Well, here’s a message to the ladies from a friendly local pastor:
AZ pastor: Childless women on birth control have destroyed the U.S. with ‘whoredom’ (via Raw Story )
Arizona Pastor Steven Anderson warned his congregation recently that birth control was not only turn women into “whores,” it was also destroying the country. In a sermon posted online this week, the Faithful Word Baptist Church leader explained…
All I have to say is, from the bottom of my childless whore heart: You’re welcome. I have not only practiced the evil contraception throughout my entire childbearing years, but I have been rather an evangelist for voluntary childlessness. I would never tell anyone what to do regarding reproductive decisions but I do promote the idea that choosing not to be a parent is a perfectly okay thing to do, despite the mountain of cultural pressure put on people (women in particular) to procreate. It is my belief that if, globally, all social and economic pressure to have children were removed and the choice to be childless was embraced as perfectly acceptable – no better or worse than parenting but as acceptable – then a whole bunch of problems would improve. The birth rate would drop quickly to a more sustainable level, women would be much freer and able to enjoy their lives, and there would probably be a marked decrease in child abuse and neglect. I realize this is not going to happen anytime soon, and probably not at all, since there are so many people with a vested interest in maintaining the current status quo of natalism in most of the world, but I like to dream.
Naturally, anti-choicers take the polar opposite view of all that, as is evident by Pastor Anderson’s tirade. I do have Anderson some credit, though. He comes straight out and says it: Women are to STFU and get to makin’ babies and sammiches, stat. Most other anti-choicers hold the same views* on the topic of contraception and refusing to have multiple (or any) children but they coat them in bullshit obfuscations like “I’m not against birth control. I just want you to pay for it yourself!” or “but those are abortifacients!” or “religious freedom!” But if Wonder Woman threw her Lasso of Truth around the average anti-choicer whining about birth control, they would sound exactly like Pastor Anderson (except probably minus the theology).
*For “lesser people”, of course, not themselves.
Ms Gratehouse, as a non-procreating man, I’m completely with you on this subject.
I have a clear memory of the evening that my imperfectly wonderful parents took “the kids” (sister and I) to dinner at a business associate of my Father’s. The host couple had been married for years, but there were no offspring. In the early 1960’s, that was highly unusual.
My mom coached us to be very polite, and to understand that – since they had no kids of their own – they would “automatically” have zero tolerance for childish antics.
Her caution was unnecessary, as the couple was happy and outgoing. I had a great time, and appreciated that these two childless people were so much fun to be with.
As soon as our car cleared their driveway for home I asked my folks “why” was it that they didn’t have children (I was not quite at the birds and bees age). My mom replied, “some people just choose not to have children”.
I was immediately awe struck, then filled with a huge sense of relief. I had always thought that children simply arrived with little warning, whether you wanted them or not (!!)
The knowledge that I would have a free choice to produce, or not produce children was liberating beyond anything I had experienced to that age. The advent of modern birth control methodology, combined with my own sense of responsibility resulted in decades with no accidental pregnancies, and zero abortions throughout a very active social life.
I met and married my first and only wife in my early forties, a beautiful self-confident woman who had (coincidentally) made the same decision as I did when she reached dating age.
21 years later we are still happy as clams, dedicated to our marriage AND our individuality. We make every day special.
I wouldn’t change a thing even if I could, and the many disastrous stories of friends and relatives children make me grateful that I avoided all that by choosing not to procreate.
PS: If I heard that Baptist pastor calling women whores in my presence I’d punch his lights out.
That’s nothing – he has dozens of “sermons” posted. You should see what he says about gays.
(Actually he refuses to use the word “gay”, he prefers “sodomite”).