Tom Ascol, a noted Calvinistic pastor, and a candidate running to be president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), thinks abortion is murder and women who have abortions should be prosecuted for homicide. In fact, Ascol thinks anyone and everyone involved in an abortion should be arrested, charged with murder, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Since Ascol is pro-capital punishment, we can safely assume he’s okay with killing women for “killing” their fetuses. Think on that one for a while.
The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States — albeit the sect is in decline, with over half its members AWOL on any given Sunday. At one time, the SBC was pro-choice. Today, thanks to the wholesale takeover of the Convention by Ascol and his fellow Fundamentalists, the sect is wholeheartedly anti-abortion and forced birth.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I currently have little, if any, hope that our country is going to pull back from the abyss. I fear people who should be paying attention won’t, and the American empire will continue to slide in a theocracy. I can’t even be happy that I might be dead, as young people I love will have to deal with it.
BJW—Nearly two decades ago, I started my gender affirmation process. I also got involved in activism for LGBTQ equality. At that time, even with an anti-abortion Republican President who was, at best, silent on LGBTQ issues—and lied us into two decades of war—we felt hope, even if folks like me wouldn’t live to see the changes. (I was in my mid-to-late 40s. You can do the math if you like: A lady, trans or otherwise, never tells her age!😉)
Now, as you say, we are circling down the drain into an Fundangelical (Even I, an atheist, wouldn’t call it Christian!) theocracy. For folks like you and me, our only solace is that we probably won’t live to see the day when the nation is led by a de Jude or de facto king/queen/Fundangelical ayatollah and adjudicated by a Fundangelical military tribunal (the country will be in a state of permanent war) or Star Chamber-type of court..
I’m not going to say I was the least bigoted person growing up, but I wanted to learn and understand. And my hopes for the 21st century were completely different from what is happening: that bigotry, racism, homophobia, transphobia etc would all be nearly conquered. Turns out all the people that harbor these types of feelings were merely keeping quiet due to their unpopularity in culture. Now they are free to be who they are: massive assholes who hate those who are different.
You are right, we probably won’t be alive. I just hope when I get to that point that I can still have hope for the future. As a hopeful, more optimistic person I am finding it harder and harder to be so. Especially with people I love dearly that are embracing this hideous MAGA movement. And no, I won’t cast my blood relative out unless they turn on me. Even then, I will still love. And while there is life there can be hope.
Damn auto correct —It changed “de jure” to “de Jude!”
Anyway, like you , I have people in my life who’ve gone down the MAGA hole. I, too, won’t turn my back on them because I love them and if I were to cast them out, I would be doing exactly what Trump and the other MAGA leaders want. I know people who worked for or otherwise dealt with Trump when he was a real estate entrepreneur and they all tell me that he always sowed division among his employees and contractors. That, of course, is a basic strategy of all top-down leaders.
A few years ago, my husband and I started watching the series “The Handmaid’s Tale” based on Margaret Atwood’s novel. I mentioned to him that there are people in the US who would like to have a similar system. He told me that would never happen and that I was exaggerating and succumbing to fear. He conceded the other day that it appears I was correct.
If abortion is murder then every miscarriage is a potential crime scene. And woe betide the woman who innocently told her colleague, “I just don’t know how we can afford a baby right now.”
The series,”Handmaid’s Tale” was an amazing show. I rented it from the library,just the first season. My “movie- obsessed “frenemy only had the attention span for one season,and yeah,it was fantastic and quite believable. Religion and Fascism combined,and people were trying to escape to Canada. Record numbers of people HAVE left the U.S. and they have no regrets. They are much happier then they were here.
Yulya and ObstacleChick—I read the novel not long after it came out. Reagan was President, thanks in large part to the misnamed Moral Majority. At the time, it seemed that “The Handmaid’s Tale” could be a harbinger of a coming dystopia as “1984” still is. But, at the time, there were still checks on Fundangelical and Anarchocapitalist power that, if not gone now, have been seriously eroded.
Although I was still living as male (and my politics, such as they were, were very different from what they are now) when I first read “The Handmaid’s Tale,” it resonated with me in large part because of the “breeders.” Of course, they could become reality if abortion is outlawed and other rights we’ve won are taken from us. But at the time, I also saw “The Breeders” as a metaphor for what can happen to anyone born or fallen into an underclass. Mind you, even as someone whose thinking was affected (infected) by a youthful obsession with Ayn Rand, I could see how—and was beginning to understand, however dimly, why—American society was splitting into socioeconomic classes and how movement upward was becoming possible for fewer people—and how those who move up could go higher and further away from everyone else.
Exactly, Ozy. And how many women who get miscarriages will be charged with murder in the future, if abortion is completely legally banished? It’s already happened.
I heard on the radio some time ago, a couple of women were prosecuted for having miscarriage issues they’d gone to the hospital for,only to encounter the cops. So yes, this is a ” thing.”