Revolution #261, February 26, 2012
Protest Catholic Church AND Obama’s Capitulation
Forced Motherhood = Female Enslavement
The following is a slightly edited transcript of a February 10 YouTube by Sunsara Taylor:
I just read in the New York Times that tomorrow, President Obama is going to announce accommodations and compromise with religious institutions who are in revolt against the new mandate for health insurance to cover birth control. He says, or his administration says, they doubt that this will mollify the Catholic church, or that it will set at ease the Republican candidates from the campaign trail, but that he hopes this will demonstrate to the broad public and to the wavering Democrats that he has sensitivity to religious beliefs.
Well, I want to speak up on behalf of being insensitive to certain religious beliefs. I for one am entirely insensitive to a pope who until late 2010 condemned condoms, causing millions of people to die of HIV and AIDS-related deaths around the world. I am totally insensitive to a Catholic institution and other religious institutions that condemn homosexuality as some kind of a “sin.” I am insensitive to the Catholic church teachings that divorce is a “sin,” which has, over the course of hundreds of years, caused millions and millions and millions of women to stay in abusive marriages and be saddled with guilt because if they question it, if they want a divorce, it is supposedly a “sin against god.” I am insensitive to a religious fascist assault that has accumulated over decades against women’s right and access to birth control and to abortion. Forced motherhood is female enslavement. And guess what? I am insensitive to female enslavement.
Finally, I am insensitive to all the arguments, which I am sure some will make, that “Oh, you can’t criticize Obama. You don’t want to criticize Obama, because if you make too much of a big deal about what he’s doing wrong we’ll get stuck with the Republicans.” I am insensitive to that notion, because if your choices are between Republican Christian fascists and a commander-in-chief of the most murderous empire that has ever existed, who continuously seeks common ground and capitulates to those religious fascists, and over and over again makes those compromises over the bodies and the lives and rights of women, that is an illegitimate framework. Those are not choices. That is just a dynamic where yesterday’s outrage becomes today’s compromise position and tomorrow’s limit of what can be imagined. Today we are having a fight over birth control. Again, forced motherhood is female enslavement. Women are not incubators. I am insensitive to the church on this. I am insensitive to the compromise and capitulation from the Democrats on this. And I am insensitive to any argument that is refusing to see that right now there is an all-out war on women being waged. It is on us to get off the sidelines, get out into the streets, rely on ourselves, and beat this back. It’s time to fight. I am calling on everybody to stand up and protest this decision today. Protest the Catholic church, protest the president’s capitulation, and make plans for bigger protests to come.
On International Women’s Day this year, we are having a protest on March 10 in New York City. So again, International Women’s Day, March 10, here in New York City, we are taking to the streets. We are going to protest the many sites of female enslavement, oppression, and degradation. I will tell more about this in a future YouTube. We will go to strip clubs, we will go to Times Square, we will go to the U.S. military recruiting center, we’ll go to the fake pregnancy crisis centers that lie to women and push an anti-abortion agenda.
But note well, we are starting this march at noon and we are gathering and we are going to protest at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the biggest, most prominent and preeminent Catholic institution in New York City. We are going to take it to them and say: “Women are not incubators. Forced motherhood is female enslavement! And we are insensitive to that and, more than that.
More than that, we are incensed by that.
You need to be part of this. Contact me directly at stoppatriarchy@gmail.com. Visit my blog at sunsara.blogspot.com. Spread the word. Organize your friends. Mobilize a contingent. Send a message of support. Send money to help get this known about and spread. There is a war against women and no one in power is going to stop it. It is on us.
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.
