Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

The lights are all blinking red.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Petty moves from a petty man.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / We Are All Catholics Now

We Are All Catholics Now

by | 187 Comments

This post is in: 

Say hello to the new boss..

There was a discussion in the comments on my post on the Alabama IVF debacle about which forms of contraception would be allowed by our new Jesuitical overlords.  Let me cut to the chase on this one:  the answer is none, not a single one.

Anyone who grew up Catholic could give you that answer in a second, because that’s what we were taught through incessant repetition.  Only the “rhythm method” or “natural family planning” or whatever they’re calling it nowadays is allowed.  Everything else — and I mean every. fucking. thing. — is not allowed.  There’s no discussion of whether condoms or diaphragms are allowed — they aren’t.  Sterilization is out of the question (even today at Catholic hospitals, a woman can’t get her tubes tied during a C-section or right after delivery).  Of course, the pill and IUDs are already considered abortifacients by these goddam assholes, so they’re right out.   Pulling out is probably OK but you sure better not tell your priest about it.

This is where we’re heading with the current Republican party, no matter how hard they’re running away from it today.  Every sperm is sacred.  They have justices quoting scripture in the state supreme courts, and at least a couple nutcase Catholics on the US Supreme Court, and they all will come up with some reason that every form of birth control is illegal, unless we stop them.  If you think I’m nuts, tell me if you expected a court to basically outlaw IVF.  We’re in uncharted territory, and the priests are in charge.

Reader Interactions

187Comments

  3. 3.

    Villago Delenda Est

    We’re in uncharted territory, and the priests are in charge.

    In direct contradiction of the Constitution of the United States.
    These people are my enemies.  I swore an oath.

  4. 4.

    rikyrah

    There was a discussion in the comments on my post on the Alabama IVF debacle about which forms of contraception would be allowed by our new Jesuitical overlords.  Let me cut to the chase on this one:  the answer is none, not a single on

     

    Say it for those in the bleacher seats..

     

    NO BIRTH CONTROL WILL BE ALLOWED.

  6. 6.

    Gretchen

    My mom had me charting my periods when I was a teenager because that was the only way to avoid having 10 kids. When my mom got a diaphragm my dad didn’t say anything to her but quietly stopped going to communion.

    It’s interesting that these people think that the only people who get abortions are promiscuous sluts with multiple partners. Married couples who can’t afford another? They’ve never heard of such a thing. And they redefine any necessary abortion as “not an abortion”.

    There was a Trump-voting Alabama couple on twitter today SHOCKED about the IVF decision, since they were trying to have kids. Joyce Vance’s husband Bob ran against the judge who wrote that decision and lost. Who do you suppose they voted for? Leapords/faces.

  7. 7.

    Baud

    which forms of contraception would be allowed by our new Jesuitical overlords.

    I’ll still have access to physical unattractiveness.

  8. 8.

    fancycwabs

    “All products of the IVF process, at the discretion of the patient (they might be Baptists, who ironically don’t commonly participate in this,) will be sprinkled with liquid nitrogen blessed by the hospital chaplain, who is also responsible for administration of the rite. Nitrogen will be used for its cryogenic properties,  as a reminder of the preferred means of capital punishment  in the State, and for the cool cloud effect.

    Per commonly accepted practices of the rite of baptism, all embryos will be required to have a name. If the patient has not considered a name for the dozens of potential embryos, using the clinic labeling standard for storage is acceptable  e.g. “K. Smith 006523 IVF Specimen 0009 I baptize you in the name of the father etc.””

  13. 13.

    $8 blue check mistermix

    @Frank Wilhoit: But what?  Trump says find a solution.  They’ll get right on that I’m sure.  No worries, it will be fixed by tomorrow, boss.

    Not gonna happen.  Bell has been rung, not going to unring.

  14. 14.

    cain

    So how long until the protestants want their own Pope? I mean it must appeal to them to be able to consolidate their political power and invest it in a single figure. I mean that’s the whole point of the unitary executive idea right?

  17. 17.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Baud: I’m sure the military still has boxes and boxes of “birth control glasses” in some warehouse somewhere.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    Comment on Reddit

    Nikki Haley: I meant, of course the cause of the Civil War was IVF treatments…

  19. 19.

    Dangerman

    @JCJ:  You are concerned about long vas deferens?

    I suppose only if someone extends me the courtesy of a 2 for 1 on procedures in that general area.

  21. 21.

    justawriter

    Reminds me of the Ajax Liquor Store punchline

    “That’s quite and order, are you having a party?”

    “No, I’m just trying to work up the nerve to go to confession.”

    Republicans are trying to work up the nerve to say, “Yes, we actually believe this shit.”

  23. 23.

    StringOnAStick

    Uh, pulling out has resulted in plenty of babies because you guys leak before ejaculation.  Just sayin’.

  26. 26.

    lollipopguild

    @Baud: The ugly black glasses that were issued to the guys who served in Vietnam were sometimes called “birth control devices”.Villago beat me to it.

  29. 29.

    EireIAm

    As a product of catholic schools in the 80’s… IVF has always been against Catholic Doctrine. Masturbation was bad and wrong even for the purpose of assisted reproduction – the only POSSIBLE way you could collect sperm in a non-sinful way was using a condom with a hole poked in it during intercourse in a sacramental marriage. Any other process did not fulfil the “twofold significance of union and procreation” and was prohibited by catholic doctrine.

    Even then, I thought it was bullshit, but I gave the catholic church full props for actually being consistent with their principles.

    Anyway, Catholics have always disavowed IVF and any other sort of assisted reproduction. This isn’t new.

  30. 30.

    trollhattan

    Day of Dobbs decision I said Griswold is next, and nothing has changed my mind. Loving was always a dark horse.

    Yes, here all week, try the flank steak.

  31. 31.

    rikyrah

    Get the ENTIRE PHUCK OUTTA HERE!

     

    Mike Allen (@mikeallen) posted at 4:39 AM on Fri, Feb 23, 2024:
    NEW: Biden’s cheat sheets, from @axios @HansNichols

    Biden’s reliance on notecards to explain his own positions, on questions he knows are coming (sometimes at closed-door fundraisers), is raising some donors’ worries about his age

    Behind the scenes
    https://t.co/7Rz7sfdqI5
    (https://x.com/mikeallen/status/1760977765854032239?t=JE11EpByLRb91u7y6Wn7BQ&s=03)

  32. 32.

    smith

    Lay Catholics actually use birth control at almost the same rate as non-Catholics, regardless of what the priests say. I’ve heard they resort to sterilization more often, because then it’s only one sin to confess. When the Christofacists finally come for their birth control, I wonder how they’ll vote.

  33. 33.

    trollhattan

    @Old School: Jerry Brown for president never took, he was an early applicant.

    TBH Jerry’s the best advertising for the Jesuits I can name. My little atheist has had good treatment from the Lasallians, who tolerate her heathen ways and give her a good education.

  39. 39.

    Adam Lang

    Any kind of sex except for missionary-position vaginal is likewise forbidden.

    If you expect sodomy laws to continue to be unenforceable with the current supreme court, you are quite an optimist.

  41. 41.

    cmorenc

    @Old School:

    The Jesuits are in charge?  When did that happen?

    Out of 9 current SCOTUS justices, seven are catholic, including all six of the RM majority: Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett.  Sotomayor is a liberal Catholic.  Surprise, surprise, surprise that the court’s 6-3 rulings seem to be made at the direction of conservative RW Jesuit priests.

  42. 42.

    HumboldtBlue

    @rikyrah: ​ 

    I’m filling out my grocery list as I read. I leave notes all over my desk regarding details from every area of my life.

    Elsewhere, Haley is finding out that being a right-wing white christian nationalist is not a very popular position outside of christian white nationalist circles.

    Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is frantically trying to quell the controversy over comments she made about IVF after an Alabama court’s recent ruling that frozen embryos are children.

    “We don’t want fertility treatment to shut down, we don’t want them to stop doing IVF treatment, we don’t want them to stop doing artificial insemination,” Haley said on CNN on Thursday. “But I think this needs to be decided by the people in every state. Don’t take away the rights of these physicians and these parents to have these conversations.”

    It was Haley’s second such attempt to explain away her controversial stance on the issue. On Wednesday evening, Haley blurted out a much more gibberish response.

    “Well first off all, this is, again, I didn’t say that I agreed with the Alabama ruling. The question that I was asked is, ‘Do I believe an embryo is a baby?’” Haley said on CNN Wednesday evening. “I do think that if you look in the definition, an embryo is considered an unborn baby. And so yes, I believe, from my stance, that that is.”

  43. 43.

    H.E.Wolf

    @lollipopguild: The ugly black glasses that were issued to the guys who served in Vietnam were sometimes called “birth control devices”​

     I wonder how many of those guys were able to be impregnated. I know there have always been women disguised as men who served in our military (see Deborah Sampson)… but not many.

    (It seems a bit off-key to me to resurrect that old cliché, “too ugly to have sex with”, in the context of a post discussing the forcible removal of women’s reproductive freedom.)

    On the bright side, we’re going to win bigger this November because of this. Pro-choice voter turnout will be spectacular. It’s going to make the Jan. 2017 Women’s Marches look like a damp squib. :)

  46. 46.

    HumboldtBlue

    @MP:

    Agreed, The Jesuits at least have the virtue of turning young men into staunch atheists because they actually teach critical thinking.

    This is that fucking death cult, Opus Dei.

  47. 47.

    EarthWindFire

    @rikyrah: WTAF? I belonged to Toastmasters in my 30s. We were ENCOURAGED TO USE NOTECARDS DURING OUR SPEECHES!!!

    Now notecards are a sign of senility? Fuck that noise.

  49. 49.

    Glidwrith

    @EireIAm: In a room full of Catholics taking marriage counseling as a condition of getting married, the counselor trotted out the rhythm method of birth control. ALL of us immediately burst into raucous laughter, no one offered a smidge of respect and that was 30 years ago.

  51. 51.

    pat

    I don’t understand what it was about this stupid ruling that made major hospitals suddenly end their IVF programs.  There are supposedly frozen cells from many couples who have already paid substantial sums for this procedure. Can they sue?

    And I refuse to call a few frozen cells an embryo.

     

    And a supreme court majority of catholics….. separation of church and state, anyone?  Damn scary.

  52. 52.

    NutmegAgain

    And now people doing a “natural”  method often use phone based or otherwise online apps to record and predict ovulation. It’s not a real reach to imagine our zealot overlords want to collect that data so that every blastocyst has state protection.  And not for nothing, so much fun taking your basal body temp every single fucking day until you outgrow being fertile.

  55. 55.

    rikyrah

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Elsewhere, Haley is finding out that being a right-wing white christian nationalist is not a very popular position outside of christian white nationalist circles.

     

    I thought her response was the most GOP truthtelling response.

    She has her child.

    Phuck you if you can’t get yours.

    If that isn’t pure GOP distilled to its core, I don’t know what is.

  56. 56.

    EarthWindFire

    @HumboldtBlue: “We don’t want fertility treatment to shut down, we don’t want them to stop doing IVF treatment, we don’t want them to stop doing artificial insemination,” Haley said on CNN on Thursday. “But I think this needs to be decided by the people in every state. Don’t take away the rights of these physicians and these parents to have these conversations.”

    But that’s exactly what you’re doing when you leave it to every state, darling Nikki. Whether physicians and parents can have these conversations depends on where you live then.

    I know she isn’t this stupid. She’s just counting on enough of us being this fucking dumb.

  58. 58.

    trollhattan

    @EarthWindFire: High school debate we relied on a bigass file box of 3X5 cards with all our talking points and references, organized pro and con, for the year’s debate topic. We wouldn’t know until each round which side we had to take, nor how the opposing side would frame their pro/con argument. Some of the framing was bizarre and maybe we had envisioned it beforehand.

    It’s called “being prepared” and being unprepared is a slow and agonizing death, with an audience. Ask me how I know.

  60. 60.

    Glidwrith

    @pat: The state Supreme Court quoted scripture and gave personhood to those frozen balls of cells – called it wrongful death if they are destroyed. Therefore, those hospitals are on the hook for thousands of murders according to the court.

  61. 61.

    rikyrah

    18 GOP-held Biden districts targeted to flip blue (@Needle_of_Arya) posted at 1:59 PM on Fri, Feb 23, 2024:
    the villain story arc of the white woman who does the exact bare minimum to keep democracy alive, but who’d rather jump off a cliff than ever confront her cousins & sisters about their attachment to white supremacy & patriarchy

    it’s literally a vicious Mafia among white people
    (https://x.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1761118628584583300?t=a1gqpGpT9QctLIMv58ZMyQ&s=03)

  62. 62.

    hueyplong

    I’m going to decline to believe that big Biden donors will pivot to the concept of Trump because of index cards.

    Because if you’re not for Biden you’re for Trump.

  70. 70.

    pat

    @Glidwrith: But they can’t even implant some of those blastocysts and watch them grow into real children?

    The whole thing stinks.

    My dad was stationed in Alabama, I believe it was, (maybe Georgia?) during the Korean War and  we went to the local elementary school.  I was in second grade and came home one day to report that the teacher had said “ain’t.”

  72. 72.

    rikyrah

    18 GOP-held Biden districts targeted to flip blue (@Needle_of_Arya) posted at 11:07 AM on Fri, Feb 23, 2024:
    true story: my older sister needed The p
    Pill™️ to regulate her cycle because menarche began at age 10 and her flow was already heavy and she very quickly became anemic

    policing hormonal birth control will have far-reaching consequences in red states for certain teen girls
    (https://x.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1761075248160473505?t=Z9e9LTZI4CLyaDo2ZUP_gA&s=03)

  76. 76.

    rikyrah

    Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) posted at 9:06 AM on Fri, Feb 23, 2024:
    No Labels’ spoiler bid has suddenly entered full meltdown mode. No serious candidates are interested. The group’s public justifications are increasingly ludicrous. Time to pull the plug.

    We have lots of new reporting and info in this piece. 1/

     

    Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) posted at 9:18 AM on Fri, Feb 23, 2024:
    Joe Manchin’s decision not to run was partly the result of intense lobbying. Richard Gephardt made a strong case to him behind closed doors. Manchin said he didn’t want to be responsible for electing Trump, which deals a big blow to No Labels’ case. 2/

     

    Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) posted at 9:26 AM on Fri, Feb 23, 2024:
    No matter how many times No Labels claims they don’t want to function as a spoiler who elects Trump, that’s what this candidacy will all-but-certainly do. Here’s my effort to engage their argument directly. 3/

     

     

    Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) posted at 9:34 AM on Fri, Feb 23, 2024:
    Some news: Prominent critics of No Labels just sent them a letter calling on them to agree to a “No-Spoiler Pledge.” If by July 1, it’s clear their candidate has no chance at doing anything other than serving as a spoiler, they should stand down. 4/

    Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) posted at 9:44 AM on Fri, Feb 23, 2024:
    More behind-the-scenes details, per sources: Dick Gephardt took his case directly to some No Labels officials/donors, and got no serious explanation back.

    And No Labels seems to have alienated even the Manchin camp, which should be NL’s allies. 5/

    https://t.co/huQpANZIlH https://t.co/p2SsklBj2A
    (https://x.com/GregTSargent/status/1761054347478093948?t=bmQw1uPZaYUHjgYZllU2AA&s=03)

  77. 77.

    Another Scott

    @EarthWindFire: +1

    Biden goes off on tangents.  Having note cards helps anyone who goes off on tangents to remember to make the important points.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  83. 83.

    Denali5

    And the priests have had such a great record lately. The reason why the Catholic Church is in such financial trouble-those troublesome priests.

  84. 84.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    OzarkHillbilly can attest to this…

    I lived in this bizarro swath of almost nothing-but-Catholics in Central Misery, it was the result of the 1840s mass-German immigration to America and a crapton of them ended up in a 4-6 county swath.

    All part of the red, rurl aspect of the state.  They were all dutiful Catholics, for the most part weekly Catholics not simply “E & C Catholics”.

    All of em used birth control.  Their children use birth control, their grandchildren use birth control.

    They are forced-birthers to their core but do everything available to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

  85. 85.

    Hildebrand

    Pope Francis, a Jesuit, is hated by the right wing Catholics of America.  I mean, they hate him as much as they hate Biden, whose Catholicism has not turned him into a hateful god-botherer.

    Perhaps we should be careful not to be quite so all-encompassing with our condemnation.  We need every ally we can get.

    Think of it – the two most religious presidents in the modern era have been Carter and Biden.  Not all religious folks are the enemy.

  86. 86.

    smith

    @rikyrah: Gephardt went to great lengths to pound some reality into Manchin’s hard head:

    Gephardt showed Manchin private polling that he’d bankrolled himself, illustrating that such a bid could only help Donald Trump beat President Biden, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Gephardt reminded Manchin that even third-party bids that win real public support have routinely failed to garner many, or even any, Electoral College votes.

    Question is, how come Manchin hadn’t figured this out already? You just need to look at who funds No Labels.

  87. 87.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Frank Wilhoit: ​There are eight more months of devolution between now and November and at the rate it is accelerating, there will be nothing to win.

     Only if people sit on their [redacteds] bewailing the inevitability of defeat.

    I guarantee women will be showing up in droves and doing the work to make victories possible.

    I wonder how many men will bestir themselves? I hope the answer is “lots”!

  88. 88.

    Another Scott

    @pat:

    AlabamaFertility.com:

    Q: How many embryos do you transfer?

    A: Short answer: “Usually two. Sometimes one or two more if you are an especially difficult patient.”

    Long answer: This is the second most common question IVF patients ask (#1 is “How much is it going to cost?” I’ll answer that one another day). It’s a tricky issue – who is really the “decider” in this setting: the couple? After all, it’s their embryos; the IVF programs? they’re the experts; the insurance company or the government? they may be paying for the cycle, as well as the medical care of any children conceived. In Belgium, for example, it’s Hobson’s choice if you’re less than 35 years old doing your first IVF cycle – only one embryo can be transferred if you want to be reimbursed for the cost of the cycle. (On the other hand, the government will reimburse much of the cost of IVF for up to six cycles if you follow their rules. It’s not a bad concept. You can do what you want, but you’ll have to pay for the privilege.)

    The more embryos you put back, the higher the chance of pregnancy. Don’t believe what you may read elsewhere, that pregnancy rates fall when higher numbers of embryos are transferred, or some study somewhere (usually in Europe) showed that pregnancy rates weren’t increased when extra embryo was transferred. The conclusion about lower pregnancy rates with higher embryo transfer numbers comes from the naive examination of national data sets like those compiled by SART or the CDC. Of course pregnancy rates are lower in women who are getting more embryos – IVF programs are putting more embryos back in those women because they know the chance of pregnancy is lower (because of advanced patient age, poor embryo quality, or repeated failure in previous IVF cycles), and they are trying to compensate for it. If they didn’t do this, the outcomes might even be worse. Every viable embryo has some chance of implanting, and the more you put in, the greater the chance that one will turn into a pregnancy.

    […]

    Alabama IVF patient Jane Doe was charged with 3 counts of first degree murder today, a day after her miscarriage…

    Legislators and judges playing lady doctor almost never ends well.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  90. 90.

    Old School

    @cmorenc:

    Out of 9 current SCOTUS justices, seven are catholic, including all six of the RM majority: Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett.  Sotomayor is a liberal Catholic.  Surprise, surprise, surprise that the court’s 6-3 rulings seem to be made at the direction of conservative RW Jesuit priests.

    Jesuits are a specific order within Catholicism.  Pope Francis is an example.

    However, mistermix has already clarified that he was going for the adjective and not the noun.

  92. 92.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @lollipopguild: The unspeakably ugly black frames were still being issued well into the 80s.  Fine for wearing in the field, where you’re not likely to be dating anyways, but back in garrison, my glasses frames were from the PX, and I had to pay for them myself.  Nowadays the VA actually has reasonably attractive frames available for your prescriptions, I assume the AD guys and gals also have the option.

  96. 96.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @rikyrah: so I guess those genius dudes and dudettes at Axios never take notes, make grocery lists or use stickies.

    ETA HumboldtBlue at comment 42 was quicker on the draw but same point. These media folks are so tiring.

  98. 98.

    Jackie

    Off Topic Great News!

    “Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary on Friday declared an end to a monthslong spat with Sweden over the expansion of NATO, saying that a visit by his Swedish counterpart had rebuilt trust and paved the way for the Hungarian Parliament to vote on Monday to ratify the Nordic nation’s membership in the alliance,” the New York Times reports.

    Said Orban: “We are ready to fight for each other, to give our lives for each other.”

    I am ready to celebrate Sweden joining NATO!

  100. 100.

    glc

    Meanwhile here’s proof that not all Soviet era weapons are ineffective, apparently.

    Those who know more (by which I mean: something) about such things will probably have considerable nuance to add. For one thing, I suspect this version dates at worst from 1999-2002, but I only know what I read in the newspapers.

  102. 102.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Christopher Rufo, the architect behind the CRT and groomer moral panics posted that birth control needs to be banned, since the only propose of sex is to procreate. I’ll leave to you, Dear Jackals, start the betting pool on when they’ll try to outlaw any extra-martial sex — and any non-procreative (gay) sex. Because that what Jeebus would want.

  103. 103.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @MP: The Jesuits would be a step up. What we’re facing is Opus Dei.

    With Alitosis the Extreme Court’s titular Opus Dei-go.

    (FTR all four of my grandparents emigrated here from their birthplaces in Italy.)

  104. 104.

    gene108

    I wonder how stark the divide in the standard of living between Republican run states versus Democrat run states will be with their abortion, IVF, and birth control bans?

    There’s measurable difference after Obamacare passed versus Medicaid expansion states versus non-expansion states.

    I think these anti-abortion, anti-birth control, and anti-IVF policies will just widen the gap.

  105. 105.

    eclare

    @StringOnAStick:

    Strangely my home ec teacher around 1980 in the south told us that.  I still remember her words about how you could get pregnant, “one quick thrust.”  At least she was honest.

  106. 106.

    Suzanne

    @Hildebrand:

    Think of it – the two most religious presidents in the modern era have been Carter and Biden.  Not all religious folks are the enemy. 

    Yes. We know.
    But until major groups of Catholics, or Christians, start saying — loudly and pointedly — that the precepts of their religion have no place in secular government…. I don’t think it’s a significant point that (many) individual Catholics/Christians are okay. We already know that.

    They need to push back against the institutional power being claimed in their name.

  107. 107.

    Jackie

    @japa21: TIFG’s “notecards” would be poster board size and stacked a foot tall, because he refuses to wear reading glasses in public.

  112. 112.

    smith

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Meidas Touch had a detailed explainer today about all the ins and outs of posting bond or escrow in a case like this, and the short version is, TFG is screwed.

    And speaking of posting bond, as far as I know, TFG has not yet done that for the $83.3millon+ in the second Carroll case, and time is running out. I think he has only a little more than a week left.

  114. 114.

    Paul in KY

    @EarthWindFire: Hadn’t thought of being confined to our states…Gotta have the checkpoints to search the vehicle for blastocysts! They could be having sex outside holy matrimony ™

  115. 115.

    smith

    @Sister Golden Bear: Christopher Rufo, the architect behind the CRT and groomer moral panics posted that birth control needs to be banned, since the only propose of sex is to procreate.

    Think of it as the incels’ revenge. If they ain’t getting laid, ain’t nobody getting laid.

  116. 116.

    Jay C

    @rikyrah:

    The New York County clerk has just entered the judgment signed by Justice Engoron — the total disgorgement (and interest) for Donald Trump is $454,156,783.05.

    It’s that last nickel that’s the real killer….

  117. 117.

    Gin & Tonic

    @rikyrah: My younger daughter was also on hormonal BC pills from a young age (well before sexual activity) for medical reasons. These people are too dim to realize that there are multiple valid medical reasons for these treatments having nothing to do with fucking.

  120. 120.

    Ksmiami

    @gene108: Red state, dead state. The statistical data difference in life span and all measures of human wellbeing are much higher in blue states – I’m talking like they are almost different countries

  124. 124.

    Gretchen

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: when we were young parents we wondered how the priests could look out over the congregation and not realize everyone was using birth control. When we were kids 7-8 kids per family was usual, and 10-12 not unheard of. When we were parents 2-3 was usual and you never saw more than 5.

    I see Evangelicals say all the time that women have to give their husbands sex as often as they want it, and certainly every 72 hours. How does that comport with no recreational sex?

  126. 126.

    smith

    @Ksmiami: And maternal and infant care are deteriorating rapidly in red states as OB/GYN services are driven out, something the IVF decision will only accelerate.

  127. 127.

    Ramalama

    @Gretchen:

    When we were kids 7-8 kids per family was usual, and 10-12 not unheard of.

    I knew a family of 22 kids, like the youngest of the 22 played guitar with me on Saturday evening Masses.

    A kid in my class was one of 13. The whole family later turned out to be gun nutting compound Catholics. All of them super angry and anti-human.

  128. 128.

    Gin & Tonic

    @H.E.Wolf: Long story short, company I once worked for had a programming issue and generated an invoice to another company (that we otherwise did business with) for $0.11. Their treasurer taped a dime and a penny to it and sent it back with an explanation that his system couldn’t generate a check for less than $5. Hilarity did not ensue when we tried to process his payment.

  129. 129.

    JML

    there’s a fair grotesque collaboration between right-wing evangelicals and right-wing catholics, but usually it’s been the evangelicals calling the political shots. Either way, they’re just giant hypocrites and always have been. right-wing catholics decided that forced birth and being mean to gay people was more important than anything else in catholic doctrine and the evangelicals got on the grifting train like 40 years ago. they’re lunatics, all of ’em.

  130. 130.

    robtrim

    Well, we all know what happens when the priests are in charge…don’t we?

    The bible thumpers of all persuasions will use their religious dogma in the most capricious ways. Wasn’t David Koresh banging half of the women in his cult?  And the Catholic clergy?  Mormons? Evangelicals?

    Division of church and state, and state and church is probably our Founding Fathers greatest gift to us. Centuries of religious persecution, civil war, hypocrisy,  misogyny, and church/state corruption were, at least temporarily, contained. Controlling human sexuality has, for Millenia, been the most pernicious goal of religious despots.

    You’re right, Mistermix, we haven’t seen anything yet!

  131. 131.

    Chris

    @EireIAm:

    Even then, I thought it was bullshit, but I gave the catholic church full props for actually being consistent with their principles.

    This is the kind of thing I used to believe when I was younger, but no longer do.  Consistently awful politics aren’t actually better than hypocritically awful politics.  They’re just all awful.

  132. 132.

    Gretchen

    @Gin & Tonic: they realize. They just want to be able cross-examine people for their reasons and maintain veto power if they don’t approve. Same as the pharmacists who won’t dispense mifepristone, even if it’s for a miscarriage or in preparation for a uterine procedure.

  137. 137.

    Gretchen

    @Ramalama: 22? Wow! 13 is the most I ever encountered. It seemed like the middle kids often didn’t do so well – nobody had time to pay attention to them, unless it was the older kids.

    My friend’s mom sang in a Catholic Church choir with a lot of older mothers of large families. Friend said that, to a woman, they all absolutely loathed their husbands for putting them through that.

    I did know one mom of eight who was worried after she couldn’t get pregnant for a few years that she wouldn’t be able to have more. She had her last baby the same year her oldest daughter had her first.

  138. 138.

    trollhattan

    Donny a’skeert of the Alabama thing.

    Donald Trump has said he supports the availability of IVF treatment, joining a growing number of Republicans who are seeking to distance themselves from an Alabama court ruling on the issue.

    The state’s top court ruled last week that frozen embryos have the same rights as children and people can be held liable for destroying them.

    At least three clinics paused IVF treatment in the wake of the ruling.

    On Friday, Mr Trump called on Alabama to find “an immediate solution”.

    “We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder! That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every State in America,” the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform.

    “[Like] the VAST MAJORITY of Republicans, Conservatives, Christians, and Pro-Life Americans, I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby,” he added.

    His comments were his first on the issue, and signalled his opposition to a ruling which some Republicans fear could harm them electorally by hindering plans to win back suburban women as well as swing voters.

  142. 142.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Ramalama:

    I knew a family of 22 kids, like the youngest of the 22 played guitar with me on Saturday evening Masses.

    My mother gave birth to nine children in a 10-year period, and we lived next door to another Catholic family in Philadelphia who had 15 children and two foster kids. This was the 70s.

  145. 145.

    eversor

    I don’t know why anybody would be shocked!  Leonlard Leo, Sam Alito, Bill Barr, and all the rest of them have been giving public and leaked private comments for ages that unless our society adhears to the God, Christ, Old and New Testament required gender roles, patriarchy, heirarchy, and sexual morality Christians cannot practice and pass on their faith.  They aren’t wrong either.  Christianity is not compatible on any level with a society that is open to differing views around sex, gender, and patriarchy because those are hard coded into it at it’s foundational level.  It’s more of a core component than helping the poor.  And helping the poor is a personal commandment for you to give up your stuff it’s not a governmental commandment and only has ever worked as one or passed the smell test in straight up theocracies.

    An actual Christian society  would be a straight up Catholic Integeralist Theocracy with social views to the right of Rick Santorum, Rod Dreher, and Ross Douthat (none of their wives would ever be allowed to go to college or speak out in a Christian society) that also distributed charity and education to the lower classes straight through the Church with stringent requirments on past, current, and future conduct to maintain them.  The Church would get those funds through donationas and also sucking tax money from everyone.  That is what Christianity actually is all about.  Then there is the fact that slavery, colonialism, reducation, child removal, genocide, support for Franco/Hitler and more all came straight from the Church and were guided by Christian teachings.

    The refusal to admit it’s about Christianity also leads to deadly strategic errors on this.  Sex education, child molestation, raising a kid that’s too young, porn bans, contraception bans, divorce bans, outlawing cohabitation, and more are all issues that hit men as well.  But that can’t happen, must be misogny and all about women it can’t be religion despite all these assholes banging their bibles and quoting scripture.  No it can’t be Christian because then you’d actually have to be anti Christian to stand against it and better to give the country to theocracy than have to admit at your Sunday’s ladies who brunch meeting that you follow, tolerate, and make excuses for an ideology that actually requires all this.

    If you aren’t anti Christian you own all of this as much as Alito does and it’s on your hands.

    @HumboldtBlue:

    No, it’s not.  First off there are tons of crazy Catholic orders like say The Knights Of Columbus that mostly due public charity works but are strictly Christian when it comes to social issues it’s not just OD.  Next is that evangelicals, main line protestants, charismatics, and even orthodox are all in on this as well.  They all hate each others guts but they are all in on National Conservatism.  I remember back in the 90s when just a few of the churches we were involved with were pumping millions into local elections and also into Russia (we Jesus’d them up before they realized the in and dragged Christianity and thus the GOP, FOX, and more over to them, Russians didn’t put all this in motion Christians did) and not a fucking thing has changed.

    You’re in a religious civil war wether you want one or not.  Worse than that you are all getting your asses kicked and it’s almost entirely because you keep swatting at the heads of the hydra while refusing to cut the last head off and rip out the heart to finish it off.  Then keep scratching your heads as to why it keeps coming back and screaming into the void “must be a tooth problem, a skin problem, a water problem, but whatever it is we can’t have a hydra problem!” and I’m laughing my ass off at you all get eaten by it.

    Get with reality.  This fight is here.  Fight back against the actual enemy or sit there and get wailed on.  Sadly I know which one people here are going to pick.  To which the only response can be, Alito, Leo, they want the Jesus, oblige them!

  147. 147.

    Another Scott

    It doesn’t look like anyone has commented on the picture up top.

    Bernard Francis Law.

    In April 2002, following the Boston Globe’s public exposure of the cover up by Cardinal Law (and his predecessor Cardinal Humberto Medeiros) of offending priests in the Boston Archdiocese, Law consulted with Pope John Paul II and other Vatican officials and said he was committed to staying on as archbishop and addressing the scandal: “It is my intent to address at length the record of the Archdiocese’s handling of these cases by reviewing the past in as systematic and comprehensive way as possible, so that legitimate questions which have been raised might be answered.”[26]

    Even so, Law submitted his resignation as Archbishop of Boston to the Vatican, which Pope John Paul II accepted on December 13, 2002.[25] Law wrote in a personal declaration, “The particular circumstances of this time suggest a quiet departure. Please keep me in your prayers.”[27] and moved to Rome. In July 2003, Seán O’Malley, OFMCap was named the new Archbishop of Boston.[28]

    […]

    After a long illness, Law died in Rome on December 20, 2017, at the age of 86. He is buried in a chapel at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.[5][39] His funeral rites, following the standard for a cardinal who dies in Rome, included Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on December 21 at which Pope Francis said the final prayers.[41][42] Vatican TV did not livestream the Mass as it normally does.[43]

    They protected their own, didn’t they.

    :-/

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  149. 149.

    Ksmiami

    @smith: Companies will be forced to leave too: as educated young ppl will not gamble their families on horrid Rt wing government

  151. 151.

    Citizen Alan

    @Gin & Tonic:  On a related note, when my mother died, I inherited half her stocks, including 7 shares of Nokia, for which I just today received a dividend check in the amount of $0.08. I am debating whether to cash it, as driving to the bank may cost more in gas than I will receive.

  153. 153.

    Kirk

    I know it’s bad when everyone on BJ starts sounding like a certain anti-Christian bigot.

     

    Eta “everyone” is hyperbolic, I think.

  154. 154.

    eversor

    @robtrim:

    Controlling human sexuality is built into the core of most of the major religions.  It is the central issue surrounding the three big ones as they impact the world today.  Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.  You cannot remove or untangle sexuality from them or the entire thing comes crashing down into a bullshit farce.

    The sad reality is that our “secular truce” only worked as long as there was a monoculture that lorded over a majority of people could feel comfortable that their religious views and values held sway.  The moment that ended democracy and rights go right out the window as the society is now hostile to traditional Christian views.  This is has not just happened here everywhere Christian has lost power there has been stife after.

    But sure keep kicking the can on this one!

  155. 155.

    jimmiraybob

    I just want to say that I am glad that the Opus Dei Catholics are getting the deserved credit for their efforts to subvert the Constitution that stands in the way of their God.

    From the view of our 17th century Puritan forefathers, way too many Catholics were let in. Let the Holy wars begin. On a side note, the Bible was removed from classrooms largely because Catholics did not want their children studying the Protestant theology out of the Protestant Bible.

  156. 156.

    jimmiraybob

    @Kirk: ​
     “I know it’s bad when everyone on BJ starts sounding like a certain anti-Christian bigot.”
    Hopefully you can distinguish between being anti-Christian and anti-Christian nationalist zealot. It is an important distinction.

  157. 157.

    Ksmiami

    @Kirk: the Christians brought this on themselves when they allowed their churches to become hotbeds of political activism against our Constitutional Republic. They chose this. Now they will experience the predicted backlash that is well deserved.

  160. 160.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kirk: I don’t think I’m bigoted towards liberal Christians. More than anything, I pity them, because the faith to which they devote themselves has been utterly corrupted by “Christians” whose entire identity is based on the idea that they are better than other people simply because they got dunked in the right magic bathtub and, having been so dunked, they can be as utterly hateful and evil and cruel as they want and still get into Heaven.

    I said it before and I’ll say it again. The entirety of the anti-choice movement is based on a single premise — Eve ate the Apple. And in response, God became angry and cursed all women to bring forth children in pain. That’s it. Period. At it’s core, the anti-choice movement is driven by the idea that God created pregnancy PRIMARILY as a way to torture women because God is an abusive, sadistic bastard, and the fundies are furious at the thought that any woman might escape God’s righteous punishment.

  161. 161.

    hotshoe

    @Villago Delenda Est: ​

    “In direct contradiction of the Constitution of the United States.
    These people are my enemies. I swore an oath.”
    Yep.

    I’m about as anti-religion as a person can be. However I have always tried to remain peaceable regarding Catholics because the only family I have left are Catholics — and I think they are okay people, vote Dem, disobey their church about contraception, etc.

    But they (and I) never have had to deal with the fact that simply by sitting in the pews on Sunday they add support for the hierarchy continuing political corruption. That nice little local priest reports upward, his superiors get the attendance figures, the archbishop feels confirmed in his belief that he represents millions of Catholics when he advances yet another theocratic claim.

    Honestly, not all Catholic people are bad people as individuals — look, JFK and Biden were/are both faithful Catholics and Biden is the best US president in my long lifetime.

    But every single member of the church hierarchy from the little priest up to the dueling popes should be evaporated.

    I know, I know, western culture has already tried this more than once. Dissolution of the monasteries, forbidding versions of bibles … it didn’t work to stop their pernicious influence. I don’t know what the solution might be, I just know I hate all of those people for what they are trying to do to my country and my people.

  162. 162.

    eversor

    @jimmiraybob:

    I don’t think another break like that is possible right now.  As someone who’s immediate family is Jewish and Epsicopalian (we joined the Church to get into a couple country clubs and then got hip deep into funnelling money to Russia and former USSR breakways and then the kiddy touching hit us) and’s extended family is all Latino or Asian Catholics they are pretty much on the same side.

    It’s all about, sex, gender, partriarchy and how Christianity demands it.  I’m sure they’ll kick off their version of the troubles once they gain power and put the rest of us down but that’s going to take some time till they go after each other.

    But yeah, per blog, Christianity good.  So this is all very good.

  163. 163.

    Ruckus

    @rikyrah:

    Awww, poor little ShitForBrains…….

    I really like the 5 cents. No rounding error here. I wonder who’s going to pay for his crappy buildings in NYC? And will they be willing to pay at least the going price – rather than the 4 times over rated amount that SFB thinks everything he touches is worth?

  164. 164.

    eversor

    @hotshoe:

    Except the Church is evaporating.  Religous attendance is closing in on rock bottom among the younger generations and the percentage of us that are outright hostile to Christianity is growing at a rapid rate.

    Christianity isn’t going to go away in a blaze of burning Bibles and torched churches.  It’s just going to hit the point where mentioning you are a Christian is going to be treated like saying you are a member of the KKK.  Having a Bible displayed at your home is going to be viewed as off as having Mein Kampf displayed prominently.

    You won’t get invited to dinner parties, people won’t let their kids go to your place, you won’t want to wear a cross at work, your pews will empty, Churches will be banned from owning hospital networks unless they go against their faith in medical practice, pronoucements of faith will cause people to think you’re a lunatic, and on and on.   The true history of Christian violence and evil will be taught in school as standard (and if you think the slave trader and Nazi’s are bad neither of them can hold a candle to Christianity unless you admit they were both products of it, at which point oh boy!).

    That’s what they are so upset about.  Christians screaming “discrimination” boils down to “we don’t get invited on the major news shows to show how our religion demands gender roles, sex rules, and patriarchy so we can make our case in public.”  The reality of that is it’s not popular amoung the youngs, and since they are 100% correct about what their religion demands there Christianity is not popular and often outright hated among the young.  Thus, they need to turn everything into Christian propaganda to keep Christianity and they aren’t wrong there either.

    They are better than us because at least they are willing to be honest about the stakes in all this and the only possible outcomes.   We are too stupid about this and so I support them.  I’ll support the honest evil each time over the dishonest liar who enables it.

  165. 165.

    hotshoe

    @eversor: ​
     
    “I’ll support the honest evil each time”

    It’s beyond stupid to support “honest evil”, but you do you, darlin’

  166. 166.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Gin & Tonic: ​Long story short, company I once worked for had a programming issue and generated an invoice to another company (that we otherwise did business with) for $0.11. Their treasurer taped a dime and a penny to it …

     I love this story! Great sympathy for all the participants, too.

    I once took an extremely pricey item (pricey for me, anyway: interview clothing) to the checkout at Nordstrom Rack and the computer rang up my purchase as “$0.01”.

    Evidently there was a store policy that anything unsold after a certain period of time was to be removed, or else sold for one penny – an incentive for the shelf-clearers – and they’d missed that item. Good news for my budget!

  167. 167.

    David Rickard

    which forms of contraception would be allowed by our new Jesuitical overlords.  Let me cut to the chase on this one:  the answer is none, not a single one.

    I’m betting good money that condoms will still be legal (if possibly pushed back behind store counters and into truck stop restrooms), because those are used by men.

  170. 170.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @MattF:

    Let’s hope for the visual this fall that the dog is rabid, it sinks its teeth into the truck’s tire, locks its jaw, refuses to let go and then the truck enters the freeway and heads for the fast lane with full tanks, a bottle to pee in and a 1,200 mile trip until the next stop.

    A man can dream, right?

  171. 171.

    Soprano2

    @Gretchen: I  think it’s only women who aren’t supposed to have “recreational sex”. I think they believe men can have as much fun as they want.

  173. 173.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @rikyrah:

    Crap, I’ve been making notes all of my life so I guess I’ve been losing my mind for decades now! This ‘argument’ is fucking stupid. Smart people keep notes, especially about complex things with many parts to them. Heck, I’m changing the gears in the rear of our car and I have all kinds of notes as I progress to make sure that I don’t miss anything.

    A good mechanic has a notepad and pens/pencils in the top of their tool box to take quick notes on a job. People make notes called lists to go shopping. My wife has 3×5 cards in an index for her own recipes and those that are not in cookbooks.

    The presstitutes are grasping at every straw and their desperation is palpable. They want to injure Biden and they are throwing everything they can at him. Fuck the ratfucking conservative media.

  174. 174.

    topclimber

    @eversor: At least Robespierre understood that people often need a religion, even if it was some dry ass classical stuff like the Jacobins put out. So does a Revolution.

  175. 175.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Soprano2:

    Yeah but how do the men get to have their fun if there aren’t any women who do it for fun.

    Oh yeah, barnyard animals. That’s the stupid part of this shit; that boys get to go sow their wild oats (good/manly) and girls must put out for them (bad/sluts).

    Freaking delusional.

  176. 176.

    Glidwrith

    @Citizen Alan: My faith didn’t survive the corruption that history demonstrated was always inherent in the Church. The last of it evaporated with the pedophile scandals and the Church declaring bankruptcy in the diocese, rather than pay out to the victims. Fuck ‘em.

  177. 177.

    ETtheLibrarian

    I am not Catholic but spent 6 years at a Catholic girls school and I was definitely left with the impression that they were not fans of any method to get pregnant that wasn’t good old fashioned sex. I think that medicine helping women to get pregnant was too much like playing God (a big No No) but also all the other ambiguities and even ethical complications that can crop up were not good for the soul.

  178. 178.

    pluky

    The fugly black frames weren’t just for those in uniform. From second grade to the eighth I wore the things with the classic ‘coke bottle bottom’ lenses (ultra high index plastics were not on the menu) because as my dad put it “I’m not spending my liquor money on eyeglasses”. My first earnings (bagging groceries in the Camp Zama commissary annex) went toward a pair of wire rims with photo grey lenses (still coke bottle bottom thick though).

  182. 182.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @cain: The Southern Baptists, of all people, have been trending that way in the face of their own doctrine for the past 40 years.  Bill Moyers, an ordained and trained Baptist minister, was flummoxed by this trend, totally in opposition to what Baptists are supposed to be.

  183. 183.

    RevRick

    @Hildebrand: My denomination, the United Church of Christ, came out in favor of a woman’s right to choose in 1971, two years before Roe. We understood that there were two salient points. One was our conviction in the sovereignty of individual conscience, dating back to the Reformation assertion that “neither prince nor priest nor thrall” can coerce. The other was that while Scripture was almost entirely silent* on the subject of abortion, there was strong evidence that the life of the one who is takes precedence over the life of the one who might be.
    *The two passages that come closest are:

    Exodus 21:22-25, where a pregnant woman miscarries because she tried to stop a fight between two men

    Numbers 5:11-28, where a man, in a fit of jealousy, hauls his wife before the priest, who concocts an abortifacient made of holy water, tabernacle dirt, and a grain offering of jealousy, and gives it to her to drink.

  184. 184.

    AM in NC

    @H.E.Wolf:   THAT is the question.  One of my good friends called me yesterday very upset at her “good liberal” husband who just wants her to stop reading the news because it is only making her upset, and they have enough going on that she doesn’t need to be adding to their stress by getting all upset about political things we can’t control.

    She called me because my “good, liberal” husband frequently has the same attitude with me.  These upper middle-class, straight, white, Gen X men just don’t have skin in the game like their wives do, and we feel it.  ALL of my female friends volunteer in multiple ways to get Democrats elected at all levels of government. None of the husbands do. They vote for Democrats, but they don’t feel the urgency like we do.  They’ll be safe under MAGA, and they don’t yet feel the need to go all in to protect the rest of us – because from everything they know from growing up as wealthy, white, straight men NOTHING BAD will REALLY happen so why fret about it and stress yourself out.  The women’s lived experiences have all taught us something entirely different. We KNOW about the bad shit that can happen/be done. This disparity is a problem.

    And not for nothing, but go to ANY Democratic meeting and the people doing the work are overwhelmingly women.  How do we get men to engage more in the often boring, grinding work of democratic politics?

  187. 187.

    Paul in KY

    @eversor: That is true. The major religions and alot more that are not practiced anymore had/have controlling of sexuality and mating as a core part of their dogma.

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