Art of the Odd

Making out in the driveway like teenagers, then realizing… “Hey, we own this house, and our parents aren’t home! We can go inside where it’s warm!”

Yesterday, I discovered (at Fired Up! Missouri, via a link from Crooks and Liars) that the Missouri House has just passed a budget bill which would prohibit state funding for contraception in all county health clinics in Missouri. The bill originally contained an amendment which would have restored funding for family planning services to women too poor to afford private health insurance, but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. (This funding was cut in 2003, when Republicans gained control of both houses of the Missouri legislature, by legislators who didn’t want state funds going to Planned Parenthood. The original amendment would have allowed county clinics to use state funds to provide contraceptive services.) However, Missouri Rep Susan Phillips successfully lobbied for the removal of the funding, on the grounds that “If you hand out contraception to single women, we’re saying promiscuity is OK as a state.“

If anyone doubts that the impetus for this was religious, the legislative session that approved it was opened with the following prayer, by the Reverend Mark Christian (no, I’m not making that up), of the United Pentacostal Church:

Righteous Everlasting God we thank You for this day. I thank You for the work of this incredibly important legislative assembly. Your servant, David of old, reminded us of the value of walking in the counsel of the godly and not standing in the way of those separated from You. He also told us that we should situate our lives by the rivers of water. Thank You for this day and the blessing and favor that with Your help and strength will be brought to each member of this distinguished House. In Jesus name we ask these things. Amen. ^[*]

This prayer was followed by The Pledge of Allegiance.

Of course, I’ve been saying for years that a significant segment of the anti-choice crowd is not only anti-abortion; they’re anti-contraception as well. A woman who can control her own reproduction (and thus her own sexuality) is dangerous in a patrilineal society. (One of the reasons, I’m sure, that midwives were so often victims of Medieval and Renaissance witch-hunts.)

And in other “scared of sex” stories, two legislators in Tennessee are attempting to ban the sale and display of sex toys. It’s already illegal to sell them in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and several other states, including Texas. All is not lost, however. The University of Missouri-Kansas City recently hosted a sex fair, with discussions and demonstrations of safe sex and contraception, and sales of — yes, you guessed it — sex toys.

As an aside, March 17 is the anniversary of the opening, in 1921, of The Mother’s Clinic in London — the first family planning clinic in England. (Unfortunately, the founder, Marie Stopes, was not only a pioneering doctor and women’s rights advocate — she was a eugenicist, too.)

^*This prayer would appear to violate the First Amendment prohibition on establishment of religion, as interpreted in Marsh v. Chambers, which upheld the tradition of “non-sectarian, Judeo-Christian” prayer in legislative assemblies, so long as “there is no indication that the prayer opportunity has been exploited to proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other, faith or belief.” ^[back]