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rfmcdonaldWhile reading Dan Savage's most recent column in Now, my attention was caught by three paragraphs.
This, alas, fits into a long tradition of religious conservatives deciding that nothing should be done to save the sexually impure from death. This is a global phenomenon, of course, not limited to Christendom. Compare Iran, if you will, and Iranian officialdom's ambivalence towards serial killer Saeed Hanaei. He killed sixteen prostitutes, true; but didn't they deserve it?
On the good news front, the Bush Administration has backed off on requirements that groups receiving funding for anti-AIDS programs issue a blanket condemnation of all prostitution, regardless of the contexts of specific situations.
It's nice to know that the murderous religious bigots don't have a complete stranglehold on the current government of Canada's great southern neighbour, not least because (continuing yesterday's theme) what we fear in the Other is often what we see around ourselves. I doubt that Robert Pickton wouldn't have gotten away with killing so many dozens of prostitutes if my fellow Canadians in Vancouver had actually cared about all those (marginal, often drug-addicted, disproportionately First Nations) women disappearing off of their city's shining streets. We Canadians (and Iranians, and doubtless every other national population in the world) have enough problems with empathy for the impure already. Surely we don't need more foreign examples of criminal apathy and contempt to let us feel unjustly morally superior?
Researchers have been hard at work on two vaccines for HPV, vaccines that could save thousands of women's lives. In clinical trials the vaccines have prevented 90 percent of new HPV infections. Good news, huh? Not for the religious right. Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told New Scientist magazine that "giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex."
While the religious right's war on gay people gets all the headlines, their war on straight rights gains ground daily. They've destroyed sex education in this country, undermined abortion rights, and successfully prevented emergency contraception from being made available over the counter. Now they're going to block the HPV vaccine. Why? Because the American Taliban would rather see sexually active women dead than vaccinated.
Hello, straight people? If you don't want to live in a world where you need a license from the likes of Bridget Maher to have sex, premarital or otherwise, you had better start speaking up. Most of you seem content to merely rubberneck while gay people have the shit kicked out of us, and while that's maddening, I suppose it's understandable. It's not your fight. But what explains your passivity when your own rights are being attacked?
This, alas, fits into a long tradition of religious conservatives deciding that nothing should be done to save the sexually impure from death. This is a global phenomenon, of course, not limited to Christendom. Compare Iran, if you will, and Iranian officialdom's ambivalence towards serial killer Saeed Hanaei. He killed sixteen prostitutes, true; but didn't they deserve it?
Hanaei confessed to the killings, smiled for news photographers and proudly told the court that he was fighting a crusade against moral corruption and vice. He and his lawyer cited an ambiguous provision in Iranian and Islamic law that refers to sinners as a "waste of blood", arguing that Hanaei deserved lenient treatment.
The case provoked a debate between reformers who condemned the authorities for failing to catch him earlier and some conservatives who shared the killer's disgust with a rise in prostitution.
"Who is to be judged?" wrote the conservative newspaper Jomhuri Islami. "Those who look to eradicate the sickness or those who stand at the root of the corruption?" Such sentiments are expressed by the killer's merchant friends at the Mashhad bazaar, one of whom says with a laugh: "He did the right thing. He should have continued."
The argument over the spider killings represented a kind of microcosm of a wider battle still being waged in Iran over the proper role of Islam in society. Reformists in parliament and government have tried to push for a relaxation of the country's theocratic system, advocating what they call a "democratic interpretation of Islam". Their opponents fear the reformists will only undermine Islam and open the floodgates to secular, western influences.
The most disturbing defence of Hanaei comes from his own 14-year-old son, Ali, who says his father was cleansing the Islamic republic of the "corrupt of the Earth". "If they kill him tomorrow, dozens will replace him," Ali says. "Since his arrest, 10 or 20 people have asked me to continue what my Dad was doing. I say, 'Let's wait and see.' "
On the good news front, the Bush Administration has backed off on requirements that groups receiving funding for anti-AIDS programs issue a blanket condemnation of all prostitution, regardless of the contexts of specific situations.
It's nice to know that the murderous religious bigots don't have a complete stranglehold on the current government of Canada's great southern neighbour, not least because (continuing yesterday's theme) what we fear in the Other is often what we see around ourselves. I doubt that Robert Pickton wouldn't have gotten away with killing so many dozens of prostitutes if my fellow Canadians in Vancouver had actually cared about all those (marginal, often drug-addicted, disproportionately First Nations) women disappearing off of their city's shining streets. We Canadians (and Iranians, and doubtless every other national population in the world) have enough problems with empathy for the impure already. Surely we don't need more foreign examples of criminal apathy and contempt to let us feel unjustly morally superior?
