Virginia Women: Get Back in That Chastity Belt!

So just when you think you've heard it all -- meet Bob McDonnell, Republican candidate for governor in the state of Virginia. Turns out that Mr. McDonnell isn't your garden-variety anti-choice politician. He's a true believer -- railing against legalized birth control, public schools, childcare and, believe it, working women! His thesis at Pat Robertson's Regent University is just now seeing the light of day thanks to the Washington Post, and it outlines his views pretty clearly about those of us whom he believes are responsible for the demise of the American family, rising promiscuity and basically the breakdown of society.

It turns out that Mr. McDonnell takes issue with the U.S. Supreme Court decision back in 1972, Eisenstadt v. Baird, which established the legal right of unmarried people to use contraception in America. Apparently, he believes that legalized birth control leads to all kinds of problems, which then leads to the breakdown of the traditional family unit where Dad worked and Mom stayed home with Dick and Jane and Puff and Spot. In his treatise, Mr. McDonnell opines that working women and "feminists" are the problem -- "materialistic" people who have made choices the government now has to support, who have broken their "perceived stereotypical bonds and seek workplace equality." He rails against child-care programs that subsidize and encourage women to work, and says that the participation of women in the work force is a symptom of the breakdown of society. It is hard to believe that a politician can possibly get elected with such a primitive view of a woman's role in the family and in society.

Lest you think he was a young, impressionable student-type when he held these views, not so. He wrote this manifesto at age 34, already a married father of two. But Bob McConnell is not only a man of words: he is a man of action. In the two decades that McDonnell has been in office, he has sponsored or co-sponsored more than 35 anti-choice pieces of legislation -- in fact, his primary focus in elective office has been to restrict women's access to reproductive health care. "Working women" have gotten little or no help from him as well, since McDonnell voted against ending wage discrimination between men and women.

While this thinking is pretty frightening, most frightening is that Bob McDonnell is now leading in the Virginia polls. Like other extreme-right candidates, Bob McDonnell is working hard to distance himself from his voting record, public statements and actions, and now, his dissertation at Regent.

Polls indicate that Virginia women can and likely will make the difference in this election and their votes are very much up for grabs. Senator Creigh Deeds, 100 percent pro-women's health and 100 percent pro-working women, is gaining ground. Despite Bob McDonnell's predictions, working women have not been responsible for the demise of American society, but women may very well be responsible for the end of McDonnell's political career.

*Cecile Richards is president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

 

 

Follow Cecile Richards on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cecilerichards

Comments

[4 Real]

There's always some dbag guy who blames a woman for their own failings. I pity the women in their lives, particularly their wives.

I also fail to see the difference between people like mcconnel and osama bin laden.

[Mark Twaine]

It seems most people missed the part of his thesis where girls should wear dog tags on one of their ankles: Virgins right ankle. Fornicators left ankle.

[seattle music]

My goodness, what's wrong with the good old Scarlet Letter?

[Stuzzadelic]

Creigh Deeds! He's got my vote. I've got news for you McDonnell: Virginia is no longer a plantation.

[In VA]

Intelligent women of Virginia will not be fooled by this guy.

I cannot speak for the female fundamentalists however.

[One more Thing]

If you want to defeat him you need a majority. Factual findings may reveal fundamentalists are the majority.

[lisakaz2]

Since when? Got a census or something?

[beyondliberal]

From which rock in Appalachia did this guy crawl out from under?
I bet he and his kissin' cuzzins are real good on them thar banjos!

[One more Thing]

None of that. He came from Mars.

[NYC-CatLover]

Well he must have the radical Islamist vote locked up! Since I highly doubt that's a big interest group in Virginia right now, maybe he can run for office in Iran or the tribal region of Pakistan when he loses this race. He'd had to get the approval of the Supreme Leader to run in Iran, but I'm sure he'd qualify as conservative enough to run on a party list with Ahmadinejad and the Repubilcan Guards.

[One more Thing]

He seems to like advanced university degrees and writing thesis maybe he can attend a university in Iran and write one for the Allatoya.

[den1953]

This guy has C Street written all over him he's either a closet gay or a Stanford clone i hope the good people of Virginia see through this phony excuse for a true politician!

[Rog49Thomas]

May I suggest that your hope should be that the good people of VIrginia are a majority?

[Rockerbabe]

And none to soon I hope; we need fewer neanthrals and more men who will "man up" to their responsibilities.

[From the Raft]

The radical right wing lieing machine is spewing this today:

"For growing numbers of people, the elections in Virginia and New Jersey can't come quickly enough and November 2010 is a date being circled in red on many calendars."

http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/57347317.html

[HPdevotee]

This neanderthal is just the tip of the iceburg, I'm afraid...There are probably 100's of his ilk still in positions of power. Remember Monica Goodling from the Cheney/Bush presidency?

"As for Regent, it recently made the news in the uproar over the firings of U.S. attorneys because Monica Goodling, a former aide to Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, was among about 150 Regent law graduates hired by the Bush administration.
The focus on Goodling has served to encourage media attention on the spread throughout the federal government of graduates of Christian right institutions such as Pat Robertson's Regent University and Liberty University, founded by the late Jerry Falwell. It is unclear how deeply these graduates have penetrated the civil service at the Department of Justice and other agencies."
http://www.jewsonfirst.org/07b/goodling.html

And the reason why the Civil Rights Department in the DOJ will take years to restore...

" Under Ashcroft, career lawyers were systematically fired or forced out and replaced by members of conservative or Christian groups or folks with no civil rights experience. In the five years after 2001, the Civil Rights Division brought no voting cases -- and only one employment case -- on behalf of an African American. Instead, the division took up the "civil rights" abuses of reverse discrimination -- claims of voter fraud or discrimination against Christians."
(same citation)

[TheBlackCat]

Because having half of their workforce unable to work or provide for themselves in any way is working out SO well for the people of Saudi Arabia.

[One more Thing]

Did Bob wake up a sleepy river town?

"Our biggest concern about the ideas expressed in McDonnell’s thesis are his thoughts about working women. At the least, they raise questions about whether he understands what life is like for people today.

Women work because they have to, and many work because they want to."

http://www2.godanriver.com/gdr/news/opinion/editorials/danville_editorials/article/what_bob_has_to_answer_for/13656/

[singermuse]

Dominionist pseudo christianity is a very real and dangerous movement in this country; not just to women, but to all people who value their freedom of and from religion, and people of all races and gender preferences. The fact that we have not a few followers of Rushdoony in our halls of congress, in local, state, and national positions should give us pause, but more than that should create in us the motivation to fight this form of fascism. I am not ready to lose my RIGHT to vote, to hold a job, to practice my own spirituality, to love whom I will, to have "dominion" over my own body. We who are thinking people should work to keep our country a real democracy.

[svmaggieb]

Agreed. I hope Obama sees this as a person raised in a secular household, and cleans house in the armed forces, which is evolving into a dominionist hotbed in sync with the imperialist expansion of the Reagan - Bush II years.

Check
http://militaryreligiousfreedom.org/press-releases/MRFF-lawsuit.html

[ejay579]

McDonnell is a cretin as are most GOPers. The Family Values mantra is a smoke screen. It is just one more example of how the Bible Thumper wing of the GOP is manipulated by the Corporatist wing. Those that pull the strings in the GOP are not nearly as concerned as much with Family Values as they are with the bottom lines of corporations. Corporations do not want women at home raising good American families as much as they want a pool of cheap labor.

[ladyearth]

Instead of Virginia women wearing a chastity belt, why don't Virginia men keep it in their pants?

[BlackJAC]

To quote a Larry Miller comedy routine: men are expected to be fruitful and women to be fruitless, but if women are fruitless, with whom or what are the men being fruitful?

[KenMoore]

The concept of a chastity belt is to control WHO has sex with a woman. It has nothing to do with who men have sex with, and never did. Strictly control issues.

[ladyearth]

iMissMollyIvins, I agree that Eve was framed. The overlooked and/or ignored part of the Adam/Eve story is that Adam failed to take responsibility for his actions. When God showed up and asked Adam what was going on, Adam could have simply said, "I ate the apple." That would have been the adult response, Adam would have been taking taking ownership of his actions. Instead, Adam first blames Eve, and then blames God. Man continues to blame woman and God for his actions to this day instead of taking ownership of his actions. What would have happened if Adam had responded to God as an adult and simply said, "I ate the apple." What do you think God would have done if Adam had taken ownership of his actions?

[prostock69]

Oh for god's sake, Adam and Eve was a story and nothing else. It never happened.

[ejay579]

Just a story? There is nothing we can take away from fiction? It is not your premise that concerns me as much as the lack of thought and reflection it exhibits. Think knee jerk.

[MJinCanada]

Yes, it is just part of the Judeo-Chri­stian-Musl­im creation myth, but it has been used for centuries by the more misogynistic Christian sects to explain why women are evil, untrustworthy, sinful and completely at fault every time some guy fails miserably.

[Angelaaaa]

Yes, it is just a story and, no, it didn't really happen. But, like so many other stories that never happened, it has a profound effect on gender relations - for no other reason that people believed that it did and felt entitled to act upon those beliefs.

The ability of human beings to justify the oppression of their fellow man or woman should never be underestimated.