On Some Recent Far Right Culture War Horrors

With Alabama’s Supreme Court ruling IVF Embryos are “people,” the far right’s assault on reproductive freedom continues. That's not the only front they are advancing on, and it’s already cost lives.

Hello, friends,

Last week, we examined a case study in how insurers screw insulin patients over - yes, even after the Inflation Reduction Act’s regulatory changes to the medicine’s accessibility.

This week, we’re met with a number of moves from the “Christian Right,” which has ramped up the culture war in a number of ways that are as interconnected as they are disparate.  It’s hard to go over everything, but we’re going to do our best.  Some of this stuff is local to me, even.

We’ve talked before about Queer rights issues and unfortunate outcomes on this platform, as well as Project 2025 and how the Christo-Fascist movement plans to use it to seize power, and we’ll certainly do so again, so don’t hesitate to subscribe to The Progressive Cafe for more.

In Memory Of Nex Benedict

We’re going to lead with the worst story first.

Nex Benedict, a sixteen year old non-binary Oklahoman, is dead.  Dead following what sure as hell appears to be a coordinated assault in which they were attacked at school and the school didn’t even bother to call them an ambulance.

They died the next day.

This followed a long time where Nex was bullied for their identity, but this shouldn’t be terribly surprising in Oklahoma.  In just one spec of evidence, notorious transphobe Chaya Raichik, AKA “Libs Of TikTok,” was recently hired in a significant position in Oklahoma’s educational system.

The math is obvious:  An environment where it was okay to bully Trans students was created, and now one is dead following an assault.  After all, here’s Republican Oklahoma State Representative Tom Woods calling Queer people “filth” in response to being asked about Nex’s death.  Might I note a hardy “fuck you” to him.

There’s little more to say, other than that police are trying to say it wasn’t the assault that killed Nex, and that Federal investigation is necessary in this case.

May they rest in peace, and may we find justice.

Transphobia Local To Me

I live in Nassau County, Long Island.  Our executive, Republican Bruce Blakeman, chose now - right after Nex’s death - to hype up the transphobia by banning Trans athletes’ participation at county facilities.

This would mean, for example, that Trans athletes on a swim team could not participate in county finals, which are held at the Eisenhower Park Aquatics Center, a county facility.

While I won’t pretend that there is no controversy regarding Trans competitors in sports, it’s worth noting that the NCAA and other organizations often use testosterone measurements to determine whether a Trans athlete qualifies for a particular sport.  This has, predictably, led to Cisgender women who naturally produce a lot of testosterone from being banned in competition, but it’s an attempt at an equitable measurement of what performance advantages a life with more testosterone might yield.

In other words, there’s still a lot of science to be researched before we decide that Cisgender women are inherently at a disadvantage over Trans women.

More to the point, the articles involved don’t suggest that there’s an actual issue here, at all.   In fact, hat-tip to Melanie D’Arrigo, Blakeman himself said he doesn’t know of any Trans girls in sports within the county. This is a “solution” without an actual problem, solely designed to scare unaware or bigotry-holding parents into thinking there’s a problem where there isn’t one.

Add to it that New York Attorney General Letitia James has implied that this might break state law and, well, you’ve got yourself a dispute on your hands.  For what?  For fearmongering, of course!

After all, trying to scare everyone about immigration failed to win the recent NY-03 special election.  Gotta scare the voters somehow, right?

Alabama Essentially Bans In-Vitro Fertilization

In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) is a reproductive health technique where a woman’s eggs are extracted from her body and a man’s sperm are introduced to fertilize the eggs, creating embryos which are then implanted into the woman’s body so that she can give birth when she might otherwise be unable to carry a child.

This should, to “pro-life” people, be a good thing - more babies!  Right?

The Supreme Court of Alabama has just ruled that these embryos are, despite being cryogenically frozen, “people.”  It is the epitome of fetal personhood, the idea that “life” begins at conception.  It would de-facto make every abortion a murder, every miscarriage a deceased child, and every fertilized egg stored in an IVF facility its own person, presumably complete with legal rights.

Now, we’re up to  - as of time of writing, at least - three Alabama clinics which have shut down due to this ruling.  After all, if an IVF facility were to - say - suffer a natural disaster, they might be sued for wrongful death.  IVF patients, the would-be parents who are struggling to have a child, would have to pay indefinitely to keep their embryos frozen, even if they never intended on having another child.

It’s insanity, and it’s just the next step on the staircase of Christian Fascism in the United States.  After all, 125 Republicans are on board to ban IVF nationwide.

They’re Coming For Obergefell & Marriage Equality

I spent my early years advocating for marriage equality.  For equal rights for Queer people.  At the time, we called it “gay marriage” because that was the easy parlance.  But in the 2015 Obergefell decision, marriage equality was concluded as a matter of practice.

As commentator Santiago Mayer put it, “they’re coming for Obergefell.”  In particular, Tennessee’s governor has signed a bill that would allow government (not religious - government) officials to refuse to sign marriage certificates for certain marriages.  Specifically, same-sex marriages.

This is the path they plan to take towards challenging Obergefell.  Someone will surely be denied a license, then they’ll have to take that challenge to the courts, who will ultimately - well, there’s a 6-3 Christo-Fascist majority on the court that already overturned a much longer-standing right vis-a-vis Roe v Wade, so that’s ‘a concern.’  A big one, actually.

Things like these are why I’m fully against compromising with Republicans on issues like KOSA.  Who knows what Trojan horses they’re slipping into the legislation.  Who knows who might control whatever regulatory board exists in the future.  We cannot just assume that we will always retain the levers of power.  They, or rather their appointees, won’t even run the postal service correctly.

Even Recreational Sex Is In Their Sights

Here is a surprisingly old tweet from The Heritage Foundation that’s resurfaced in recent days.  Here, they talk about making it…Well, let’s just say “consequential” to have sex.  They’re definitely against birth control and other forms of contraception, the legality of which only dates back to at least Griswold v Connecticut, but they’re even explicitly calling for, quote, “ending recreational sex.”

Now, a party led by Donald Trump calling for sexual conservation is just the height of hypocrisy, but that doesn’t mean their words are insincere.  Far from it:  They fully believe in “sex for me, not for thee.”  They will surely continue to have their affairs and their in-public-places wanking sessions, and if everyone involved is a consenting adult, then who really cares, right?

But they do.  They want it for themselves and not for others.  Or, if others engage in it, they want “consequences.”  They’ll make abortion illegal, but slip their lovers abortion pills when it suits them.

Always remember:  Their hypocrisy does not mean they are not dangerous.

So What Now?

Fuck, man, I don’t know.

See, normally this is where I suggest ways that we can improve things, but the only solution is that we cannot allow any Republican anywhere near government at nearly any cost because it’s clear from the above that they…

• Want to genocide Queer people.

• Want to ban abortion nationwide.

• Want to ban IVF nationwide.

• Want to make birth control illegal.

• And so much more.

• Oh and major Republicans figureheads are calling for an end to Democracy.

Obviously, this just cannot be allowed to pass.  Also obviously - and very unfortunately - that means that in just about every case we are trapped in a cycle of “Vote blue no matter who!” (I hope you hear the disdain I have for those words), because the alternative is insanity and self-destruction.

It is clear - crystal fucking clear - that there are no “moderate” Republicans left.  After all, Long Island and New York Republicans were, at least by local word of mouth, supposed to be the moderate ones.  And here they are creating controversy to scare up votes by using Queer people as scapegoats.

And Democrats have been moving further to the right.  Democratic support for KOSA (even with the changes made since that article was written) is just as bad as anything Republicans will do.  It’s easy to want to stay at home when your state’s Democratic leadership is drooling over opposition to immigration and other right-wing pet projects.

I have no idea how it will all turn out, but we have to collaborate to fight Republican excesses.  We really have no choice.  It isn’t just that Democrats suck and are bad and need to be taught a lesson:  It’s what lessons we’ve learned from past attempts to teach Democrats a lesson.

I fought as much of my ass off for Bernie Sanders as I could, but I still endorsed and voted for Clinton.  Many others didn’t, Trump won without the popular vote, he appointed three Fascist Supreme Court justices, and now we’ve lost Roe with Obergefell next in their sights.

What did we learn from that?

I’m waiting until I see the results in Michigan, the last state I have any reason to believe will have any kind of strange Democratic Primary Hijinx, to say anything more on the general election, but it’s pretty obvious where I stand at present.  I fucking hate it!  But, again, what did we learn from the 2016 election and the 45th Presidency?

In Other News…

Honestly, this week’s In Other News is mostly what I wrote above.

I’ll leave you with some good news:  It appears that the Biden Campaign is going to voluntarily recognize a growing employee union drive.  This is a great bit of news because even if he’s been imperfect (Cough-Railroad Strike-Cough), he’s been pretty good about unions in particular and labor in general, and leaning into that going into 2024 might be a good way to get the vote out.

Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe.  If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list.  This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a former hyperlocal journalist and sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.