Category Archives: Writing

This week we were offered another glimpse into the creepy right-wing mind, this time of Rep. Todd Akin  of Missouri. Here’s the heart of the matter:

“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Akin said, referring to conception following a rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”

Rep. Tod Akin, as reported in the LA Times (Rep. Todd Akin: No pregnancy from ‘legitimate rape’).

It’s the old-school patriarch speaking out of turn. That’s why the Republican party old-guard is so determined to get Akin out of the race. Contemporary Republicanism is, if nothing else, a kind of Trojan Horse ideology which succeeds by advocating populism (aka the Tea party) while pursing authoritarian and nationalistic policy. Especially during this election year, the goal has been to tamp down the authoritarian nationalism and emphasize the populist economic rhetoric. This  incident, though, is like last week’s peek at Ayn Rand lurking behind Paul Ryan; this time we’re getting a peak at John C. Wilke, also lurking behind Ryan.

When Akin suggested that he had “read somewhere” that a woman’s body could do this sort of thing, he was being coy but not dishonest. He’s talking about John C. Wilke’s 1999 piece, “Rape Pregnancies Are Rare,” available online at the Christian Life Resources webpage. Wilke is a long-standing anti-choice advocate. The right needs to argue that rape pregnancies are uncommon, to the point of non-existence, so that they can justify their position that there should be no exceptions to laws banning abortion. Rape pregnancies are not simply uncommon, the right tells us, some of the rapes never happened.

“The most conservative studies,” Rev. Robert Fleischmann the current National Director of Christian Life Resources writes, “have suggested false rape reports account for 4%-8% of all reported rapes. So, 4%-8% of rape reports could rightfully be called illegitimate rapes… Taking Representative Akin’s words in the best possible way,” Fleischmann writes of the Representative’s apology-video, “we can accept his apology for failing to respect the high emotion of the rape issue.”  So don’t fret, it’s just a few woman who will be affected by the no-exceptions ban. Not something to worry about.

It’s that “emotion” thing that’s the real issue (three decades ago he would have surely said hysterical); “most people today can’t get past the thought of the rape event”  to, presumably, the important issue, that is, the embryo not the woman. Akin should “leave the emotionally distorting event of pregnancy from a rape for a later day when society is better educated… the proper education that can come out of all this might better result in tougher laws against rapists, care and support for the women who have been raped, and protection for the most defenseless of all – the unborn child.”  Aka, Ryan’ and Akin’s Personhood law.

Today, I thought I’d offer a little good news and some bad news. Here’s the bad news, which continues to emerge out of my birthplace, Louisiana, where the Christian religious right has managed to use the idea of “choice” to help them siphon off public money for their schools, thanks to the Republican Governor Jindal. It’s possible to have a good Christian school, of course, at least in theory, but these schools promote what amounts to a form of religiously sanctioned ignorance. Here’s a brief discussion of what these school plan to teach:

… Barbara Forrest, a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University, a founder of the Louisiana Coalition for Science, and a member of NCSE’s board of directors, told the Advocate, “What [students] are going to be getting financed with public money is phony science. They’re going to be getting religion instead of science.” Alluding to a textbook published by Accelerated Christian Education, the editorial noted, “Among the dubious assertions of creationist pseudo-science is that evolution is called into question by sightings of the Loch Ness monster, a ‘dinosaur’ living in the modern age — according to those who believe in the Loch Ness myth.”

“Louisiana’s Loch Ness mythology” National Center for Science Education

The good news is that there’s a plethora of videos that parents and teachers can use to promote a fuller understanding of evolution. If you search for the term “evolution” at The Khan Academy, for example, you find four short videos (most a little over 10 minutes), including “Introduction to Evolution and Natural Selection” (longer than most at 17 minutes).  A similar search at Knowmia produced more than 150 videos; limiting the search to “introduction to evolution” produced six, including a 2 1/2 minute “What is Natural Selection” that would be suitable for younger children and “Darwin’s Theory of Evolution,” an 8 minute video geared for high school or perhaps early college. We could all probably use a refresher in these subjects, if for no other reason than to sharpen our nonsense detectors.

Note: I’ve recently added a link to a new resource, “Online Schools,” which is a very readable  and informative directory of online education in the U.S., listed by State; each school listed also includes information about particular colleges offering online courses and links to the program’s websites. It’s pitched to students but it would be useful for teachers looking for work as well.