Women In The Military

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville Undermining Military Readiness, And Must Be Stopped!

Ronald 1 Comment

There is a dire need for the US Senate to change its policy that any one Senator can prevent a movement forward on a nomination, or a vote on legislation!

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, who was a renowned football coach with a Physical Education degree from a third rate college, has held up approval of military promotions, causing hundreds of military personnel to be held effectively captive, including the movement forward on a new Marine Corps Commandant. This has been done in order to prevent women in the military from being able to gain the right to have abortions, if in their personal judgment, it is appropriate and wish to control their own bodies!

He also is vehemently anti gay and anti transgender, and has claimed white nationalists are not racists!

This is causing an uproar, with even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell disturbed about this mess, and the need is clear to do whatever has to be done to force movement on promoting the military readiness that is urgent for national defense!

The fact that Tuberville is a terrible Senator, who sadly defeated Doug Jones in 2020, arguably the best Alabama Senator in many decades, is a sad commentary on how extremist right wing Alabama has been for such a long time! The idea that a football coach with minimal qualifications on major national issues could end up in the Senate is a true tragedy! 🙁

165th Anniversary Of Seneca Falls Equal Rights Convention: A Time For Women’s Rights Advocates To Plan Strategy For Future!

Ronald 5 Comments

165 years ago this week, specifically on July 19 and 20, the momentous event known as the Seneca Falls Convention took place in upstate New York.

300 men and women gathered, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, and including the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, demanding equal rights for women, including the right of suffrage, participating in voting.

That fight for suffrage took 72 years, until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, and the move for the Equal Rights Amendment proposal of 1972 fell short by three states, and was declared dead in 1982.

But now there is an urgency to fight for that proposed amendment, despite the odds against it being ratified in the political climate we live in now, if for no other reason than to declare that the strategy of the future is that women are not going to allow backtracking on basic rights that have now been the law for years, specifically the Roe V. Wade decision on Abortion Rights forty years ago, plus the push for equal pay, equal treatment in the military, fighting against acceptance of rape by many politicians of the Republican Party, and the Religious Right desire to send women back home, not working, cooking and being available for a man’s desires in the bedroom!

There may be women who are willing to accept the Republican view on women in 2013, but they are NOT a majority, and if Betty Ford, the First Lady with President Gerald Ford, were alive and well today, she would be leading the fight for women’s rights, as she did when she was in the White House!

Having visited the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids yesterday, it reminded the author of how far the GOP has moved from the Ford Presidency experience, and remember that turn to the right began when Ronald Reagan challenged President Ford for the Presidential nomination in 1976, helping to cause his defeat, and the ultimate takeover of the Republican Party by the Right Wing led by Reagan!

So women, and men who agree that they deserve equal treatment, need to organize and fight for women’s rights, even now, 165 years after Seneca Falls!

Rick Santorum: Anti “Modern Women”, And Wants Women Back In The 1950s!

Ronald 2 Comments

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum may be leading in many polls at the moment for the Republican Presidential nomination, but he has a major problem among women, and rightfully!

Rick Santorum is the Number One “Male Chauvinist Pig” in American politics!

Santorum wants women to be what their image was in the “good old days” of the 1950s–mostly staying home, not working, not educated beyond high school, only there to make her husband’s life easier when he came home, doing all the household duties, having large families, and basically being always available in two places–the kitchen and the bedroom!

Those days are gone forever, even for wealthier women, as well as middle class and poor women.

The reality is that women NEED to work to sustain their economic advancement, whether single, married, divorced, widowed, and with or without children.

Also, women have become a larger portion of the college educated, and do not wish to sit home full time forever and just keep the house clean and take care of the children, and most certainly, expect their boyfriends or husbands to share in the domestic duties.

The age of feminism has arrived since the 1960s, and women are NEVER going back to the old subservient existence they had.

They are human beings who wish and need also to work and accomplish personal goals; wish to serve their country in the military as equals; wish to control their family sizes through contraception methods; wish in overwhelming numbers to have control of their own bodies, and not be told they must follow through on any and all pregnancies unless that is their wish; and are not going to allow any church or synagogue to dictate to them their role in American life.

Rick Santorum will not be able to gain support of many women, unless they are the minority that allows themselves to be dictated to by their husbands, boyfriends, or fathers; are religiously fanatical where they are willing to make themselves subservient; and have no problem in giving up the potential and challenge of professional careers and opportunities to just be a “baby maker” and housewife full time for their entire lives. Such a person is Rick Santorum’s wife, Karen Santorum, who gave up a nursing and legal education, shows herself adoring her husband as if he is God, and has no ambition except the advancement of her own husband.

Those who wish this are the era of “Ozzie and Harriet”, “Leave It To Beaver”, “Father Knows Best”, and “The Donna Reed Show”! Sadly, for Rick and others like him, that is a distinct small minority of American women, and that is a good thing!

Why Not The Equal Rights Amendment For Women 40 Years After Its Origin?

Ronald 1 Comment

The Republican Party has actively been promoting amendment after amendment to the Constitution in the past two years, and the thought has emerged that it is time to re-introduce the failed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, passed through Congress in 1972, reaching 35 states ratification by 1976, and then collapsing, with no more support, and failing of ratification by 1982, three states short of adoption.

Women have seen their fortunes change amazingly these past four decades, and are now the majority of the work force, attending universities at a higher percentage than men, and entering all of the professions in tremendous numbers, with them being the majority in more and more occupations.

Women have been “liberated” from the old controls that religion and conservative values put on them, and there are even many Republican women in the House of Representatives and a few in the US Senate.

So why not promote the adoption of the amendment which would put women into the Constitution directly, for only the second time, after the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote after a 72 year battle in 1920?

Even the arguments used by evangelist Jerry Falwell and conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, among others, no longer have any validity, as if they had justification at the time of the ERA!

These and other critics argued that passage of the ERA would:

1. Promote Lesbian marriage–which now exists in six states and Washington, DC.
2. Advocate Unisex public toilets–which now exist all over the nation in shopping malls and many hotels and other public restroom locations.
3. Allow the involvement in combat situations of women in the military–which now occurs on a regular basis.

With all of the great advancements of woman in the past two generations, this is the time to institutionalize what has happened by laws and by natural evolving over that time!

We should put Republicans on the line for a modern Equal Rights Amendment, make them stand up for human rights for women, at a time when Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin are potential future Presidents! They, the other women in the Republican party in Congress, and the men of the party, need to show that they believe in true EQUALITY for women and have no problem making it a permanent part of the US Constitution, that they claim they revere!