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February 27, 2005
TOTO, I HAVE A FEELING WE'RE ALL IN KANSAS ANYMORE
You know, for a non-descript farm state in the middle of red country, Kansas sure has been in the news an awful lot in the last week. (By the way, how gleefully ironic is it that one of the veritable icons of gay culture, Judy Garland's Dorothy Gale, was from Kansas -- and that the movie which lent itself to the term "Friend of Dorothy" was set in "moral values" Kansas? Has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that I think it's funny.)
First, we have a Gestapo-like state attorney general investigating the sex lives of female citizens of his state. Only in a red state (or in George W. Bush's America) could you have the highest law enforcement official in the land committing overt violations of the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to privacy. Only in a red state could such blatant disregard be shown for the Constitution under the guise of enforcing moral values.
The Kansas attorney general is demanding abortion clinics turn over the complete medical records of nearly 90 women and girls, saying he needs the material for an investigation into underage sex and illegal late-term abortions.
Attorney General Phill Kline, an abortion opponent, insisted Thursday: "I have the duty to investigate and prosecute child rape and other crimes in order to protect Kansas children." Kline is seeking the records of women and girls who had late-term abortions. Sex involving someone under 16 is illegal in Kansas...
Wow. Now the neoconazis are connecting abortion with child rape? That's as specious as connecting opposition to this president's social security overhaul with supporting gay marriage. This is a group of evil, propagandizing, disgusting people who don't deserve the title "American."
Our good friend Tim has posted about some of the very real reasons behind potential late-term abortions -- which, it should be pointed out, is a rare procedure and more importantly is usually a decision made with great heartbreak involved for the mother or prospective parents. I recommend you check his post out and think about what he's written.
But even more hysterically, when discussing underage sex, Kansas appears to have its collective head buried in (the sand? somewhere else? you decide). Again as Tim points out, Kansas refused to participate in the CDC's latest study on underage sexual activity. For a state government so concerned with the sexual habits of its underage women, you'd think the Kansas powers that be would have been a little more enthusiastic about learning more about what's really happening in their state, wouldn't you? But then that would have indicated real concern, as opposed to merely the pursuit of an extremist right wing agenda to enforce or inflict a religious sect's moral beliefs on the rest of society... you know, kind of like the Taliban.
Moving on, of course the other big news is that the alleged BTK serial killer has been arrested in Wichita. If they've got their guy -- and by all indications, it appears that they've got a pretty solid case -- then of course it's a sigh of relief to get a sociopath off the streets. And I hope they're able to find some sort of loophole to get this guy the chair; at the moment it isn't looking likley, since Kansas instituted capital punishment after the BTK killings had occurred. But I really would like to see this criminal get a little taste of what he inflicted on his victims.
One area in which I stray from the liberal orthodoxy is on the death penalty; it was Timothy McVeigh's hate-filled crime that flipped me on the issue. I was working in a federal building less than four blocks from the FBI headquarters on that day, and I will never forget the sadness, fear and anguish that man caused, all for some right wing AM radio-fueled vendetta against the American government. If I could have pushed the button, flipped the switch or injected the syringe myself, I would have paid for the privilege.
From that point on, I have believed that even though the deterrence factor is relatively nil, and that little is achieved beyond society's need for retribution, there are some crimes so henious and despicable that they warrant the extraction of that retribution. Yes, I am concerned about the imbalance of how and when the death penalty is applied, especially down south; I know that your odds of getting a capital sentence increase dramatically if you're a criminal of color as opposed to being white. And that requires review and correction... I'm not saying the system's perfect or that we oughtn't be extremely careful in handing down that sentence. Just saying that criminals like BTK have it coming.
One last thing that caught my eye about the BTK story was this comment from the son of one of the victims:
"It's going to take awhile to reconcile the fact that my mom spent her last few minutes on this Earth at the hands of the lowest form of social sewage on the ladder of evolution," he said. "It's hard to accept that's what she last saw before she died."
Not to find irony in someone else's pain... but did I just hear a Kansas citizen use the word, "evolution?" Guess all that Christian brainwashing didn't take hold after all.
