Sex, religion & politicians.

The stuff about religion and sex being peddled in the primaries convinces me that US politics is nuts.

The issues of abortion and birth control have not been issues for 50 years in the remainder of the civilised world. America is facing a major economic crisis which although improving is not taking the US out of the woods anytime soon. There is a major security threat in the Middle East from Syria, Iran and Israel; there are enormous issues of defence and foreign policy; the Wall Street corruption has not been tackled; the housing market is on the bones of its arse.

I could go on.

So why are men still wittering on about something that is not their business?

What position do men have on issues that do not affect them personally? Why do they believe that they are at liberty to impregnate a woman and then deny her the freedom to decide what to do about the consequences?

What makes celibate priests imagine that they have any locus whatsoever? Come to that, what makes the Catholic Church believe that it has any moral standing whatsoever in sexual issues, given its long-standing record of the worst kind of moral turpitude?

By what right in a secular state – protected by the Constitution – does a politician foist his personal religious convictions on the electorate?

Why are the Churches up in arms about ‘gay marriage’, a contradiction in terms if ever there was, when it is such a tiny minority issue and which seems  to be principally aimed at giving ‘civil partnerships’ the same succession and inheritance rights as conventional marriage? (In the UK the C of E seems to think of little else but gays and women; sex mad, that’s what they are!).

And where in the Scriptures is there any reference to either birth control or abortion? Is not the real purpose of the Catholic policy to ensure that Catholics out-breed the rest of us?

Much of America seems obsessed with the threat of ‘socialism’.

Is not the greatest threat to society the malign influence of religion in all its most intolerant forms? And by what logic do the religiosi criticise the stranglehold of Islam on Arab society when they propagate much the same?

And why do (male) Republican candidates feel that these are key political issues – or political issues at all, for that matter

In ‘Freakonomics’, the authors make a direct link between abortion, birth control and the fall in the crime rate of black Americans. The reason is that black women are less prone to depositing fatherless children upon society and thus breeding the next generation of delinquents.

Fortunately, this Sanatorium fellow has no more chance of becoming POTUS than I have. Or is this wishful thinking? After all, if the American electorate can prefer Dubya to McCain they are capable of any foolishness.