Thursday, January 17, 2008
Bob Marshall, Virginia's Peeping Tom, to go National?
The anti-sex (read, sex-obsessed) delegate from Prince William, Bob Marshall, has decided to run for the Republican nomination for the US Senate. I guess former repub Gov. Jim Gilmore is not right-wing enough? It would not be completely accurate to call Marshall a one-issue legislator, but his main concern is the control of sex. As far as he's concerned, no one should be able to decide whether or not to have sex except for married men (he thinks married women should submit to their husbands no matter their wishes--the Virginia general assembly debate on the bill to remove the marriage loophole from Virginia's sexual assault laws was pretty interesting, with Bob talking about wives in their nighties).
Keeping birth control out of the hands of college students has been a big priority for Bob. Now he's trying to backtrack on the GA's decision to add HPV vaccine to the list of required vaccines for girls. The reason is not because he's concerned about girls' health, but the right-wing take on the HPV vaccine is that it promotes promiscuity. (I suppose the vaccine for polio must also promote some kind of bad behavior (what? I'm trying to think...) but I'm sure my dad's parents would have wanted to save him the pain of the disease if they'd had the ability to do so, even if it *had* encouraged him to play in the dirt (ah, there we have it)).
The Bob Marshalls of the world cloak their attempts to control others in "caring." You can see through that by noting the logical inconsistencies--obviously, anyone who really cared about reducing the rate of abortions would favor birth control, because that's logical. Wanting to restrict access to BOTH birth control and abortion is ideological (not to mention idiotic).
It's been pointed out before that Bob Marshall and others like him in the Virginia legislature like to peer into the bedroom windows of Virginians. I don't think we have to worry about him taking his window-peeping crusade national, because he's too wacky even for the Virginia GOP to pick him (at least George Allen *looks* normal, even tho he's too stupid to act it for long). It would be kinda nice to see him trounced. But, Virginia politics can be a little wacky too, so he might make it farther than I think!
The anti-sex (read, sex-obsessed) delegate from Prince William, Bob Marshall, has decided to run for the Republican nomination for the US Senate. I guess former repub Gov. Jim Gilmore is not right-wing enough? It would not be completely accurate to call Marshall a one-issue legislator, but his main concern is the control of sex. As far as he's concerned, no one should be able to decide whether or not to have sex except for married men (he thinks married women should submit to their husbands no matter their wishes--the Virginia general assembly debate on the bill to remove the marriage loophole from Virginia's sexual assault laws was pretty interesting, with Bob talking about wives in their nighties).
Keeping birth control out of the hands of college students has been a big priority for Bob. Now he's trying to backtrack on the GA's decision to add HPV vaccine to the list of required vaccines for girls. The reason is not because he's concerned about girls' health, but the right-wing take on the HPV vaccine is that it promotes promiscuity. (I suppose the vaccine for polio must also promote some kind of bad behavior (what? I'm trying to think...) but I'm sure my dad's parents would have wanted to save him the pain of the disease if they'd had the ability to do so, even if it *had* encouraged him to play in the dirt (ah, there we have it)).
The Bob Marshalls of the world cloak their attempts to control others in "caring." You can see through that by noting the logical inconsistencies--obviously, anyone who really cared about reducing the rate of abortions would favor birth control, because that's logical. Wanting to restrict access to BOTH birth control and abortion is ideological (not to mention idiotic).
It's been pointed out before that Bob Marshall and others like him in the Virginia legislature like to peer into the bedroom windows of Virginians. I don't think we have to worry about him taking his window-peeping crusade national, because he's too wacky even for the Virginia GOP to pick him (at least George Allen *looks* normal, even tho he's too stupid to act it for long). It would be kinda nice to see him trounced. But, Virginia politics can be a little wacky too, so he might make it farther than I think!
