The linked post is from ThinkProgress, and they reference The Raw Story, as they discuss this quote from a Fox News guest, and pastor, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson. It may appear on the surface as if it were just another joke about yet another whack job on Fox News, but it is far more than that. This story encapsulates the whole current culture war that we are currently living in, and should stand out as a warning of where we will be if we fail to recognize the severity of the issue.
“Look at every place where a women is in control,” said Peterson. “You see nothing but confusion. There’s no good in it at all, none.”Peterson’s sermon began with comments about Sandra Fluke, doubling down on Rush Limbaugh’s slut remarks. But halfway through his speech, he kicked the hate into another gear:PETERSON: “I think that one of the greatest mistakes that America made was to allow women the opportunity to vote. We should have never turned that over to women.”“It was a big mistake…these women are voting in the wrong people. They’re voting in people who are evil, who agree with them…Men in the good old days understood the nature of the women, they were not afraid to deal with them.”“Wherever women are taking over, evil reigns.”
I have been working on a post on thomascwaters.com, dealing with the current state of the Marriage Equality battle and then I read this post. There are a few things we must accept as a starting point now. The GOP is been hijacked by the far right elements of that party, and this once-fring-now-mainstream position is all about a radical far right conservative religious position. Their goal everywhere is to push a social agenda where moderate and liberal voices have no place, and we experience a return to some mythical yet perceived real social hierarchy where men rule and the Bible is the basis for everything. This is the current day’s version of the Dark Ages being born again.
The solution isn’t really so simple, even if it appears as if it should be. Down with Religion, right? But Religion itself isn’t really the problem, simply the weapon being employed by these folks. Sure you can try and take away their weapon, but that doesn’t stop them from fighting. You can’t, no matter how hard you try, take Religion away. No amount of trivializing it or fighting it will work. THe only solution is to push back with real and constant effort and fight poor theology with good, sane, meaningful theology. And to point out what is really going on. That the men in power want to return to a space in time when they had even more power than they do today. This is not a battle against Women alone, but a battle against modernity in total.
I was listening to an interview with Erik Larson the other day about his book, Beasts in the Garden. In it he tells the story of the American Ambassador to Germany as Hitler grew in power and devastated Germany, Europe and the Jewish population. He explained that in the early days, no one really believed that anyone could conceivably do the horrific things that the rhetoric of the times seems to imply. For me the similarity is that it can seem inconceivable that our entire social structure and sense of empowerment and freedom could be in danger. But it is and can be if we do not stop and counter such horrific ideas as Peterson espouses.
via Fox News Contributor: Allowing Women To Vote A Mistake.
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by satanoid
