Give God His Rainbow Back! Now!

“Worst example of cultural appropriation ever: LGBTs stole the rainbow from God. It’s his. He invented it. Gen. 9:11-17. Give it back.”

People have been making nonstop fun of Mr. Fischer for his indignant tweet, but rather than just letting it slide, he’s back, with a double down demand.

“The rainbow is God’s,” Fischer said. “God invented the rainbow—look at Genesis 9:11-17—He invented it, it’s His thing, He put it in the sky as a promise that he would never again destroy the earth through a flood. Are you listening Al Gore? Al Gore, you do not need to worry about the planet being destroyed by floodwaters. Why? Because God has put His rainbow in the sky to let you and everybody else know, ‘I’m never going to do that again.’”

The LGBTQ community, Fischer warned, “is using something that doesn’t belong to you. That’s cultural appropriation … You’ve culturally appropriated something that doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to God, it’s His idea and you need to give it back.”

The first thought here is how any being so utterly weak as to not be able to retake a rainbow, well why bother with it? Apparently, it never bothers Christians that they simultaneously exalt the might of Jehovah, and his absolute weakness. Also, Jehovah is a latecomer in the god business, and a fair amount of the old testament stories are lifted from earlier peoples and their mythologies, so there’s no reason to think ol’ Jehovah had a lock on a rainbow. There is the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, which the OT writers shamelessly stole from when hammering out Genesis. What about the Bifrost? That’s a whole rainbow bridge, from Asgard to Midgard, which would kind of put Jehovah’s measly rainbow to shame, yeah? What about Cuchavira, god of the rainbow? How about the Greek Goddess Iris, who is the personification of the rainbow, a messenger, and the link between the gods and humanity? Iris had long been in business before your sorry god was dreamed up, so that weak god of yours loses this one. There are plenty of other rainbow ties to various mythologies as well.

You also lose the whole “you can’t have a rainbow flag!” tantrum, too. Rainbow flags are not new, have been used for centuries. So, about that cultural appropriation business…of all people, Christians need to shut the fuck up about cultural appropriation of any kind, seriously, because the list of your crimes in that category are damn near endless.

Via RWW.

A Few Words from Alan Cumming…

#ArtAgainstHate PLEASE SHARE by reposting, or volunteer if you would like to partake in this project. Help build a community with us by raising awareness of the bullying this administration is enabling. Find empowerment in the words they call you. In these chaotic times it’s easy to lose grasp of hope for this troubled country. Yet if we open our hearts and our minds to the lush array of souls and energy that surround us every day we can find common ground. And if we advocate others to try their best to learn just one positive thing about that person who may seem so alien on the surface, perhaps we all will discover that beneath the masks that we hide behind are actually more similarities than differences. And one by one, may we shed these words of hate that are spawned by fear of the unknown. #Model: @alancummingsnaps #Photographers: @StevenTrumon & @GINGERB3ARDMAN #MAKEUP: @makeupartbynoel #Retouch Collab: @shinehorovits #ArtistsAgainstTyranny #SpreadTheWord #LoveTrumpsHate #AmericaTheBeautiful #UnitedNotDivided

A post shared by Alan Cumming (@alancummingsnaps) on

#ArtAgainstHate PLEASE SHARE by reposting, or volunteer if you would like to partake in this project. Help build a community with us by raising awareness of the bullying this administration is enabling. Find empowerment in the words they call you. In these chaotic times it’s easy to lose grasp of hope for this troubled country. Yet if we open our hearts and our minds to the lush array of souls and energy that surround us every day we can find common ground. And if we advocate others to try their best to learn just one positive thing about that person who may seem so alien on the surface, perhaps we all will discover that beneath the mask we hide behind are actually more similarities than differences. And one by one, may we shed these words of hate that are spawned by fear of the unknown.

Source.

The Penis Seat.

Men using Mexico City’s metro trains got a shock when they sat down on a seat featuring a lifelike penis.

Campaigners against sexual violence placed the seat, which is moulded in the shape of a male body – complete with genitals, on public transport in a drive designed to show men the difficulties women face every day.

A note on the floor in front of the seat read: “It’s uncomfortable to sit here, but that’s nothing compared to the sexual violence suffered by women on their commute.”

A video promoting the stunt has been watched some 800,000 times on YouTube and is part of a UN Women campaign, alongside the Mexico City government, to tackle the problem of sexual assault.

In it, men can be seen leaping straight back up after trying to sit in the seat. Bemused, confused and disgusted expressions are seen on passengers’ faces as they catch sight of the moulding.

Mexico City moved in 2000 to make the first three carriages of metro trains women-only all day because of a surge in complaints about harassment, but it appears the problem remains.

This is a great idea, because it drives home the problem of harassment in a very real way, not only with the seat, but as you can see later in the video, the camera screens at the station were focusing in on men’s arses, much to their consternation and alarm. As a woman, it’s quite easy to laugh about the reaction of the men, because we spend whole lifetimes putting up with such shit, and it is always a difficult task to get the depth of the problem through to men. Here’s hoping this campaign does get more men to understand.

Holly Kearl, founder of the Stop Street Harassment campaign in the US, told the BBC: “Too often initiatives around women’s safety focus on what women should or should not do, so it is refreshing to see a creative campaign aimed at men.”

On YouTube, the reaction was not universally positive.

One angry male commenter condemned the video as “misandrist” and said it accused an “entire gender” over the actions of an “idiotic and uneducated percentage”.

A woman wrote under the video: “These misandrist campaigns make me angry. To other women I say, ‘Don’t you have sons, fathers or partners? Do you agree with generalising and demonising the male sex in this way?’”

As there has been little done to diminish centuries worth of generalising and demonising women, I’d say when that sort of shit stops, we can stop targeting those who commit the highest levels of harassment. Why is is alright to continue on with the “don’t do this! don’t do that!” garbage women and girls get from day one? Why is it not alright to target harassers and rapists? Those campaigns actually work. And the standard disclaimer: No, not all men harass, assault, or rape. All men do know other men who do those things. All men know other men who are sexist assholes, who tell very nasty jokes about women, who complain constantly about how evil women are, so it’s okay to do this or that, and so on. And the probability is very high that most men don’t tackle all those other men about that sort of stuff. Until men stand up to other men, we won’t get far.

Full story here.

Art Focus: TDOV.

Today is the Transgender Day of Visibility. In celebration, and in the spirit of always learning, visit Jes Fan, and their work. Hyperallergic has a good look at Fan’s current body of work, No Clearance in the Niche, exhibiting at the Museum of Arts & Design, NYC, through April 30th.

Jes Fan, “Stranded between one act and another” (2016), polished resin, hair (all images courtesy of Museum of Arts & Design, unless noted).

Jes Fan, “Stranded between one act and another” (2016), polished resin, hair (all images courtesy of Museum of Arts & Design, unless noted).

If gender is learned and performed, as scholars like Judith Butler have argued, then can it also be reinforced at a biological, molecular level? Jes Fan’s No Clearance in the Niche poses this question by exploring how our bodies are already engineered, and the ways we can take control of engineering them better to serve our own needs and desires.

The exhibition stems from Fan’s experiences transitioning between genders and also between continents. As Fan explained to me before the opening, “I started thinking, how pervasive is the patriarchy in organizing power structures, and even bio-politically? Birth control pills are a cocktail of progestogens and estrogen. What are the feminizing effect on bodies who take birth control pills? Why are the bodies of uterus-owners policed more rigorously than others?” Fan’s work falls in line with much of the current discourse about the ways that drug use and administration are influenced by cultural, racial, and gender biases. Decisions about who has access to drugs and how they are packaged remains in the hands of a white capitalist patriarchy, and many marginalized people are forced to find ways to navigate these exclusionary policies.

Jes Fan, “Testo-candle” (2016), Depo-testosterone, lye, water, silicone base.

Jes Fan, “Testo-candle” (2016), Depo-testosterone, lye, water, silicone base.


You can read and see much more at Hyperallergic. * Jes Fan in their Studio: The Miracle of Gender. * Jes Fan’s Site.

Women, Success Is…

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Kali Holloway at Alternet has an outstanding article up about Ivanka Trump, and how many very gullible liberals insist on thinking she is some sort of liberal moderating force on the Tiny Tyrant. That could not be further from the truth, she’s every bit as ruthless, power hungry, egotistical, and conservative as her father. Ms. Kushner Trump also appeals to a certain type of feminist, one who is not remotely interested in intersectionality, and not all that interested in feminism, when it comes right down to issues. Ms. Kushner Trump’s most recent book is called “Women Who Work”, and let’s take a look at the above photo. Of all the women who might read this post, does that come close to representing you, in any way? Let’s hear it for those working women, if they are white, and part of the 1%!

Just a bit from the article here, the whole thing is well worth reading (emphasis mine):

The irony of all this is the feminism that Ivanka has upheld is steadfastly retrograde and classist, perpetuating an image of womanly success as a kind that requires they both do and have it all. You can see it in her fashion line’s Women Who Work campaign, which also happens to be the name of her forthcoming book. She measures women—and here she pretty much only means white women; the rest of us barely enter the picture except as occasional tokens—by the same yardstick used by the patriarchy and, not coincidentally, her father. Success is being rich, thin, attractive, the boss (at the office and in bed) and never once letting the difficulty of juggling it all make you bitchy. According to the rules of her brand of consumerist feminism, the first rule of fighting sexism—aside from living up to its every impossible expectations—is to never complain about sexism. In the Trump Card she suggests, for example, “separating the real [sexual] harassment from the benign behavior that seems to come with the territory.” Learn to take unwanted advances as compliments, ladies!

“Frankly, I think the biggest message that Ivanka is espousing is that, sure, women can get a seat at the table … if they’ve already got a hefty leg up and they pander to the men above them,” Teagan Walsh-Davis, co-artistic director of The Jades theater group, told the Chicago Tribune. “I can certainly appreciate the idea of using your privilege for good…But her goals seem to be a lot more shortsighted. When she talks about advocating for working women, she’s talking about women who are already successful. She’s seeing ‘working women’ as a monolith of her own class. In her mind, it’s mostly women who have already made it. In the family leave plan she’s tried to propose, most of the tax benefits go to families earning over $100k a year.”

Trump voters get a lot of richly deserved derision for gullibly swallowing Trump lies despite all contradictory indications. The same might be said of Ivanka among (white) liberals, who’ve endlessly given her chance after chance, in the hope that the feminist glimmers they’ve seen will fully shine. It’s not that 45 isn’t listening to his daughter, who is pleading with her father to do the right thing. The reality is, Ivanka and her dad are on the same selfish, kleptocratic page. Despite all her up-with-women talk, Ivanka doesn’t pay interns and reportedly required a full court press to offer maternity leave to employees. In her new role in the White House—which makes her a high-ranking member of her father’s administration, but with no actual title so as to skirt anti-nepotism laws—she’ll continue to offer no advocacy for the vulnerable and marginalized.

She never even pretended to care about issues facing black women or other women of color, and it’s a safe bet that streak will remain unbroken. Expect her “deafening silence” on the destruction of Planned Parenthood to continue; her pushback on the GOP’s anti-women’s health care to be nonexistent. She’ll keep putting out empty, faux-enlightened statements for as long as it serves the administration and her brand, which she still controls and has refused to put in a blind trust, conflicts of interest be damned. The goal is to keep a line open between the White House and the Trump Organization, and to keep downplaying the threat of this administration by outright lying about it in soothing tones. Ivanka is Rose, feigining innocence before betrayal in the horror movie “Get Out,” she is the 53 percent of white women—the ones she was hired to speak directly to—who voted for Trump even though they knew deal but like the benefits of white supremacist patriarchy. Like those women, Ivanka has signed on to do the bidding of that system in exchange for personal gain.

It’s more of the same that we’ve seen from Trump’s team, and a reason to stay weary. Ivanka is a key part of the strategy. Start recognizing her as such.

Highly recommended reading!

SlayTV.

Slay

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Enter SlayTV.

Slay was founded by Sean Torrington, a former Goldman Sachs project manager, and his husband Terry; after Torrington lost his job in 2010 , he decided to follow his passion for filmmaking by creating some YouTube web series based on the lives of black and brown LGBTQ people. They then created an app to curate content from Youtube and the web onto one platform. And Slay has been growing ever since.

SlayTV officially launches on May 15 online, on iOS and Android devices, as well as on Roku, Apple AirPlay, Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, and other services.

Torrington hopes to empower content creators to become “sustainable entrepreneurs” who generate their own revenue. “Slay is not only digital TV, it is a production company and an ad agency,” he tells Out. “We will build campaigns around content on our network to get it branded.”

That content includes a wide variety of programs in various formats, for and by queer people of color, such as: the docu-series Other Boys NYC, a 50-part series exploring narratives of queer and transgender men of color; No Shade, inspired by Torrington’s coming-of-age in New York; and the romantic sitcom Love @ First Night, based loosely on Sean and Terry’s relationship.

Out has a nice introduction video. SlayTV. SlayTV on youtube. Great content, wonderful people, go explore!

Wee Gay Badgers: Mustard & Ketchup.

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Two “wee” gay badgers Mustard & Ketchup, who’re in a “long term lovin’ relationship,” star together in Looper’s retro new “Farfisa Song” video. The music project, helmed by Stuart David of Belle and Sebastian, is gearing up to launch tomorrow pre-orders for exclusive vinyl of its 2015 album, Offgrid:Offline, which this track originally appeared on.

The video’s cutesy cartoon characters were animated by David’s longtime collaborator, Iain Gardner, who also created Looper’s “Oh, Skinny Legs” visual. “I loved how ‘Farfisa Song’ harked back to the sounds from my youth and consequently found inspiration from ’70s variety shows for the video,” Gardner told OUT. “And it’s been a great way for me to flesh out and get to know my characters, Mustard & Ketchup.”

David said he gravitated toward the badgers because they live in a world where no stigma is attached to being gay, but where it is frowned upon to be a badger. Throughout the video, they’re shown preparing for a Looper music video on what looks like a very slim production budget. “We are proud to have worked with them on this video,” David said of Mustard & Ketchup. “We do feel, however, that Mustard and Ketchup may have overlooked the fact that there is something of a stigma attached to those who have chosen to associate themselves with Looper.”

Via Out.

The Benedict Option.

Youtube screenshot.

Youtube screenshot.

Oh, a book on how Christians can hide from all the icky queer folk! Not only hide, but build shadow societies until they can take over, proper like. Think Progress has a fun and informative Atheist and a Christian Review…

ZF: I mean, that’s not even the most extreme outcome! Dreher specifically calls on those who are committed to Benedict Option communities to sacrifice educations and careers to avoid having to function in environments that might require affirming LGBT people. “A young Christian who dreams of being a lawyer or doctor might have to abandon that hope and enter a career in which she makes far less money than a lawyer or doctor would,” he writes. “An aspiring Christian academic might have to be happy with the smaller salary and lower prestige of teaching at a classical Christian high school.” I’m not really surprised by the indoctrination mentality of limiting one’s education to a Biblical framework, but how can anyone argue that having fewer doctors is a good thing for any community?

JJ: Yeah, I think this is all wrapped up in Dreher’s dream of creating a sort of shadow conservative Christian society. As he puts it: “Rather than wasting energy resources fighting unwinnable battles, we should instead work on building communities, institutions, and networks of resistance that can outwit, outlast, and eventually overcome the occupation.”

Head on over to read about the latest Christian scheme.

The Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Care Plan. UPDATED.

The Message to Women Everywhere.

The Message to Women Everywhere.

As most everyone now knows, the bill was withdrawn before a vote. Yes, be happy. That said, go ahead and read all the following, and remember. Remember just what they wanted to do, and still want to do. We cannot afford to forget.

 
This post brought to you with a leaden heart sinking in a simultaneous sea of fury and despair. It’s going to be a roundup, because I just can’t. I can’t.

Trump budget boss: If you want insurance to cover maternity care, lobby your state legislature. Trumpcare: Giving you the freedom to purchase health insurance that covers nothing.

On Thursday, President Trump and the House Freedom Caucus tentatively worked out a deal: Trump would agree to remove mandatory coverage of “essential services” from his health care bill in order to win the far-right caucus’ support for it.

Essential services include maternity and newborn care, pediatric care, emergency services, substance abuse treatment, and prescription drug coverage. Under the Affordable Care Act, every health insurance plan sold in the US must cover them.

White House says maternity care won’t be more expensive for women —if they’re on a family plan: A story of male priorities on women’s health care, in two acts.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Thursday that women wouldn’t have to worry about paying more for maternity care under Trumpcare, as long as they’re on a family plan.

The exchange came as a reporter pressed Spicer on reports that the GOP is considering repealing Obamacare’s 10 essential health benefits mandate — a requirement that all insurance plans cover services such as hospitalizations, prescriptions, preventative care, and pregnancy, maternity, and newborn care.

Spicer called the furor over these benefits a “philosophical discussion,” and argued that repealing them was a way to bring premiums down.

The White House may have skirted federal law to try and save its failing health care bill: Several official Twitter accounts lobbied Congress in support of the AHCA bill.

On Thursday morning, as the Trump administration frantically tried to save its deeply unpopular Affordable Care Act replacement bill, White House social media director Dan Scavino Jr. tweeted out a message to Trump’s dwindling pool of supporters urging them to call their congressperson in support of the American Health Care Act.

Hours later, similarly worded tweets were sent from the official @POTUS account and Donald Trump’s personal account.

But as some people were quick to note, directly lobbying Congress in support of (or opposition to) a bill using federal dollars—including White House staff who earn federal salaries—is strictly forbidden under 18 U.S.C. § 1913.

The Trump White House seems confused about how pregnancy works: Let me teach you about the birds and the bees.

The House is expected to vote Friday on a bill that, if a faction of the most conservative House Republicans gets its way, will eliminate the requirement that insurance plans cover certain essential health benefits. These benefits include maternity care, a fact that the Trump White House views as an opportunity to pit men against women.

It’s a common joke among the Affordable Care Act’s opponents. Why should a man pay for women’s health care? Hilarious!

At least with respect to maternity care, however, there’s a very simple answer to this question. Because of the unusual nature of pregnancy, either everyone must pay for pregnancy coverage, or no one will have pregnancy coverage.

The reason why is a problem known as “adverse selection.”

In last ditch effort for votes, Trump says goal of Trumpcare is to end Planned Parenthood: Trump quite literally plays politics with women’s health.

A photo of the House Freedom Caucus and Mike Pence went viral on Thursday, and for good reason — it showed that in a discussion over the future of women’s health insurance plans, the only people in the room were white men.

In a bid to get the far-right Freedom Caucus on board, President Trump and GOP leadership (again, all men) offered to repeal Obamacare’s Essential Health Benefits provision, which mandates that health insurers offer coverage for basic care like hospitalizations, prescriptions, and notably for women, pregnancy, maternity, and newborn care.

According to reports, however, the Freedom Caucus still doesn’t think the bill goes far enough. And on Friday, Trump took to Twitter to levy one more threat at its members, dangling women’s health coverage in front of them as bait:


The irony is that the Freedom Caucus, which is very pro-life and against Planned Parenthood, allows P.P. to continue if they stop this plan!

There’s many ways in which Trumpcare would disproportionately affect women. It would price abortion care out of reach for many women, even some on employee-sponsored plans. It would roll back Medicaid and charge seniors more for health insurance, hurting two populations that are predominately female. With the new revisions, it will roll back maternity coverage.

And, as Trump alludes to, it would federally defund Planned Parenthood —which in practice, actually means preventing low-income and rural women and men who depend on Planned Parenthood for cancer screenings, STD testing, and birth control consultations. In 105 counties, Planned Parenthood is the only birth control clinic. Annually, 2.5 million women and men seek care at Planned Parenthood clinics.

Trump knows this.

Ware Christians Offering Cake.

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While perusing Right Wing Watch yesterday, I came upon a story, told by one Lance Wallnau, about a magic cake. This cake was so gosh darn magic, it completely changed someone’s sexual orientation.

While streaming a video over Periscope last weekend, right-wing pastor Lance Wallnau received a message from a viewer saying that she needed prayers that would help deliver her son from homosexuality. That message prompted Wallnau to recall an incident he heard about recently in which a gay bar owner was supposedly delivered from his life of sin after eating a cake which had been prepared and prayed over by Christians.

As Wallnau told it, there were some hookers who used to hang out at a bar who were saved by a fellow patron who had found Christianity. Together, Wallnau said, these individuals “baked a cake for the owner of the bar, who was gay and very adamantly anti-Christian” and prayed over it that he would leave homosexuality.

They didn’t pray for him to lose his adamantly anti-Christian views? Oh, what am saying, of course praying away the gay was much more important. Anyway, on with the magical cake!

“It was an anointed cake,” Wallnau said, “and they made the cake and gave it as a gift. And when he ate the cake … the power of God hit him.”

The “presence of God” fell upon the bar owner, Wallnau recounted, and he then got baptized, at which point “the spirit that was working him got broken off,” thus freeing him from his life of homosexuality.

Aw, I’m disappointed. No recipe? How are you supposed to concoct the special anointing oil? I grew up Catholic, that shit’s serious, you have to have the magic recipe! So, ware Christians bearing cake. Now I’m wondering, is there a special cake us atheist types can make and offer? Perhaps a really good magical cake recipe for republicans?

Via RWW.

Oh, the Stupid. Too Much.

Sean Spicer speaks about health care benefits (CNN/screen grab).

Sean Spicer speaks about health care benefits (CNN/screen grab).

See that list in the photo? Those are all things we are about to lose here behind The Gold Curtain. America the Fucked Up. CNN tackled Spicer, who was going with full out bluster, in an attempt to defend this monstrousness. I’m just going to remark on a bit of the stupid, I’m close to overdosing on it already today.

According to Spicer, “older men, older women” who had “gotten passed [sic] maternity age” were being forced to pay for maternity care, driving up the overall cost of insurance.

When, exactly, do men get past maternity age? There are men in their 70s who have very young children, under the age of 5. Also, a lot of women don’t have children until they are in their 40s, so can we at least define this “passed the maternity age” business? Then, if you don’t mind, would you answer as to why you think any of this is your fucking business? Also, y’know, lot of people out there, older ones, who have children who are now having children, and they have a vested interest in them having good healthcare. That sort of thing is called family. You should look it up.

“People who were at the younger end of the age scale were buying end-of-life benefits,” he added.

What, I wonder, do you mean by that one? It’s not in the least uncommon for younger people to make plans for the end of their life, that would be why people make wills, have insurance, and so on, you stupid dipstick of an idiot. What in the fuckety fuck makes you think being younger automatically rules out catastrophic health problems? Accidents? Terminal illness? Not everyone dies at the age of 100something. Most of us won’t make it that far. At your age, Mr. Spicer, I’d think you’d know just how fast it flashes past, and before you know it, you aren’t 25 anymore. Trying to have some safety nets laid out in front of you is one way to prepare, so you can have a good life that isn’t completely wiped out by one unforeseen complication.

The people in charge of the Fuck You Care Plan, now with added Fuck. You.!

Via Raw Story.

ETA: In the comments, I included a link to yet another callous rethuglican, who made a very nasty remark about mammograms. The tweetstream following his notpology is very long, and a good many people brought up a very important point: men also have breasts, and yes, they can get breast cancer too. This is not brought up enough, and men, seriously, if you find you have a lump, get your self to a doctor, immediately! Ignoring such a thing leads to one place: death. Also, manhandle your breasts every month, have a check for anything suspicious. If you have a partner, it can be fun to check each other!

The Male Breast Cancer Coalition.

The ‘Working for Women’ Award Goes To…

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Mike Pence! Aww, here ya go, you walking meatsack of sexism and hate:

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…Naturally, he’s being honored with a “Working for Women” award by the “Independent Women’s Forum,” a conservative non-profit for which Kellyanne Conway is a board member. Ah, it all makes sense now.

A press release sent to the Cut describes the…honor…thusly:

“The award recognizes an individual who values free markets, works to create a more dynamic and innovative work world, and celebrates the valuable contributions women make to society.”

According to its website, the mission of the IWF is to “improve the lives of Americans by increasing the number of women who value free markets and personal liberty.” Just to be clear, an award from a group that celebrates “personal liberty” is going to a man who is working feverishly to curtail the rights of women to control their own bodies. This is like giving Idi Amin a Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian efforts.

Jesus Christ. Every time I think they just really couldn’t sink any lower, they manage it. Pence is someone who has spent his whole career trying to destroy women. He certainly has no use at all for them as actual autonomous, thinking human beings. Of course, this “award” is coming from a group which does not view other women as full human beings either. It scares me to think of the near to insane level of cognitive dissonance ringing in the brains of women like Carrie Lukas and Kellyanne Conway. That might explain the inability to actually think, that ringing has got to be awfully loud.

Via Jezebel.

Bad News for Women, a la Trump.

Austin Ruse speaks at 2015 conference on sexual orientation and gender identity in international law.

Austin Ruse speaks at 2015 conference on sexual orientation and gender identity in international law.

The Trump administration this week named representatives from two intensely anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ groups, C-Fam and the Heritage Foundation, to be part of the official U.S. delegation to the session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which began on Monday and runs until March 24.

The State Department’s press release announcing the delegation calls the session “the most important annual meeting on women’s issues at the United Nations.” But just last week, in an email titled “Seven Days to War…Meet the Enemy, Learn Their Names,” C-Fam called it “one of the most dangerous meetings of the year.” On Monday morning, C-Fam sent out an email calling the session an “assault on life and family” and begging for money, portraying themselves as a “small and relatively weak” organization pitted against the “rich and powerful” forces such as the U.N. human rights office; now they are part of the official U.S. delegation.

C-Fam, formerly the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, and its leader Austin Ruse are so committed to enshrining “traditional” ideologies about gender, marriage and family in international law that they have teamed up with many of the world’s most repressive regimes to carry out their fight at the U.N. The Heritage Foundation is at the heart of a massive Religious Right coalition pushing to give business owners a broad legal right to discriminate against LGBT people and families as well as single parents based on their holding traditional religious views about gender, marriage and family.

As you can see from the wiki links, neither C-Fam or the Heritage Foundation are “small, relatively weak” organizations. They are both powerful, and they both have unfettered access to the Trump Regime, whereas previous administrations restrained them somewhat. The rise of the Religious Reich has been ongoing, but now is the time for alarm, because the current regime has no problem at all with crushing tank of Christian oppression running ramshod over everyone and everything they don’t like, and that’s a considerable list. The mere fact they have been designated representatives to such an important session is not good news. These people are anything but interested in the status of women and girls, outside of a determination to make sure all women and girls are ground well into the dirt, under the boot of patriarchy.

Trump’s massive expansion of the global gag rule already made it clear that his administration was willing to target some of the world’s most vulnerable people in order to meet the demands of his Religious Right base. Ruse recently complained about efforts by other nations and nonprofits to mitigate the harm of Trump’s policy on public health efforts in poor countries. The official appointments of C-Fam and Heritage effectively remove any lingering doubts about the Trump administration’s abandonment of what has been important U.S. advocacy for reproductive health and LGBTQ human rights around the world.

OutRight Action International, a human rights group active at the U.N., decried the appointments. “Fundamentalist notions about how women and girls should behave should never be the basis of advising or negotiating US foreign policy,” said Executive Director Jessica Stern in a statement. She also called it “a bad sign that two organizations that have tried to delegitimize the United Nations and human rights internationally now sit on the official US delegation.” Stern held out hope that even in the face of these appointments, the U.S. might be willing to support Commission on the Status of Women conclusions condemning discrimination.

Oh, I wouldn’t be holding my breath on that last. We are in dark days here, the Gilded age is back, and women don’t hold much of a place, as far as being considered full human beings, who are, in every way, the equal of men.

The delegation will be led by anti-choice U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley and her deputy Michele Sison. Joining them as Public Delegates will be Lisa Correnti, C-Fam’s executive vice president, and Grace Melton, Heritage Foundation associate for social issues at the U.N.

When it comes to social issues in regard to women, it’s quite plain where the Religious Reich is concerned: women belong under the thumb of a man, must be virginal until placed under said thumb, no, no contraception, absolutely no choice, because no autonomy, and certainly none of that queer business!

Via RWW.