Think Progress went back and took a look at the sermons of Todd Akin’s spiritual mentor, Rev. Dean. James Kennedy. Needless to say, it’s not pretty:
1. Kennedy believed that rape victims who chose abortion are “hysterical.” In “Abortion: Myths and Realities,” Kennedy labels victims of rape who chose unsafe abortions when safer procedures are illegal “hysterical,” saying “We are told by some of the radical feminists that the women will become hysterical, that they will abort themselves with coat hanger.” Abortion rates are, in fact, higher in nations where the procedure is criminalized, and men describing women whose choices they disapprove of as “hysterical” has a storied sexist history.
2. Kennedy suggests rape victims can be responsible for being raped. In “Life: An Inalienable Right,” Kennedy expresses concern that rape victims who chose to get an abortion are occasionally responsible for their own rape, saying that “Even if they want to say the woman had some part in it—which in most cases they probably don’t—surely the baby did nothing wrong, so the only innocent party is killed and the rapist often goes free.” He doesn’t elaborate on how this might be true, but another Kennedy sermon says “the immodest woman is contributing to the lust of other people” by wearing revealing clothing.
Kennedy also thinks that the Bible should dictate women’s health, and that husbands should be allowed to dictate whether or not their wives can get abortions. 14th-century thinking in the 21st century! It is unsurprising that Todd Akin thinks that women’s bodies have some sort of super seekrit baby-b-gone juice in their no-no areas that prevent women from becoming pregnant when they are raped.
[via Think Progress][cross-posted at ABLC]
pragmatism
FSM dammit if I get another email/FB post talking about how what whoopi goldberg said once about rape is enough of a BOTH SIDES DO IT to excuse akin, i’m gonna lose it.
Zifnab
Time to bust out the burkas.
You see these hideous trolls pop their heads out of the ground every so often. “Women will scream ‘rape’ just because they feel guilty about having anonymous sex with someone that followed them home from a bar in the dead of night while they were too drunk to resist an advance. It was mutual consent at the time, because the girl couldn’t fight back!”
I wish I was making this up, but I read comments like this on Reddit and other social forums all too often.
joes527
Hmmm…. attacking someone by nutpicking from that person’s “spiritual adviser.” Where have we seen that tactic used before?
Yutsano
@pragmatism: Both Sides Do It is not a fucking excuse for Akin to be a complete asshole. I hope his numbers drop like a stone. Sadly I fear they won’t.
The Other Chuck
@joes527: Tell ya what, when Obama proposes the “God Damn America Act”, you’ll have a point.
It’s not really nutpicking either so much as shaking a whole tree of nuts.
Nina
It seems like we fought this battle so many times, so many years ago, and yet there are still people who believe things that are just plain wrong.
But I think it’s good that this guy is in the news, so I can tell kids exactly why he is wrong. I just hope my daughter can grow up without some of the stupidity that we had to deal with.
Nemesis
Nuttin to see here. Move along. Just the gop being crazy muthfuckas like they have been for the past several decades. And we act surprised.
Mudge
James Kennedy is dead, so he won’t be making any further comments, unless from the hereafter. Certainly Akin has found some evangelist to follow since 2007. I wonder who?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I have thought about starting up a shed building business – you know, so that husbands have some place to put their wives while they are in their impure state – just to see how many takers I would have for it. I figure the company shirts and advertising would be awesome.
ETA: Romney/Ryan 2012: Because the 1400’s can’t get here fast enough.
Cap'n Magic
Thank FSM that this particular neo-Pharisee (Kennedy) is taking a well-deserved dirt nap.
The Dangerman
Is that upgradeable to a pair of sharp pincers to unmember the offending member (I think it’s called “The Bobbit”)? I’m thinking that will lessen the recidivism rate markedly.
Violet
If someone claims to be anti-abortion and yet believes that abortion can be allowed in certain circumstances, then they are no longer anti-abortion. They are pro-choice. It’s just that they choose to make abortion restrictive and pro-choicers choose to make it available and safe for all women.
They are hypocrites because unless they are anti-abortion 100% of the time, the reason they’re against abortion has nothing to do with “life of the baby” and everything to do with “is that woman a slut”.
g
Since we’ve already seen close-up the role that rape plays in wars with ethnic cleansing, where women were deliberately raped as a tactic, I’d say these guys are vile pieces of sh*t.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
This.
Furthermore, the attitudes toward contraception dovetail nicely into this. Lord Saletan keeps saying that the compromise on abortion is “contraception for all”, but the problem is, the forced-birthers oppose contraception, too. It’s about punishing the sluts.
Cassidy
@The Other Chuck: Don’t even bother. He’s one of the asshats who believes that Sweden is acting in cahoots with the US gov’t and that the CIA planted women to accuse Assange of rape just so the US can suddenly charge him and get him extradited to a black box prison and be tortured for wikileaks.
wrb
I don’t know, While I don’t doubt that the good Rev was vile, and I’m sure Ryan and Akin are, the quotes chosen seem like pretty weak sauce. One of their supporters ocould read them and this, “this is all they’ve got? Our guys are completely reasonable and their detractors ARE hysterical.”
Kennedy expresses concern that rape victims who chose to get an abortion are occasionally responsible for their own rape, saying that “Even if they want to say the woman had some part in it—which in most cases they probably don’t
Sly
The very term itself has a storied sexist history. Hysterical comes from the Greek word for uterus, “hystera,” and since the time of Hippocrates until the end of the 19th century, a woman was thought to undergo hysteria because her uterus moved around her body and disturbed her humoral balance. The preferred treatment for most of this period, of course, was to have sex with a man. Then it switched to having a man stimulate the woman with a vibrator. Then we as a civilization stopped believing in stupid nonsense. But non-medical professionals hung on to the word because hysteria sounds better than terms like somatization disorder.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Zifnab:
Nah, time for another Boobquake!
Patricia Kayden
“but another Kennedy sermon says ‘the immodest woman is contributing to the lust of other people’ by wearing revealing clothing.”
Same old “women who dress slutty deserve to be raped” meme. Nothing ever changes with these guys. Sad to say that Akin is far from the first politician to use such language about rape.
Alex S.
TPM says that Akin wants to stay in the race….. good. Much like the single word “macaca” gave the Democrats the Senate in 2006, this remark can keep it. (I suspect that Angus King is not a safe member of the democratic caucus if the Democrats end up with only 49 senators without him.)
danielx
The scary part is that Akin’s wife is playing a major role in his campaign and from what I understand she makes him look like a model of sanity and logical thought.
theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/08/republicans-see-few-ways-avoid-loss-todd-akin/55954/
La Gata Gris
Kennedy was the worst of the worst – a Christian Reconstructionist. (If you’ve never heard the term, look it up, you are in for a good time. These people believe that the non-ritual OT laws should be followed to the letter – with lots of stoning! And slavery is legally permitted.)
Yes, thankfully, Kennedy is dead. I am sure Akin has found another raving nutter to follow as his ‘spiritual’ leader.
Mnemosyne
@joes527:
When a candidate for US Senator says that women have magical hormones that prevent conception after rape and it turns out that his preacher had similarly nutty beliefs about rape, that ain’t nutpicking. That’s pointing out that someone’s nutty beliefs were directly influenced by his nutty preacher.
wenchacha
My sister fell under the spell of Bill Gothard, back in the day. She’s dumped most of the judging judgery in the past 20 or so years, but it ticked me off when she would talk about how I should dress “modestly” so as not to be “a stumbling block” to young men and others who might be tempted by seeing me at the beach in a two-piece bathing suit. Those arguments persist to this day among many Christianists.
Quaker in a Basement
If Hollywood cast someone who looked like Akin in the role of conservative slimebag, they’d be accused of liberal bias.
The guy is a living breathing stereotype.
burritoboy
Hey, don’t smear the 14th century with our current nonsense.
Soonergrunt
Joes527–
I can’t clear that monstrosity of multiple links that’s in the mod filter. Please resubmit it with line breaks between the links. The filter is showing it as one gigantic 600-character-long link.
In any event, please remember that the mod filter will trigger automatically on any post that contains more than three hyperlinks, and the ‘reply’ button generates a hyperlink, so you have to include that as well.
WereBear
@wenchacha: There’s a lot coming out about Bill Gothard over the past couple of years. About the way he “counseled” troubled young ladies sent to his camps and conferences.
jon mcnally
Another ‘rogue’ republican? No.
dailykos.com/story/2012/08/20/1122030/-Akin-wasn-t-out-of-line-he-was-toeing-the-Republican-Party-li…
joes527
@Soonergrunt: just delete it. dunno what happened. I only intended to put in a single link to a picture of Kennedy wearing a dress. This internet savvy Luddite thing isn’t working out for me today. FMWP I guess.
lou
Ah, the late unlamented Rev. James Kennedy of the Power Hour and Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale. Brings me back to my childhood. The church did have an amazing organ and put on a great Handel’s Messiah every Christmas.
Otherwise, an ugly, vicious place.
West Texan
If someone from the future had appeared to the 15-year-old me taking Biology in 1975 in West-of-Fuck-All, Texas and told me that in 2012 the US would be having a national “debate” over whether there are magic sperm that understand whether or not sexual activity was wanted or that women’s bodies have a magical ability to protect themselves from unwanted fertilization, I very well might have decided that I should be making plans to live somewhere else.
We are fucking doomed, aren’t we?
TenguPhule
The problem is we never kill them all and the survivors live to breed again.