‘We haven’t won yet politically, but we will’
When Peter Brownlie arrived in Kansas nearly 15 years ago to become the head of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, he knew he was forging into a fray. Brownlie had worked with Planned Parenthood for most of the past 40 years, serving as an administrator in Michigan, Indiana and Texas.
Then he went to Kansas, which had long been considered the main battleground of the so-called abortion wars. In 1991, anti-abortion activists laid siege to Wichita in what they called the Summer of Mercy, in which thousands of anti-abortion activists led a weeks-long protest and attempted blockade of abortion access in the city. Most of their attention was directed at the clinic run by Dr. George Tiller. Two years later, he was shot by a woman who had been part of those protests. Tiller returned to work the next day.
Leading Planned Parenthood in that climate made Brownlie one of the most visible (and targeted) pro-choice advocates in Kansas – a circumstance he would feel acutely when his colleague Dr. Tiller was murdered while at church in 2009.
After Tiller’s death, Brownlie says, the stakes were higher, but the locus of fighting had also shifted. He spent much of the last decade in court rooms – fighting restrictive anti-reproductive rights legislation and defending his chapter of Planned Parenthood in a grand jury investigation and a lengthy criminal case. (All charges were dropped last year, and the law license of the attorney general involved in those cases got suspended.)
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http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/we-havent-won-yet-politically-we-will
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I always appreciate your heartfelt and insightful posts here. A compliment from you is an honor.
As an atheist, I do not proselytize. But I will fiercely defend my rights to profess my lack of belief in gods. I also do not care if others do believe, to the extent that they keep it to themselves and do not attempt to use legislative fiat to enforce their beliefs on others. Unfortunately, many believers do not see what has happened to the GOP.
Maybe as an outsider I can see it clearly. But maybe as an outsider I may be biased. I am willing to see either side, if there is evidence to support it. From my perspective, the GOP is a profound theocratic danger.
Suggestion for people in this thread: John Dean's (Yup! Nixon's guy who blew the whistle on Watergate) Conservatives Without Conscience which connects Robert Altemeyer's research on authoritarianism to the GOP milieu during the past decades. It is a very intellectual read, but Dean gets it right, as did Altemeyer. I've advocated for this book before in these forums and likely will again. It is a profoundly revealing argument. (on edit: And yes, Dean is a good guy, which is why Keith Olbermann had him on his Countdown program over and over again.)
I was pretty active in the Episcopal Church through my teens, the teaching at the time was rather progressive. We were taught that we were indeed individuals with the ability to think and be ourselves.
Yet there were things I questioned in the church. Later years I moved away.
Twice in my life I prayed my heart out. To whom, I am not sure. The first time was so many years ago when my two year old niece fell. She had a cerebral hemorrhage, she nearly died. I prayed and said I would go in her place. The last time, more recently was when her brother fell. He almost died too, I had a mantra running through my head at the time. I guess it was like a prayer. A prayer to whomever for his sake, was not a bad thing.
It's when they use their righteous crap and force it on us, then it becomes dangerous. To wear your religion on your sleeve is a bogus show of arrogance. Do not tell me you are a Christian. Show me you are one. Those that believe silently are the ones of a true faith, those that preach from the rooftops are false. They wear it like a badge of honor, yet they dishonor us all.
longstar, what you said. I thank you my friend.
she~
