I'm at a private school today, speaking with faculty, students and parent -- but I just checked my email and learned two exciting developments.
The Swedish government just overwhelmingly approved marriage equality, joining Spain, Canada, Belgium, South Africa, and Norway, in giving same sex couples the right to marry.
And late last night, at the United Nations, the U.S. government spoke out for sexuality education and reproductive rights -- something we haven't done for these past long 8 years. Here's what they said, courtesy of the IWHC:
Today, at the United Nations the United States expressed its renewed and deep commitment to the goals and aspirations included in the International Conference on Population Program of Action and Development (ICPD) and the Key Actions of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs):
"Ladies and Gentlemen, our common task this week is vital. Five years remain in both the ICPD and the MDG mandates. We can, this week, commit to stronger actions to reach our common goals. We must do much more to provide comprehensive, accurate information and education on sexuality, sexual and reproductive health for women, men, girls, and boys as they age and their needs evolve. We must, as well, foster equal partnerships and sharing of responsibilities in all areas of family life, including in sexual and reproductive life, and promote frank discourse on sexuality, including in relation to sexual health and reproduction. We must also acknowledge the direct link between population rates, fertility, and the ability to reach development outcomes.
"We need to prioritize comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services, as defined in the Programme of Action and the Key Actions for its further implementation, in our work to strengthen health systems. The cluster of services agreed in the Program of Action is all essential to save women's lives and protect their health as well as protect their reproductive rights."
God bless this new administration!
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2 comments:
I wish that I could rejoice in this language:
"We must, as well, foster equal partnerships and sharing of responsibilities in all areas of family life, including in sexual and reproductive life, and promote frank discourse on sexuality, including in relation to sexual health and reproduction. We must also acknowledge the direct link between population rates, fertility, and the ability to reach development outcomes."
But what it really means to me is:
" We must be sure to further marginalize and stigmatize women who choose to become mothers, or who once becoming them, embrace this role, and desire to devote themselves to it full-time, and not necessarily earn an income while doing so. We must ensure that all women are forced from their homes, and their small children as early as possible - including breastfeeding mothers - so that they will earn at least 50% of the family income for political reasons and not for any reason based on the good of the woman, the good of the child, or the good of society. We must ensure that no one sees any good coming out of motherhood, and stamp out anyone who in the free exercise of their personal liberty might choose to believe that babies need their mothers and mothers need their babies (much less that both mothers and fathers have a unique and important role to play in the development of a young child - only fatherhood is more to be despised than motherhood). Believing in the goodness of motherhood - especially the desire to mother more than 1.2 children - is politically subversive and adversely affects those women in power who prefer to work outside the home and need all women to make that same choice in order to feel vindicated in it. We are "pro-choice" as long as all women make the choices that we ourselves prefer.
We must assume that women in developing countries desire the same things and have the same values as Western women and prefer to find their value in being economic producers and we must make sure that no woman feels fulfilled or valuable as "just" a mother.
We must remember that children - especially children of color or children in developing countries, who often come to the world in disconcertingly large numbers in our own view - are first and foremost a drain on the environment, and secondarily, a commodity that should be only created in the model ordered by wealthy Westerners, only if "wanted" and only if they can be produced economically, raised in what we regard, without any scientific evidence to support our requirements, in an ecologically-sustainable way, and if their numbers are strictly limited. Otherwise, because all children represent a threat to the adult material lifestyle of Western countries, which is the pinnacle of all good things (we believe), their lives should be seen as generally unimportant and mothers should be further stigmatized because they collaborate in the creation of this threat to our collective lifestyle.
We must ensure the universal adoption of the aforementioned goals and values by promoting at first voluntary, but then increasingly coercive methods of fertility control, combined with high-quality propaganda ensuring that all women see prospective motherhood as an unworthy pursuit and the threat to everyone's well-being, especially their own, that we, the powers that be, believe it to be."
I'm sure that the folks whose agendas have been stymied by 8 years of the Bush administration(an administration I did not ever vote for or support) feel tremendous intoxication at the power to force their own values on everyone else. And of course, in a tyranny of the majority, the majority are always delighted with the concept of "majority rule." But I think that without more dialogue and respect for the viewpoint of people who see motherhood and children as great goods, including those who see large families and stay-at-home motherhood, traditional people, that what we will end up with in the end will be lack of respect for human rights and an impoverished view of humanity that will eventually come back to bite all of us.
What, what a great and informative post! Love your writing style!
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