about adoption needed by new or thinking-about-it paps. Who knew? I've never seen an agency webpage that wasn't full of answers in search of questions.

From the Adoption Project press release:

"The vast majority of resources being published by adoption agencies and supporting organizations are for families that are either close to or have committed to the adoption process already," said Marc Andreas, Vice President of Marketing at Bethany Christian Services, the largest adoption agency in the country.

"We recognize that couples just starting to think about adoption have completely different perspectives and needs regarding the discernment process for adoption in their lives. This project will provide tangible resources to help support them and the beginning of their own adoption journey."

Among these resources is a creepy video under the "For Pastors & Ministry Leaders tab, featuring Tony Dungy, former head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts (2007 Super Bowl champs ) and his wife Lauren, pimping the "orphan crisis" generic or branded. Also there, you'll find a download link for an Orphan Sunday kit. Since I doubt Bastard Nation would count as a ministry with these folks, I opted out.. Anyway, I already know quite a bit about Orphan Sunday, the "orphan crisis" ande the weepy orphan evangelizing projects operating out of churches and ministries. They hate UNICEF and Save the Children for trying to keep families and culture together and holding children "hostage" in their home country; thus thwarting God's work and the Great Commission. Adoption is their stairway to heaven--a lifelong job of "gospel proclamation"--and without it they may have to pass out blankets to the homeless or worst yet, mind their own business.

Among Dungy's comments:

...This picture is a vivid reminder of what God has done for us--adopting us into his family.

...God was calling us down this path so adoption became an act of obedience.

...We won't rest until the orphan crisis has ended.

...We as the church ca be the solution.

...Lauren tells us:

Because our church talked about it, adoption felt natural to Tony and me.

I guess we should be happy their church doesn't talk about arson or abstract expressionism.

Mr an Mrs. Dungy don't explain why if the orphan crisis is so out of control that Bethany and every other adoption agency in the country continue to create more "orphans" by strip mining perfectly good mothers of their newborns. Isn't the point to decrease the orphan population, not increase it?

Maybe scarier is the page of adopter testimonials found toward the bottom of the front page. While a couple couples (and its always het couples-no singles or queers need apply; bi-racial is OK unless you belong to the Gulmare Freewill Baptist Church in Pike County, Kentucky) are as "normal" as the Bethany family can be, most range from disturbed to the bizarre. See, these people have no agency. God commands and they obey, whether they can afford a kid or have no desire to take a trip to AdoptionLand.. And those who have decided to take the journey, without asking God's approval first, are delighted when he high-fives them. Funny about that. God wants us all to adopt and be adopted. .

Meet the Hoffmans. Reading their story forces the Dear Reader to imagine a team of doctors having a have-at- it with the Mrs: as they discuss "God's fingerprint: on her physical body:"

Our plan was to start our biological family in 2005. But after over a year of trying and failing, we decided to visit the Emory Reproductive Center. After a few tests, we discovered that Laura had a unique fingerprint of God on her physical body: she had one kidney and half a uterus. The doctors, undeterred, kept telling us that “We can still get you pregnant.”

Then there's the Walters who stay overnight in a hospital suite and get prayed over by the hands of fussy staffers. We're not sure where Baby Ernie's bios get to stay, if they stay at all, since he was born in the back of a van in the hospital parking lot. Mr and Mrs. Ernie'sParents are too poor to keep him and trying to get the rest of their kids back from Children's Services:

We were shown to a spacious suite and invited to stay overnight. One by one, hospital staff members familiar with Ernie’s birth came by to introduce themselves. “I’m not working today,” a physician said. “I just wanted to meet you.” Each visitor spoke about his or her personal belief and rejoiced with us in God’s faithfulness. A nurse at the end of her shift knocked softly. “Could I pray with you before I leave?” She placed her hands in ours and uttered sweet words of thanksgiving.

There we were in a public hospital savoring the fellowship of believers. How could they know about our faith? It seemed that God was sending His servants to affirm His call upon our lives.

The Griswalds--sorry, I mean the McCollums-- parade around Hanoi with their acquisition strapped to them: No mention of friendly Vietnamese greetings, though we're sure they got them, just like Clark and Ellen did.

Finally there's the Robinson family gettin' down with adoptitude. Get thee behind me Satan!

Greg and I have found there is a spiritual war waging with adoptions. When you commit to adopt, just be prepared for battle because Satan does not want these kids in homes. There has always been a battle for the lives of little ones. From parents mindlessly sacrificing their children to Molech (god of the Ammonites) in the Old Testament to the New Testament, you can see the battle for children, and I think we are still battling for the lives of children. And I think the church has to stand up and fight for these little ones. It’s going to be painful, and it’s going to hurt. You’re going to come to the point where there’s nothing in your power that you can do. It’s total reliance on God.

I am sure that if both sets of my parents had been subjected to this crap (my natural mother adopted two kids 10 and 12 years after I was born and my natural father adopted his stepson), they'd both have cheerfully gone childfree.

Of all the reasons to adopt that I can think of, salvation isn't one of them. The idea, in fact, is downright insulting.

Many years ago I knew an LDA who learned he was adopted only when he decided to go into broadcasting, not the family auto parts business.

Why do you think we adopted you? Here's why. To take over the business.

The spin from our new breed of evangelical adopters:

Why do you think we adopted you? Here's why. To get into heaven. .

And how would you feel, if you were an ill-behaved ungrateful bastard who'd taken an axe to their stairway to heaven?

Ohio Right to Life: Thankful for Adoption Yet No Rights for Adoptees

2011-11-24T21:29:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving!If you're one of those who don't feel you have much to be thankful for this year, think again --unless you're in or from Ohio, that is.

Ohio Right to Life wants you to be thankful for adoption!

ORTL, in fact, is so thankful for adoption that it got together a few of its friends to tell us how thankful they are for it and us--who make their miracle happen.

ORTL fo decades has been the single greatest impediment to restoring records access to Class Bastard Ohio.

ORTL loves us so much that it wants to protect us from our birth certificates and our rights.

ORTL's hobby horse trumps the rights of thousands.of Ohio adoptees.

ORTL: "Promoting Life" while screwing adoptees and their families.

A drawing of her family

by Olivia Gonidakis

This Thanksgiving, Ohio Right to Life is grateful

for the gift of adoption as a loving and life-saving alternative to abortion.

Because November is National Adoption Month, it is important to take time to celebrate the selfless sacrifice of birthmothers and the gift of children. Join us by reading words of thanks from members of the pro-life family who have been adopted or who have chosen to adopt.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving,

Ohio Right to Life

Secretary of State Jon Husted

"Right now, across the country, I know there are young women agonizing over the decision to have a baby they cannot properly care for or to have an abortion. I want them to know there is another option in adoption. Organizations like Ohio Right to Life can connect women to the services they need to get through the pregnancy and give birth to a child that will be adopted, loved and go on to lead a happy life. I can tell you this first hand because that is my story; I was adopted 44 years ago and I owe all that is good in my life to the woman I barely knew, but who gave me the gift of life."

Mike Gonidakis, Executive Director, Ohio Right to Life

"God's perfect plan for our family was through the blessings of adoption. We are so very thankful for our daughter Olivia as well as the sacrifice and life-saving decision her birthmother made. As a society we must continue to promote adoption and offer compassion and support to both birthmothers who place their child for adoption and families who adopt these wonderful babies."

Darlene Yost, Wife of State Auditor Dave Yost

"The Yost house is a bit chaotic this week in preparation for Thanksgiving. I'm going overboard (Dave says, as usual) for our family gathering. I get that from my mother. But, not inherited through blood, for you see, I'm adopted. Chosen.

As we approach this day where we reflect about what we are thankful for, Mom and Pop are high on that list. I am who I am because they chose me - and made me their daughter. Their own.

It is only recently that I realize how grateful I am to the woman who gave me birth. It occurs to me that she chose for me as well. She chose life. I pray she is as blessed by family as I have been."

The Speicher Family, Pro-Life Supporters

"We are profoundly grateful that God formed our family through the gift of adoption. Our four children are the joy of our life! We hope in some small way that our example will encourage mothers in difficult circumstances to choose life and couples to be open to the blessing of adoption. Happy Thanksgiving!"

Interested in Adoption in Ohio?

We are very grateful for all of the assistance provided to families seeking children, and to children seeking families. Learn more about adoption from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services by clicking HERE.

The mission of Ohio Right to Life is to promote and defend the right to life of all innocent human beings, from the time of fertilization until natural death.

To learn more about Ohio Right to Life please visit our website at www.ohiolife.org. Visit our blog at www.ohiolifewire.org.

Adoption v Abortion: Pimping Adoptees for a "Higher Purpose"

2011-11-11T03:33:00.001-05:00

I did not intend to write as much as I have about abortion in this month of National Adoption Awareness but the subject just keeps getting in the way.

Abortion is the wild card that pops up in even the best laid plans of reformists and activists. In some weird fit of cognitive dissonance, anti-aborts claim that the fetus shares the same rights as the already born, but reject the notion that if this sacradotaled fetus is brought to term, born and adopted that it should be treated equal under law once it is secularized. In other words, once the word becomes flesh, it's on its own.

Adoption and abortion, of course, have little in common, though the increasingly Gospelized adoption industry and the anti-abortion corpos make a seamless fit. Together they present adoption as a happy win-win-win solution for the principals involved, when they are actually manipulating, propagandizing, redeeming and reconstructing these principals for the higher purpose of political pimping.

It's bad enough as is, but during National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM), we get a booster shot of happy-dappy juice from the evil twins.

STUDENTS FOR LIFE
Just as NAAM was gearing up, I received a tweet from Students for Life which led me to the group's "Adoption, Another Option" webpage.

Students for Life has been around since the mid-1970s under different names, but became a centralized, brick and mortar organization in 2006 when it located in Arlington, Virginia, hired a professional staff, and started it's "historic Pro-Life Field Program." According to its website:

Since 2006, Students for Life has helped start over 350 new student pro-life organizations and trained hundreds of previously existing student pro-life groups. Since 2006, the organization has trained over 7,000 pro-lifers at its national conference, weekend training seminars, and one-on-one campus training.

Students for Life is not a student organization, no matter what it says.The president of the Students for Life board is Leonard Leo, the Executive VP of the Federalist Society. Executive Director Kristan Hawkins worked for the 2004 Bush/Cheney Re-election Campaign and served as a Bush appointee to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Assistant Director, Tina Whittingthom, came to Students for Life from Rock for Life (see below). Her husband is Rock for Life director, Erik Whittington, Go to these links for more information on the board and staff.

Students for Life posts glowing endorsements from numerous rightest and domionist organizations and individuals, including some on record as opposing obc access for adoptees: Phyllis Schafly, founder of the Eagle Forum, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Mary Cunningham Agee, founder of the Nurturing Network, former VP of the NCFA board, and almost (after Bill Pierce's first retirement from NCFA) CEO and president of the National Council for Adoption.

Students for Life, not surprisingly, argues with very little wiggle room that an unplanned college-aged pregnancy (their demographic target) can lead only two ways: abortion or adoption. Keeping a kid gets little traction with these folks. They consider the adopted class, lucky indeed to have not been sucked scrapped and drained down the sink.

Pro-lifers should rejoice with a person who has been adopted…that person’s very life may have been saved because of adoption!

Students for Life also portrays us as emotional hard asses: (my bold)

Adoptees are some of the strongest people in the world. They not only have to push through the emotional struggle of not knowing their birth parents, but they sometimes look so different from their family that they must overcome the idea that complete strangers know that they came into their family through adoption.

But wait a minute! Adoptees are forced "to push through the emotional struggle of not knowing their birth parents" because some of Students for Life's biggest supporters don't think we have a right to know those birth parents and will stop at nothing, including calling adopted people "baby killers" and "homewreckers" to keep our records impounded and sealed. Please explain yourself, Students for Life!

Students for Life also commiserates with adopters who fall under the scrutiny of nosy strangers:

Looks of confusion when the skin of their child is a bit darker than their own, a blondie found among a family of red heads, or a nose that doesn’t quite look like Mom or Dad’s.

To celebrate NAAM, Students for Life suggests several soft tactics to use on college girls who get themselves in trouble. These fun activities include sidewalk chalking, promoting adoption songs (Mary Gauthier need not apply), and showing adoption movies such as ( hold on!) NCFA favorites Bella, Juno and the classic Penny Serenade.

Adoptee Nina shortly before losing her bedroom

Longtime readers of Bastardette may remember my assessment of the latter film--one of the scariest adoption movies ever made, and nary a head chopped off by a bitter bastard. After Dear Viewers invest themselves emotionally in 8 years of adoption drama with Irene Dunn, Cary Grant (in a stellar performance) and the wonderful Edgar Buchanan as Applejack (an old adoptee), and a happy ending is finally on the horizon, Adoptee Nina is struck down by that mysterious illness of which movie children are prone. Six weeks later, after considering divorce, we find Mom and Dad painting over Nina's room, stripped of all her belongings, to make room for ~~a replacement~~ an older boy--what they really wanted all along anyway. (Newborn adoption wasn't so popular back then). This film would have really messed with my mind if I'd see it when I was Nina's age. No doubt the same people who gripe and whine about Anne of Green Gables love this film.

You can also flyer your campus with incorrect information about "celebrity adoptees." downloaded from the Students for Life site. For instance, What do Willie Nelson and Eleanor Roosevelt have in common?" (Love the High Times graphic!) Maybe Willie and Eleanor smoked it up at Val-Kill? No, that's not what they have in common! The "correct" answer is supposed to be "they're adopted" But they're not. adopted. Both were reared by grandparents. BTW, Eleanor had a kept bastard half brother.

You can see the flyer catalogue here. . If you're going to pimp, do it right. I'll probably write more about purposeful celebrity adoptee mis- disinformation later this month..

FEMINISTS FOR LIFE
Feminist for Life, dusts off an old issue of its American Feminist: (Fall-Winter, 2003-2004)-- its Rewarding Motherhood "family album" issue-- on the joys of motherhood.
.
Relinquished moms discuss satisfaction with open adoption; married moms, some with large families, write of the rewards of rearing 9 children; adopters speak of their struggle and good fortune in acquiring some courageous woman's child; and adoptees thank their heroic mothers for giving them life. The curious thing about this is that with the exception or one woman, seeking an abortion or actually having one, never seriously crossed the minds of the writers. The exception: an abortion due to pregnancy complications.

Celebrity Feminists for Life front woman, actress Patty Heaton tells us "women who experience an unplanned pregnancy also deserve unplanned joy." She challenges her readers to "take up the challenge of sacrificing for these women, too."

I didn't find any mention of sacrificing something to keep women and newborns out of the adoption system, though at least one teenage writer actually manged to do it.

ROCK FOR LIFE
Rock for Life is a "project" of the American Life League, an amicus in Doe v Sundquist. I have written about ALL and its founder Judie Brown here , here., here, and here with a couple more marginal mentions elsewhere. Judie is one of those Grundys haunting the American landscape, that can't stand the thought that somebody somewhere is having sex for non-procreative purposes. D W Griffith would have had fun with her. Brown was particularly aggrieved when Planned Parenthood International sent a shipment of condoms to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

Rock for Life's mission, according to its webpage, is "promoting human rights for all people, born and preborn, by engaging the culture through music, education and action." Their page includes an endless list of "pro-life bands" that, with the exception of Skillet, no one has ever heard of unless they listen to Radio U. Maybe.

The folks at Rock for Life are so convinced that adoption saves lives, though no one says how they know this, that it offers this attractive lime green Adoption Saves Lives hoodie for only $35.00.

Rock for Life, in fact, has a busy t-shirt ministry.

Gloming on Steve Jobs death, Rock for Life director Erik Whittington profers his opinion:

What if Steve Jobs was conceived today? Since his parents weren’t married and both attending college there is a much higher chance he would have been aborted. Could his mother of withstood the pressure from her friends, her classmates and her family members to abort? Would she of withstood the pressure of a Planned Parenthood abortion salesperson telling her pregnancy is just a blob of tissue & abortion is harmless? Many college mothers these days choose abortion over life for their child. The abortion rate for college aged mothers is astronomical. I would easily bet my iPhone4 that if Steve Jobs would have been conceived today he most likely would have been aborted...

...Adoption is powerful! Without the willingness of his mother to place her son in an adoptive home AND for Steve’s adoptive parents to take him as one of their own who knows how the world would be today. Would we have Apple, Inc.? What would we do without our Macbooks, iPhones, iPads, iTunes, etc., etc.?

A Rock for Life video features Chris, 15, who breaks my heart with the bill of BS he's been sold by his adoptive parents who claim his adoption was finalized two weeks before he was scheduled to be aborted! This may be the saddest adoption video I've ever seen.We're here for you Chris!

For some reason, many adoption reformists show little interest in getting to know the enemy. .I was surprised no long ago when someone tried to tell me that the abortion v adoption issue was dead. I can't remember who said it, but she must have been a liberal. Abortion v adoption is very much alive, and any adoptee rights activist--no matter what his/her beliefs are about abortion (some oppose it) had better know the territory in to which they are walking. God may not make mistakes, but it's up to people like Students for life, Patty Heaton, and Rock for Life to make sure the babies from the wrong tummies end up in the right families. If you think any different, then you're just a whiner...or worse.

It is absurd, of course, that in the second decade of the 21st century Class Bastard has to spend valuable time debunking adoption myths and defending our right to our own birth records. Tonight, for instance, I'm engaged in a "discussion" on the Conservative News Network cite regarding records access I've been told off. but good! hrumpf! The restoration of adoptee rights is a "justification for killing babies."

I remember when Pat Robertson pulled that one 15 years ago when Sundquist was running in Tennessee. It didn't get him very far.

This is from a paper I presented at the American Adoption Congress annual meeting in 1997 and again at the Bastard Nation conference in 2002. I thought about paraphrasing it, but I think it needs to be quoted in full:

In the July 2, 1996 edition of The 700 Club, Jay Sekulow, playing to Robertson's bumpkin straight man, contended that the abortion rate would rise in relation to the rate of adoption records made available to adoptees. He even espoused a modified version of the American Life League's abortion conspiracy theory--that, is pro-abortion organizations were going stealth or setting up front groups to push their agendas. Thus, adoptee rights activists and organizations were simply ungrateful bastards with no legitimate beefs and were either knowing agents of abortion or dupes.

The following conversation is taken from the official transcript of that show published at the time on the 700 Club's home page, since erased. Sekulow certainly knew the difference between open records and open adoption, but I have no idea if he made a slip of the tongue, intended to smear openness in adoption in general--or if, in fact if he was implying weirdly that open adoption causes abortion. There is no doubt, though that he was referring to records access.

Jay Sekulow

SEKULOW: ...The significance is that we expect that those who are in favor of abortion, those in the legislature that are pro-abortion, those that are trying to get this whole abortion agenda through, were looking at the Tennessee case and say "Gee, we should do this everywhere because they picked a great name, open adoption, but...

ROBERTSON: Do you really think that they had in view more abortions and less adoption Do you really feel that?

SEKULOW: Pat, they have had to. Can I give you tangible evidence? No, but I can give you the legal evidence. We looked at cases in the Untied States where judges from a Court of Appeals all over the country said, "this type of legislation opening up these records like this is pro-abortion." Those were the words a court said. There's a North Carolina Court of Appeals, Louisiana Court of Appeals, Texas Court of Appeals. These same types of bills were being put forward and the courts said, "The legislation is not pro-life. They said the opposite. They said, "This is pro-abortion This will encourage abortions and discourage adoptions." So they had to know that

Yet nine months later on April 2, 1997 edition of MSNBC's The Site (no longer online), ACLJ's Chief lawyer Larry Crane conceded that the ACLJ did not intend to use evidence they had gathered from a New South Wales study which showed that although abortion rates went up the first year open records were in effect, they declined steady after.

We're not relying on statistical evidence for our case, and we are not required to do to.

That's because there is none. Not that it makes any difference to the "for Life"(trademark) crowd who simply consider adopteess, ponceout of the womb, as another step to tramp on as they ascend their stairway to heaven.

Glenn Beck: Redux

2011-11-09T15:04:00.001-05:00

Ohio Right to Life now has a collection of pictures up on YouTube of the Glenn Beck's art project I reported on last week. Go below for a closer look at Beck, his faithful chalkboard, and 2500 fawning fans

Beck, like Herman Cain, the soon-to-be-dumped-wannabe-prez, is a performance artist --or tries to be. He lacks the irony to pull it off except for the artless crowd that represents American culture today..

Here, for instance, is Beck a few months ago on Fox, calling for a pre-emptive US strike on England to prevent it from re-colonizing America.. It's all about the Beatles, doncha know:

The Brits are in cahoots with the Chinese. They’re aligned with the Islamo fascists who also want to take over the world. Together it’ll spread into India, which Britain also used to own. The Brits, the Chinese, the Arabs and the Indians, everyone in this caliphate cabal is a tea drinker—that’s the link that ties the conspiracy together, they use tea as a form of mind control.” Beck said. “The fall of Egypt is not about freedom, it’s not about democracy, it is about an Islamic state, too much tea and rock and roll.”

Although I don't know ORTL director Mike Gonidakis, I am pretty sure he'd not personally endorse this lunacy. From what I hear he's pretty smart, too The only logical reason I can come up with as to why Beck was invited to raise money for ORTL is that people will pay good money to be flim-flamed, and the larger the bam the bigger the boodle..

Ain't That a Shame? Pat Boone shills for an Issue 2 Yes.

2011-11-08T00:29:00.000-05:00

Plunderbund got ahold of a robocall from Pat Boone urging us to vote YES on Issue 2

According to Pat, Issue 2 is opposed by a gazillion dollars worth of special interest boodle. If defeated, Oho's firefighters and cops will be thrown out of work. I can't cut and paste just the audio, so here is the link Plunderbund's piece.

I am distantly related to Pat Boone When I was a kid I thought it was pretty cool. I even had a pair of white bucks in his honor. Do you have any idea how much work it takes every day to keep them spiffy? Or how big they make your feet look?

Now Cousin Pat sounds like a tired old man.This is all the better K-sick could come up with?. I was at least expecting Chuck Norris.

Informed Consent v Informed Consent: Redux

2011-11-05T19:24:00.003-04:00

Hypocrisy boiled to the top yesterday as Ohio Right to Life client-in-chief, governor John Kasich, signed HB 63. The bill, sloganeered to "protect parental rights and save lives" was designed to "tighten" Ohio's parental consent loophole that allows unmarried underage women to get the juvenile court's permission, rather than, their parents, to undergo an abortion.

Hypocritical because the same politicians who cry foul over the judicial bypass for abortion, claiming it interferes with family communication and the ability of parents to oversee their daughters' medical needs, also support Ohio's "safe haven" law, which encourages teen women to carry a secret pregnancy to term with no parental knowledge or medical monitoring, give secret birth alone under dangerous conditions, and then anonymously abandon the secret baby at an ER or fire station with no questions asked.

Nobody will ever have to know you had this baby.

ORTL director Mike Gonidakis celebrating its latest victory told the Columbus Dispatch:

Ohio is witnessing the blessings of having the most pro-life governor and general Assembly in our state's history working together to save lives.

Ya mean like this (from my earlier Daily Bastardette and Theoconia blogs) Mike:

In the bizarro world of Ohio Right to Life, parental involvement in teen pregnancies when "saving fetuses" is involved, is essential to the maintenance of “traditional family values” Involvement is eliminated in the name of “traditional family values” when it comes to the safety and welfare of young pregnant women, just delivered mothers, and just born babies as long as the babies are scheduled to be dumped on an ER counter.

Under the banner of informed consent, Ohio Right to Life insists on ~~scaring~~ -warning pregnant women with a laundry list of what it claims are the harmful affects of abortion, At the same time it ignores the harmful affects of secret pregnancy on the fetus, the harmful affects of unattended secret birth on baby and mother, and the harmful affects of child abandonment. on both. Moreover, it does not address the legal ramifications of "safe haven." which are beyond the scope of this piece, but include protracted legal proceedings including closed court hearings, the the filing of a deserted child complaint, and expensive DNA testing if reunification is desired.

HB 63 was signed with much fanfare that included a bevy of ORTL politicians, supporters and the inevitable troop of babies that appear at all ORTL functions. (There was even a baby at the Glenn Beck installation.)

Hanging with Glenn Beck So You Don't Have To

2011-11-03T03:12:00.000-04:00

A slightly difference version of this article appears in the Columbus Free Press.

Glenn Beck is more dreadful than you think.

Thursday night (October 27) I attended Glenn Beck's performance piece at Vets Memorial. His appearance was sponsored by Ohio Right to Life to kick off its annual state conference and fill its operating budget (according to Beck) for next fiscal year. Just buying a ticket wasn't good enough. In a word of faith moment, Beck ordered us to pull out the donation envelopes from our programs and hold them tight for the next couple hours as he inspired us to stuff them with cash, check or credit card number. From the looks of the beg buckets held by ORTL volunteers standing beneath the exit signs when it was all over, Beck had indeed miraculously turned envelopes into cash.

Lying in bed the next morning I wondered just what I could write about Beck. There must have been something in his 90 minute one man show that was revealing or quotable or enlightening, or entertaining.. Alas! There is none. For 90 minutes Beck paced the stage, implored, and wept over....well... something, but it's unclear what.

When he was at Fox, Beck had time constrictions.With a live performance, anything goes. Obviously orchestrated and staged with chalkboard, Beck nevertheless gave the appearance of running on open-ended stream of consciousness boosted by a couple hits of Adderall

Beck came out the gate running, telling the crowd of about 2,400 that he is not political. "I've gone so far beyond politics," he assured us with evangelical vigor. The audience responded with excessive applause.

Beck implored us to "follow where your heart is." To find our "complete life." Instead of following our hearts, though, for the next hour and a half we followed Pilgrim Beck's dark heart through a murky maze of cliches, platitudes, and God talk between monologues on early 20th century progressivism, collectivism, eugenics, history. and a short apology for his former life as a drunk..

Despite Beck's promise that he's "beyond politics" he vented on everything from the Arab Spring (bad) to Israel (good). He told us that he'd "dragged" his wife on three trips to Israel this year. One jaunt included a side trip to Auschwitz. He gave us his firsthand but foggy account of gas chambers, ovens, and a life-changing experience that had something to do with God and the United States.

Beck was particularly fascinated with the instruments of Nazi human extermination, telling us that "somebody thought it [killing Jews] was such a good idea" that they put their names on the instruments of annihilation, He failed, however, to tell us whose names. The audience, familiar with Beckian verbal prestidigitation didn't need those names or a flowchart, however, to attach his allusion to the current Planned Parenthood and to the historic Margaret Sanger and her unfortunate remarks on "the Negro problem." which he quoted at length later in the show.. The virtually all-white Vets crowd shook its collective head.in disbelief. Occasional shouts of "We love you Glenn" or "God Bless you, Glenn" rang through the hall.. Beck remained modest.

Back at Auschwitz, Beck said he left the camp "outraged at the churches" and drove around the countryside screaming, "Where were you? Where were you?" a common rhetorical trick of evangelicals to score points against "liberal" denominations especially when they're not around to defend themselves.

Glenn Beck making dead tissue.

Then it came to him. We suffer from "self-inflicted blindness." We see only what we want to see. "People don't want to see pictures of dead tissue." He used his own snot as an example. I'm not making this up

We also got some history lessons, presumably via Glenn Beck University "historian." David Barton ("David Barton's Christory" Free Press hardcopy, Jan-Feb 2007; Theoconia Jan 4, 2007) Beck's other staff historians from Hillsdale, who hold real academic credentials, might cringe at this nonsense. Or maybe not.

Beck informed us that presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth ("the Leonardo DeCaprio of his day") "lunged" at Abraham Lincoln shortly before the president delivered his second Inaugural Address. Booth did, in fact, attend the March 1865 inauguration as a guest of his fiance, Lucy "Bessie" Hale, daughter of US Senator John P. Hale. Although Booth reportedly said later that he'd missed an excellent opportunity to kill the president, there is no evidence of any "lunge" or that Booth was even close enough to "lunge " at Lincoln. Beck avoided the obvious question of why Booth would even consider pulling a "lunge" stunt in front of thousands of more-or-less friendly people, especially when up to the Fall of Richmond in April 1865, his plan was to kidnap the president, not kill him. The point of this story was...I've either unremembered it or it was never articulated.

Taking another stroll down memory lane, Beck, warned us of the dangers of collectivism (aka communism, Stalin, and Occupy Wall Street) and eugenics (eating the rich). He assured us that "you" (that is, we in the audience) were probably safe from cannibals in Columbus. Maybe Wall Street derivatives pimps aren't.

As his 90 minutes closed in on him, Beck proffered God as the solution to all of our our traumas--and followed with the assurance that he was quite ready to talk for another two hours. Miraculously, Beck's proffer turned true. In a few minutes God, in the form of a contract with Vets, forced Beck to wind up so Vets could tear down.

******

The Beck show was full of narcissistic spectacle, but had no substance. Ohio Right to Life and its friends, though, had plenty to say., and that's the real story.

ORTL director Mike Gonidakis, in his opening remarks, listed ORTL's goals for the coming year(s): defund Planned Parenthood; raise standards for abortion clinics (including prohibition of "telemed abortion."); push Michelle Bachmann's HR 3130 Heartbeat Informed Consent Act, through Congress; and introduce more "pro-life initiatives in the state. He cited the imminent signing by John Kasich of HB 63, the tightening of "informed consent and 'parental notification" for the state. ("Informed Consent v Informed Consent," Free Press , Oct 16, 2011; Theoconia, Oct 14, 2011.. Nothing really new there.

I know people who still fail to grasp that ORTL owns the Ohio legislature. For them, especially, here is Mike Gonidakis' list of funders and supporters of the Beck performance--the creme de la creme of the Ohio Republican Party with only John Kasich absent--and then in name only.

The anted-up included Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, Ohio Auditor Dave Yost, Cong. Jim Jordan, Steve Stivers, Pat Tieberi, Bob Latta, Steve Austria, Jim Renacci, Bob Gibbs, Steve Chabot, and Ohio Senator from Columbus, Jim Hughes. Jordan, Latta, and Yost were among state pols commended for donating blocks of tickets to ORTL local affiliates enabling the less fortunate to attend. (While waving his envelope around on the stage, Beck comiserated with the less fortunate in the audience declaring he'd be there with them himself some day.) Gonidakis said 65 state affiliates were represented at the event, and people had come from as far away as Kentucky, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Colorado to attend.

Absent were Central Ohio's usual suspects, Coach Dave Daubenmire (Pass the Salt ), Pastor Bill Dunfee, (New Beginnings Church, Warsaw, OH), Dr. Patrick Johnston (PersonhoodOhio and Stop Columbus Killing) and Mark Harrington Created Equal). Harrington has supported ORTL legislation in the past, but the others consider the organization weak-kneed, insufficiently Christian, and "pro-abortion," floundering around " in Daubenmire's "evangelifish" tank.

Gonitakis made a special effort to acknowledge National and Ohio Right to Life founder, Dr. Jack Willke. Willke who recently walked off the ORTL board in a very loud huff, taking Cincinnati RTL and others with him, after the board refused to support HB 125, the Heartbeat bill (not to be confused with the Bachmann's federal proposal) that would virtually outlaw all abortion in Ohio. The Ohio bill originated with Willke and his protege, former ORTL leg director and evangelical rock star Janet Folger Porter. (Faith2Action and Ohio ProLife Action.) The consequences of the the split are yet to be seen. Several times, Gonidakis acknowledged support from the Tea Party (however that's defined nowadays), so much so, that I wondered just how much money "the Tea Party" has tossed ORTL's way, and marked it down as something to look into later.

Following Gonidaks' welcome, we got a few words from David C Forbes, Jr, senior pastor of the Columbus Christian Center. He and his Columbus Christian Center Choir were virtually the only African Americans in the audience that I observed.

Six years ago, Forbes sat on the board of Rod Parsley's Christian domionist Reformation Ohio and spoke at its launch on the statehouse lawn in November 2005. ("Coup d'etat in Ohio?" (Free Press, November 15, 2005; Theoconia, July 11, 2006.) Also on the board was then-Ohio State Rep Linda Reidelbach, now a founding board member of Willke and Folger Porter's challenge to ORT: leadership, Ohio ProLife Action.

Strategy Group for Media , producers of "effective and engaging political advertising for conservative, pro-life candidates across the nation" was on hand with swag and promo videos of various Ohio politicians pushing ORTL. SMG's clients include John Kasich, Rand Paul, John Boozeman, Jim DeMnt, Joe Pitts, and overall, the Ohio Republican Party.. It operates out of several locations, including Delaware, Ohio.

Other Beck event sponsors: Kalmbach Feeds (Upper Sandusky), Home City Ice (Grove City); Graphic Services Group Ltd (Dublin), Sports Ohio (Dublin); , S&; K Concrete (Akron), MDS Communications (Mesa, AZ), InfoCision, (Akron). WRFD-AM, (Columbus) and Catholic Speakers Bureau (LA County,.Clients include Alan Keyes, Bay Buchanan, Bobby Schindler, and Jill Stanek, ).

Non-profits: Heartbeat International (home base, Columbus), Teachers Saving Children, Inc, (Ohio Chapter endorsed by Jack Willke), A Voice for Life (an anti-abortion documentary based in Mansfield and endorsed by Willke), and VoteYesOnIssue3.com (Columbus).

******

I've attended numerous evangelical and quasi-evangelical events, some of which I've written about for the Free Press and Theoconia. These include the 1999 D. James Kennedy's Center for Reclaiming America conference at Coral Ridge Ministries, in Fort Lauderdale; the 2001 Christian Coalition Road to Victory Conference in Washington DC (speeches from dozens of nationally elected officials and rightwing celebrities such as Tom DeLay, Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Boone, Ehud Olmert, Alan Keyes, Jim Inhofe, Ernest Istook, Donna Rice Hughes, Lindsey Graham, and a outbreak of tongues for Israel); a half dozen Teen Mania stadium events ("Teen mania: Lift the Banner," Free Press, hardcopy July-Sept 2006; Theoconia, July 27, 2006; the 2005 Operation Save America invasion of Columbus, and related events (see left sidebar for numerous links) and many smaller events and get-togethers in Central Ohio. This, however, was my first ORTL event.

There was little difference between the spirit, aesthetics, and message of those events and the Glenn Beck one man show, except Glenn lacked the dog and pony that are standard fare with the big boys and girls. . Praise music and prayer, an American flag as tall as your house, the linking of ORTL's anti-abortion crusade to the American state, Christian conversion (even if Beck is L-d-S) all enabled Ohio Right to Life to slip out of its public quasi- secular costume and slip into its something-a-little more-comfortable Armour of God.

National Adoption Awareness Month: Shilling for Adoptacrats

2011-11-02T00:29:00.000-04:00

NOTE: Because this entry, originally posted on my main blog, The Daily Bastardette, covers in part "christian adoption," I am cross-posting it here. The Daily Bastardette is commentary by on identity and adoptee rights, and the atrocities the adoption industry and "friendly" deformers concoct to maintain The Adoption Culture of Shame and Acquiesce.

Today the adoption industry launches the 2011 edition of National Adoption Awareness Month. (NAAM) Bastardette knows you've been looking forward to this great event as much as she has.

Coincidentally, today also marks the first day of November NaBloPoMo . No, that's not an unspeakable sex act. It's the November edition of National Blog Posting Month, a blog ritual for over-zealous bloggers who promise to blog every day on a designated topic each month. Topics that only the most abstract students of 19th century British literature can appreciate fully, such as "return" and "between," November, however is the open month, which means we can choose our own bloviation. My subject, naturally is adoption.

I successfully completed the 2009 November NaBloPoMo none the worse for wear but full of wonderment that I succeeded. . You'd be surprised, though, at the topics that land in your brain when you are desperate to cross the finish line. 2010 November NaBloPoMo was more difficult.. I finished exhausted, but finished. This year, due to my summer hiatus I feel up to it--so far. There is so much to write about that surely I can fill up 30 days as easily as filling up water balloon and dropping it on the head of an adoptacrat below. I've got several topics lined up so far. It's just a matter of time and articulation.

Today I had planned to comment on suggested NAAM activities listed on the web, but decided commentary would be anti-climatic, so I'll post some links for your enjoyment instead.. adoption.com furnishes us with a calendar of daily celebratory events: a dinner table discussion of the history of NAAM; cooking with child (adoptees beware!); helping your library set up an adoption book display, surprising your child with a few Chinese or Russian words; creating an adoption family tradition ( GOTCHA?)!; and adoption stories. (aren't they all?) My favorite is the activity for November 28: spend some time at a maternity home. Is that an order? My mother been there done that. Look what she got out of it. Or didn't.

Self proclaimed adoption expert and gadfly Mardie Cardwell suggests we

donate money to adoption foundations; especially Mardie Cardwell's Lifetime Adoption Foundation.

suggest adoption books to your local library; especially books by Mardie Cardwell

learn more about Positive Adoption Language, a pet project of Mardie Cardwell

order adoption prayer bracelets designed and sold by Mardie Cardwell.

Here's a suggestion . Let's change the name of National Adoption Awareness Month to National Mardie Cardwell Awareness Month.

Then there's Holly Erritt, proprietress of Little Blessing Adoptions, running a Facebook sale on your Dear Birthparent; Letter; Lifebook. Adoption Resume and webpage design needs.

***NATIONAL ADOPTION MONTH SPECIAL FOR NEW LBAS CLIENTS****

Take 10% OFF Adoption Profile Design, 10% OFF Adoption Website Design OR 10% OFF Printing of Adoption Profile Books, Adoption Pass Along Cards, or Adoption Brochures. *New Clients Only - Contract must be received by November 11, 2011

Of course. this doesn't' even begin to cover the hundreds of puffy national and local news stories on the blessings of adoption; hardluck tales of paps, adopters, and orphans; interviews with adoptacrats (special emphasis on Christocrat adoptacrats); sappy reunion accounts that not once mention that states continue to refuse to restore the right of all adoptees to access their birth certificates without exception, a right these same states once upheld without exception.

NAAM is also a good time for the professional adoption class: the Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute, The National Council for Adoption, JCICS, and local agencies to beg poor so they can continue to provide "services" to their clients.. No adoptees need apply.

NAAM also brings lifers out en force pounding their hammers on the heads of adoptees who exhibit insufficient gratitude for all the work the fetus savers have done in "our" sacred name. Right to Life, Students for Life, Feminists for Life, Democrats for Life, Priests for Life, Life Issues, Institute, the American Life League, Human Life International.will howl incessantly on how adoption saves ~~fetuses~~ baybees for adoption-the-loving-option (which it doesn't)--and btw, send us money. By publicly celebrating the spurious"life saving" elements of adoption, lifers and their ilk can hide their aggressive hatred of Class Bastard and pantless parents who fail to appreciate their efforts and would like more than anything for them than to go back to their pews and mind their own business.

So welcome to National Adoption Awareness Month and November NaBloPoMo. Bastardette won't shut up. We hope you won't either.

Vote Pro Life: A short conversation with Sister Mary Clement and Francis

2011-10-27T01:54:00.001-04:00

When l I was downtown today (see below) I spotted two people standing quietly on either side of the High Street entrance of the Statehouse with banners reading: Vote Pro Life: One Nation Under God!

They identified themselves as Francis and Sister Mary Clement from Holy Family Church. Francis told me that they were not affiliated with any organization. He doesn't even own a computer. He assured me he'd never heard of Dave Daubenmire, Mark Harrington, Patrick Johnston, and the rest of our local obstreperous theocrats. I can't imagine they would have much to talk about anyway. Sister Mary Clement and Francis were just out there urging people to "vote for honest politicians." (A pretty big order!) not threatening the general population with hellfire.

Francis told me although only two people were present, there were really five: Sister Mary Clement, Francis, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Occupy Columbus: A few pictures from today

2011-10-27T01:51:00.000-04:00

I was downtown today and dropped by Occupy Columbus to see what was up. Well, not much this aftenroon, but I thought I'd post the few pictures I took.

Occupy Cleveland and perhaps some other Occupy other Ohio cities are coming to down on Friday, and a General Assembly will be held at 2:00 pm on Saturday. at Bicentennial Park. Here's more information on the GA:

Agenda:
Soapbox (Open Mic)
General Assembly Opening Comments 3pm Sharp
Committee UpdatesCalls To Action
Committee Proposals &
ResolutionsIndividual Proposals and Resolutions
Closing CommentsEnd of General AssemblySoapbox (Open Mic)
Go to the Occupy Columbus FB page for more information. They've got more than 8500 Friends.

Rick Santorum Has a Problem with Contraception: How Theocrats Feel about Birth Control

2011-10-23T16:03:00.000-04:00

When I wrote Condom Coture the other day, (directly below this entry), I discussed briefly the anti-contraception ideology of so-called "prolife" advocates. Abortion certainly is a genuine target, and Christian Domionists such as Mark Harrington/Created Equal's goal is to eradicate it. The larger target, however, is birth control, and the "contraception mentality," they believe opened the door to legal abortion and is destroying America and Christianity. In my hurry to get Condom Couture online, I linked to the obscure goodmorals.com as an example of fundamentalist objections to contraception. Now I have a much better: authority: Rick Santorum.

Last Monday, Santorum, visiting DesMoines, gave a 45 minute video interview with Shane Vander Hart from Caffeinated Thoughts, in which he expounded on a variety of issues, including the detrimental consequences of contraception on marriage, sex , family, church, government, and the economy.

Raw Story picked up the interview and has posted a partial transcript of of Santorum's comments. I've listened to the original interview and Raw Story's transcript is accurate. I'm re-posting Raw Story's transcript below. (Contraception remarks are at 17:45-20:08.)

The candidate later went on to explain that sex between a man and a woman is “special,” and even birth control is “not OK.”

“We’ll repeal Obamacare and get rid any idea that you have to have abortion coverage or contraceptive coverage,” he said. “One of the things that I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the sexual liberty idea and many in the Christian faith have said, you know contraception is OK. It’s not OK because it’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

Santorum continued: “They’re supposed to be within marriage. They are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal but also procreative, and that’s the perfect way a sexual union should happen. When we take any part of that out, we diminish the act. If we take one part out, it’s not for the purposes of procreation, it’s not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women. So, why can’t you take other parts of that out? And then all of the sudden it becomes deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure, and that’s certainly a part of it, and it’s an important part, don’t get me wrong. But there is a lot of things we do for pleasure and this is special and it needs to be seen as special.”

“I know most presidents don’t talk about those things, and maybe people don’t want us to talk about those things. But I think it’s important that you are who you are.”

You'd think liberals and progressives, after decades of ~~listening to~~ Santorum-type Domionist rhetoric, would get it--but they don't. Instead, liberal LaLas, such as those who are responding to the Condom Couture protest in the Dispatch, cluelessly pander to theocrats in a a naive attempt to create "common ground" with people who not only repudiate common ground, but stomp on it.. Since the "if you oppose abortion then you should support birth control" warble reflects a decadent, dying culture and nation which God has appointed Domionists--according to theocratic biblical interpretation-- to redeem-- the argument holds as much water as the proverbial sieve.Yet, useful liberal idiots continue.to pander in some odd belief that if they're nice enough, they and the Domionists will just agree to disagree and "move on."

Take for example, the June 2006 hearing on HB.228, an attempt to outlaw abortion in Ohio which I covered for the Free Press (and on Theoconia.) Well-meaning liberals, wearing "Birth Control Not Bans" tags felt compelled, after a morning of listening to Dr. John Willke's romance of what happens when sperm meets egg, and Patriot Pastor Russell Johnson and Janet Folger (before she became Porter), comparing them to Southern slave holders and Nazis, to assure the panel, "we love our children." With a couple exceptions, the choicers from Planned Parenthood and "welcoming" churches spent the rest of the afternoon defending themselves against Folger's accusation that they are too busy killing babies to breed any for themselves. Not one time did these so-called "defenders of abortion rights" mention the bedrock pro-abortion foundation of self-ownership and autonomy. Instead, "our defenders" argued tired old consumerist "choice"--co-opted by anti-aborts years ago-- except when they were lobbing their own cherry-picked Bible verses across the room at Willke and Folger.who smirked back.

Jack Willke and Janet Folger Porter

For the time being, some Domionists are willing, up to a point, to let birth control take a tactical backseat to abortion, though they won't remain particularly quiet, either. John Willke, at least back in in 2006 was willing to take birth control off the table until legal abortion was outlawed realizing that if anti-aborts staged a two-pronged attack, neither stone would hit the mark. His comrade in arms, though, Joe Scheidler, the granddaddy of the anti-abortion movement, and his ProLife Action League (which backs Willke and Folger Porter's Ohio ProLife Action and their current Heartbeat bill) supports Santorum's position, believing that the abortion war cannot be won until the harmful moral consequences of contraception are exposed. At Scheidler's 2006 conference, Contraception is Not the Answer, speakers proferred that contraception is the root cause of abortion,. In order to ban legal abortion contraceptive culture needs to be derailed,and our Inner Druggars released. The speakers argued that contraception harms women, decimates families, turns men into irresponsible bums, and lets all but the most pious run wild and pantless with no social restraint. We can only wonder how may fornicators dance on the head of their pin. Or the fantasies that reside in their heads:

Dr. Janet Smith, professor of theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit argued that birth control insults women. "It denies the gift of fertility and treats it as an inconvenience and a health condition to be treated."

Damon Clark Owens, director of New Jersey Natural Family Planning, declared that " contraception is a mortal assault on the marital love of spouses, the dignity of the person and the family that draws its life from that marital love.... It does not allow for the perfection of the person, but denies the unity and wholeness of sex, marriage, love and children."

"Former feminist" Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse complained that "contraceptive ideology says that all adults are entitled to unlimited sexual activity without a live baby resulting....Contracepted sex is dumb." . She is currently the director of The Ruth Foundation: One Man, One Woman For Life ,a project of Maggie Gallagher's National Organization for Marriage Roback Morse's goal is "to make marriage cool." Queers need not apply.

Lionel Tiger, Charles Darwin (now Emeritus) Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers had as much in common with Joe Scheidler as Occupy Wall Street. That didn't stop him, though, from arguing that birth control is bad because it puts the ability of women to control their reproduction in their own hands; thus, preventing shot gun marriages. "According to Tiger, the contraceptive pill has given reproductive control almost exclusively to women and has done away with the societal pressure on men to "do the right thing" in case of an unplanned pregnancy. He pointed out that the pill came into wide use in 1963—a cheap, effective, trouble-free contraceptive. "And what happened? Ten years later Roe v Wade. The entire scenario has driven men outside of the family structure—avoiding taking responsibility for a child they did not want to have and are not quite sure is their own."

Rick Santorum's statement earlier this week, is just the latest manifestation of decades of theocratic--Catholic, Protestant and misogynist--propaganda that has been dismissed by liberals and progressives who don't want to dirty their own minds by delving into the minds of their opponents. As a result, Domionists have been able to co-opt liberal language and arguments, skew and reframe them as their own, and leave the "nice" people to bang their heads in their own wall..And, of course, dominate legislatures.and hack away at what is laughingly referred to as "abortion rights" in the US.

Banning birth control is a pipe dream, at least for now, and most likely in the future..Domionists know that. But their goal is actually not so much legislative, but "spiritual".through Christian conversion.via propaganda. By condemning contraception as the harbinger of the "culture of death" they hope to cut the underpinnings abortion.

Thanks to Mike Swanson for the Santorum tip!

Created Equal: Condom Couture is an outrage to Ohio taxpayers!

2011-10-20T14:50:00.002-04:00

Wednesday evening, Mark Harrington and his latest knock off, Created Equal, planned to picket a private fashion show fundraiser for Planned Parenthood of Central Ohio held at the Shadowbox Theatre on S. Front Street. .While any excuse to picket Planned Parenthood is a good excuse for Harrington, this event billed as "Condom Couture"--condom-inspired fashion with a cause" has driven the usually grumpy Harrington into the street. (As of this writing, I've been unable to learn if anyone showed up--I'll update when I do).

Maybe it's because this isn't' just some rubber chicken banquet. It's $ponsored by the marketing research firm One Point Contact, Continental Real Estate Companies, the Crane Group, and Teva Women's Health. I have no idea who showed up this year, but last years's local luminaries included Mary and Bob Lazarus, Howard Sirak, and Channel 10's Andrea Cambern. Not a rubber chicken in sight.

I have been unable able to locate a press release about the protest on the Created Equal website or major Christian wire services, but the Dispatch quotes Harrington in two short separate articles:

Condom rage: Despite the fact that the event is a private fundraiser, many taxpayers don't want to support the outrageous funding of sexual promiscuity under the guise of "safe sex."

Condoms on the catwalk: This is an outrage to Ohio taxpayers and should not be tolerated.

We doubt that taxpayers much care if somebody wants to hang condoms from their hems, but we do know that Harrington's real outrage is not for the Ohio taxpayer who has nothing to do with the event, but that somebody somewhere is having sex for non-procreative reasons.Marriage license or not. Private donations be damned!

Commenters on the Dispatch site are treating Harrington like he's an ill-educated lout who opted out of sex-ed,. They point out that condoms prevent pregnancy, not to mention abortion. They do.of course, but that's not the point.since our local theocons oppose birth control on Biblical and moral grounds, something the liberal mind can't phantom, and nine out of ten times clicks into pander mode when confronted by it. Abortion is simply the hook, something to grab the public, which still needs to be "educated" on birth control.. In the longterm, abortion is just one of many secular missteps in need of a Domionist repair. It's just sexier than the others.and gets the blood roiling.

Mark Harrington & Dave Daubenmire at Roy's Rock, Oct 15, 2004

I've covered Mark Harrington and his activities for at least six years. While others in his camp are passionate, hotheaded--even intellectual at times. Harrington has always seemed cynical, Even in 2004, when I started to pay serious attention to him, Harrington appeared to have gone beyond Domionists like Coach Dave Daubenmire and Dr. Patrick Johnston. He struck me as a community organizer gone sour after looking into the soul of The People and finding it lacking. Somebody pulling the strings behind a candidate. Somebody who is happy behind a desk plotting it all out, or drawing up a flow-chart. (He's got a degree from OSU in Marketing and Economics.) Not somebody standing in the street with a dumb sign or arguing with an OSU student over which holocaust is worse. Not that Harrington doesn't do these things. He just never seems too happy about it. When I covered the Roy's Rock event (transcript of speeches) for the Free Press in 2004, he was clearly bored and cut the event short by a couple hours. All the songs were sung, the last shofar blown, Coach Daubenmire, Hollis Summers, and Harrington had said their piece, and State Rep Linda Reidellbach and the president of the Ohio Christian Coalition were no-shows. Even the cops had left. Standing in the rain, tandem with a rickety wooden trailer and a couple big shiny rocks wasn't making his day.

Nonetheless Harrington knows an opportunity when he sees it, even if it's only for "the mission." The Dispatch picked up the story fast enough and now it's all over the wire. He knows the stunt is silly, but he's sucking it up for the "greater good."

Mark Harrington is the long-time director of the Center for BioEthical Reform - Midwest (CBR), under which numerous projects were launched. The two best known are the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) which I wrote about in 2006 and truth trucks with their baybee blender bits pictorials, which you've probably seen driving around town annoying the mothers of young children. He also developed Obama Nation/Christians for Social Justice which posits Barack Obama as "the face of black genocide."

Harrington left CBR earlier this year to open up shop with Created Equal. In his press release announcing the opening,, he says that its name comes from the Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King's famous I Have a Dream speech, a quote which he neatly jereryrigged into something King did not say and the casual reader may miss. (italics is actual quote.)

Men should be judged not by the color of their skin" -- nor whether they are born or preborn-- but "by the content of their character."

Harrington's press release description of Created Equal fell right in line with my previous thinking about him: a behind-the-scenes man.

Created Equal's goal is to train the next generation of leaders to take on the culture of death and win." We will specialize in youth training and outreach at the high school and college level. (He' is currently holding training sessions on the OSU campus)....

Using new media and cutting edge technology, he says "Our projects will be easily transferable to students all across America so they can win the abortion debate on campus now and into the future."

Dr. Patrick Johnston and Troy Newman, November 2005, Columbus

Created Equal is endorsed by Scott Klusendorf, president of, Life Training Institute; Lila Rose, president Live Action, and notorious "undercover videographer"; Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life; Dr. John Willke, co-founder of National Right to Life, Ohio Right to Life, and founder of the Life Issues Institute; prominent anti-abortion blogger Jill Stanek; Troy Newman, director of Operation Rescue, Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values; Mike Gonidakis, director of Ohio Right to Life; and WRFD talk show host, Bob Burney.

These are not insignificant names.

I have written about some of them hereand for the Free Press. Willke and Buress are board members of Janet Folgler Porter's new Pro Life Action Ohio, which may blow Ohio Right to Life right out of the game. Jill Stanek and Troy Newman have appeared on the platform with Folger Porter recently and have ties to other Central Ohio Domionists. These supporters drag in a busload of like-minded friends in-state and out.. With the convergence of so many theoconic forces in Ohio (which I'll be writing about over the next few weeks), it appears the state is being sent up as a flashpoint.

Ohio Right to Life: Informed Consent v Informed Consent--It's All Situational

2011-10-14T15:30:00.005-04:00

On September 27, the Ohio Senate passed HB 63, an Ohio Right Right to Life (ORTL) bill to "tighten" up the procedures by which unmarried women in Ohio under the age of 18 can get an abortion without parental notification and consent. The passage of HB 63 is another tool to hack away at abortion access in the state. The bill, however, gives us the opportunity to expose the duplicitous nature of ORTL's fraudulent concerns about "informed consent" "parental involvement" and "best interests" of teen women.. Dubious at best, these bytes spewed out to the public are nullified by ORTL's sponsorship, support, and promotion of Ohio's "safe haven law," which encourages women-- and targets teens especially-- to hide pregnancies, give birth unattended, and to turn over their newborns anonymously to the state with no counseling, no parental involvement, and no health care, all under their "pro-life" banner.

JUDICIAL BYPASS
Under Ohio law, an unmarried woman under the age of 18 cannot get an abortion without parental consent. She can, however, loophole out by utilizing the judicial bypass procedure which permits her to go to juvenile court and request the state's consent for her abortion outside of the family structure. This legal procedure requires judges to inquire about the minor's understanding of the "possible physical and emotional complications of abortion and how she would respond to such complications." That is, judges are forced to consider, for the most part, a laundry list of ORTL and Friends myths about abortion. The teen's responses determine her mental and emotional "maturity" to undergo the procedure. Oddly, a young woman ruled too "emotionally immature" to have an abortion is considered mature enough to carry a pregnancy to term, give birth, and presumably rear a child--unless she decides to place it for adoption, or dump the newborn anonymously at a no-questions-asked state-facilitated "safe haven" drop-off point--neither of which requires consent of the teen's parents or a judicial bypass to accomplish.

There are no good figures on how many judicial bypass requests have been made in Ohio since the law went into effect in 1985. In 2003, however, the Akron Beacon Journal, under a public information request to selected county juvenile courts, was able to identify 515 requests made between 2000 and late 2003. Out of those, 73 were denied. Unfortunately, the Beacon Journal article is no longer online so I'm forced to use the biased secondary source Life.com. for these figures and other information regarding the survey..

Since the survey was reported, the number of successful loopholes has been a bug up the nose of our local anti-aborts, and over the last few months ORTL has been working on passage of HB 63 to tighten them up. (Earlier bills were unsuccessful.) HB 63 passed the House in March, and last week, a slightly different version passed the Senate. After the concurrence hearing, it's all over but the signing.

HB 63 was sponsored and supported by Speaker of the House William Batchelder and a gaggle of House and Senate Republicans. Many of them oppose the right of adopted adults to access their original birth certificates.. Two of them are Rep.Matt Hoffman and Bob Mecklenborg who rolled their eyes and cracked jokes to each other during, and walked out during 2008 testimony (and here and here) before the House Health Committee in support of the original HB 7 records access/adoption and foster care reform bill. Mecklenborg was recently forced to resign from his House seat after he was arrested in Indiana drunk and pumped up with Viagra in the company of a stripper (who he described as "an old family friend").

The Senate analysis of the bill indicates that HB 63 does the following: (my bold)

Requires the court, in a hearing to permit a pregnant minor to consent to an abortion or by which a court may give judicial consent to an abortion, to specifically inquire about the minor's understanding of the possible physical and emotional complications of abortion and how the minor would respond if the minor experienced those complications after the abortion.

Requires the court, in a hearing of the type described in the previous dot point, to specifically inquire about the extent to which anyone has instructed the minor on how to answer questions and on what testimony to give at the hearing.

Requires the court, in a hearing of the type described in the second preceding dot point, to make its findings regarding whether or not the minor is sufficiently mature and well enough informed to decide intelligently whether to have an abortion and whether or not the abortion is in the best interests of the minor by clear and convincing evidence

“Rubber stamping” and an alleged lack of "informed consent” is ORTL’s putative complaint. Last February, ORTL lobbyist Stephanie Krider, testifying before the House Health and Aging Committee claimed that the current judicial bypass procedure is nothing but blatant government contempt for parental involvement in a teenager's decision to seek an abortion. To underscore her point, Krider claimed, presenting no evidence, that underage women going to court are being over-prepped by lawyers, Planned Parenthood, and even "older men" (aka seducer adult males fearful of statuary rape or rape charges) ) on how to respond to judges' queries and manipulate the decision to the petitioner’s favor. (Krider forgot to mention that communication between client and attorney are confidential, thus suggesting at a broader long-term objective to the bill than just "informed consent.") Since bypass hearings are closed to the public, she complained. parents are denied the right to legal representation and to cross examine the teen or present opposing testimony. She says that judges tend to ask routine scripted questions, but then hints of an organized high school underground that informs teenagers of "new" questions a specific judge has asked recently.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Here are some quotes direct from the keyboard of ORTL and its legislative cronies bemoaning the deficiency of parental input and informed consent in the judicial bypass procedure:. (My bold):

The fact that so many judges automatically conclude that it is in the minor's "best interest" to have an abortion without notifying her parents shows that they have no concept of how physically and emotionally harmful an abortion can be to a young woman...Parents kept in the dark about their daughter's abortion may underestimate the importance of signs of physical and emotional problems until it’s too late. Mark Lally, ORTL legislative counsel, LifeNews.com, November 11, 2003.

Ohioans know that parental consent laws save lives...We are trying very hard to preserve parents' ability to help their daughters when they are confronted with the challenges of teenage pregnancy. A recent study proved that responsible parental consent laws reduce the minor abortion rate by 18.7 percent. Mike Gondiakis, Executive Director of ORTL, Ohio Right to Life Press Release, March 16, 2011.

A minor's decision to terminate a pregnancy can have immeasurable consequences. It is critical that we do everything possible to allow for meaningful parental input. HB 63 sponsor Ron Young, Life News.com, March 16, 2011.

The pro-life legislation will protect minors and their unborn children by strengthening parental involvement and consent laws. Mike Gondiakis, Executive Director, ORTL Press Release, June 22, 2011.

This pro-life legislation will protect minors and their unborn children by closing loopholes and raising the bar to protect parents' ability to care for their children."... "HB 63 strengthens parents; ability to care for their children and prevents lawyers and others from taking mom and dad's place when the child needs them most." Mike Gondiakis, Executive Director, ORTL Press Release, September 27, 2011.

All of this rhetoric about informed consent and strengthening, family communication, parental involvement and rights (real or otherwise) in the untimely pregnancies of teen daughters would normally be talk I'd not be writing about here. It's all old ho-hum. Everybody knows that ORTL’s real problem is that somebody somewhere is having an abortion.

Ohio Right to Life and its friends in the General Assembly, however, are on legislative record as opposing informed consent, family communication, and parental involvement in the unplanned pregnancies of their teen daughters when it fits the organization's political agenda.

With its support and promotion of the state's "Desertion of Child Under 72 Hours Old Act" (DCA), popularly known as the "safe haven" law" that lets women of any age legally abandon their newborn children anonymously with no questions asked, ORTL guts its demand for informed consent and parental involvement in critical child-bearing decisions that can effect their daughters’ and their grandchildren's physical and mental health permanently, and in the process, collapses on its self-defined moral high ground.

THE OHIO RIGHT TO LIFE EXCEPTION
Ohio's "safe haven" law, is the ultimate loophole. It doesn't require a lawyer. It doesn't require parental notification or consent. It doesn't require a judicial bypass hearing. It doesn't require counseling, "informed consent". or even a flyer listing alternatives to legalized dumping. It doesn't require surrender documents and other tedious paperwork. It doesn't even require that the "parent" be identified by name, show an ID, or prove legal custody. It only requires the desire of someone to get rid of a baby after it's born.with no fuss, muss, and untidy questions .

Ohio law permits any woman (or man) of any age to anonymously "relinquish" a newborn at designated state-approved drop-off points such as ERs, fire stations and police stations. (Despite the hype, "safe haven" infants aren't being "relinquished" for adoption, though adoption may be the outcome. Infants are, instead, being thrown into the juvenile court and CPS to founder for at least a year. until their legal status is clarified.) Some states' laws are broader and include drop-offs at staffed churches, dentist offices, health departments--and "any responsible person" (no definition of "responsible person” given). In a few states such as Florida, "safe haven" agents are barred legally from asking newly delivered mothers if they need medical assistance. Legally complicated and sometimes expensive mechanisms are in place for parents or kin to retrieve the child.

Passed in late 1999, HB 660, Ohio's original "safe haven" law, was enacted during a wave of moral panic in response to a falsely perceived nationwide epidemic of newborn discard and neonaticide fueled by mainstream media that focused on rare and sensational incidents. such as the infamous 1998 "Prom Mom" case. Initially, the law legalized the anonymous dumping of babies up to three days of age. In 2008, under SB 304, the General Assembly expanded the age frame to children up to 30 days old, though as in 1999, there was no evidence that infant discard was a problem in Ohio.

HB 660 was a creature of the legislature with some support from public child welfare agencies. Law enforcement, also supported the measure even though hearing witnesses admitted they had no memory of discard incidents in their jurisdictions. .The bill received no support from child welfare and adoption ethicists, adoptee rights/adoption reform groups or for the most part, private adoption agencies,.

Opponents raised serious ethical and legal questions, pointing out that legalized baby dumping is irreconcilable to best practice in child welfare and adoption; a heave-ho to over 100 years of evolving practice and a slap in the face of everyone who has ever surrendered a child "the right way."

Moreover, "safe haven" laws did nothing to decrease infant abandonment. On the contrary, they gave infant abandonment the state's seal of approval, which in turn encouraged women who would have otherwise sought counseling and alternatives to abandonment to now make "non-bureaucratic surrenders” that lacked the legal protections for mother and child under traditional child welfare law. They were also concerned that the law, with the promise that "nobody would ever have to know you had this child" would encourage young women to forgo pre- and post natal care, putting the welfare and lives of themselves and their babies at risk.

Reform groups particularly objected to lack of informed consent and parental involvement, anonymous "relinquishment,” secret birth and adoption, and the erasure of the other parent (usually fathers) and the biological family.. Adoption agencies were especially critical of hidden, unattended pregnancies and birth, lack of informed consent, and lack of fathers’ consent, all of which in business terms, put their own incomes at risk.

In 1999, I attended three of the four House Children and Family Services Committee hearings for HB 660 and testified against the bill at the second hearing. So-called "pro-life" proponents made no objection to the lack of informed consent and parental input.or the inherent danger of unattended pregnancy and birth. They acted as if magic babies would suddenly appear on a pink fluffy cloud, clean and healthy as ...well... who knows. One woman from Akron whose church was eager to adopt "every abandoned baby in the state" testified that medical conditions and psychological problems caused by secret pregnancy, delivery, and anonymous abandonment were unimportant. "The baby will just be glad to be alive. If it has problems, it will just have to live with it."

Neither the Church Lady nor the committee as a whole cared just what those problems might be. Children born with no pre-natal care are subject to numerous disabilities including cerebral palsy, mental retardation and delay, blindness, low birth weight, diabetes and hyperlidemia, short life spans.and...death. Women who receive no pre- or post-natal care and give birth unattended are subject to life-threatening pregnancy-related disabilities including infection, premature birth, breech birth, placenta previa/accreta (which can require a C-Section), preeclampsia, hypermesis, gravidarum, post-partum depression or psychosis, and... death.. Very young women are at especially high risk.

House sponsor and bill author Rep Cheryl Wmikler, who also chaired the House committee meetings, made the improbable claim during one hearing that 14-year old girls, a few moments after giving birth alone over a toilet or in a bathtub, would just hop on a bus or catch a ride with "an older friend in college" (!) and drop off the baby before anyone knew what had happened. Bleeding out was not an option..

"Safe haven" was seen simply as another way to "save babies." and consequences be damned! Winkler, in fact, closed each hearing with a tearful "Thank you for saving the babies." (see Carol Sanger's excellent Infant Safe Haven Laws: Legislating in the Culture of Life, Columbia Law Review 104:4 :4 May 2006 on the connection in the greater political culture between "safe haven" laws and abortion.). Ironically, when the bill passed the House, the two dissenting votes came from the most conservative anti-abortion members in the chamber: Rep Jim Jordan (now a Congressman) and Rep. Ron Young, both believing that the law "cheapened life." Jordan, during hearings, objected on many of the same grounds as did adoption reformers and adoptee rights activists. Cincinnati Republican Doug White opposed in the Senate..

HB 660 passed into law, dreaded rubber stamp in hand.

LEGISLATORS ON THE RECORD
Ohio Right to Life's legislative support for HB 660 is no longer online. For more than a decade, though, it has supported baby dumping and advocated the use of "safe havens" by posting information about the program on its website. Various ORTL state affiliates link back to it. Its webpage does not mention medical complications and psychological problems for mother and child..Other state anti-abortion organizations signed on, too: Americans United for Life, The Catholic Conference of Ohio, Democrats for Life in Ohio, Ohio Christian Alliance, Priests for Life, and the Life Issues Institute.)

ORTL's support for SB 304, the 2008 expansion law, however, is easy to find.. ORTL testified in support of SB 304, but it's testimony is not online. In a December 9, 2008, press release, though, distributed to anti-abortion organizations and media throughout the country, and reprinted in ORTL state affiliate newsletters, ORTL Director, Mike Gondiakis praised the expansion. "We believe that extending the time frame when a parent can use the Safe Haven law will help protect babies."

Large numbers of ORTL PAC recommendations for the 2008 session put their names on SB 304 and another time expansion measure, HB 485. The second bill, which would have increased the age eligibility from three to six days, was left to die in committee in the wake of SB 304. (See sidebar below for names)

Ironically, by supporting the extension of the dump age to 30 days, ORTL and its legislative buddies, appeared downright anti-family, suggesting that parents should be able to test-drive their children before deciding to keep them. (This is not a far-fetched. In California, proponents of several unsuccessful attempts to expand that state’s “safe haven” time frame, citing post-partum depression, protracted C-section recoveries, and new-parent sleep deprivation, argued that parents need time to decide they are up to the task, and they should be able to "send the baby back" if they came up short. In a moment of clarity California Right to Life Advocates and the California Right to Life Committee opposed the expansion for moving the intent of “safe haven" from "child saving" to "child welfare.")

Not satisfied with simply having baby dumping on the books, sponsors of both expansion bills included provisions for the state to educate "at risk populations" on how to abandon newborns without going to jail. HB 485 specifically required some sort of high school curriculum unit be developed "pertaining to the desertion of a child less than one hundred and forty-four hours after birth by parents with no intent to return for the child." In effect, "safe haven" proponents and ORTL were eager to teach teenagers how to avoid parental detection of pregnancy and birth. So far, we have not see any baby abandonment curriculum coming out of the state, though several states, including California, Illinois and Catholic schools in Florida

THE SCAM
In the bizarro world of Ohio Right to Life, parental involvement in teen pregnancies when "saving fetuses" is involved, is essential to the maintenance of “traditional family values” Involvement is eliminated in the name of “traditional family values” when it comes to the safety and welfare of young pregnant women, just delivered mothers, and just born babies as long as the babies are scheduled to be dumped on an ER counter.

Under the banner of informed consent, Ohio Right to Life insists on ~~scaring~~ -warning pregnant women with a laundry list of what it claims are the harmful effects of abortion, At the same time it ignores the harmful effects of secret pregnancy on the fetus, the harmful effects of unattended secret birth on baby and mother, and the harmful effects of child abandonment. on both. Moreover, it does not address the legal ramifications of "safe haven." which are beyond the scope of this piece, but include protracted legal proceedings including closed court hearings, the filing of a deserted child complaint against the "courageous" parent, and expensive DNA testing if reunification is desired.

Current informed consent procedures in Ohio include a menu of best practice and ORTL-friendly warnings, but "safe haven" procedures require none. Ever. Mental retardation?. Fine! Premature? Fine! Breech birth? Fine. Preeclampsia? Fine. Excessive bleeding? Fine! Post Partum Depression? Fine. You'd think this would worry ORTL and its Statehouse point men, but it doesn't. It it did, it wouldn't be pimping baby abandonment.

______________________________

SIDEBAR

OHIO RIGHT TO LIFE PAC RECOMMENDATIONS FOR 2008 AND 2010 ELECTIONS WHO SUPPORT INFORMED CONSENT FOR ABORTION BUT NOT FOR "SAFE HAVEN"

Also see The Company They Keep below

____________________

SB 304: Over half of the sponsors of SB 304 were either ORTL PAC endorsees or preferred candidates for the 2008 election.

Senate: 6 out of 21 sponsors: Cates, Wagoner, Seitz, Faber, Neihaus, Austria (already in office, but running for Congress with ORTRL endorsement).

House: 31 out of 68 sponsors: Goodwin, Sears, Uecker, Wachtmann, Huffman, Mecklenborg, Jones, B Williams, Adams, Bacon, Batchelderr, Blessing, Bolon, Bubp, Coley, Combs, Dodd, Gardner, Garrison, Gibbs, Hite, Hottinger, Hughes, Mandel, Newcomb, Oelslanger, Schlichter, Stewart and Sehringer. Brinkman, a veteran of ORTL point man was term limited out at the time of the vote and Nero was a "preferred candidate." Brinkman, a veteran of ORTL point man was term limited out at the time of the vote and Nero was a "preferred candidate."

HB 465: 10 out of 28 sponsors of HB 465 were ORTL PAC endorsees: DeGeeter (lead spoonsor) and: Watchmann, Garrison, Driehaus,. Brinkman, McGregor, Combs, Dodd, Bolon, BWilliams, Gardener, and Domenick.

HB 304 and HB 63: 13 ORTL-PAC endorsees sponsored SB 304 against parental involvement and informed consent for baby dumping and sponsored HB 63 for parental involvement and informed consent: for abortion: Goodwin, Sears, Ueucker, Hoffman, Wachtman, Mecklenborg, J Adams, Batchelder, Blessing, Coley Bubp, Gardener, Hottinger.

To keep the record straight and going: 2010 ORTL PAC endorsses either not endorsed earlier or not in office during the 2008 SB 304 campaign who supported the new bypass regs are Roegner, Henne, Brenner, Maag, Boose, Grossman, Martin, Stautberg, Kozlewski, Dovilla, Blair, Combs, McKenney, Burke, Balderson, Amstutz, Beck, R. Adams, McClain, Rosenberger, Johson, Schuring, Carey, Gonzales, and Young. For unknown reasons, Senate sponsors aren't included on the Senate copy of theonline bill, but Mike Gondakis, in his September 27 press release thanks ORTL PACT endorsees and expansionists Nehaus and Wagoner.for their support for informed consent.

Rep (and sometime Senator) ) Kurt Schuring is probably the only institutal memory of the1999-2008 baby dmp campaign left at the Statehouse. He was an original lead sponsor in the House, and a sponsor of the expansion in the Senate. In 2008 I reminded him that in 1999 Cheryl Winkler, author of the original law, had adamantly opposed an extension of the timefame calling anything beyond three days "premeditated abandonment." He acted like I'd just told him Kim Kardasian had written the Declaration of Independence, though the nformation came directly from the lips of Winkler's legislative aide to my ear. Schurding was also a sponsor of the HB63 judicial bypass changes. Although not a ORTL PAC endorsee, he comes close to it. Rep. Ron Young, who opposed the original "safe haven bill" was also a sponsor of HB 63.

*THE COMPANY THEY KEEP

Jared Martin: In January 2010 Rep.Jarrd Martin and five other men were kicked out a Beavercreek hotel .for fighting.during a bachelor party. Two months later, in March, he was found drunk, slumped over the steering wheel of Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder's Chevy Suburban in an overnight downtown parking garage. Then, on. July 27, 2011, Martin was arrested at a traffic stop near Beavercreek and charged with drunk driving and child endangering At that point, Speaker Batchelder asked Martin to "consider" resigning his seat. Martin refused, saying he doesn't have a drinking problem and then mumbled somethng about "stupid rumors."

Robert Mecklenborg: In April, Rep. Bob Mecklenborg was arrested in Indiana drunk and pumped up with Viagara while in the company of a stripper. Later he neglected to mention his arrest when applying for his new drivers's license. . House Speaker Bill Batchelder requested Mecklenborg's resignation. Although the resignation was announced in mid-July, it did not take effect until August 2.

Sen. Kris Jordan (and here): In July and August 2011, Sen. Kris Jordan was investigated by the Delaware County Sheriff''s Department after his wife, Melissa, the Delaware County Recorder, made several calls to the 911 center asking for assistance and then cancelling. She reported that he was drunk and had a gun. (Both have CCW permits). Later he claimed the Sheriff's office was conspiring to destroy his political career. No charges were filed.

A slightly different version of the article appears in the Columbus Free Press.

Columbus Issue 12: Secrets = "More Information"

2010-11-03T13:40:00.011-04:00

This is cross-posted from my main blog The Daily Bastardette.

Yesterday at rush hour, I stood at the corner of Broad and Front Streets holding a sign

Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors.

No, this was not about adoption, but it was about secrecy in government. No government can thrive without it.

Yesterday was about keeping Columbus City Council meetings open to the public.

Ohio's Open Records and Open Meetings Law, collectively known as the Sunshine Law, is one of the best in the country. You can read about it and download here. It has numerous loopholes, most so tiny a gnat can barely fly through. That is, except for the dinosaur-sized adoptee birth certificate exemption, which even the most bleeding heart liberal thinks is hunky dory if it saves just one brave mother from being exposed to her neighbors by her thoughtless bastard.

Another big loophole is the executive session where City Council is allowed to go behind closed doors to discuss "sensitive issues" away from public eyes and ears. Sensitive issues like personnel, property purchase, litigation, collective bargaining, security matters--that is, where money deals are cut. political appointments made. and tax payer money is squandered on privilege. In theory these meetings are rare. But in practice...

While the nearly 100 year old Columbus City Charter forbids executive sessions and secret meetings, City Council has been holding them for years as allowed by Ohio's Sunshine Law. Confused? You're not alone!

Columbus is a one cow town, a post industrial enterprise run currently by corporate Democrats. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Limited Brands/The Limited, Victoria's Secret; The Wolfe Family/Columbus Dispatch and other Wolfe media; Nationwide Insurance; and lesser assorted moneybaggers. Our mayor is a Democrat and all City Council members are Dems. Occasionally a Republican slips through, but local Reps in the main are fat, lazy, and seldom put up a serious fight as long as they're thrown some ground level pickin's.

But wait! There's more! For the last decade and a half every City Council member has been appointed to city council by...city council...vetted in executive session. Only later, after freshman members serve out their appointments are they thrown to the electorate for approval.

But wait! There's more! All council members are appointed/elected "at large." That is, there's nobody to represent you, no one is responsible to you. The buck can't stop. City Council is a haven for ruling class cronies, and you're not one of them.

I imagine our laughable "neighborhood commissions" are supposed to pick up the slack. I've lived 21 of my 31 years in Columbus in the University District and I have never received a single mailing or door-to-door flyer from the University Area Commission that I can remember. When I lived in German Village, I received a few. Mostly these commissions" are operated by fallen Progs, fake liberals, and a few do-gooders who busy themselves with mundane and annoying issues, like citing old ladies for peeling porch paint or holding hearings on speed bumps. My neighbor received a complaint, with threat of summons, from the University Area Commission for keeping a canoe at the side of his house. No, this is not a gated community. This is the Ohio State University area in desperate need of better lighting, sidewalks, and less crack dealers. Some neighborhood commission members, if they game it right, go on to bigger jobs, like City Council or the Board of Education.

But I digress...

For nearly 100 years Columbus City Council by law has held all business before the public (well, that's what they claim), except when it comes to the Sunshine Law executive session loophole and whim and the secret vetting of council appointees and cutting deals for tax abatements and other big donor shenanigans. So what if it violates the City Charter. See, according secret meeting pushers, only "good deals" out of sight of the insensitive and cloddish public, can be made behind closed door. It's for our good that we don't know what's going on. In 2007. Republicans showing a rare moment of ball growth. complained that council was breaking the Charter, and threatened legal action--but only because they weren't the ones sitting on council cutting the deals.

This brings us to Measure 12, on the ballot today, the only way City Council can legally upend the City Charter and officially align the city with so-called state law, which to be honest, nobody cares about. The city's fat cats hope the public will cluelessly vote themselves out of the council chamber and into the street. As I write this tonight it looks like that's what's happening. But let's not blame it all on voters.

Measure 12 shines with Orwellian brilliance:

Shall Section 8 of the charter of the city of Columbus be amended to permit council or its committees to convene in the same manner as the general law of Ohio pertaining to open meetings of public bodies when discussing issues such as personal, matters, purchase of property ligation, collective bargaining, and security matters as recommended by the Charter Review Committee."

The Dispatch editorial board crowed in response:

City charter change would provide public with more information

How secret meetings promote public disclosure wasn't explained. You'd think it was nothing but a housekeeping measure to bring City Council under state compliance.

Fat cat downtown lawyer Larry James who helped draft the measure got it., though. He told The Other Paper that he "cringed" at the word "closed."

If you say "closed" people think that you're closing the public out. So they would vote against it."

The measure is pimped, of course, by the Dispatch and something called Columbus Citizens for Good Government. The title alone should put you on red alert. Since I'm writing this by the seat of my pants for NaBloPoMo, I don't have the time to look up who is on the committee. (If I find out later, I'll add their names here). Among the committee's outlandish arguments spewed forth is that of Homeland Security. See, City Council must meet in secret session during an Al Qaeda attack or other emergency. I'm not making this up. As Bob Fitrakis, publisher of the Columbus Free Press and a member of Keep Council Open opposition writes in Issue 12 - A Mockery of a sham: Orwell rolls in his grave, his pre-election wrap-up of the campaign:

The City has a Public Safety Director and a Chief of Police, and various joint task forces with other security and police agencies. The last thing that will happen in the case of an actual emergency will be calling of parttime City Council people into an emergency session. Both federal and state emergency management agencies working with fulltime professional public safety appointees of the Mayor will handle the issue.

Acording to Suburban News outlets and other sources, Limited Brands has thrown $10,000 the committee's way, and Nationwide Insurance another $5,000. Other moneybaggers have tossed in enough to fund the campaign for $32,500. The Limited, according to Fitrakis, was the chief beneficiary of public monies of the demolition of the downtown City Center Mall

Besides the Dispatch endorsement, Citizens for Good Government (which doesn't seem to have any real people citizens) snagged the endorsement of the Franklin County Democratic Party. It also claims four or five neighborhood co-chairs and 100-200 "volunteers." who do...what? Rank and file Demos and even some City Council members have voiced opposition (Charlita Tavares in particular). Even Mayor Mike Coleman has given only a lukewarm endorsement.

Bob Fitrakis (right dressed as Jake Blues ) has covered this whole mess for the Free Press and writes what's really going on. There's a lot, but this is the most pertinent to me:

The real reason Mentel (city council president) wants to go behind closed doors is to talk about giving rich corporate entities and major donors tax breaks or tax increment financing that allows a private entity to keep the tax dollars they pay for improving their property. It is much easier to come up with schemes to give away subsidies in the form of infrastructure development or tax breaks if the pesky public is not around.

I need to bring this back to adoption for closing. What's happening in Columbus public meetings today is not unlike what's happening in adoption deform. Special money and special interests locking out those most affected. Secret making and secret keeping for "your own good." Convoluted language. A willing, clueless public that wants to believe that the government has our or your best interests at heart. We are not fighting in a vacuum. Corruption and big money are all around us, and we need to keep exposing it and ridiculing it, and killing it. We have few friends and the public doesn't care as long as it's lied to and taken care of.

Addenda: As I wrote last night, Issue 12 was passed by a whopping 63% of the voters who either don't care or were confused by the wording of the measure. As of this writing there are 24 comments on the Dispatch article, with three writers saying they voted Yes, when they thought they were voting against it. Not unlike Illinois leggies who thought they were voting for a restoration of adoptee rights in that state while they were in fact voting for more state control to original birth control access.

Advocates of Issue 12 said it would enhance accountability and provide the council with opportunities to frankly discuss sensitive matters.

Welcome to 1984 all over again.

(Sorry about font changes. I can't get them corrected)

Tea Party Tax Day: Flags and Dad Pants

2010-06-08T10:05:00.086-04:00

As I wrote a couple days ago, I've been way out of the loop lately. I've covered a few events, but never wrote about them up due to other tasks. One of the events I attended was the Tea Party Tax Day rally at the Ohio Statehouse.

******

On April 15 about 1000 Tea Party-hardies hit the Statehouse lawn with signs, flags, hats, izods, and dad pants. They were xburban, christian, and didn't do irony.

One speaker, a lawyer, whose name I didn't catch, was allegedly responslbe for "putting ACORN out of business." I started to videotape his speech, since I assumed, by his rousing intro, he'd have something interesting to say. He didn't. Minuntemen United founder and theocratic gadfly Coach Dave Daubenmire, who attended the event as an "infiltrator" (more about that below), pointed out to me that the speaker was basically a crowd culler. That is, he drove droves away. After about 40 minutes of droning, about half the Tea Party contingent had dispersed somewhere. Coach, running in the May Primary as an Independent Tea Party Republican for the 18th Congessional District seat (he lost) told me he wasn't "allowed" to speak at the rally. He said his speech would have been about "morals-- something the event throwers found controversial. No doubt!

THE TEA PARTY

I can think of lots of names to call Mary Jo Kilroy, but Communist isn't one of them.

Ohio Objectivist Society--selling Ayn Rand to Christians.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S NOT ABOUT THE ECONOMY?

INFILTRATORS

To infiltrate: (4) to enter or become established in gradually or unobtrusively usually for subversive purposes infiltrated by spies> Merriam-Webster online dictionary.

That's what Theoconia thought, too, but apparently to local Tea Partiers anyone, no matter how obviously NOT with them, is an infiltrator. For those unable to spot an infiltrator, helpful Tea Partiers brought signs to point them out.

THE OTHER TEA PARTY

I think they are from Spore.

The two Connies

Suzanne Patzer, Columbus Free Press

Long-time Columbus activist Connie Harris and Dr. Bob Fitrakis, publisher, Columbus Free Press. Bob's account of the event is here.

Robbt

ROCCO BIANCO:

NOT A TEA PARTIER. NOT A PROGRSSIVE. AN AVID ALEX JONES LISTENER

COACH DAVE DAUBENMIRE: ALL DRESSED UP AND NO PARTY TO GO TO

TRUCE

Leave your guns at home, Bill...Don't take your guns to the CPC

2010-06-03T17:35:00.010-04:00

I was down on campus today and saw the sign below declaring the OSU franchise of the anti-abortion Pregnancy Decision "Health" Centers (my quotes) a gun free zone. Being out of the loop for the last few months, Theoconia was unaware of the threat presented to local compulsory pregnancy camps by liberal gun toters.

Here's a handful of pictures, though, taken at the old Capital Care on N High and East Weber (since relocated) of kindly anti-aborts engaged in "peaceful" protest against a none-of-your-business legal medical procedure.

Pastor Bill Dunfee's arrest at the old CapCare at N. High and E. Weber Rd.

Dr. Patrick Johnston's warning:

Patrick with another sign

Mount Vernon science teacher John Freshwater (Minutemen cap) and Minutemen friends in abortion dialogue with passerby

Progress Ohio: Dave Daubenmire, Wingnut of the Year #5

2009-12-31T07:32:00.007-05:00

Dave Harding of Progress Ohio has announced winners of the coveted Ohio Wingnut of the Year Award. Coach Dave Daubenmie comes in #5.

Coach” Dave Daubenmire, the local Christian talk radio host and blogger and the founder of Pass the Salt ministries is equal parts Glenn Beck conspiracy nutcase and Rod Parsley over the top fire-and-brimstone rhetoric.

Since Coach is #5, it appears that others will be named, but they're not up When they are, we'll add them here.

We can think of several, from both sides of the aisle, that qualify.

Columbus Free Press Investigative Reporting Workshop: December 2, 2009

2009-11-27T15:49:00.003-05:00

The Free Press is debuting a "Columbus" Free Press page on the freepress.org website and is starting a project to recruit new local writers.


Our first event will be next week:

Bob Fitrakis will be holding an Investigative Reporting workshop next Thursday, December 3 at 6pm
Location: Carriage house at the Free Press, 1021 E. Broad Street

Please RSVP if you are coming. It is not mandatory to RSVP, but helpful
to know so we have enough seats.

Invite your friends!

Attention Columbus Writers!

2009-11-05T18:57:00.007-05:00

Saturday November 12, the Columbus Free Press will hold its first Writers Salon, an informal meet-up with local writers interested in covering central Ohio politics and culture --and a lot more. I've been writing for the Freep since the early 1980, and I'll be there. I invite you to join me.

Below is a letter of invitation from Bob Fitrakis and Suzanne Patzer with details.

Hello!

The Free Press will be holding a get together to meet and talk with people interested in writing for the freepress.org and a possible new printed Free Press publication. The meeting will be:

Saturday, November 14, 4:30pm, just prior to the Second Saturday Salon At 1021 E. Broad Street

You are receiving this email because you have expressed interest in writing for the Free Press or you have submitted articles to us in the past.

We would like this first gathering to be an introduction and brainstorming session on story ideas, the future of the Free Press, and how best to coordinate writers, proof-reading, and other duties necessary to continue the functions of the Free Press.

We are also hoping to recruit people to cover some of our public officials' activities as "City Council Watch" or "Congress Watch" reporters.

This invitation may be passed along to others you know who may be interested. RSVPs are suggested. truth@freepress.org

Hope to see you there in what may become a monthly or bimonthly event!

Bob Fitrakis
Suzanne Patzer

Columbus Life Chain 2009: Another Big Yawn

2009-10-07T21:33:00.006-04:00

It's that time again!

The annual Life Chain protest, aka the most boring anti-abortion protest in Columbus was held late this afternoon at the Ohio Statehouse. (October 7, 2009) The event was sponsored by Columbus Right to Life.

I've written about Life Chain before (go to the "Topics, People and Organizations Covered" sidebar on the right and click on "Life Chain Columbus" and "Life Chain National" for previous posts.) My October 13 2006 "Kool Aid" post details Life Chain history, and mission in relation to Columbus-based Mark Harrington-CBR Genocide Awareness ideology and actions. (For some reason my pictures for that entry have disappeared, though they are still embedded in my entry.)

This year, due to the temperate weather, rather than mingle with the crowd, I situated myself at an outside table at Pot Belly directly across from the Statehouse, where I could do a 3-fer: enjoy a late lunch, read a book, and watch LifeChain from a comfortable distance. It's not like anything much interesting would happen.

As usual, the protest started late and no one seemed to pay the protesters much heed, even at full staff-- about 50-60 soccer mom and retiree types and a few little kids--down from about twice that number three years ago. Life Chain, you see, eschews speakers, bloody blender baybee bits blow-ups, and hand-outs.

I don't know why, but the fat priest, the angry nun, and the big whomping crucifix are no longer a Life Chain feature. The formerly ubiquitous "Adoption A Loving Option" signs were absent save one held by a man standing near the High and State Street end. Perhaps local Life Chain management understands that adoption--at least the healthy white infant type it promotes--is economically unfeasible for its constituency in a tanked economy.

Usually an all-white protest, this year's vigil featured two black male teenage holding "Abortion Kills Children" signs on the corner of Broad and High. They stood out. Especially when they sneaked to the curb and did a little quite-unlike-Life Chain dance followed-up shortly by two shouts about 10 seconds apart: "Punk Bitch!" Now that made me shut my book momentarily. Who and where the epithet came from remains a mystery. Unfortunately, traffic got in the way and I couldn't get any pictures. Shortly afterward the two disappeared permanently behind a string of buses that pulled up to the Statehouse to pick up rush hour passengers.

Early on, a man walking by my table looked over at me and said, "People across the street Awful." I don't know if I'd call them"awful" except as an adjective: ineffective, lackluster, dull, pointless, boring.

Life Chain is supposed to be a "silent witness" to raise abortion opposition awareness. Yesterday, it elicited nothing more than a big yawn. Not even CBR "truth trucks,"which in the past have glommed off Life Chain, bothered to show up.

PATRICK JOHNSTON TO DEBATE HEALTHCARE TONIGHT AT ST. JOHN'S CHURCH

2009-09-28T15:49:00.002-04:00

Tonight (September 28), well-known Central Ohio Biblical American Dr. Patrick Johnston will debate James Castle, president of the Ohio Hospital Association on what a press release calls, the "helpfulness or harmfulness" of proposals pending in Congress related to national health care legislation. The debate will be held at 7:00 PM at St John's Church, 59 E Mound Street, Columbus

This is their second debate The first was held on September 3 at the Hillard branch of the Franklin County Public Library. I was unable to attend that debate, but will cover tonight's event, and report here later.

The debates are sponsored by the Community Leaders Forum, , The Columbus Free Press, Simply Living, the Humanist Community of Central Ohio, the Society for Humanistic Judaism the OSU Students for Freethought..and believe it or not, Coach Dave Daubenmire's Pass the Salt Ministries. It is free and open to the public.

The Hilliard debate received virtually no coverage outside of an Other Paper hit piece on Daubenmire, Meet your local demagogue, which must have made the reporter feel oh-so clever, but missed the mark by a mile.

Regarding the debate, we learn:

Pass the Salt ministry was among the groups supporting the anti-public health care position during the debate (without Daubenmire)., accorting ([sic] to event organizer Earl Wordlow [sic]. Voicing the cons was Patrick Johnston, an uninsured Zanesville family practitioner, Christian radio host, an active anti-LGBT and Operation Save America activist, and one-time Libertarian candidate for state representative in Ohio’s 94^th District.

Wearing a Ten Commandments pin on his lapel, Johnston countered his opponent’s Power Point presentation on the whats, wheres, and whys of proposed health care bills with an impassioned speech about the road to perdition, down which government health care must necessarily lead.

Johnston and his supporters’ primary concerns with health care reform , as he laid them out, were taxpayer-subsidized reproductive care, specifically abortion, health care “rationing,” health care for illegal immigrants and, naturally, the ever-present threat of Communist infiltration.

“Even if it could be proven that universal health care could save lives, it should be rejected…better to be a cigarette smoker in an SUV than die a slave to a government system,” said Dr. Johnston. “A little candy for a little Communism? No thanks.”

While audience members, like the gray-haired man wearing a “NObama” T-shirt answered Johnston’s rhetoric with “Amen” and spattered applause, other members grew visibly agitated, some issuing groans and speaking out of turn to question the relevance of his position.

I received an email from Johnston over the weekend, which included this quote about the health care--which I prefer to call the health coverage-- debate:

If you break this ethical question down to its lowest common denominator, it comes down to a Garden of Eden question. Who determines right and wrong? Who determines the limits of government? If it is up to a democratic consensus, how can we condemn slavery where it is democratically popular? How can we condemn the execution of gays or the clitorectomies of little girls in Arab lands, where such things occur with a democratic consensus? If it is up to the whims of the leaders, how can we condemn dictatorships who suppress minorities and persecute political dissidents? The question of whether the government should fund universal healthcare, as in all ethical questions, ultimately comes down to a question of morality. What is the basis of right and wrong? I believe that the God who created us has given us a standard that transcends time, national boundaries, and even our opinions. The Holy Bible contains His word to us, and in it He places a limit to the power of the state. The state has no right to take your money and give to a cause that you would not give willingly if you had the free choice. ‘Thou shalt not steal’ applies to princes as well as paupers.

Judging from the above quote, the Other Paper Paper piece, and previous statements from Johnston on gay marriage, it looks like he'll argue tonight that "the greater good" is not necessarily the "greater good" in his moral construction and and under "God's law." Better to die with God than be saved through tax-payer funded medical.

An email to Coach Daubenmire asking about PTS co-sponsorship of the debate wasn't answered. I talked to Earl Wurdlow, organizer of the debates , and he seemed unaware of Johnston's extreme views on abortion (including posting pictures and plate numbers of women using women's clinic services), queers, and Islam and his elationship with Operation Save America, which I have written about elsewhere in Theoconia. Go to the sidebar on the right for links to those pieces.

Selected Patrick Johnston's web sites (there are more)
Stop Killing Columbus
Right Remedy

For those who can't attend tonight's debate here is a video of Dr Johnsto speaking and selling his children at the April 6, 2009 Campapign for Liberty Tea Party in Zanesville.

4TH IUKA PARK FOLK ARTS FESTIVAL - THANKS CHRIS!

2009-08-17T17:21:00.024-04:00

Occasionally I write about something other than theoconic activity in Central Ohio. Something fun or of interest to the community. This is one of those entries.

Yesterday I attended the 4th Iuka Park Folks Arts Festival. Uplugged and uncommercial. And I'm glad I did. Organized annually by Chris the Anarchist Ryan (Yippie!) the festival is a great way to spend a hot August afternoon. Picture an afternoon of no political posturing and bickering where people just hang out. Kind of a throwback to the Be In.

Iuka Park is located in the middle of the University area, on Iuka Ravine. It's quiet, easy to find, and family friendly. As long as you're not electrifying your equipment or consuming illegal substances the cops leave you alone. A couple canopies, a couple tables. About 60 neighbors dropped by during the 6 hours of free food, free music, and free fun.

Entertainment was provided by Cowboy Hilbilly Hippy Folk (who I missed), bluegrass favs Dottie and Cyde, The Limited, Trains Across the Sea, The Vague, Miles Curtiss, aka Marvin the Robot, local bluesman Bob Sauls, and Old Hundred, a new bluegrass duo (maybe making their first appearance.

We admit we are mad about Marvin the Robot who we first ran into at the 2007 Iuka Fest. Unbeknownst to Marvin, we became a groupie from afar. We think Marvin--or do we mean Miles?-- is visionary. This weekend, Marvin will perform at the Arawak City Garden Fest

This year I became an immediate fan of Trains Across the Sea. I haven't seen such a Wobbly spirit since my old days in the IWW. Go to the Trains Across the Sea website for downloads, pictures, and a lot more including a video of the band's ComFest gig.

I've known Chris for over 25 years. Believe it or not, I always think of him as a cocktail party kinda guy. In fact, I think we went to a couple together. He's always known how to throw a good event. This is one of them.

A big THANK YOU to Chris for all the years he's put into making Columbus a better place to live. And for throwing the Iuka Park party every year. YIPPIE!

Below are some pictures.

THE VAGUE

TRAINS ACROSS THE SEA

DOTTIE AND CLYDE

BOB SHAULS

MARVIN THE ROBOT

OLD HUNDRED

CHRIS @

MINUTEMEN UNITED PICKET TILLER MEMORIAL SERVICE, COLUMBUS, OHIO, June 4, 2009

2009-08-10T12:17:00.008-04:00

I apologize for the lateness of this entry. I intended to write a longer piece on the May 31, 2009 murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, and local reaction to it. Unfortunately, other matters came up, so I am just putting up pictures, belatedly.

I attended the June 4, memorial service at the Broad Street United Methodist Church. Not surprisingly, a small contingent of Minutemen United showed up to picket. Memorial organizers warned the Minutemen against entering the church and police monitored outside during the hour-long service, The Minutemen remained in public space and did not disrupt the service.

Below are pictures of the Minutemen picket and porn. I asked if Coach Daubenmire would join them. One of the men told me he thought Daubenmire was in Wichita.

I did not recognize the two picketers. If anyone can identify them, please contact me.

Pray or Peace!

2009-06-04T22:13:00.005-04:00

Seen downtown tonight at Trinity Episcopal Church: PRAY OR PEACE.

BLOG ALERT: LIVING PRO-LIFE CHOICE FOR WOMEN

2009-03-18T10:00:00.000-04:00

A great blog appeared yesterday on Shakesville: Breaking the Silence on Living Pro-Lifer's Choice for Women posted by first mom "Shaker Anonymous." It really tears the lid off the anti-abortion pro-adoptionist arguments.

It speaks for itself, so I won't comment on it here.

Here's a snip:

They're [anti-aborts] always blatting on about how concerned they are for us, apparently because women aren't capable of making decisions without the gently guiding hand of all-knowing patriarchy, lest we irreparably damage our emotions and drown in a whirlpool of remorseful tears. They care ever so deeply about the long-term psychological effects of not having at least 10 months to consider whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, but no mention is ever made about women who actually do give up the baby. Seems to me that anyone who actually does so is lauded far and wide for Doing the Right Thing, but is simultaneously despised for being an unnatural uterus-bearing mechanism which has horribly malfunctioned. Where the fuck did that narrative come from, and why does everyone buy into it at some level?

Thanks to Maryanne for the heads up!

COLUMBUS LIFE CHAIN, OCTOBER 2008: THE MOST BORING ABORTION PROTEST

2008-10-07T20:52:00.005-04:00

I just returned from the the 2008 edition of the Most Boring Abortion Protest in Columbus: Life Chain.

Life Chain is a yearly October event held throughout the country. It's billed as "a peaceful, prayerful public witness of pro-life Americans standing for one hour praying for our nation and for an end to abortion." It attracts mostly middle class retirees and SAHM-types who wouldn't dream of showing up in front of CapCare or Founders or shutting down City Hall for a week.

In Columbus this means that "respectable" anti-aborts and their kids too young to object to being tricked out, come out to flank the Statehouse, carrying unobtrusive signs that remind the public "abortion hurts women" and "adoption is a loving option." Never mind that many natural mothers, forced to send their de-parented bastard babies to the adoption mill, would disagree with them.

Whatever. Life Chain locally is bereft of Meansies in Blue Beanies, aggressive Bible bangers, traipsing chanting prayer warriors, blown-up lurid baybee blender bits poster carriers, shofar blowers, and "truth trucks" (unless CBR -Midwest or other graphically oriented folks decide to glom off the event). This doesn't mean, however, that Life Chain, Minutemen United, and Operation Save America are 10,000 miles apart, even if their denizens refuse to admit it. Neil Horsley excluded. Sort of.

I wrote about Life Chain in 2006: Life Chain: The Kool-Aid Test. Instead of repeating what I wrote there, I suggest, you read my original entry so you'll see the similarities between Life Chain and the more outwardly militant--similarities hidden from all but the mosts curious local worker bees,.

It is difficult to tell how many Life Chainers attended since the demo was held during rush hour and bus stop loiterers were mixed in with the crowd. It looked, though, that 70-80 people showed up this year. There were plenty of babies and toddlers in strollers (aka "abortion survivors" since anyone born after Roe is considered to have survived abortion), but the old priest and cranky cross-wielding nun were missing. (see 2006 pictures. NOTE: Blogger is being flakey with the pictures in this entry, but they ARE there.) A younger priest, though was thronged by a group of women.

Does Columbus Life Chain accomplish anything besides making "respectable" demonstrators feel good about themselves and perhaps serving as a funnel though which a handful of folks will fall out the other end into the arms of their more radical fellow travelers? I have no idea.

I left early since I needed to go home and watch some paint dry. I caught the bus a couple blocks south of the Statehouse. When we got up to the Statehouse, the Life Chainers were posing--signs in hand-- for a group photo. Somebody on the bus asked to no one special, "what ARE they doing?" and then saw the signs. eeecchhhh....At least one person wasn't impressed.

Go to the Life Chain website and punch in Ohio (under "National Listings") to see where other Life Chain events in Ohio are taking place this month.

NOT LETTING OBAMA OFF THE HOOK

2008-08-31T02:46:00.000-04:00

NOTE: This is cross-posted from my main blog, The Daily Bastardette.

Though, I've been writing about John McCain's adoption problem, (see previous entry) I did not intend to leave Barack Obama off the hook.

Obama, too, warmed to Rick Warren's suggestion of a PEPFAR plan to "rescue" by adoption 148 million so-called orphans 'round the world. His comments below, in conjunction with his earlier stated belief in Jesus as his redeemer,is code for his willingness to open up adoption (more than it already is!) to a globalist evangelical-government partnership.

From the CNN transcript:

WARREN: OK. This one is dear to my heart. Most people don't know that there are 148 million orphans in the world. 148 million kids growing up without mommies and dads. They don't need to be in an orphanage. They need to be in families. But a lot of families can't afford to take these kids in. Would you be willing to consider and even commit to doing some kind of emergency plan for orphans, like President Bush did with AIDS, almost a president's emergency plan for orphans, to deal with this issue?

OBAMA: I cheated a little bit. I actually looked at this idea ahead of time, and I think it is a great idea. I think it's something that we should sit down and figure out, working between non-governmental organizations, you know, national institutions, the U.S. government and try to figure out what can we do. I think that part of our plan, though, has to be, how do we prevent more orphans in the first place, and that means that we're helping to build a public health infrastructure around the world, that we are, you know, building on the great work that you, and by the way, this president has done when it comes to AIDS funding around the world. I think it helps. I'm often a critic of President Bush, but I think the PETFAR [sic] program has saved lives and has done very good work and he deserves enormous credit for that.

Obama has no personal adoption baggage or scandal--that we know of--but like McCain, he has no problem pandering to the christo-socialist adoption agenda and its money-grubbing child redistribution agencies. The US government has no business funding mis-named "faith based" programs of any type, and certainly not those that seek movement and church growth through adopta-evangelization.

Adoption "reformers" need to put both these jokers on notice.

JOHN MCCAIN; "WE HAVE TO MAKE ADOPTION EASIER"

2008-08-31T02:41:00.000-04:00

NOTE 1: This is cross-posted from my main blog The Daily Bastardette, where I have been discussing Biblical American connections to adoption.

NOTE: This entry was originally much longer. Due to commitments this Labor Day Weekend, I am unable to finish up, so I am publishing only Part 1. Part 2 will go up next week.

The other day I posted Another Reason to Hate John McCain: He Lies About Adoption. I'd now like to point you to Pound Pup's Legacy's The Black Sheep (please read it all!) for a further view of The John & Cindy Show. Niels lays out a disturbing idea that should send up red flags for anyone with even a passing interest in adoption ethics:

It is a weird story and though it never raised much suspicion, it doesn't make much sense to me, unless it is to cover up the fact John McCain used his political influence to circumvent normal procedures. What couple wouldn't discuss such an important decision without at least consulting one another? Was there no contact between the two, while Cindy McCain was in Bangladesh?

******

During his Saddleback Forum interview with Rick Warren, McCain made the Piercian claim, that USians rush to adopt internationally because adoption in the US is too difficult.

Though non-committal, McCain seemed open to Warren's suggestion that the federal government create an "emergency program" similar to PEPFAR (The President's Plan for AIDS Relief), the 10-year $48 billion abstinence until marriage, condom-free (except for high risk cases), abortion gag, AIDS prevention and treatment program pimped by the Bush administration to poor countries. Recent re-authorization of the program seems to have lightened a few of the more onerous mandates much to the dismay of moral scolds (and here). Liberal critics say that the program has done more to promote the sexual rectitude and ideology of the Catholic Church and Protestant fundamentalists than to prevent the HIV transmission. (See here and here and here for some of their criticism.)

Imagine, now, what mischief "faith-based" adoption wackadoodles--in control of much of the US adoption trade already-- with the imprimatur of the president, could do here and in the Third World, with PEPFAR-type money under the guise of "saving children.

Here is the CNN transcript of the adoption discussion in the McCain-Warren interview (emphasis mine):

WARREN: John, most people don’t know that there are 148 million orphans in the world growing up without parents.

What should we do about this, and would you be willing to consider or even commit to something similar to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS — which he said AIDS is an emergency — a PEPFAR. Could we do a PEPFAR for the emergency plan for 148 million orphans?

Most of these - they don’t need to grow up in orphanages. They need to be in families, and many of those families could take them in if they had some kind of assistance.

MCCAIN: Well, I think we have to make adoption a lot easier in this country. That’s why so many people go to other countries to get - to be able to adopt children.

(APPLAUSE) My great hero and role model Teddy Roosevelt was the first modern American president to talk about adoption and how important it was, and I promise you this is my last story.

Seventeen years ago Cindy was in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She went to Mother Teresa’s orphanage. The nuns brought her two little babies who were not going to live. Cindy came home. I met her at the airplane. She showed me this 5-week-old baby and said, “Meet your new daughter.” She’s 17, and our life is blessed - and that’s what adoption is all about.

(APPLAUSE)

******

It it is extremely important for us to listen to what McCain says about adoption, The McCains alleged skirting of adoption ethics and law, if true, (including Cindy McCain's documented and confessed dope binge in the middle of the procurement-adoption process) and alleged string-pulling in another adoption, indicate the type of entitlement and affect the McCains will have on US adoption policy and reform--especially the movement of domestic and international product--if the presumptive GOP nominee is elected.

We cannot dismiss this as election year blather. If McCain gathers in evangelicals and is elected and Cindy McCain is serious about being the First Lady of Adoption as she said she was in 2000, we could end up with an Adoption Czar in the White House...and adoptees in the dog house.

"PILL GOGGLES': THE AMERICAN LIFE LEAGUE'S LATEST WACKY ATTEMPT TO KEEP WOMEN CONTRACEPTIVE-FREE

2008-08-31T02:26:00.003-04:00

NOTE: This is cross-posted from my main blog, The Daily Bastardette

If James Dobson and National Council for Adoption confused you the other day, then the latest American Life League Report's, "Pill Goggles," will send you straight into full-blown dementia.

According to ALL "reporter" Michael Hitchborn, oral contraceptives can "disrupt a woman's natural abilities to select the perfect mate." At first I thought this meant that use of "The Pill" (whackjobs love archaic terms) just encourages women to hook up with any appetizing stray male she encounters in a public bathroom without much chance of a Baby Bumble popping out 9 months later. Of course, that's not what Mr. Hitchborn is scolding us about--at least not in this segment.

It's deeper than that. It's genes.

If that doesn't work, click here for the fun.

Hitchborn explains that a new study, out of the University of Liverpool on histocompatabity complex (HMC), something that enables "opposites to attract" through "subtle smells" suggests that "The Pill" can alter the female olfactory sense causing women to be attracted to men with non-complimentary HMC genes. That is, women on "The Pill" seek out genetically compatible men, not their genetic desirable opposites. This unfortunate mismatch made under the heady influence of "The Pill" inhibits the creation of babies with stronger immune systems and can lead to miscarriage, infertility... and the breakdown of relationships when women go off The Pill and come to their senses about Mr. Wonderful.

With a straight face, Hitchborn informs us that the Liverpool study was performed on about 100 women who sniffed the unwashed t-shirts of 100 men. At least American taxpayers weren't dunned for this fetish study.

Hitchborn ends his lecture:

As if women really needed any other reason to stay as far away from the pill as possible, not only does The Pill kill babies and cause serious health problems, it could doom relationships as well.

******

American Life League founder Judie Brown has spent nearly 40 years on a perpetual road trip to ban contraception in the US. (She has 3 children.) Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood are the dirt beneath her tires. Go here to read "Who Was Margaret Sanger." Go here to read the ALL/STOPP (Stop Planned Parenthood, a subsidiary of ALL) plan to run Planned Parenthood out of your town and contraception out of your body. Mrs. Brown's diatribes are many. Some of the wackier ones against lesbians and The Little Mermaid were shot into the ether years ago. My current favorite Brown-o-Gram is Contraception is Not the Answer where she blames the "destruction" of the American family on birth control, henpecked men, and The Simpsons.

ALL subscribes to , among other things, Pope John Paul II's ideas on "sexual communion" and its evil twin, "sexual degradation" via unnatural family planning found in his Familiaris Consortio, a tome that could only be written by a man who either never progressed beyond Robert of Arbrissel or never got laid (or is too old to remember it).

We recognize that the practice of contraception violates the principles of Natural Law which are understandable by the use of reason alone. We endorse the consistent Catholic teachings on this subject and specifically cite Pope John Paul II’s definition of these differences in (Section 32):

When couples, by means of recourse to contraception, separate these two meanings [the unitive and procreative purposes of the marriage act] that God the creator has inscribed in the being of man and woman and in the dynamism of their sexual communion, they act as "arbiters" of the divine plan and they "manipulate" and degrade human sexuality and with it themselves and their married partner by altering its value of "total" self-giving. Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life, but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality.

In 1996, as part of its mission to restore prudery and sexual order to the continental United States, The American Life League teamed up with the American Center for Law and Justice, the National Council for Adoption, The Tennessee Eagle Forum, the Christian Coalition of Tennessee, the Family Research Council and other bastard-hating diseputables, as a Doe v Sundquist amicus, in the unsuccessful attempt to overturn Tennessee's semi-open records law. Regrettably, I don't have a copy of its brief. It's safe to assume, however, that ALL argued records access would hike abortion...and, no doubt cause women to gobble up ungodly amounts of Pills; thus snuffiing the American gene pool with stuffed-nosed bad decisions. Soon afterward, Brown's teenage daughter brought forth a son with no husband, conceived while Judie was on the road bashing bastards and their moms. No adoption and sealed records for HER grandson! No secrets and shame for HER daughter! The unfortunate child gets paraded around ALL events as an abortion survivor, that is, as a child born after Roe. (NOTE: I've misplaced my sources on this last part, and will link it when it's retrieved.)

******

Where does all this moral flim-flammery leave those lusty non-Pill-boggled women, whose super gene children were and continue to be sent off to better acceptable climes? Weren't these women practicing their clear-nosed prerogative to mate with non-complimentary male gene carriers? With the superior choices at hand, shouldn't those relationships, bolstered by high class DNA, have been rewarded? Shouldn't they have ended with a trip down the aisle and happy-ever-after instead of a one-way backroad cab ride to Saint Margaret of Cortona Maternity Home and Camp for Bad Girls? The pilltotallers and bareback riders obviously followed the ALL directive (even if they didn't know it) and copulated with the "perfect mate" to create genetically superior material. They didn't even get a smelly t-shirt for comfort or thanks.

As the great protector of women and babies the American Life League sure sounds like its pushing its own brand of bete noir: genetics in its war on contraception. And let's not even talk about "Darwinism."

ADDENDUM: For a good essay on the consequences of polluted thinking such as ALL, go to Motherhood Deleted, A Realistic View on "Abstinence Only"

JAMES DOBSON CRIES ME A RIVER

2008-08-30T03:06:00.001-04:00

NOTE: This is cross-posted from my main blog, The Daily Bastardette.

The American Adoption Industry once more comes begging: Give me your child, lest I die."

The latest panhandler is snake oil preacher, psychologist, adopter, and dog beater Dr. James Dobson. A couple days ago Dobson's Focus on the Family daily email newsletter Citizen Link posted the scary (to some) headline: Legalized Abortion Drives Down Adoption Rates."

Dr. Dobson, or rather his ghostwriter, complains:

Adoption rates in the U.S. have plummeted since abortion became legal in 1973, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Get out your hankies, folks. It gets worse

According to the CDCP before 1973 nearly 9% of babies born to never-married women were "placed" for adoption. By 2002 the number dropped to about 1%.

Then (surprise!) NCFA weighs in:

Chuck Johnson, vice president of the National Council for Adoption, said that creates a sad situation for the thousands of families waiting to adopt.

"Americans' attitudes about adoption have remained positive," he told Family News in Focus. "(Unfortunately) with that has come a decrease in the number of women considering adoption.”

For what it's worth, Mr. Johnson isn't quoted as saying that this lack of newborn adoptables for the desperate and childless is a "sad situation," Dobson's mouthpiece says Johnson says it is. (Say it isn't so, Chuck!)

Weirdly, this "sad situation" is then directly tied to Focus on the Family's adoptee conversion-o-matic Orphan Care Initiative which we are urged to click on. Here we find happy-faced minority boys blowing bubble gum and a cute little white girl in slightly pagan face paint waiting patiently for their Forever Families to arrive. According to the page, 127,000 of these happy older urchins can be yours (if you're the right kind) for the asking.

So why isn't Dobson yelling, "Demand for Newborns Drives Down Foster Care Adoption Rates"? Why does he want to create more "legal orphans, out of newborns (and fetuses) who have perfectly fine parents ready and willing to rear them, when there are already boxcars of kids who might actually need to be adopted and are so desperate for a home that they've turned to Focus on the Family for assistance?

Cynically, we know that HWIs (or even HBIs and HHIs, HAIs and HHAIs) are the desired and most profit- generated product. We can't get away from that. But at the end of the day, it's not about adoption, and it's not really about abortion (even when it is). It's about the patriarchial impotence of female autonomy, bodily ownership, and who controls fertility and the baybee market.

These guys can't stand the thought that women execute reproductive parenting, and moral agency over their bodies, themselves, and their children, and dare to just say no to the "adoption option."

After an initial drop in adoption post Roe, adoption rates readjusted. Since then abortion has had barely a blip on adoption rates. In fact, abortion rates are the lowest they have been in 30 years, and domestic adoption rates, though they fluctuate from year to year, remain pretty steady. (Go here for an explanation on the difficulty of gathering adoption stats and here for older stats.) Contraception, acceptance and de-stigmatization of non-maritial sex and single motherhood/fatherhood, state aid (though ever-shrinking), informal "adoption" amongst kin or friends, paternal custody, and the growing unpopularity of state marriage amongst straight couples are the main reasons most unmarried parents reject surrender of their newborns. Married couples, of course, are a generally untapped product source, but are even less likely to surrender than their fornicating brethern and sistern. Anyway, who gives away their own flesh and blood? Though USians are adoption friendly to the nth degree, the concept of turning your OWN kid over to the adoption mill is as foreign an idea as haggis for breakfast.

The conflation of foster care and newborn relinquishment is necessary, however, to pull off the child distribution social engineering for-their-own-good scam so beloved by the christo-socialist adoption industry, cultural go-gooders, and woman haters. But, Dobson is chump change next to the National Council for Adoption's grand scheme which hauls original birth certificate access into foster-newborn discourse. According to NCFA president and conspiracy theorist Tom Atwood's "How Mandatory Openess Harms Adoption" published in NCFA's Adoption Fact Book IV [pdf] (p 461-468):

Fifth: Mandatory openness reduces the number of adoptions and increases the number of children in foster care. Eliminating privacy in adoption would mean that women with unplanned, out-of-wedlock births, who would only choose adoption if it were confidential, would have no choice but to single-parent. Social science data clearly reveals that the more single parents there are the more children languish in foster care with greatly increased cost to the child, family, and tax payer as a result. Forcing women to parent when when they are not ready to do so leads to more children in foster care as evidenced by the large increases in the foster care rolls, that have occurred, as the number of infant adoptions dramatically declined over the last 30 years. (p 465)

Let's get this straight.

Newborn adoption surrenders have plummeted since Roe v Wade, but foster care rates have skyrocketed.

Shamed and fearful women who earlier would have surrendered their newborns with "guaranteed" anonymity (sealed obcs) now haven o other "choice" than to keep and raise their dirty secrets in plain sight and will abuse them as a result.

Unsurrendered newborns are likely to end up in foster care

Women who refuse to incubate for the desperate and childless are selfish.

Ungrateful bastards (and their fellow-traveller first parents and aparents) cause child abuse and high taxes.

Does your head hurt yet?

Even Dr Pierce couldn't come up with something this deranged!

PATRICK JOHNSTON IN COLORADO

2008-08-12T18:35:00.017-04:00

Imagine my surprise when I found an article about Patrick Johnston in the Colorado Independent--with a picture from Theoconia (the one on the left). The article, Colorado Personhood Law Backer Linked to Militant Anti-Abortion Groups, is one of a series on Colorado's proposed Amendment 48--the Human Life Amendment--which if passed would confer constitutional rights to fertilized human eggs. More precisely, it would add the following language to Section 1 of the Colorado State Constitution:

Section 31. Person defined. As used in sections 3, 6, and 25 of Article II of the state constitution, the terms "person" or "persons" shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization.

And who is up to his neck this campaign, but... Patrick Johnston.

I haven't followed the Amendment 48 campaign, so I shall refrain from commenting. I do, however, believe that for people who care about these things, we need to know that what happens in Central Ohio doesn't stay in Central Ohio. Dave Daubenmire and the Minutemen, Mark Harrington and the Center for Bio-ethical Reform, and GAP...and Dr. Patrick Johnson all have legs. And they travel.

The author of the article, Wendy Norris, has done her homework. I actually recognize where she has picked up most of her material. I disagree with her on a couple points, including the existence of the Army of God. It's 's such a treat, however, to find a homegrown theonomist featured in a publication half-way across the country, mucking around in somebody elses' business that I need to pass the word along, no matter what the quibble.

Here is an excerpt:

James Patrick Johnston, D.O., is, by all appearances, a polite country doctor in south-central Ohio, husband and father of six children under the age of 10 with a new baby on the way. A self-avowed "life, liberty, and jobs" guy, he lost his 2007 bid for a seat in the Ohio General Assembly, where he ran on a plank of cutting taxes, expanding homeschooling and "making Ohio the first state in the Union to defy Roe v. Wade with a statewide abortion ban."

Less obvious are his links to some of the most radical elements of the anti-abortion movement — the paramilitary groups Army of God, Christian Gallery and Minutemen United that have been at the forefront of advocating for and celebrating violent clashes between anti-abortion forces and clinics.

The path leading from Johnston's activism in poor Appalachian Ohio to the hotbed of wealthy religious conservatism in Colorado exemplifies the fluid interchange between the more radical anti-abortion movement and those seeking to shield their past associations in order to appear more mainstream.

The whole series is well worth the read. You never know when "theological" weirdness is coming our way.

The articles can also be found at Unbossed.com

JOHN FRESHWATER DEFENSE: WHO IS THE COMMUNITY COUNCIL FOR FREE EXPRESSION?

2008-07-18T15:44:00.004-04:00

Recently the official John Freshwater defense webpage, The Bible on the Desk, went online, It provides bios of Freshwater and his family and a PayPal link for defense donations. The site is sponsored by The Community Council for Free Expression. (In fact, the subtitle of the page, when it is Googled, is "The Official Webpage of the Community Council for Free Expression," though the banner doesn't say that.) The 'Community Council Members" link, however, is blank, begging the question: Who is the Community Council?

A quick run over to the Ohio Secretary of State's business database tells us the following about CCFE's initial papers of incorporation (filed May 19, 2008):

CHARTER NO: 1781823
EFFECTIVE DATE: May 19, 2008-May 19, 2013
STATUTORY AGENT: William Kepko, Attorney
1 E. Vine Street
Mount Vernon, Ohio.

Here is where it gets weird:
PURPOSE:
To have and exercise any and all powers, rights, and privileges which a corporation organized under Chapter 1702 may now and hereafter have or exercise by law, and take action necessary to expedient, incidental, appropriate and convenient to the carrying out of the forgoing purposes. (hand written, May 3, 2008)

I've been involved in the incorporation of a non-profits and even attended a 2-day non-profit incorporation workshop, and I've never seen anything this generic before.
I suspect, since this is an initial filing, it's a placeholder with something more substantial to follow. I'll keep checking.

A further Google search for CCFE finds the blog, A Good Choice: America is in the midst of a raging cultural and spiritual war. Forces of Good, Light, Conservatism and a Judeo-Christian Worldview daily battle the forces of Evil, Darkness, Socialism and False Religions and Philosophies. A Good Choice is on the frontlines exposing evil across America’s political and social spectrum.

The blog belongs to Matt Miller, Gregjaye (no full name given), and Merrill "Sam" Keiser, Jr. a truck owner/operator from Fremont.

Gregjaye's blog entry of May 20, one day after incorporation--Freshwater Legal Defense Fund-- tells us to send checks, made out to The Community Council for Free Expression to Trinity Assembly [of God Church], 1051 Beech Street, Mount Vernon, OH 43050. The picture accompanying the entry informs us that God supports Freshwater.

A post comment about the purpose of the defense fund collection is attributed to "Don Matolyak,
Community Council For Free Expression" and coincidentally, Freshwater's pastor. Mayolyak has gotten a fair amount of face time over Freshwater. He organized May 18 rally in Mount Vernon's Public Square.

The unofficial Support John Freshwater website has a download of audio interviews with Matolyak, Freshwater with WRFD's Bob Burney, along with a video of Freshwater on Fox's Showdown with Larry Elder.

Speaking of official versus unofficial Freshwater support pages, Bible on the Desk makes it clear that Dave Daubenmire is permanently off Freshwater's bus. Under the "New Media" link we're told:

This is the only official source of information from John Freshwater and his team of legal and spiritual advisors. No other person or group has the authority to speak for or on the behalf of Mr. Freshwater.

I'm going downtown next week and will try to pull CCFC's incorporation papers.

In the meantime if Mount Vernon readers can fill in the blanks on CCFE an its "members" feel free to comment.

PHIL BURRESS; THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT PERSONAL OBSESSIONS

2008-07-10T13:31:00.011-04:00

Cincinnati busybody and anti-sex crusader Phil Burress, director of Citizens for Community Values, was featured in yesterday's CitizenLink, a daily e-publication of Focus on the Family. The 5-minute video interview with Stuart Sheppard, which you can see here, contained nothing new for Burressphiles. Nonetheless, I was surprised to learn that, according to Philly Vanilli , there are over 110 "sexually oriented businesses" (whatever that means) in Columbus. Who knew?

Just a little less than three minutes into the interview though, Burress got a little hinky. Discussing a 2004 interview with a New York Times reporter, he recalls:

I just said, you know I’m gonna tell you everything, the good the bad the ugly. But but if you don't understand what happened to me on September 6, 1980 my story will not make sense... Well, what’s his first question now? What happened on September 6,1980?

That’s when I met my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. and I turned my life around Divorced in the past, Drugs. Alcoholic. I’m Liberal. A union executive. Democrat. And my life did turn around And, so what keeps me in this battle is that I know the harms that the Left produces in the area of sexual exploitation, human trafficking. Can cause to the community—can cause to the family.

We already know that Burress' purification drive is all about his former dissolute porn addicted soul. But let's get this straight. "The Left" with its labor unions, alcohol and drugs is responsible not only for his personal downfall, but his whole sin list of "sexual exploitation" that must be struck from cities across the US: strip clubs, Larry Flynt, Hustler, homosexuality, escort services, Marriott Hotel porn-to-order, prostitution, suggestive billboards and ads, private dancers, and peep shows. The way Burress talks you'd think he needs all these eradicated to keep him in line. You'd think that the Solid Gold Dancers were hot for his lap.

For other Theoconia pieces on Burress check the Theoconia Blog archives to the right.

SHOWDOWN WITH JOHN FRESHWATER

2008-07-08T14:31:00.027-04:00

Last Saturday Larry Elder snagged an exclusive interview with Mount Vernon middle school science teacher John Freshwater. You can see all but a few seconds of the video here. Scroll down on the right and click on "John Freshwater and Attorney on FOX News with Larry Elder."(Thanks to Rawhide on KnoxPages Forum. I couldn't find it anywhere).

I've spoken casually with Freshwater a few times during protests outside the old Capital Care Women's Center in Columbus. He was energetic but not rabid. I was a bit surprised, then, to find him so jacked on Showdown. Freshwater acted like was possessed by Dave Daubenmire. Or one of the umpteenth guys dragged on Maury's Who's the Daddy. The robotic gyrations, finger pointing, wide-eyed incredulity, forced chuckles, third person declamation, and weird vocal inflections were disturbing.

Freshwater was lawyered up with R. Kelly Hamilton who played Paul Winchell to Freshwater's Jerry Mahoney. I could almost see Hamilton pulling a string (or leash?) at the back of Freshwater's head"

"That's a great question!" ka-chink!

"You know what?" ka-chink!

He seemed grateful to tears when Hamilton took over answers.

And Larry Elder did indeed ask solid questions. He seemed to actually want to know what the story is.

Freshwater categorically denied he had ever taught creationism or intelligent design in the classroom. He insisted he was held to teach three "standards," one of which was evolution. What the other standards are were left a mystery. He claimed that no one ever complained about his Bible until April 10, 2008 (!) Both he and Hamilton claimed they had no idea why anybody, in fact, would complain.

As usual, the cross "branding" allegation got played. I believe the branding incident is a red herring for the school board and Freshwater. It makes things easier for everybody, the media loves it, and it keeps the pot boiling.

With this is mind I found the following 3-way Q&A interesting:

Elder: Mr. Hamilton, one of them [allegations] is the allegation that he burned a cross or an X on somebody’s arm. Tell me about that, Mr. Freshwater.

Freshwater: (laughs) I wanna stop that right now.

Elder: That’s why I brought it up. I want to know.

Freshwater: I did not. John Freshwater did not brand anybody OK. This is not...that is not truth. I did not brand anybody.

Elder: So somebody made it up?

Hamilton: Sir, you've seen a picture.

Elder: Right.

Hamilton: that is purported to be a particular mark. Somebody has put the cross designation upon that particular mark. John very thoroughly explained not only to the investigators but to anybody will listen. He has not burned, branded, or made any kind of religious symbol on anybody. Not himself, not his family, and certainly not a student in the public school system. (Freshwater laughs) There's not been any medical evidence deduced indicating...

and a minute later:

Hamilton: Let’s not load the question with an improper premise, that he branded or put a religious symbol on anybody.

This is very close to Dave Daubenmire's argument on his June 29 radio show:

He may have done a science experiment but John Freshwater did not do that to this boy’s arm.

While the real issue is the teaching of evolution in the public schools, Christianity in the classroom, the Bible on the desk, and Freshwater's insubordination, this will play out as an I say/you say with the plaintiff and his family being portrayed as whiney, lying, God-haters going after an innocent God-loving Freshwater through the back door. Expect to see more of this confusion. Who's arm is it? Who took the picture? Has it been doctored? Who REALLY made the mark? As Paul Simon sang, " one man's ceiling is another man's floor." Reality is what you can convince the Mount Vernon Powers That Be is real.

Finally, Freshwater argued that his bottom line was the removal of his Bible from his desk. "That’s how I’m able to teach. It gives me my inspiration. It’s me."

Elder, hardly a raving liberal , closed the segment with his opinion that if he were a teacher and a parent, especially one that is an atheist, agnostic, a Muslim, or of some other faith were offended, he'd remove the Bible. "It seems to me" Elder closed, "that Mr. Freshwater, probably with very good intentions, is trying to make a statement about his Christian beliefs in God, and it seems to me that the pubic school is an inappropriate place for that."

Freshwater obviously should have hooked up with Sean Hannity.

Freshwater's lawyer Kelly Hamilton is located in Grove City. He is listed in the Christian Blue Pages, but the link to his website is dead. He is listed in the ABA Lawyer Locator, but there are no details on him such as years of practice, specializations, professional memberships, and university and law school attended.

NOTES: If you interested in what people in Mount Vernon think about this, go to mvohio.net and Knox Pages.com There are huge discussions on both. These links will take you to the last few pages of the the very long Freshwater forums.

PATRICK JOHNSTON: ANOTHER LETTER DEFENDING FRESHWATER

2008-07-07T20:45:00.002-04:00

Another letter wailing "Christian persecution from Patrick Johnston, this time in today's Zanesville Times Recorder. "Disgusted by media's comments of teacher"

Here are two excerpts from it:

Why can't the evolutionists handle criticism of their precious little theory? It's as if their taxpayer-subsidized atheism is to be accepted on blind faith, with a mandatory inquisition for all opponents. The recent movie "Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed" reveals how common it is that creationists are persecuted at institutions of higher learning.

and

Evolutionists appeal to a separation of church and state to censor competitive theories of origins, but what we desperately need is a separation of atheism and state. For too long America has believed the myth that governments and public institutions can be legitimately neutral with regard to Christianity and its claims. But Jesus said we are either for Him or against Him, that if we do not gather with Him we scatter abroad. We are either in rebellion or submission to Him. "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord" but "every nation that forgets God will be turned in hell."

There's also comments.

a