3 July 2013 Come Mr. Taliban

Cassi Creek:  As we make ready for the annual celebration of the American Revolution, we find that one segment of our populace is waging an ongoing war to deprive women of their right to control their own bodies. 

          According to the  American Taliban, comprised of Christian fundamentalists allied with anti-everything facets of the various “tea party” pseudo-patriots, American women should be relegated to non-voting, non-legislating breeding stock being kept and used by men in as close an approximation of a bronze age culture as can be enacted by a purchased Congress. 

          This iteration of theocrats has enjoyed some degree of public dominance despite the efforts of the Framers to eliminate religion from the political nature of the U.S. Currently; the demographics of the nation are evolving away from membership in these various religious cults.  The loss of membership has resulted in some loss of prominence in civic and social structures. 

          To combat the decrease in numbers and the associated ability to claim that this is a “Christian nation,” – read that as fundamentalist repressive theocracy – these non-elected, self-proclaimed cult leaders are blanketing the airways with propaganda and talk shows in an effort to generate a widespread belief that “Christians “ are being persecuted by atheists and others who do not accept the cult of Christianity as valid. 

          Part of the problem is the affiliation of fundamentalists with other anti-abortion groups.  While opposing abortion, these groups and cults also oppose the most reliable manner of reducing abortions, teaching teens and young people about reliable birth control methods and making these tools, along with family planning help, available to the population most in need of them.

          Instead, the American Taliban wishes to use pregnancy to punish women who engage in sexual activity without a slip of paper signed by a cult leader allowing them to reproduce.

          The American Taliban is working frantically to remove women’s access to abortion, birth control, and family planning.  They are attaching riders and amendments to obscure bills and ramming them through committees before late night votes.  They are prohibiting spectators and observers in some instances in some states.  They are taking these regressive actions without the input of women at any level of the process because they currently have eliminated as much of American women’s access to political office as they can without risking the voting public actually becoming aware of this process.

          There is little difference in the American Taliban and that of Afghanistan other than the language of the book each uses to enforce Bronze Age treatment of women and non-members.  In point of fact, the Afghani Taliban is somewhat less responsible for their 7^th century attitudes and behaviors.  They have not been as widely exposed to modern public education, as have their American analogues; who have been exposed to the 21^st century and rejected much of it in favor of continuing to use women as breeding stock.

          It’s time to eliminate these cultists from public life by every legal means.  If we don’t, they will bring this nation into a theocracy less forgiving than those of the current Islamic nations.