You hear it all the time when the Pro-Birth crowd says a woman does not have a right to choose other than the right to choose not to have sex if she does not want to get pregnant.
For them, sex is mutual, optional, and always under the woman’s control. It is her choice. Rape is just God’s way to get women pregnant and His involvement removes any say on the part of the woman. He trumps her choice whether or not to have sex.
There is never force or power involved.
If it were just some guy raping a woman that would be bad. However, the defense of rape offered by the religious leaders and politicians is that the fetus is a gift from God and such a gift from such a source must not be rejected.
Taking God out of the equation and not dealing with it as rape, a woman, if she so chooses to have sex must accept any consequences desired or otherwise. If she wants to avoid pregnancy, a woman should not have sex.
It’s that simple.
After all, no one would ever accept the idea that a woman can get pregnant while remaining a sexual virgin.
Growing up in the 1950s I had been through the atomic bomb drills.
As a teacher I had gone through fire drills, earthquake drills, and tornado drills depending on the location. Other than the threat of “Godless Communism”, these drills were regional and in response to acts of nature.
After the shooting at Columbine active shooter drills began.
Nothing was done to prevent such occurrences in the future, just a lot of practice for the kids to learn how to handle it. However, the reality of an actual shooting is quite different than the exercise in a clean classroom setting after which kids just go back to routine.
In the actual event of a shooting along with the noise of the guns and the sudden appearance of an angry, yelling shooter entering the classsroom, the reactions of the children, regardless of sanitized practice, is an additional aspect to contend with especially when the children see what is happening to their friends before it happeens to them.
People, other than teachers, are coming up with all manner of solutions from the almost reasonable to the absolutely not reasonable when it comes to school shootings, but they are viewing it from the outside looking in. This limited view misses two points that make their favorite solutions, arming teachers and militarizing schools, the worst solutions with reasonable gun control being the better.
In response to school shootings, according to John Cohen, a former Department of Homeland Security official,
“As law enforcement has studied the individuals who have committed school shootings and other mass casualty attacks, one of the common characteristics they’ve observed is these individuals tend to study past mass shootings.”
This might be true on the surface, but teachers are aware of another aspect that shows studying past events of others is not necessarily what makes school shootings seemingly easy and efficient to a point.
While Mr. Cohen and others see the profiles of the shooters with their names, addresses, type of weapon used, personal histories and see the obvious, what stands out to teachers are these numbers:
Columbine involved two current students.
Virginia Tech, a 23-year-old shooter.
Sandy Hook Elementary School – 20-year-old shooter
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School – 19-years-old shooter
Santa Fe High School – 17-years-old shooter
Robb Elementary School -18-year-old shooter.
Marysville Pilchuck High School –15-year-old,
For whole or in part these shooters, with the exception of the Columbine shooters, spent the better part of twelve years in school practicing live shooter drills and know the hiding places, all the safety measures that have been repeatedly explained along with modifications and why, the best doors to sneak in because students often prop doors open, flaws in video security and standard measures, that there is no real after school faculty meeting in the blue hall, the best places to find people because they are familiar with the daily schedule so are aware of population divisions, and know where all the Hidey-Holes are and where the most number of victims will be assembled at any given time.
They do not need to study past shootings because we refuse to deal realistically with gun control, preferring, instead, to train future shooters.
Preventing the wrong people from getting military style weapons would help end the need for the school shooting boot camps.
While cutting funds for mental health care, politicians like to claim that the problem with the shooters is not the weapon of choice and the ease in obtaining it, but mental health.
The manifestations of a mental health issue are not some spontaneous event but are layered like a rolling snowball as it grows heading downhill before taking out the Alpine A-frame cottage in the mountains that I always wanted.
The signs are there in childhood, and teachers are committed to do what they can so that all students have well-adjusted and successful futures and work closely with troubled students. Sometimes over the years there is success as problems are overcome or at least ways are found to deal with them. Sadly, on the other hand, there are those cases where, in spite of anyone’s best efforts, even the student’s, events might conspire that aggravate the condition resulting in acting out from mild actions like tantrums to those that are devastating.
Teachers work with these kids, and regardless how odd they may seem or how oddly they deal with problems, slight or traumatic, the school shooters were once students and, judging by ages and some connections between the shooters and the school, teachers have had them in class as students, troubled or otherwise.
I knew a student with a very troubled home life that often influenced school behavior. He wanted to be a better person and teachers wanted to help him be that person. He was into sports and involved in school activities where he would shine. Unfortunately, after graduation that support system was lost and so, eventually, his home life led him into the wrong crowd and he is now in jail.
The man in Jail is the kid that was in school with a raw hand and string of bad luck in a poker game he had not chosen to be part of.
Some states do not allow teachers to serve on juries because they have seen multiple waves of children grow into adults (My first class of students has grandchildren), and they have seen what life can do to some vulnerable kids and, so, inadvertantly might let that empathy cloud their impartial judgement.
Teachers rarely ask a student what they did, after all they saw them do it
They ask, “Why did you do it?”
What those who advocate for arming teachers are not aware of, perhaps, or conveniently ignore, is that this puts the teachers in the position of potentially having to shoot and kill someone who had been a student in their classroom and might still be, and whose rough life is known to the teacher. Worse, when handing the teacher the gun, the understanding is that along with educating the students, potentially shooting the kid you have known while the students in your class are being slaughtered all around you is also part of the job.
It is one thing to shoot some strange rabid dog. When Atticus Finch did it, we all thought Gregory Peck was the Man, but we cried when Tommy Kirk had to shoot Old yeller. The former only knew the rabid dog; Tommy had raised a puppy.
That is an unconscionable position into which to put a teacher.
But it certainly is more comfortable for lawmakers than losing the extra lobby money from the military-industrial-NRA Complex.
Imagine being told you need to be ready at a moment’s notice to shoot and kill a former, or even present student who could have been prevented from getting a gun especially if you and other teachers had not been continually ignored when pointing out the signs.
The pound of cure to prevent the shooting was in the ounce of prevention the teachers offered.
It happens way too often.
These are school realities and must be considered when creating solutions that will be incomplete and inefficient if this reality is ignored and not dealt with.
The solutions should not include training students in how best to shoot up a school or telling teachers that everyone of the kids sitting in the classroom can be someone they will someday shoot to kill because it is part of their job.
To be honest, throughout my teaching career I hated that many of the students I had educated so they could have a great future would join the military and go off to some war to have that future erased for somone else’s benefit. I saw bright kids with talent never get to be who they might have been because some stranger in the same position they were in shot them dead.
I cannot imagine being a teacher who by job requirement does that in a school hallway to someone they might have had hopes for.
I am of an age that I remember when John F. Kennedy ran for president. Surprisingly for people outide of Boston, the Kennedy family was not necessarily all that liked. Their connection to Honey Fitz through Rose gave them some validity, but as they were Boston Irish Catholic at the summit of the rise of the Boston Irish through Honey Fitz and Hizzonner James Michael Curley and with their connection to Richard Cardinal Cushing, the Boston Irish bond, having one of our own, the first Catholic in the White House and Boston Irish at that, resulted in strong support and a wlilingness to overlook the fact based and valid gossip.
Meanwhile, what we were hoping for as a good thing was being seen another way by the fetal evangelism movement that was rising because Blacks were getting White people stuff and the Catholics, especially the Irish ones who had been a problem in the Know Nothing days, had moved close to the White House.
The strategic claim spread at the time was that JFK’s loyalty would go to the pope, not the Constitution, and he would run the country according to the dictates of the Vatican.
At the time the evangelicals were against such religious meddling in the United States. They were the defenders of the separation of church and state, or so it seemed, but in reality, what they were defending was their vision of America and being able to force their religiosity on all citizens with no interference, even some help, from the government, but Kennedy might beat them to it with the wrong brand of Christianity.
And, here were.
Kennedy wasn’t around long enough to fulfill the plan for a Vatican take-over, and, with no Catholics until Joe Biden, the plan would have been in place and sprung with the three Trump SCOTUS appointments.
And now we are a country whose laws are being based not on the U.S, Constitution that we the people did ordain and establish, but the religious interpretation of the Bible according to a minority of evangelists.
As the January Sixth Committee hearings continue to bring out new revelations of behind-the-scenes machinations, as politicians in the Trump event horizon are beginning to get sucked into the black hole, and as the public’s view of the events are beginning to change with these revelations, there are those afraid of what is coming out when their names and actions come up.
Why they were so strongly opposed to any investigation is becoming clear and the last thing they need is for too many people to hear too much, so they are looking for the proverbial squirrel
Distractions aren’t easy to come by what with the big discussion being our apathy toward children being massacred in classrooms and the only other topic being the Hearings. But distractions can be found.
And they can be desperate.
Senate and House Republicans are introducing the “Protecting Minors from Medical Malpractice Act. It might sound like a good idea as no child should be the victim of such malpractice but, rather than being a broad law about children’s health care, its actual aim is to introduce the idea and practice that if a Transgender adult who received any level of gender-affirming care when they were young has any regrets, real or perceived from societal pressure or even religious conversion, they can sue those physicians involved later in life.
Don’t already hate Transgender people because some of them play sports and all have to pee? Well, a new group people cab ne created who will hate and avoid them because they mean potential legal problems. Of course, there will be other things introduced later when the hatred has to be spread and new ways found to do it.
Senator by Tom Cotton of Arkansas is sponsoring the bill in the Senate and Jim Banks of Indiana and Doug LaMalfa of California in the house.
The bill would ban federal health funds from going to states that allow health care workers to perform gender-affirming health care while permitting patients or their legal guardians to sue those physicians involved later after the patient turns 18.
Patients could sue for declaratory or injunctive relief, attorney fees, and compensatory damages.
This bill, based on the religious beliefs of its sponsors, defines “gender-transition” procedures as social affirmation, like proper names and pronouns, hormonal therapies, and puberty blockers defining “biological sex” on the basis of sex chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones, and internal and external genitalia present at birth.
Doug LaMalfa of California, one of the bill’s House sponsors, claims.
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“Radical gender-changing ideologies ignore scientific evidence and put children in harm’s way” because every time” a physician offers gender-affirming care to a minor, they’re “potentially” sterilizing them “for life” and violating their oath to do no harm.
I know a woman who, never wishing to be a parent, fulfilled Lady Mac Beth’s desire to become unsexed. Would the doctors who were part of whatever the procedure was be considered to have done harm as she was sterilized for life?
She, like those seeking gender affirming care, made a choice that she saw was best for her.
He also described gender-affirming care as “experimental procedures” by which the government is trying to “force” physicians to offer this care.
I remember as a child watching Christine Jorgenson getting off the plane after her return from Europe and all the subsequent jokes about Sweden and sex, and later throughout by adulthood meeting many well-adjusted, happy, and successful people on all the stages of the gender affirming process, but I, apparently, have been wrong assuming that in those close to 70 years the procedures had gone beyond the experimental.
It is as if the conservatives and their politicians think all this is new.
Reminds me of when Gay people started coming out of the closet and the conservative thought something was happening to create more of us when in reality it was our being fed up with their controlling attitudes and forcing their religions on the rest of us that had us step out of the shadows where they had forced us to hide not because of some 747’s contrail.
Tom Cotton based his action on his claim that gender-affirming care isn’t “safe or appropriate” for youth, describing physicians who offer this life-saving care as “radical” doctors who perform “dangerous” and “experimental” procedures.
He also went with the baby producing idea suggesting that all of this care is “sterilizing” and that these procedures are being performed on “young kids.”
Gender-affirming care for youth usually involves the non-threatening to baby production use of correct names and pronouns, supporting gender expression, and, when the time is right, hormonal therapy and puberty blockers.
None of this involves anything irreversible.
In most states this is all you can get until you turn 18 and surgery is allowed.
When it comes to Transgender people and their parents their decisions are personal medical decisions that should only involve the patient and their medical providers, not Tom Cotton.
Everyone should have the basic dignity of accessing safe and age-appropriate health care with the respect and help of their physician without politicians having any say whatsoever, especially if, in order to get their beliefs forced on all of us, they create a false paranoia about potential lawsuits that prevent patients from getting proper care.
What is the GOP obsession with the sex and the private lives of citizens?
