This week, I was reading a story about the 46th anniversary of Americans’ right to use birth control, and – huh? What’s that you say? 46 years since what, now?
Yeah, in 1965, Griswold v. Connecticut was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, and the ruling declared unconstitutional a state law that forbade the use of birth control - and I’m not talking just birth control pills here, I’m talking any birth control device or drug, used by anyone, including married couples.
This ruling, made in my lifetime, mind you, has been decried ever since by conservatives claiming that we cannot construe freedoms where they are not specifically spelled out by the Constitution, and that the majority 7 justices who made the ruling were being “activist.”
Sound familiar? And are you, once again, trying to wrap your mind around the idea of freedom-loving small-government conservatism being opposed to a freedom as simple as sticking a sock on your dick?
Because make no mistake, the conservatives of today would have supported that Connecticut law, and would have decried that “activist” ruling.
And I’m not talking about some early ‘60s version of Boehner, Cantor, Pence, Sessions, et al. I’m saying take those exact same Republican jackasses, with their current sensibilities; send them 46 years back to a time when the highest court of the United States was trying to decide whether to allow American citizens the right to use otherwise legal birth control and I guaranfuckingtee you that immediately after the decision, they would be urging the Congress to pass a bill to strip the operating budget of the Supreme Court, and planning to launch an amendment to the Constitution that would forbid interfering with the Earth-bound destiny of God's little bundles of joy.
Don’t think so? How about if I told you that the Griswold in Griswold v. Connecticut was Estelle Griswold, Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut?
It's just so typical of this fucked up country that we choose as our boogeyman a plucky, low-rent little organization like Planned Parenthood, which is comprised of underpaid doctors and overworked nurses and harried administrative people who devote their hours to explaining to dumbass teenagers that pouring Bud on your boyfriend's dick won't make his sperm too drunk to swim.
Because by all means lets ignore the bankers throwing people out of their homes, and the arms makers and the oil men who keep sending us to die for the rights to Middle East crude, and the kids murdered on the streets every day warring over who gets to sell drugs on which corner, and the schools where they're being taught to love football and Jesus instead of science and mathematics, yeah, lets ignore all that, because some fucking Jezebel somewhere is sitting on a table in a paper apron being told that it's her body, after all. Yeah, that's the real goddamn emergency.
Some fucking asshole said to me the other day "Well, you know that MSNBC is no better than Fox, don't you?"
Well, I walked away from that argument, because it wasn't the time or the place, and to tell you the truth, the dude who said it has his head so far up his ass that not even I can scream loud enough for him to hear me. But let me just outline my response here, because it's something that comes up for me a lot.
No, they're not the same.
Yes, both networks are full of windbags who love the sound of their own yammering, and yes, both sides revel in the scandals of the other, and blow the missteps of the opposition out of all proportion, yes, in that way, they're very similar.
Here's how they're different. One side worships money. And they will do or say anything, anything to make and keep more of it. They tell anyone who will listen to them that we're all alone in this world, and we should look out for ourselves, and the way you look out for yourself is to keep other people from getting something that you would like to have. So let's make sure the billionaires and corporations pay no taxes, so that the black woman in line in front of you at the checkout can't buy Dove bars with her food stamps.
And the other side, as flawed and cheating and douchebaggy and pompous as we are, believe that we're all in this together, and that we have an obligation, as the most powerful country on Earth, to set an example of compassion and peace. We should lift each other up, with our dollars, with our ingenuity, and with our love for each other. And then we should take that lesson of how you do that, and teach it to anyone in the world who asks it of us.
That's right, I'm suggesting we should become Canada. Only with less hockey.
