Shit that Pissed me Off – 4/29

Oklahoma House Moves to Ban All Abortions

In another move meant to remind us how important control of the Supreme Court has become, Oklahoma appears poised to test exactly how far you can go in the control of women’s health decisions.

The state governor has not yet decided whether or not to sign this bill, which goes so far as to tell the state medical board which doctors they can certify.

Rather than targeting the mothers, this law rewards doctors who perform abortions with felony charges.  Even if the abortion is required to save the life of the mother.

Bad things happen when you put doctors in handcuffs.

More and more, it becomes clear that lawmakers on one side of the issue are far more concerned about the next generation than the current one.  Unless we are talking about global climate change.  Or overpopulation.  Or pollution.

Then the needs (or wants) of this generation are far more important.

Unless, of course, they need to go to the bathroom.

Oxford, Alabama Will Send Transgender People to Jail for Six Months if They Use a Restroom that Conforms to Their Gender Identity

Oh, Bible Belt, why must you work so hard to confirm stereotypes that I am trying to believe aren’t true?

After a good week in which Target has announced they are totally OK with transgendered people using whichever bathroom they choose*, some people in Alabama got really concerned.

Apparently, a whole lot of people who have, up until this point, not felt the least bit threatened by other people in the restroom with them, are suddenly really worried about who is peeing in the same room.

I realize this is all the fault of us liberals who thought Transgendered people deserved some protection since they are subjected to assault at a much higher rate than the rest of us.  Turns out, in our rush to protect people who are actually at risk, we neglected to protect all those people who aren’t.

Fortunately, the good folks of Oxford, Alabama (not to be confused with Oxford University) have passed an ordinance that will allow those pesky transgendered folks to go to jail for having bodily functions in the wrong restroom.

This is all so stupid because trans people have been peeing for years and none of us gave a damn.  We just went on about our business (heh – business) and worried as much about trans people peeing as we did about Catholic priests counseling children.

Turns out we were wrong about one of those two things being completely safe.  Oddly enough, it wasn’t the one we are passing laws to stop.

It’s all so ridiculous, you’d think that perhaps we’ll look back at this in thirty years and laugh at what intolerant fucks we were.

Except it won’t be funny because people will have gone to jail because they had to pee.

*I have resolved to buy all of my LEGO Star Wars sets at Target from now on.

Oklahoma Court Rules Oral Sex Isn’t Rape if the Victim is Drunk

Oooooooklahoma where you can stick your dick in a passed out girl’s mouth and not face criminal charges!

I don’t think the musical would have been as popular with those lyrics.  But they would have been accurate.  Here’s something that is taken directly from the court ruling:

Forcible sodomy cannot occur where a victim is so intoxicated as to be completely unconscious at the time of the sexual act of oral copulation

So since you couldn’t force her to give you a blow job because she was unconscious, it isn’t illegal.

Worse, the ruling is probably correct because the laws in Oklahoma basically created this loophole that dudes can stick their dick through without the risk of prosecution.

What kind of country do we live in where we will send doctors to jail for trying to save the life of a pregnant woman, transgendered people to jail for trying to pee but we won’t send a guy to jail for sticking his dick into an unconscious woman’s mouth?

Maybe it’s a country where Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for President.

Speaking of Donald Trump, He’s Talking about the “Woman Card”

At this point, it appears Trump and Clinton will be the nominees for President (it isn’t over yet but for this segment let’s assume things continue to play out as they appear to be going so far).  As many of you may have heard, Hilary Clinton is a woman.

This is unusual because although our country is over 200 years old, a woman has never been her parties’ nominee to be President of the United states.

So it seems like a big deal.

Kind of like nominating a black man.

The best way to respond to this big deal is not to praise it and talk about the issues, apparently.  Instead, the way to deal with it is to complain that a woman is talking about women’s issues and claim she is playing the “woman card.”

So Donald Trump, a rich white dude, feels marginalized because Hilary is a woman?

Cry me a fucking river.

I don’t care what you think of Clinton, you should think that anyone who uses dismissive language to marginalize people who are already marginalized should grow the fuck right up and go back to his casino.

Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theorists

If the rest of this weeks column hasn’t already made you weep for the future of our nation, how about reading this article penned by a man whose six-year-old son was killed at Sandy Hook in 2012?  Seriously – don’t read this article.

You may remember Sandy Hook as an elementary school where a gunman killed 26 people, including 20 children, in an incident that actually happened.  By actually happened, I mean the killer totally walked into Sandy Hook and killed those people.  There is no cover up.  It really fucking happened.

Seriously – there is no cover up. Adam Lanza really killed those children.

Which is what makes this article so maddening.  You are reading about a parent who lost his six-year-old son in a random and senseless act of violence and is still receiving hate mail on a daily basis from people who think he’s just making the whole thing up to take down the NRA.

So while this guy is still grieving over a murder that really took place, he is simultaneously having to delete e-mails telling him that his son didn’t even exist.

It would be bad enough to learn people actually believe that.  It is worse to learn that in the internet age, people can find out how to contact this guy and they will never leave him alone.

An Atheist Billboard Critical of the Ark Park in Kentucky Inspires an Editorial Explaining Why We Really Need Religious Freedom Laws

My favorite part of this editorial is when the dude complements atheists for allowing the word “immoral” into our vocabulary.  As if we had no idea what immoral meant up to this point.

He seems to believe that non-religious groups being openly critical of religion is somehow counter to the idea of religious freedom.  He also suggests that atheist groups being critical of the hiring practices of the Ark Park (they will only hire Christians who believe in creationism) are hypocritical because they would never hire heterosexual Christians (because right now atheists only hire homosexual atheists).

Actually, he’s got it wrong.  If atheist organizations were in a position to hire people (most of them aren’t), they would hire whoever was most qualified to do their job.

Does a receptionist need to be an atheist to welcome people to “There Are no Answers of Value in Genesis?”*

No!  She just needs to be nice.  She can totally be straight.  She can even hate gay marriage. She just can’t let that opinion get in the way of doing her job.

Religious freedom means she is totally free to believe what she wants.  And she is free to get whatever job she wants.  Just so long as she doesn’t use her beliefs as an excuse for not doing her job.

*This organization doesn’t exist but I wish it did.  I’ve love to see their Ark Park.  I really want them to design a big bang roller coaster.

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is Going to Jail for Fifteen Months

Hastert is going to jail for bank fraud.  Because that’s the only thing they could nail him with even though he molested several children about forty years ago when he was a wrestling coach.  The defense really wanted the judge to give him the minimum sentence of six months.

And a whole bunch of Hastert’s Republican colleagues wrote to the judge on his behalf.

Yes, I know this is the same party that thinks transgendered people are more dangerous to kids in a restroom than Hastert was in a locker room.

The judge, who could have sentenced him to five years, was pretty stern in calling him a  “serial child molester” but somehow still only sent him to jail for fifteen months.

If reports are true, that is less than three months for each kid he abused.

And only nine months more than a transgendered woman could serve if she uses the “wrong” bathroom in Oxford, Alabama.

AMERICA!

This has been a busy week so I didn’t manage to write a new short story for my blog.  If you’ve enjoyed the stories I’ve been writing (or even if you haven’t), here is one I wrote a few months ago to present at a public speculative fiction reading.  It’s about time travel.  I like time travel.