“Perfectly Equal Already”: GOP Tries To Protect The “Sanctity Of Traditional Domestic Violence”
Republicans still can’t decide whether there is a War on Caterpillars Women, or whether President Obama started it, or whether it’s a fictional invention of the media or the Democrats, or whether it’s a Democratic War on Women Ann Romney.
This week, Michele Bachmann said, “There is no war on women. There’s never been a war on women.” Which is either on or off message, depending on the day. For example, Sen. John McCain on Meet the Press, March 20, 2012:
GREGORY: Do you think that there is something of a war on women among Republicans?McCAIN: I think we have to fix that. I think that there is a perception out there because of how this whole contraception issue played out — ah, we need to get off of that issue, in my view.
But this week, during a Senate debate on reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, McCain flip-flopped on the problem he’d previously acknowledged. He took to the floor to make his case while his party launched an unprecedented opposition because they don’t like the part where it includes protection for immigrants, lesbians and Native American women. Or, as Melissa McEwan (aka Shakespeare’s Sister) brilliantly described it, “Protect the sanctity of traditional domestic violence!”
While McCain ultimately voted to reauthorize the act, he first had to spend more than 10 minutes explaining why women are perfectly equal already and, just as his fellow Republican Bachmann claimed, the War on Women is mere fiction:
My friends, this supposed “War on Women” or the use of similarly outlandish rhetoric by partisan operatives has two purposes, and both are political in their purpose and effect. The first, purely political; the first is to distract citizens from real issues that really matter, and the second is to give talking heads something to sputter about when they appear on cable television. Neither purpose does anything to advance the well being of any American. […]To suggest that one group of us or one party speaks for all women or that one group has an agenda to harm women and another to help them is ridiculous if for no other reason than it assumes a unity of interests, beliefs, concerns, experiences and ambition among all women that doesn’t exist among men or among any race or class. […]
Thankfully, I believe men and women of our country are smart enough to recognize that when a politician or political party resorts to dividing us in the name of bringing us together, it usually means that they’re either out of ideas or short on resolve to address the challenges of our time. At this time in our nation’s history, we face an abundance of hard choices. The vicious slogans and the declaring of phony wars are intended to avoid those hard choices and to escape paying a political price for doing so. […]
Leaving these problems unaddressed indefinitely and resorting to provoking greater divisions among us at a time when we most need unity might not be a war against this or that group of Americans, but it is surely a surrender: a surrender of our responsibilities to the country and a surrender of decency.
Apparently, Mitt Romney’s flip-flopping is contagious, and John McCain has a bad case of it.
As I previously wrote, and as readers of this series well know, Republicans can deny it all they want, but there is a War on Women. It’s real, and it’s dangerous, and it’s not about zingers and slogans:
It’s about a constant legislative assault by the Republican Party, at the state and federal level, on women’s equality and basic rights, from health care to equal pay to funding programs to combat violence against women. Women aren’t stupid, even if Republicans, like Herman Cain, insist that “men are much more familiar with the failed policies than a lot of other people.”
Despite the best efforts of the 31 Republicans (yes, all men) who voted against it, the Senate passed the not-watered-down Violence Against Women Act. Next stop is the House, so tell your representatives to pass the Violence Against Women Act.
By: Kaili Joy Gray, Daily Kos, April 28, 2012
“Just Saying”: Dear Ann Romney, Allow Others The Choice You Made
I am a proud progressive, both socially and economically. My heart bleeds just as much for economic justice as it does for full equality for women and the LGBT community. As a progressive, as a liberal, the primary objective for which I fight is the right to self-determination: people, regardless of race, class, gender, orientation or any other fortuitous circumstance of birth, should have the ability to pursue their dreams. My liberal identity comes from the belief that government must take a proactive role in ensuring that those whose origins were more humble than others are free from discrimination and at least have a ladder to climb, instead of being forced to watch helplessly as the more fortunate dance on the top rung.
Because of that, I highly respect the decision of Ann Romney to stay at home and raise their five children. It goes without saying that being extremely wealthy makes that decision much easier: the ability to hire nannies and housekeepers when necessary certainly alleviates some of the stresses commonly associated with stay-at-home parenthood. But that isn’t the point: parents who choose to stay at home and raise children willingly risk forgoing the potential social prestige and economic benefits associated with developing an external career. My father, for instance, forsook a promising academic career to raise and home-school my brother and myself. Partly owing to personal experience, I feel that parents who feel that raising children is their calling should be highly respected for their choice: we, as progressives, should no more be in the business of telling parents, especially women, that they should work than the Catholic League should be in the business of telling them that they should sacrifice their ambitions to stay home with their children. What we as progressives must be in the business of doing is making sure that everyone has the ability to make that choice.
Here, however, is where my respect for Ann Romney ends. Once again, it is my job as a progressive to ensure that everyone has access to follow their dreams. Ann Romney, however, supports policies that will ensure that only people of her station will be able to make such sacrifices.
Back in 2003, current Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren co-authored a book called The Two-Income Trap. The main thesis was that even a decade ago, it took two incomes to maintain the same standard of living as one income could provide generations ago. The main culprits were the rising cost of education and the rising cost of insurance. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that these problems have only gotten more aggravated with the passage of time, further limiting the options of parents who might otherwise wish to stay home with children, but cannot spare the income, or in many cases forcing young people who just cannot figure out a way to get ahead of the game to delay marriage and child-rearing, waiting for an era of comfort and job security that may come far later than they expect, if ever.
Ann Romney wishes to be respected for her choice. Fair enough. But the fastest way for her to earn respect for her choice is to make sure such a choice is not the province of her class alone, and that idea is in direct contrast to the policies that her husband Mitt espouses. So here’s a simple message to Ann Romney:
If you care about making sure that parents can afford to stay home with their children, then you don’t support Scott Walker’s efforts to destroy the middle class. You don’t support Paul Ryan’s budget that destroys Medicare and Medicaid. You examine the fact that public education is becoming increasingly expensive, and you support efforts to fund it, rather than continue to watch it spiral out of control and ensure that it takes two incomes to afford any sort of higher education.
You support student loan reform so that new graduates don’t have to work their entire lives to pay off their debt. You don’t “get rid of” Planned Parenthood, which provides vital medical services and helps ensure that women are able to raise healthy children to begin with. You don’t let Detroit go bankrupt so that vulture capitalists like the one you married can sell off its scrap for investor profits. You don’t accelerate foreclosures and kick children out of their homes so that those same investors can make more money from their rental fiefdoms. You do everything you can to ensure that health insurance is not tied to employment (to be fair, Mitt deserves some credit on this).
You support the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act to ensure that women who do choose to stay home are guaranteed some sort of recourse against partners who turn bad, instead of being forced into a devil’s choice of being stuck in a violent relationship or out on the streets. You support increases in the minimum wage so that those who do work don’t have to work multiple jobs just to put food on the table. You strengthen social security and its associated death benefit so that widows (or widowers) who chose to stay home have something left to live on in the worst case, instead of privatizing it so that (stop me if this sounds familiar) investors like your husband can figure out how to make even more money off of a program that’s doing just fine as it is.
You support investing in America again through stimulus and public works so that both men and women have good-paying jobs and a much more livable transportation system. And most importantly, you support tax reforms that require the super-wealthy (like your husband) and the gigantic corporations they run to pay their fair share in taxes so that all of these other things can happen.
If you were serious, Ann, these are just some of the things that you’d do. Otherwise, you’re just another spoiled Republican telling people that as long as you can do what you want, then everyone else can go to hell.
By: Dante Atkins, Daily Kos, April 15, 2012
Today’s Republican Party: “Grand, Old And Anti-Woman”
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska got it half right on Tuesday when she told her Republican colleagues that their party was at risk of being painted as anti-woman. It would be more accurate to remove the hedges and say flat out that the G.O.P. is anti-woman.
There’s really no other conclusion to reach from the positions Republican lawmakers, and the contenders for the party’s presidential nomination, have taken on contraception, abortion and reproductive health services, including their obsession with putting Planned Parenthood out of business.
Republican opposition to reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act certainly won’t help the party’s reputation. That law, which provides federal money to investigate and prosecute domestic violence, has had broad bipartisan support since it was enacted in 1994. Congress renewed it in 2000 and 2005 without struggle.
Senate Democrats have revised the law to include LGBT victims of domestic violence, dating violence and sexual assault. New provisions would also allow more immigrant victims to claim temporary visas. The latest version has five Republican co-sponsors, but it failed to garner a single Republican vote in the Judiciary Committee last month.
Despite what Republicans might say to the press, the Democrats did not dream up these changes to infuriate their opponents—they were responding to calls from groups that help victims of domestic violence. A 2010 report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs detailed a woeful shortage of services for LGBT violence victims – including scarce access to shelters. An expanded Violence Against Women Act would reflect the reality of American life in the 21st century – when gay men and lesbians actually get married and illegal immigrants cannot merely be deported or wished away.
Naturally, certain out-of-control right-wingers are eager to fight over this bill. Phyllis Schlafly said last month that it promoted “divorce, breakup of marriage and hatred of men.” Because, I guess, women whose husbands are beating them should stay in those relationships and just try to work it out. Or maybe because if we provide assistance to lesbian women whose girlfriends beat them up, straight women will hate their boyfriends. (Honestly, what is the logic here?)
But Congressional Republicans are scared of another tussle. They are bleating that it’s not fair to attach these provisions in an election year, because voting them down would make Republicans look bad. Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, put it this way: “I favor the Violence Against Women Act and have supported it at various points over the years, but there are matters put on that bill that almost seem to invite opposition,” he said.
They only invite opposition if you are ant-immigrant or homophobic.
Including same-sex couples in domestic violence programs would not diminish their value for couples of opposite genders in any conceivable way. And giving a battered illegal immigrant woman a temporary visa is not a threat to national security.
The real agenda here is obvious: If a federal bill recognizes that there is such a thing as domestic violence in same-sex families, then that implicitly recognizes the legitimacy of those couples and that could lead – gasp – to giving them actual rights.
By: Andrew Rosenthal, The Loyal Opposition, The New York Times, March 15, 2012
GOP: “We Don’t Consider Violence Against Women To Be An Important Issue”
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is up for reauthorization this year, and for the first time since its original passage, it’s facing pushbackfrom Republicans.
Female senators are not happy about the sudden resistance to a usually uncontroversial bill. A few new provisions in VAWA add protections for undocumented people, the LGBT community, and Indian reservations, which have prompted a change of heart from anti-immigrant Republicans like Jeff Sessions, who said, “there are matters put on that bill that almost seem to invite opposition.”
In a Senate floor speech today, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) argued that our values should demand that everyone deserves protection from domestic abuse:
The bill includes lesbian and gay men. The bill includes undocumented immigrants who are victims of domestic abuse. The bill gives native American tribes authority to prosecute crimes. In my view, these are improvements. Domestic violence is domestic violence. I ask my friends on the other side: If the victim is in a same-sex relationship, is the violence any less real, is the danger any less real because you happen to be gay or lesbian? I don’t think so.
If a family comes to the country and the husband beats his wife to a bloody pulp, do we say, ‘Well you’re illegal, I’m sorry, you don’t deserve any protections’? 911 operators, police officers, don’t refuse to help a victim because of their sexual orientation or the country where they were born, or their immigration status. When you call the police in America, they come regardless of who you are.
Feinstein added, “To defeat this bill is almost to say ‘we don’t need to consider violence against women — it’s not an important issue.’ It is.” Indeed, with all the recent attacks focused around women’s issues, Feinstein had a larger suspicion about blockage of the bill: “I hope that this bill is not part of a march. And that march, as I see it, over the last 20 years, is to cut back on rights and services to women.” Watch it: http://youtu.be/2MyEPpl3AHY
In a show of general strength and support, the women of the Senate took to the floor today to fight for passage of the bill. Among the floor statements were both Democrats and Republicans, though no men spoke.
By: Annie-Rose Strasser, Think Progress, March 15, 2012
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