Continuation of our series on the 14 Characteristics of Fascism and how BushCo uses them. The first Essay in this section was incorrectly labeled as Part 4 Sunday. It is of course Part 5. -Dusty

PART V: RAMPANT SEXISM

(Women at Risk: The Dangers and Consenquences of a Christian Republic)

Section 2

So what does this have to do with the Bush Administration and fascism? Consider this. In many ways the attitudes of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis are mirrored in the most fanatical of Republican constituencies: The Radical Christian Right, which is hardly Christian nor right about anything. Only radical.

FACT: “The administration requested $546 million for domestic violence programs in fiscal 2007, a decrease of $20 million–or 3.5 percent–from the amount appropriated in 2006, the anti-violence network’s figures indicate. The amount does not include any funding for 21 newly enacted programs, the largest of which is a $50 million program that provides services for survivors of sexual assault.” [6]

FACT: “Although President Bush vows to leave no child behind, his proposed 2006 federal budget and the budget resolution passed by Congress in April does just that-by calling for a cut of over $500 million from the Department of Education. These budget cuts stand to particularly impact female teens. ‘Since women make up a disproportionate share of low-income students, they will be particularly affected by planned cuts to the Perkins Program, TRIO and GEAR UP,’ said Jacqueline King, director of Policy Analysis at the American Council on Education. About 61% of the students who stand to lose the Upward Bound and Talent Search programs are female, according to the Washington-based Council for Opportunity in Education. The Council says the budget cuts will leave female teens across the country without a lifeline to higher education.” [7]

FACT: “On March 18, 2005, the Bush administration released a clarification to Title IX, the 1972 federal law that requires equal opportunity for women and girls in education and sports. The clarification allows schools to show compliance with Title IX even if they do not provide equal funding and opportunity for women’s sports, provided they show that their female students do not have the same level of interest in sports as the male students. The change also allows schools to avoid a 1996 guideline that states that multiple factors should be used in determining the level of student interest in sports. This clears the way for schools to use a flawed email survey of their female students to duck their Title IX obligations.” [8]

FACT: “Enacted under Clinton, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) guarantees eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for a serious illness, to care for a seriously ill family member or to care for a newborn or newly adopted child. This important legislation allows workers to avoid having to choose between family and job. Opponents of FMLA - the very groups that fought the law’s original passage 12 years ago - are reportedly pressuring the Bush administration to weaken the law by eliminating some of the circumstances in which employees may take unpaid leave and by restricting the use of intermittent leave. Though the Department of Labor reportedly has denied plans to propose these changes, it has said it will make changes to regulations governing notice for leave time.” [9]

FACT: “The Bush administration’s plan to curtail mercury emissions is less stringent than many environmental groups had hoped. The plan will allow the coal-burning power plants that are responsible for dangerous amounts of mercury being released into the environment to buy and sell emissions credits as they see fit and as their budgets allow. Mercury is a poisonous metal that has been found to harm the developing nervous systems of infants and fetuses along with women of childbearing age.” [10] In a similar vein this reveals a literal interpretation of the Holy Bible on the environment, specifically, since Jesus will return to destroy the earth anyhow, why bother to preserve and improve the health of the planet, its many ecosystems, and life forms.

FACT: “With new leaked White House salary figures and an Excel spreadsheet, crack Washington Post researcher Margot Williams determined in July that men in the Bush White House earn an average of $76,624 a year, and women earn $59,917 on average. That means Bush women are paid about 78 cents for every dollar that Bush men earn-similar to the wage gap that still exists between men and women throughout the U.S. (In 1963, women employed full-time in the U.S. were paid, on average, only 59 cents to the dollar received by men; in 2001 women were paid 76 cents for every dollar received by men.) At the White House, the gap is the result of the predominance of men in highest-paid jobs; 12 of the 17 White House staffers earning $157,000-the top of the pay scale this year-are men. Men and women are paid similar salaries for similar work, says The Post, but fewer women hold top positions.” [11]

FACT: “Overruling the advice of its own scientific advisors, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on May 6 rejected over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception (EC), prompting NOW and other critics to accuse the agency of responding to political pressure from the Bush administration. In December, two FDA scientific panels voted 23-4 in support of making EC available without a prescription. Afterward, the agency was subjected to political pressure from conservatives who argued that increased access to EC would encourage teenagers to be sexually active. While acting drug chief Dr. Steven Galson denied that politics played a role in his decision, women’s rights advocates said otherwise. ‘The FDA is playing politics with women’s lives and contributing to the deterioration of public health in this country,’ NOW President Kim Gandy said. ‘The FDA has set aside its mission and caved to political pressure from the Bush administration and its allies who oppose birth control.’ Barr Laboratories, makers of the Plan B emergency contraception brand, plan to rapidly seek approval for nonprescription sales for people aged 16 years and older. ‘It’s a matter of weeks and months to deal with this objection,’ said Barr chief executive Bruce Downey, saying that means the FDA could reconsider the issue within a year. ‘Clearly … the door’s open, and we plan to go through it.’” [12]

FACT: “The Bush administration has quietly deleted and altered information on women’s issues from government agency websites, a research group has found. A report from the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW), released in mid-April, says the deletion of information on subjects including pay equity and childcare was ‘apparently [done] in pursuit of a political agenda.’ At least 25 publications were removed from the website of the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau alone. Some items that were not deleted were reportedly altered: For example, information about the use of condoms to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases was changed to say that the effectiveness of condoms was ‘inconclusive.’ The National Cancer Institutes’s website was changed in 2002 to say studies linking abortion and breast cancer were inconsistent; an outcry from scientists resulted in an amendment to say abortion is not associated with an increased risk. The NCRW report also indicated that key government offices such as the Office of Women’s Initiatives and Outreach in the White House and the President’s Interagency Council on Women have been disbanded, with attempts made at the Pentagon to disband the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services. Finally, the report found that as of March 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft had failed to conduct and publish a study required under the Violence Against Women Act to investigate discrimination against domestic violence victims in getting insurance.” [13] This, as you might have guessed is exactly what we have been talking about. When theocrats don’t like the facts they revise them. Or in this case, the both, revise and delete them.

FACT: “Salon.com reports that ’some nonprofit organizations that don’t agree with the Bush administration’s ‘abstinence only’ philosophy have been ‘repeatedly investigated by the government, while faith-based groups get a free pass.’ Advocates for Youth, a national nonprofit that provides teens with comprehensive sex education, had never in its 18 years as a federal grantee been subject to an audit by the government. Over the past year it has been subjected to three. The organization claims that ‘it’s being unfairly targeted because of its negative views towards the administration’s abstinence-only education policies.’ Their claims are supported by a leaked Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) memo published by the Washington Post in July 2001. The memo describes Advocates for Youth as ‘ardent critics of the Bush administration.’ And Advocates for Youth are not the only ones being targeted. Three reviews have been conducted over the past 10 months of San Francisco’s STOP AIDS program. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SEICUS) has undergone two audits this year. While Advocates for Youth, STOP AIDS, and SEICUS have all ‘come through their audits with flying colors,’ last year a number of faith-based organizations receiving federal grants were found guilty of misusing government money. For example, a number of sex-education programs funded by Louisiana Governor Mike Foster’s Program on Abstinence ‘were found guilty in a federal court of openly violating the constitutional tenet of separation of church and state.’ However, none of these Louisiana nonprofits have been subject to an HHS audit. James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth says, ‘Our complaint is not with getting audited’ but ‘with the selective and political nature of these audits. Ideology is invading-if not subverting-science within the Department of Health and Human Services.’” [14]

FACT: In the 2002 budget, Bush proposed eliminating required contraceptive coverage for female federal employees and for federal employees’ dependents. Lawmakers in both houses of Congress indicated they would fight to keep a provision that requires federal health plan providers to offer federal employees the five birth control methods approved by the Federal Drug Administration. Andrea Brooks, director of the women’s and fair practices department at the American Federation of Government Employees, called the proposal “extremely discriminatory.” [15]

FACT: “Bush’s 2002 proposed budget seeks to cut the Maternal and Child Health Block Grants that provide health care to women before, during and after pregnancy, according to the House Democratic Policy Committee. The budget would also freeze the Healthy Start program, which has been shown to reduce infant mortality and morbidity. [16]

And our favorite!

FACT: At a recent press conference, George W. Bush indicated through White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer that he does not consider discrimination against women to be an offense as serious as racial or ethnic discrimination. According to Fleischer, membership in a group that excludes women is not ‘a disqualifying factor’ for candidates to Cabinet posts. However, when prodded, Fleischer stated that racial or ethnic discrimination is a ‘very different category for the President.’” [16]

Should we expect anything different? This is what you get in a patriarchal society where men are frightened of female intelligence and (dare we say it?) female sexuality.

Sadly, we all know what attitudes such as these can lead to. We’re talking about Domestic Violence (everything from verbal and psychological abuse to rape, physical assault and murder), employment discrimination, glass ceilings, poverty, ad infinitum.

We already know that when a woman is raped or physically assaulted that there is a 76 percent chance that her assailant was either a former husband, her current husband, a partner with whom she cohabitats, or a date. Seventy-eight percent of stalking victims are women. Globally, at least one out of three women have been beaten or forced to engage in sexual relationships. Nearly 25 percent of American Women alone report having been raped or physically assaulted by a former spouse or cohabiting partner. Women are five times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner. ad infinitum. By all means, click on the link in our foot note. The statistics you encounter will give you a good idea as to what happens when men fail to respect and accept women as partners and equals.

Will we return to the bad old days when women will be forbidden the right to own property? Will we see the establishment of a kind of Christian Sharia? Will women be required to stay in their husbands and fathers homes? We don’t know. We don’t know because we don’t know if the radical theocrats have enough political power to stage a complete takeover. We’d like to think that the 2006 midterm elections were a sign that the American people have grown weary of being told what to think; that they don’t want a narrow minded group of authoritarian theocrats intruding into their homes, personal lives, and churches. We’d like to think that we have truly come a long way. But liberty is a tricky thing. You may think that you have acquired it, only to learn that there have been clandestine or perhaps even violent forces to undermine.

As suggested in Part III, we must be ever vigil, because the freedom that we lose may well be our own.

Author’s Notes by Shakti
*For a more thorough discussion of the Thirty Years War please go to “The Thirty Years War” at http://www.pipeline.com/~cwa/TYWHome.htm

**We use the term “some of us” because there is a variety of religious beliefs within our group. Our group is composed of everything from atheists and agnostics to deists, unitarians, and practicing Christians who support the concept of church/state separation as a means to protect both, our religious freedom and neutral government.

Finis Part V
GENERAL SOURCES (Prologue)

From: Wikipedia

Biblical Inerrancy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy

Copyright Wikipedia Foundation Inc.

Last Moderated 30 April 2007
From: Online Baptist

http://www.onlinebaptist.com/index.html

Article titled, You’re Just Like Adam and Eve

http://www.onlinebaptist.com/dontclick.htm

Copyright 2000 by Online Baptist

SOURCES (Article Proper)
[1] From:: Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers

Page 169

Published by Doubleday

Copyright 1988 by Apostrophe S. Productions Inc and Alfred van der March Editions
[2] From: Religious Tolerance

The Status of Women in Hebrew Scriptures

Passages Treating Women as Inferior to Men

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ofe_bibl.htm

Copyright (c) 1997 to 2006 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Latest update: 2006-SEP-13

Author: B.A. Robinson

[3] Religious Tolerance

The Status of Women in the Christian Scriptures

Women in the New Testament’s Scriptures

http://www.religioustolerance.org/nfe_bibl.htm

Copyright (c) 1997 to 2006 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Latest update: 2006-SEP-13

Author: B.A. Robinson

[4] From: Democracy Under Assault (Theo Politics, Incivility, and Violence on the Right)

Page 168-169

By: Michele Swanson

Published by Sol Ventures Press

Copyright 2004 by Michele Swansen

[5] Ibid

[6] From: Feminist.com

Budget Falls Short for Domestic Violence Programs

Washington Lookout

By: Allison Stevens–Washington Bureau Chief

http://www.feminist.com/news/vaw59.html

Copyright 2006 by Womens eNews

http://www.womensenews.org/
[7] From: The Truth About George W. Bush

Womens Rights

http://www.thetruthaboutgeorge.com/women/

Copyright 2002-2006 by the National Organization for Women
[8] Ibid
[9] Ibid
[10] Ibid
[11] Ibid
[12] Ibid
[13] Ibid
[14] Ibid
[15] Ibid
[16] Ibid
[17] Ibid
[18] Family Violence Prevention Fund

http://www.endabuse.org/resources/facts/DomesticViolence.pdf

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