Maybe you didn't know this but prior to the early-1970's, if you were a young unmarried couple and wanted access to birthcontrol in America -- we're talkin' simple contraceptives, here -- you were outta luck. Despite the advances of the flower-power free-love 60's, America was littered with antiquated, moralistic laws... and right alongside those anti-miscegenation and anti-sodomy statutes were laws designed to keep anyone who wasn't a married heterosexual couple from having sex.
That era finally ended with the case of Eisenstadt v. Baird. In it, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a 6-1 vote, to overturn a Massachusetts law which dictated that contraceptives could only be distributed by doctors and pharmacists, and then only to married persons.
As arcane as that may sound to 21st century ears, Robert McDonnell called that decision "illogical" as recently as twenty years ago.
He said so.
So who is Robert McDonnell, you ask, and why should anyone care?
Well, if the latest poll numbers are to be believed, he remains the front-runner to become the next governor of an important east-coast state: Virginia.
And... if a recent series of articles in the Washington Post are to be believed, McDonnell's position on contraceptives is just the tip of this conservative candidate's philosophical iceberg. In its Sunday Edition, the Washington Post reported on a thesis written in 1989 by McDonnell while a student at Regents University, the ultra-right college created by evangelical preacher and one-time presidential candidate, Pat Robertson.
At issue is a 93-page research paper titled "The Republican Party's Vision for the Family: The Compelling Issue of the Decade," in which McDonnell laid out a conservative action plan to promote the traditional family in government. McDonnell wrote against working women, feminists and homosexuals, and he decried the absence of religion in the public schools, the rise of single motherhood and the creation of tax credits for child care to encourage mothers to work. Washington Post, 1 September 2009
Did you catch that?
Working women were a threat to America...
... and feminists, too.
Homosexuals, of course, as well as cohabitators and fornicators...
... oh, and single mothers....
Add to the list: materialism and lust.
Once word of this paper hit the fan - like the proverbial sh*t in that old expression - Republicans were sent scrambling for cover.
McDonnell hastily called a conference-call to explain that, well, that was then and this is now.
He's no longer the 34-year-old idiot (I'm paraphrasing here...) he
now says, and that his ideas and opinions have changed.
You know: flip-flopped.
Back then, we're told, he was a young (34 is young?) ex-military officer, devout Catholic and Reagan-neophyte.
Now he says he's seen the light about the contributions made by women in the workplace and he's now all in favor of those working women, including even women in the military -- even boasting of his daughter "shipping off to Iraq" back in 2005.
Too bad he didn't have a gay son in the military.
Imagine how much more 'light' he might've seen.
Now, I'm not one to think that people's opinions can't change.
Indeed, I'm a big supporter of the idea that people are capable of change and that no one's past the point of redemption... which might sound a bit odd, coming from a now-avowed atheist... but frankly the idea that people and ideas can mature is a sound principle, to my thinking.
I guess my main heartburn with McDonnell and others of his ilk is how he ... and 'they' ... can deny that people can morph and mature and see-new-nuances-as-life-goes-on for some people while reserving that right for themselves.
If Robert McDonnell can flip-flop, so can John Kerry.
So can prisoners for whom, mostly, we've thrown away the key... you know, three-strikes and that nonsense.
So could Barry Goldwater... and maybe so could Mike Huckabee.
Good for you Robert for admitting you were an idiot then.
You're right: you were.
Grow up already... and admit your -- and your party's -- homophobia and moral self-righteousness is also wrong.
Change that, and then I'll consider forgiving that silly 93-page thesis.
Show me that you're not that 34-year-old Reganite and then we'll talk.
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