This week, an actress by the name of Juanita Moore died. She was 99 years old and passed away on New Years Day.  You may not remember her name, but how could you forget her performance?  Juanita Moore was nominated for an Oscar for her role in the 1959 version of Imitation of Life.  She was only the fifth African-American to receive an Academy Award nomination – and it was for playing the role of Annie Johnson, in Imitation of Life.     

Imitation of Life was based on the book, by the same name written in 1933 by Fannie Hurst.   Hurst was a Jewish white woman and supporter of feminist causes. She also supported African Americans in their struggle for greater equality. The book and the films are set in different time periods, the book reflecting the 1910 era; the two subsequent films were made in 1934 and 1959.   I’ve seen both versions and read the book and the basic elements are the same.  It is about two mothers, one black and one white and their daughters.  It reflects the racism and the sexism of eras that were destructive and cruel to all who weren’t in the ruling class of white males.

 From the turn of the 20th century until the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia in 1967, numerous Southern states passed laws enforcing a "one-drop rule", requiring that persons of any known African ancestry had to be classified in records as black. Only black and white was recognized as racial categories, and racial segregation laws restricted blacks.  Imitation of Life reflected the tragedy of those laws.  A young black woman who so desperately wanted to be accepted that she denied her race and her mother in an effort to pass as white and escape the cruel injustices that were inflicted on her simply because of her race.  Two mothers, one black and one white, each struggling in their own way to survive on their own and raise their daughters in a culture that placed insurmountable obstacles on their path to survival and independence. 

There was controversy around this film and novel, some saying that it depicted African American’s in stereotypical roles.  And I’m sure that’s true.   But it was a story that was reflective of its time when racial and gender oppression were so blatant that a woman felt desperate enough to try and pass as white so that she could find a good man and survive in a culture that told her there was something wrong with everything about her.

And for those of us who did not grow up with memories of segregation or Jim Crow Laws, or the one-drop rule to determine race.  Who could forget the heart wrenching scenes of Susan Kohner’s character, Sarah Jane, as she cried, proclaiming that she was white and then hugged her mother for the last time as she denied her, or the powerful funeral scene when Sarah Jane sobbed and after a life of running from who she was, finally admitting, “That’s my mother”. 

These painful and dramatic scenes cut to the core of who we have been in this country and why it is so important to remind ourselves that we don’t ever want to go back. 

I hate to even mention ‘Duck Dynasty’ in the same breath as Imitation of life, or great women like Juanita Moore and Fannie Hurst.  And I do so only to contrast greatness and ignorance.   The star of this reality Red Neck show, Phil Robertson has been in the news for his racist, homophobic and misogynistic comments.

Robertson’s pedophile video where he stated, and I quote, “Look, you wait till they get to be 20 years old - the only picking that’s gonna take place is your pocket. You gotta marry these girls when they’re about 15 or 16.”

This video hasn’t gotten the outrage it deserves because, well forcing girls in to marriage when they are still children is not a completely foreign concept in our culture where marriage laws in most states still make the legal age 16 with parental consent.

Yet a video showing a 67-year-old man waving a Bible from his pulpit and using it to justify acts of pedophilia by adult men seems to be over the top for most reasonable people. 

Some on the right cried foul that it was a violation of  ‘freedom of speech’ rights for Robertson to be rejected for his hateful racist, homophobic and misogynistic words.  Seriously?  Freedom of Speech was evident by the mere fact that, unlike the Punk Rock Band in Russia, Pussy Riot, Robertson wasn’t thrown in prison for a few years and forced to have regular gynecological exams for simply voicing his opinion.

Robertson has a history of violating underage girls.  At age 20, he was having sex with a 14-year-old girl who got pregnant and was he forced to marry her at 16 to avoid going to prison for statutory rape in Louisiana.

Police reports show Robertson, in drunken rages, beat and abused his wife and children and then threw them out of his house before he later claimed to “find God” and repent for his ways.  But this is the man advising other adult men to go after child brides.

It seems that on the right we have a group of Americans who are so intolerant of others and whose hatred towards gays and blacks and women is so ingrained that they will embrace a disturbed star of a “reality” show in a desperate attempt to rationalize their own bigotry, homophobia and misogyny. 

According to Forbes Magazine, “Duck Dynasty” is the most popular show on the A&E Network. It has 14 million weekly viewers. That is pretty scary. 

A new Pew Research poll showed that Republicans are even more anti science than they were 4 years ago.  According to the poll, 67 percent of Democrats acknowledge that all living things on Earth evolved over time. That’s up by three points from a 2009 poll. 65 percent of Independents also agree that evolution is a real process supported by scientific evidence. On the flip side, Republican support for evolution science has reversed.  In 2009, 54 percent of Republicans believed in evolution. Four years later, that number now stands at 43 percent. More Republicans now reject evolution than support it. They deny science and fact. Apparently, stupidity has become a Republican value as the party shifts further to the extreme right wing.  More state abortion restrictions were enacted in Republican controlled states between 2011–2013, than in the entire previous decade. In 2013 California moved to expand women’s reproductive rights.  Hawaii became the 18th state to provide protections to women who have been sexually assaulted by enacting a new law requiring that a woman receive medically accurate and unbiased information on emergency contraception from the hospital treating her injuries.  While at the same time Oklahoma and Missouri moved to restrict access to emergency contraception after rape. 

In the past few years Republicans have made incomprehensible efforts to strip women’s rights from them.   Republicans and their teabag cousins want to claim that they are the real America. The South will rise again is a popular chant.  As if the Southern states did not already distinguish themselves with seriously depressing statistics in every quality of life category, eleven of the top 12 states with the highest mortality rates are located in the South.  Every factor contributing to higher than normal mortality rates is the result of conservative policies that were paid for by the Koch brothers with propaganda from Americans for Prosperity and the Heritage Foundation. They are all organizations representing corporations benefiting from low wages, no corporate taxes, no environmental protections, no labor protections, and no healthcare for what Republicans call the real America.

I am so fortunate to live in California, one of the most progressive and economically stable states in the U.S. And where affordable health care and women’s rights are not blasphemy and our Governor is actually interested in a better life for our citizens as well as business. It is difficult for reasonable Americans to comprehend why people vote for Republicans when their policies have transformed most states under Republican leadership into poverty-ridden regions. They convince voters that health insurance is a bad thing and so you have states like Texas with the highest uninsured rate of residents in the country.

It is no coincidence that Republicans pass Draconian abortion laws, and convince residents that voter suppression laws are necessary to preserve their Christian way of life. Bigotry, homophobia, misogyny and ignorance have become a way of life for many on the right who live in fear that their god and their guns are being stolen from them. 

There is a quote from the 1930’s that states, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”

On New Years’ eve the Supreme Court made another decision that placed the division of church and state more critically at risk when it exempted groups affiliated with the Catholic religion from complying with the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act. The groups, none of them churches, complained the mandate violated their religious freedom.  Catholic organizations demanding exemption from the mandate see it as restricting their biblical right to impose their religion on their employees and the High Court agreed.  The irony is that in this particular case we’re not even discussing the distribution of birth control by the nuns, or even their insurance company.  This is a pure and simple case of the church’s over reach and blatant effort to control the rest of America with their religious beliefs.

Extremist Christians are adamant the First Amendment protects their religious freedom to impose compliance with their religious beliefs on all Americans.  In Utah they are demanding that recent legal approval of marriage equality be stopped. Their case states a refusal by the federal government to accommodate a state’s biblical definition of marriage. 

The Founding Fathers wrote a constitution that was aimed at protecting Americans from religious tyranny.  The Right wing fundamentalists are determined to be make America a theocracy and we should all be terrified of those who are wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

This week the  Republican-dominated Michigan state legislature pushed through a bill on requiring women to purchase separate insurance policies if they want to have an abortion. The law, which takes effect in early 2014, will also ban women from purchasing the policy after becoming pregnant under any circumstances, including rape and incest, causing opponents to refer to the policy as “rape insurance.”  So a woman would basically have to plan ahead if she was going to be raped and need an abortion.   But let's not make the mistake of placing abortions on a hierarchy of what is an acceptable need. (ie rape) and what is not (ie unplanned).  A woman has a legal right to a safe, affordable and accessible abortion under any circumstance.

This is just the latest in a very long line of legal, financial and geographical barriers that Republicans have constructed to prevent women from exercising their rights to safe and affordable reproductive choices.   It’s easy to become numb to the continuous erosion of your rights.  But unless your Ann Coulter, who seems to hate women as much as Rush Limbaugh, how can any woman really be accepting of  the misogynistic health risks that women are now being subjected to in this country? 

Since 2010 When the Republicans and their zealot cousins in the Tea Party flooded into state legislatures, as well as the US Congress, over 1100 laws have been proposed and or passed to restrict a woman’s right to abortion and birth control. These people are serious.  Do you think this has anything to do with protecting women’s health?  No.  The number one killer of women in this country of child baring age prior to Roe V Wade, was botched abortions.  These legislators, predominately male, have no regard for a women's health and safety.  Their primary concern is infusing their archaic religious dogma into our cultural norms.

Restricting women’s access to safe and legal abortions puts women’s lives in serious danger.

Every day, every hour there are events going on that impact our lives.  And we have to pay attention.  Something really dangerous has came into play these past few years.  The overwhelming and insidious intermingling of religion into our politics.   We have historically been very clear in our separation of church and state.  Even the Republican God, Ronald Reagan said, “We establish no religion in this country. We command no worship. We mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are and must remain separate.”  Article VI of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.  This is to ensure that we maintain our country as a democracy and not a theocracy. 

Theocracy is a form of government in which a religious deity or god, is officially recognized as the civil Ruler and official policy and laws are made based on the belief system in that deity. The word theocracy originates from the Greek  meaning "the rule of God".

We’re always told that ‘Religion and politics’ should not be discussed in ‘polite company’.  I’m probably a little too opinionated to ever be considered polite company.  We have a real problem in this country.  And we can’t dance around the GOP elephant in the living room. And it’s not the right wing zealots who are screaming about their freedom of religion while stripping us of ours.   it’s the rest of us who are cowering  when we’re accused of not being ‘religious enough’.  In the past few years, the Republicans and their Tea Party cousins, have taken their religion and shoved it down our throats and we continue to dance around the issue.  Are we afraid to piss off God… or Ted Cruz?

I remember exactly when I stopped believing in organized religion.  When I became educated and free thinking and looked beyond the dogma that I had been spoon fed.  I was in college and writing a paper on the women’s suffrage movement.  And as usual  I went off on a hundred other tangents in my research and really started learning about the history of women in the church.  In just about every religion women have been subjugated to roles that are basically chattel.  No voice, no self determination, deemed by the church to be the origin of the original sin and nothing more than seductresses who lead men astray.  Seriously.  This is women in the history of the church.  My mother immediately had a heart attack when I made the announcement that I could no longer believe in a religion that obviously hated me.

And it is that misogynistic tyranny that the right wing have brought in to politics in recent years. The Republicans in their efforts to turn the American Government into a Theocracy, have seized control of our consciousness and made us fear for our mortal souls if we rebel.  …. Very similar to what happened in the Dark Ages when progress stopped and society became embroiled in religious superstition and ruled by the church.  Moral standards weren’t any higher, they killed and tortured and stole and prevented any scientific knowledge from development. 

Their whole objection to marriage equality is that it is against their religious beliefs that marriage is between one man an one woman.  Marriage is a legal contract between two individuals.  It has nothing to do with religion…. Unless you make a choice to go off and have a church ceremony….  The state issues a marriage license and it is the state that recognizes that contract or dissolves that contract in the cases of divorce.  Historically women have again pretty much been used as chattel in marriage.  A woman would be given from the father to the husband in exchange for property or titles.  So this moral objection to marriage equality based on the sanctity of marriage is a new evolution.  There was no moral outrage when women were traded for property. 

The GOP is about forcing religious doctrine on to Americans and turning this country into a Theocracy instead of a democracy.  Women’s lives are endangered when they have restricted access to abortion and birth control.  Period.

The Christian right scream that their rights are being denied and trampled upon and yet have such callus disregard for the way they deny others their freedom.  That is a theocracy.   The great thing about being pro-choice is that you don’t have to believe in abortion, you just have to accept that America is a Democracy and not a Theocracy and that you don’t get to make that personal choice for every woman in America.

The Republican lawmakers do not have clear boundaries between the misogynistic fanatics like Rush Limbaugh or the fire and brimstone preacher on the pulpit.  They incorporate these twisted views into their politics and then pass laws that force the rest of America to live by their fanatical rules. They are working to incorporate this ‘mandate from god’ into our government.  Keep Jesus out of my Vagina as a friend of mine likes to say.  

 Why do women vote against their own self interest? I have heard so many times that the Republicans are the ‘fiscally’ responsible party.  How absurd is that?  Forbes magazine listed the top five worst Presidents for the economy… guess which party held 4 of the 5 spots?  Yep, the Republicans.  George W. Bush was number 1 worst president ever for our Economy and his daddy was number two, of course in all fairness Bush Sr did get stuck with Reagan’s mess.  Then they were followed on the list by Nixon, Eisenhower and then Truman.  Seems that the GOP fiscal policies of giving tax breaks to the rich and boosting income inequality for the rest of us, isn’t a very sound fiscal practice. 

Supporting abortion rights isn’t a moral sin that is going to damn you to hell for all time. And the owner of Hobby Lobby should not be allowed to dictate that his religious views outweigh every woman in America who have a right to access affordable birth control through their health insurance companies.  

As long as I live, I will never understand religious objections to birth control. That way of thinking is as misogynistic as it gets.  Deny a woman birth control so that you can control her sexual behaviors.  Not only sexist, but stupid and impractical.  I heard someone say once that if men got pregnant, birth control would be dispensed like Pez candy.

Complacency is Complicity.  We have allowed the religious zealots on the right to co-op religion.  It’s as if they are they only ones that know how to define it and any one who disagrees is a liberal moral degenerate.  We have to stop cowering under the attacks of these bullies.  And make no mistake that is exactly what has become the platform of the GOP.  Bully until you get what you want and scream that your religious freedom is being jeopardized while you trample the hell out of everyone else’s rights. The religious wackos aren’t going to change, but those of us in the center and to left of crazy, have to stop allowing ourselves to be intimidated. 

When I was 16 and getting my driver’s license,  my driving instructor purposely took me down a dead end street and I didn’t even realize it until I couldn’t go any further.  He told me that I couldn’t be a myopic driver and  that I had to pay attention to what was going on around me or I was going to keep finding myself on dead end streets.  We have to stop being myopic citizens in this country.  We have to look around and pay attention.  Women's rights will continue to be eroded until we say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.