How Texas Saved Gail Collins

Ms. Collins

I was a little worried about Gail Collins, if you must know. Once Mitt Romney's dog--you remember: strapped to the roof of the car on the family vacation--faded from public view, her favorite touchstone to the ineffably  bizarre style of Republican America was lost. She simply seemed a little adrift, searching for the essence of the American experience. But then she went back to the one source of inspiration which has never failed her: Texas.

29 year old virgin surgeon

She still obviously watches the Texas state house with some avidity and she found what she was looking for: A state rep named Stuart Spitzer (you cannot make up a name like that) sponsored a bill funding abstinence-only sex education for students in Texas, a state which has a teen sex rate twice that of California's (where abstinence is explicitly not taught as the primary contraceptive method).  Rep. Spitzer said he had been a virgin when he got married at age 29. and he added, "What's good for me is good for a lot of people."  Except, of course, for those teens who get pregnant when abstinence doesn't hold up. 

As Collins has noted, Americans, even Republican Americans have got a lot more rational about gay sex, but some Americans--mostly they are  male Americans--seem to be getting more and more crazy about heterosexual sex. 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Once people actually reflect on the gay folks they have known, they tend to say, "Live and let live." Her own mother, a conservative Catholic from Ohio, came under the care of gay medical attendants in her later years and "wound up riding on  float in Cincinnati's gay pride parade."  Oh, how I love that image.

Maud has pointed out that Gail Collins bears an uncanny resemblance to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who in the 19th century insisted her wedding vows be amended to strike the phrase she would "obey" her husband (as in "love, honor and obey") which she found untenable in a relationship which she viewed as a partnership of equals. She was a pioneer in the quest for women's rights to vote and to control their own destinies. Whether there are any shared genes here, I do not know, but there is a shared legacy of anger at the way women have been pressed under the male thumb, especially in state legislatures. 

In four states women requesting an abortion must be told that abortions are linked to an increased risk of breast cancer.

Breast cancer from abortions!

And here I thought that idea was the sole province of Jeanine Notter, (again, the name, just one letter from the truth) the New Hampshire rep (R-Merrimack) who testified at some hearing that abortions increase the risk for breast cancer, based on some bogus "study" of a naturopath or chiropractor or some sort of quack, which did not qualify for publication in The New England Journal of Medicine or any other actual peer reviewed journal. Notter's comments made the Huff Post:

"In an interview last month with the Merrimack Patch, Notter said she understood that abortion would cause spaces in breast duct tissue to allow for the growth of cancer cells. She said she believed birth control pills lead to the same issue. Notter last month also said that she believed that birth control pills taken by women cause prostate cancer in their male children."

 I don't know if that bill became law in New Hampshire, but now I'm going to inquire.This had to be the best single revelation by a politician since Michele Bachmann informed the country that vaccines cause mental retardation, which she had on the best authority of a woman she had met in the parking lot outside the building where the candidates' debate was held. 

Really, if the Texas well runs dry for Gail Collins, she has another right up here in New Hampshire. 

And here I was marveling at the preoccupation of Islamic extremists with female sexuality. They may be getting some stiff competition in their concern for female sexual behavior from the male politicos in Texas. 

And don't forget  Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) who blamed President Obama for the imminent onslaught of rapes about to be visited upon the white women of Texas  by the dark skinned, Muslim, Hispanic teenagers who the President was inviting to breach the Rio Grande in droves.  Never did get the follow up on that story. I know Maud was concerned for her safety, but she lives in New Hampshire, so there was some protection in distance. 

I've never believed we ought to care much about the percentage of women in legislatures. Just let the best man or woman win, I always said. But now, I gotta say, I'm beginning to think we ought to limit the percentage of male legislators.  If you're going to have a quota, may as well start where you get the most effect.