Rape, Incest, Rep. Steven King (R-IA) and abortion

September 2, 2012 / Posted in  abortion, GOP, Martin Luther, Republican Party, Roman Catholicism

In August 2012, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) stood proudly behind the Tea Party / Republican Party claim that rape does not exist and that women have no right to an abortion for any reason. He is on record saying that he didn’t know of any pregnancies caused by incest or statutory rape.

King told an Iowa reporter he’s never heard of a child getting pregnant from statutory rape or incest: “Well I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way,” King told KMEG-TV Monday, “and I’d be open to discussion about that subject matter” (see video).

Incest has the most devastating effects on a fertilized egg. It can result in albinism, hemophilia, Cystic fibrosis, Sickle Cell anemia and Tay Sachs especially if the family carries any recessive genes.  Chiming in, Paul Ryan (WI-R) told a reporter that rape is just a “method of conception,” totally ignoring the woman who was raped (video).  64-year-old Tom Smith, the Tea Party / Republican Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania (running against Bob Carey who is also against abortion) says that becoming pregnant via rape is “similar” to having a baby out-of-wedlock — for the father of the mother (video and text).

A Democratic source flagged King’s praise of Akin in the KMEG interview to TPM, but potentially more controversial for King is his suggestion that pregnancies from statutory rape or incest don’t exist or happen rarely.  At the least it shows those who are concerned with a woman’s right to make decisions concerning her own body that King is not only ignorant of human rights but of the bodily functions of the woman.  A 1996 review by the Guttmacher Institute found “at least half of all babies born to minor women are fathered by adult men.”  (Cf. D. J. Landry and J.D. Forrest, “How Old Are U.S. Fathers?” Family Planning Perspectives, 27:159-161 & 165, 1995; and M. Males and K.S.Y. Chew, “The Ages of Fathers in California Adolescent Births, 1993,” American Journal of Public Health, 86:565-568, 1996).  What King ignores is that an overwhelming majority of young women who become pregnant and give birth are from poor or low-income families. (The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), Sex and America’s Teenagers, New York, 1994, p. 3).  

Most preteen rape victims lack access to good schools, face poor prospects for finding jobs and have little chance of marriage.  Those who engage in sex do so because the adult male (defined as any male age eighteen and older) has a job, a car, and can spend freely–appearing to be the god-send to a young female who sees herself as being trapped in a cycle of poverty, ignorance, and breeding.

Seven percent of adolescent females have had intercourse by age 13, 13% have done so by age 14.  Nineteen percent of all adolescent females have had intercourse by age 15, and most were the result of rape.  Only philanthropic organizations seem to post any concern for this increasing malady in the USA. The tie between statutory rape and teen pregnancy has been the subject of ad campaigns from groups like United Way.  

Instead of helping rape victims, Steven King and Todd Akin with others introduced H.R. 3, a bill co-sponsored with Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) in 2011, that originally called for an exemption in the federal ban on abortion funding only in the case of “forcible rape.”  The implication was clear, that most rapes were not the result of force.  That language was dropped after pressure from women’s advocates and Democrats.

At the time H.R. 3 was making its way through the House of Congress, the Republican sponsors of the legislation weren’t too interested in discussing their reasoning for the wording. There sole goal was to make abortion increasingly difficult for the victim.

While King denies the realty of rape and incest and chortles that either the girl who is raped was at fault by wearing her clothes too provocative (too tight, too short, or similar complaints), there was a time when he was defending dog-fighting and initiating legislation to prohibit groups from fighting cruelty against animals (read here and here) he had a hard time seeing the difference as both were “sports”.  Earlier, however, giving the lie to his present position,  King actually admitted “[i]f there’s a sexual predator out there who has impregnated a young girl, say a 13-year-old girl, and it happens in America more times than you think, that sexual predator can pick that girl off the playground at a middle school and haul her across the state line and force her to get an abortion to eradicate the evidence of his crime.”  What King does not say is that many times the sexual predator is the girl’s father, grandfather, brother, uncle or other male relative. Frequently the mother is a part of the rape in the sense of entrapping, holding down, and even coercing the child to accept the rape as “the will of God” or “the right of the man.” (video)

King has no right to tell any woman what she can do with her body—nor can any other man on this planet.  Only the woman can determine the destiny, use, function, and need for her body. 

It is easy to state that Steven King of the new Fourth District is stupid, but that does not explain Steven King.  He is more psychopathic than stupid.  King represents the illiterate and big farms that make their millions off of the labor of illegal aliens and those desperate enough to work for minimum wage.  His political war chest is filled by contributions from rich hypocrites who would rather sell corn for ethanol than to feed the starving people in Iowa or the world (it jumped from 25% in 2010 to 50% by 2012; read here and here despite the historic drought the Midwest is suffering because of climate change and subsequent environmental catastrophe in the Midwest; read here and here).  Steven King, Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Todd Akin, and other climate change deniers are not only ignorant of science, but also of history, as it was climate change that killed off Egyptian pyramid builders, threw Egypt into a disabling drought, ended the growth of corn and other grains, and led to massive lay offs on state construction work.

Steven King’s hatred for and lack of any compassion for people or animals (especially animals) is legendary. King’s cavalier attitude toward working Iowans has won him the flatulence support of the dimmest bulb in the Iowa State Legislature’s chandelier: Annette Sweeney of the 44^th House District representing Hardin County (R-Alden).  Sweeney claims on her official resume to have a degree (bachelor) in English and has not yet learned the rules for capitalizing nouns and adjectives when referring to a language or subject (note especially the third paragraph, reviewed on September 2, 2012)—something I was taught in Iowa schools in the 1950s. In most of her official writing she appears to be five cans short of a six-pack, with little grace in composition and far weaker in her facts, probably from a lack of any formal training in research or investigation.

Like King on the national level, Annette Sweeney has initiated legislation in the bumbling House of regressive Representatives in the Des Moines, Iowa legislature to protect big agribusiness from being spied on by any animal rights activists, and has argued that any filming of cruelty to animals be treated as a crime against property (read here and here and here).  Sweeney’s draconian bill, that protects her customers (she owns a  business registered as Practical Promotions, employing three local women in a database mailing and publishing business that creates advertising, sales brochures and catalogs for purebred breeding cattle producers) that reached the Senate as Senate File 431.  It was promptly nicknamed “The Whistleblower Bill”.  Its purpose is to punish the recording and distribution of animal cruelty footage with fines of up to $7,500 and up to five years in prison. It makes reporting a crime a crime in keeping with the same tactics used during the Stalin era in Communist Russia. 

Sweeney and husband David had two sons who are students at Iowa State University in Ames.  They have been filmed picking up literature against cruelty to animals, and pulling down posters that she disagrees with, and as a Republican, argues that she has the right to determine what is said and even thought in Iowa (this video shows the abusive treatment of pigs and piglets Iowa Select Farms in Kamrar, Iowa).  Other abuses include massive chicken farms that raise poultry in crowded conditions, abusive conditions employed against workers and the hiring of illegal aliens (especially at Postville; watch this video) where the Khristian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (headquartered in Charles City, IA) picketed as federal agents stormed the facility on May 12, 2008, and incarcerated the Mexican workers.  The Iowa KKK is supported by various neo-Nazi groups in Boone, IA and have claimed responsibility for setting fire to the Beth Israel synagogue in Boone; Iowa has a long and stench filled history of a love affair between the Iowa Republican Party and the Nazis, with Frederick Kaltenbach (born in Dubuque, Iowa, and was raised in Waterloo, Iowa) migrating to Germany to spread propaganda for Hitler before returning to the USA to be tried for treason (he was referred to as “Goebbel’s Iowan”, read here and here; see also the Department of Justice file on Ezra Pound).  Both the Iowa Nazi Party and the Iowa cauldron the KKK have endorsed Steven King and Annette Sweeney for re-election, the Iowa Nazis Party have openly embraced the Tea Party Express and its radical agenda seeing it as a way “to clean out inferior races.” 

Religious fundamentalists are increasingly indoctrinating their young with Tea Party extremism while pandering governors, such as Terry Branstad (R-IA, see my article on him and his son Brian), Bobby Jindal (R- Louisiana) and others are determined to rid classrooms of science so that the Bible can replace evolution with the myth of creationism. 

In Iowa, the KKK and Nazis turned to Pat Grassley (born 26 May 1983, who some claim is already affiliated with fringe groups in Iowa), who won 61% of the vote in the primary against Annette Sweeney. Most of his expenses were paid for by his grandfather–a member of the far-right C Street dominionist cult (Charlet, Jeff (2010). C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy. New York, NY: Little, Brown & Co., pp. 4, 160, 162, 167-168, 172-173; Sharlet, Jeff (2008). The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. New York, NY: Harper Perennial, pp. 18, 54, 281) climate change denier, and NAR member US Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) who was able to get fellow Republicans Senators: Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and six-term Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, to fund his grandson whom Chuck plans on succeeding him to overthrow science on the national level.  Pat Grassley received contributions from hospitals and nursing home owners ($5000), insurance industry ($4,450), bankers ($2,200), far-right PACs ($20,500), and next to nothing from private citizens. 

The KKK and Iowa Nazis also endorsed and support Steven King whom they believe will throw out the last 100 years of progress in education (read my article on the Republican-controlled legislature in Iowa and the touting of illiteracy as the “will of God”).  Over 80% of all Republicans have serious reservations about the need for science. 70% of all Republicans deny evolution.  Steven King, who has no college education and barely made it through high school, wants to restore McCarthyism (who he proclaims to have been an American “hero”) and refers to those who cross the boards of the USA as “cattle.” 

Pat Grassley is actually more dangerous to democracy than is Steven King. Adopting his father’s Family concept buttressing dominionism, a term used to describe politically active conservative Christians who are usually members of the Tea Party and various organized hate groups (American Family Association, Lion and Lamb Ministries, Americans for Prosperity, John Birch Society, and others funded by Charles and Edward Koch) who seek influence or control over secular civil government through political action, especially in the United States.  They have, as their centerpiece the goal of a one-world theocracy ruled by their concept of Christianity (more in line with Paulinity than anything that the Jesus of the New Testament said) where “Christ” would return to the earth on a war-horse, carrying a sword, and ending the lives of non-believers (based on Matthew 10:34).  When the Final Battle takes place, to some before the year 2020, they expect their Christ to establish either a nation governed by Christians or one governed by a conservative Christian understanding of biblical law. The term dominionism is a bastardization of Genesis 1:28.  Identical to the jihadists in Islamic fundamentalism who believe in Sharia Law, the dominionists, especially the two Grassleys, argue for a one-world ruled by the Bible and its laws (you cannot eat shell-fish, wear man-made fibers, and will be stoned to death if you commit adultery, etc.).  It is a form of postmillennialism with society becoming exclusively Christian (Barron, Bruce A. (1992). Heaven on earth?: the social & political agendas of dominion theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. p. 14; Hedges, Chris (2006). American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Free Press). (Steven King of Iowa endorses and supports the rant of Michele Bachmann (R-MN) against Muslims in the USA and has supported removing Jews and Blacks from USA soil on the grounds that they are not really Americans.)

A Hanford meat processing plant, Central Valley Meat Company, was shut down the third week of August 2012, while federal agriculture investigators look into allegations that dairy cows headed for slaughter were repeatedly shocked and shot before being killed. Brian Coelho, president of the slaughter-house, said in a statement Monday, August 20, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has received a videotape allegedly showing inhumane treatment of animals at the plant.  Sweeney was furious that anyone dared to make a tape showing inhumane treatment of animals in Iowa, as farming was a mainstay of Iowan income, and there was nothing cruel about killing animals for food.

As a possible defense of Draft-dodger Steven King, it is entirely likely that he would score points with Republicans and other voters. He tends to do that. The evangelical movement in Iowa is extreme and fundamentalism fringes on fanaticism.

King is a traditional workhorse, so it is doubtful that the Iowa Republican Party will distance itself from Steve King, as they did with the Missouri Republican Twit Akin. It is more likely that the Republican Party of Iowa, now so deeply and heavily funded by Americans for Prosperity, one of the political arms of the Brothers Koch (Charles and Edward), finds King’s profound ignorance blissful and almost an alkahest or opiate for the voters of his redrawn district (where is he facing a challenge for the seat by Christie Vilsack, wife of the former governor who is serving in the Obama Administration as Secretary of Agriculture).  The district that is on the western coast of Iowa is known for its citizens who seethes in self-loathing and hatred for any woman who dares to make a choice for herself. 

King’s crass carping in fact, is directly in line with the official party line on these things, and is in fact one of the common suppositions behind the so-called personhood amendments Republicans have been pushing across the country.  While King has never served his country in time of war and barely notes the debt owed Iowa veterans, King stands sentry over the sacred nature of sperm and ova.

The issue of forced rape (rape is rape) is a menacing monster created by the Roman Catholic Church shortly after it was created by the Emperor Constantine I at his Council of Nicaea in 325 CE.  Medical schools established and supported by the Roman Catholic Church are at best fraudulent, but most are generally pathetic paternalistic institutes bordering on religiosity rather than medical accuracy.  Their professors of obstetrics and gynaecology are not only ill-trained but theological apologists, as is the situation with Thomas Hilgers who boasts of a medical degree and license. 

Thomas Hilgers works at Creighton University as an obstetrics professor and director of the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction (stem cell research is forbidden and there is no real study of reproduction except for what is permitted within the craven Roman Catholic culture created by the Vatican Curia).  Given the name of the school it is obvious that the center has little objectivity and anything that pertains to the fetus will be lauded as a person, following Roman Catholic unscientific dicta that women who are raped are seldom made pregnant.  At the official  Roman Catholic website, as with Creighton and other Roman Catholic institutions, people are allowed to comment on this insanity only if you make a financial contribution to the Roman Catholic Church. This is especially true at Hilgers website.  The distortions and lies of Hilger, Creighton and the Roman Catholic “medical community” are refuted by Holmes, MM, Resnick, HS, Kilpatrick, DG, Best, CL., “Rape-related pregnancy: estimates and descriptive characteristics from a national sample of women”  American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 1996 Aug; 175(2):320-4; discussion 324-5.  Cf. Koss M P ; Gidycz C A ; Wisniewski N (1987). “The Scope of Rape: Incidence and Prevalence of Sexual Aggression and Victimization in a National Sample of Higher Education Students”.  Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology Volume:55 Issue:2 Dated:(April 1987) Pages:162-170.  Cp. Holmes, M. M., Resnick, H.S., Frampton, D., “Follow-up of sexual assault victims.” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.1998 Aug; 179(2):336-42.  The Roman Catholic Church, as admitted by many including nearly the entire church in Ireland, is a dead institution; and as confessed by the self-flagellation drone Josemaria Escriva, it will become smaller in size until it disappears. 

As the former archbishop of Milan and papal candidate Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini said the Roman Catholic Church was “200 years out of date” in his final interview before his death, published on Saturday, September 1, 2012.  If it is to survive, a radical change must be initiated by the pope and bishops, to admit the errors of the Church and its priests, to accept new kinds of families: “A woman is abandoned by her husband and finds a new companion to look after her and her children. A second love succeeds. If this family is discriminated against, not just the mother will be cut off but also her children.”  No where did the cardinal define family, but left it open to all families including “a new companion”.

What Hilger, King, Akin, Roscoe and other anti-choice fanatics refuse to admit is that 17% of the females raped in Ethiopia became pregnant, the result of less menacing attitude by authorities than in the USA, except for the stringent attacks by Roman Catholics and Coptics in Ethiopia (read: Mulugeta, E; Kassaye, M; Berhane, Y. (1998). “Prevalence and outcomes of sexual violence among high school students”. Ethiopian Medical Journal 36 (3): 167–174 ). Hilger should have his license revoked.  Creighton University has little right to accreditation for support such unscientific statements, its objectivity is circumspect, its quest for truth and conduct of inquiry abysmal.

There has never been a serious Roman Catholic study on rape or subsequent pregnancy.  The Roman Catholic Church does not permit the teaching of facts in its obstetrics and gynaecology or even medical schools.  This is especially true in the three most abused nations by the Roman Catholic clergy: the USA (rapes hidden by such miscreants as Timothy Dolan of New York, and Salvatore Cordileone of Oakland, CA), Ireland and Peru. Rape of underage girls by priests is common in Poland, Scotland, Italy, Australia and other nations under the fascist thumb of the Roman Catholic Church, and throughout the former Soviet bloc now under the heel of the Russian

Orthodox Church and Patriarch Kirill in Moscow.  Kirill, with the backing of Vladimir Putin is working at gaining control over the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Bulgarian Orthodox Church and other Slavic Orthodox Churches to feed his quest for personal wealth that has already materialized in the form of a yacht, expensive cars, a penthouse in Moscow and a villa in Switzerland not counting “lady friends”.  It is the same within the Roman Catholic Church where German bishops drive fancy cars and live a life of ease while the workers do without–a goal sought by Paul Ryan in the USA.  The corruption in the Roman Catholic Church is universal and nuns and priests defending birth control, abortions in cases of rape, and to modernize a dead church are more vocal and openly revolting against an ever-increasing corrupt cable of bishops and the pope whom many demand steps down.  The influence of the Roman Catholic Church is fading even in Poland, and in Germany the German pope Josef Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) is anything but popular.

What the Roman Catholic Church, especially in the USA, Peru (Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, a medieval-minded inquisitor rants that chastity is a gift and those who are not chaste in appearance invite abortion [read here]  whose crimes against humanity are more vicious than even that of the German pope and the Philippines, attempts to silence is any discussion or intervention in STD and HIV that is the result of rape and pregnancy (Teerapong S, Lumbiganon P, Limpongsanurak S, Udomprasertgul V. (2009), “Physical health consequences of sexual assault victims” Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand Jul;92(7):885-90.) noting that 68.8% of the victims were between the age of 10 and 18.

Ignorance controls the Congress of the USA with Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) who is the Chairman of the Science Committee.  Akin openly discounts all science that apply to women.  He declared that “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down…” 

King reminds me of my own father, Herbert Frederick Ide, a man I learned to hate before I was age five. The hatred I felt escalated with the increase in his constant beatings and whippings, which made Hans Ludder (the father of Martin Luther of Germany), look almost passive and even saintly. 

Before I was ten, Herbert Frederick Ide had stolen the money my siblings and I had raised selling pigs (a big market in Iowa) so that he could give it to the Republican Party.  He frequently “helped” himself to the money my brother and I earned carrying the Waterloo Courier newspaper to homes, tramping through the snow that was waist-high. If I tracked snow into the house, I was beaten.  If I was able to sneak into the basement to remove my snow-caked clothes, I was beaten twice for two offenses: sneaking into the house, and carrying snow into the house.  Snow is common and deep in Iowa. By carrying the outdoor elements into the house I was disobedient to god and parents.

I learned there were three things that a “saved child of God” had to do flawlessly.  First, I was required daily to memorize the Fourth Commandment (by the time I was ten, I dropped “father” from the recitation, and threw my Luther’s Small Catechism into the garbage.  It made no sense, as Luther was controlled by fear and the answer to every questions was: “We must fear and love the Lord”–never “We must love the Lord” as fear was engrained in all young Lutherans and used by Adolf Hitler to control the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church in the Third Reich. 

The message is the same in each of the copies I have bought over the past 50 years: hate, fear, loathing is the only message). Both actions made my father beat me more savagely.  That led me to run-away on a regular basis, and sometimes during a blizzard I would escape wearing only my underwear to Jones DX on Highway 218 to hide in the men’s bathroom.

I would run away to, unsuccessfully, commit suicide. I was arrested for it once and taken to the Cedar Falls Police Department, but released to my mother after Herbert Frederick had left the house.  To return to the house, voluntarily, would mean that I would be met with scorn and my sister, Mary Helen.  It was a fate, I believed, worse than death.

Mary Helen would pull me into the bathroom pinching my cheeks until she was able to push me in front of a mirror.  Once she saw me look into the mirror, her voice would raise and she would scream like a banshee: “You are ugly. You are so ugly. Do you see how ugly you are. You are the ugly spawn of Satan!” Mary Helen always brought The Advocate (the correct translation for The Satan which is a title: σατανάς or השטן and is always used with the definite article “ha-” as in Job 2:1, the word does not appear as a form of leader of evil until Islam:  (شيطان, from the root šṭn شطن) and is an adjective (meaning “astray” or “distant”, sometimes translated as “devil”) that can be applied to both man (“al-ins”, الإنس) and Jinn “demon”, Koran 7:11–12; Lucifer is Iblis ( إبليس‎, plural: ابالسة ʾAbālisa; see سورة الأعراف al-ʾAʿraf in the Koran 7:27) and has a totally different meaning) when ever she spat at me (Mary Helen, like my family, is monolingual and linguistically challenged but taunted, teased and criticized my love of reading and languages. Ha-Satan (meaning “The Accuser” or “The Advocate”) with the definite article occurs 13 times in the Masoretic Text, in two books of the Hebrew Bible: Job ch.1–2 (10 times), and Zechariah 3:1–2 (3 times). The King James (he was never a saint) Version and later versions dropped the article because of poor translation skills, a plague that is recurring in Translation and Interpretation schools throughout the world and is especially damaging politics and political discourse as seen in the rants of Steven King.

The common curse I heard was “give Art a book and he will worship the Devil.” I was fifty years old the last time I heard that–but it was what I remember the few times I had Christmas in Iowa.  After that, I spent the holiday alone in Europe.  It was more peaceful, and I did not have to worry about being told how fat I was–a remonstrance heard even at the mid-century mark in my life.

Even in Islam, the Iblis, a jinn, was a devoted servant of God, Koran 15:27, 18:15, 38:76; this, of course was plagiarized from the Babylonian myth of Job that the Apiru put in their original canon in Canaan).  I heard it so often that I had it memorized, as she never spoke much else to me and never with me. She was a faithful, one-note Republican worshipping at the altar of άγνοια και μίσος so identical to Annette Sweeney and Steven King. 

The last time I saw her, when my stepfather had a stroke, she spat “What is he doing here [at Sartori Hospital]?” I made her a promise I have kept, that she would never see me again as long as she lived, as she was dead to me at that moment. That was the same moment that my mother told me never to contact her until I fell onto my knees and begged Mary Helen to forgive me, as Mary Helen was considered by my mother to be my intercessor with her god.

The second action required of me was to always see Democrats as demons and devils.  My sister believed this as religiously as she found Limbaugh to be next to the Messiah of her Trinity Lutheran Church in West Waterloo. I hated drug-addict (on OxyContin) Limbaugh as nothing he said was ever true–and I would attempt to show the evidence to the contrary; Mary Helen’s only response was that Rush was an “entertainer”. She never spoke to me, after that, even when I moved back to Iowa.

The third task, Herculean in nature for me, was to see Republicans (especially Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin and Rep. Richard “I Am Not A Crook” Nixon) as angels and god-sent to the nation that was always right.  They were after the “godless” communists and atheists, and vowed to keep “niggers” in their place.  Herbert Frederick bragged, when I was very young, how he was at a cross-burning that he interpreted as “a true sign of God’s favor on Iowa”.  The only one who was a greater racist than my biological father was my mother who flew, grudgingly to Texas after I had my catastrophic heart attack and discovered that one of my friends was Black, terrified that his “curse” (the pigmentation of his skin) would rub off on me. 

It was the hatred of black people who made my family, “of modest means” (it was not modest, as after the divorce, my mother drove film for a company to clients and made in 1960 $40 a week) my sister Mary Helen would say after our parents divorced, that we always lived on the west side of Waterloo (along with Michele Bachmann’s Norwegian Lutheran family who were as great as racists as mine) since black people carried the curse of Cain that was strengthened by Noah’s curse against his grandson. Because of those curses, as pounded from the pulpits, black people had to live on the east side with the poor white trash—which we were.  When a few black families moved into West Waterloo, white-flight was the order of the day, with white families moving west to Dyke.  (Later I saw humor in the name of the “safe haven” as most West Waterloo people who moved to Dike were strongly anti-LGBT.)

I always remember the hatred, racism, and scorn for the rights of women to choose their own destiny that made up my family every time that I look at King’s photograph. Not only were my parents (I think both are dead now) but so too is my sister: blasting Richard for marrying a Japanese woman (a Buddhist) and adopting two Japanese children that she tried to turn into Western youth–an attempt that her niece openly rebelled against, causing Richard and his family to fly back to Sapporo where he taught English the next day. He wrote Mary Helen a thirty-page paper detailing her errors, and has never returned to Iowa in rhw last fifteen years.

Steven King looks very much like my father.  Herbert Frederick Ide became a saint to the rabid radical religious right, especially after he died and left his Ascension Lutheran Church in West Waterloo $1 million to build a church school. It was as if Johann Tetzel (1465 – 11 August 1519) was a German Dominican preacher had been born in Pirna, Saxony (in 1518 he earned a Doctorate of Sacred Theology), and was reborn in Waterloo and once more was selling exits (indulgences) from Hell. I do not know what either my brother or sister received, but I had been cut out of the will when I left the Lutheran Church and the Republican Party.

I have not spoken with either my brother or my sister for decades. Decades ago my mother commanded that I not call her when she found I had written “a book” on abortion (actually I have written three, and I do support abortion for any woman who wants one regardless of reason). Surprisingly, she never knew (or acknowledged knowing) that I helped her niece get an abortion in 1960 after the juvenile was impregnated by her brother.

I was with my cousin throughout the procedure. I never saw any baby.  All I saw was a lot of blood and some fetal tissue. I remember thinking at that time how much better it would have been if my mother had aborted me as she wished (she told me that many times in private), rather than carry the unwanted pregnancy to term.  Neither of us would have had to suffer the slow strangulation of religious suffocation and misery. Unfortunately, my mother was too weak to carry out her own choice, as my father had always been a man of volatile temper.

What Todd Akin and Steven King forget is that males are raped, too.  Two uncles raped me when I was five. One raped me when I was ten—with my father watching.  He just grinned.

I never knew if Herbert Frederick was aware that his blessed brother raped me repeatedly when he sent me to his acreage outside of Jericho, Iowa, to move stones.  My uncle promised he would kill me if I told anyone.  When I ultimately told my mother before her divorce. she rebuked me as her heaven-sent brother-in-law “was incapable of such an act”.  It was I who was lying. She knew that I was a sinner.

After my uncle had finished, while I lay bleeding on the floor, my saintly father (an accolade of anointing according to what he was told by the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in West Waterloo) prayed that I would find the Lord in the violence of his brother who was studying in the seminary. He claimed it was his god’s retribution for disobedience and disrespect I showed my “elders”.  I was told to remember that his god was ever vengeful.

Herbert Frederick recalled the times I refused to include the word father in the mindless repetition of the Fourth Commandment.  That was one of my sins. His god demanded revenge and his god had his revenge and would be ever vigilant in watching me from that time on; Herbert was only watching that one time, he said, as tasked by his god (I wondered if his god had been on vacation or was asleep and could not verify that I was being punished).

After that I refused to ever again attend the Lutheran Church.  Ultimately left that hate-filled community and its god of anger and Martin Luther’s acceptance of parental brutality (Bainton, Roland H. (1950), Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. New York, NY and Nashville, TN: Abingdon-Cokesbury, p. 23, citing Tischreden 3566 A (1537) in Luther’s works: Luther, Martin. Werke: kritische Gesamtaugabe; (Weimar Ausgabe) Weimar [Germany]: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1906-1961). 

After my parents divorced, blaming me for the divorce as the judge stated that the State of Iowa would remove the children from the home in Cedar Falls, if Herbert remained with Ruby.  I did not see Herbert Frederick for nearly 40 years.

Since my biological father’s middle name was also mine, I have always used it to remind myself what an animal he was around me.  Because of his great hatred, evangelical extremism, and devotion to the Republican Party that brought in US Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) and the Great Fear that I would be reminded of as teachers left school without explanation, actors disappeared from the screen, and books were censored, I vowed that I would never marry nor ever have children.  I lived in fear that I would become like Herbert Frederick, and any child from my loins (a biblical expression: Genesis 35:11, Psalm 38:7) would turn out like me.  That I did not want to happen.  I deliberately stayed away from women, and after a painful youth of constant sodomy I avoided men of all ages, never even having a friend.

Forty years later, having shed over 200 pounds of fat that accumulated as I ate excessively to forget the pain I had gone through, I returned to Waterloo–to see my mother and her second husband.  I cannot remember ever being welcomed when I drove from Texas to Iowa for a visit, and when I would arrive late at night, I was handed a bowl of lettuce as they went to bed. 

Not wanting another bowl of lettuce (nor anything with calories), I went to the shopping mall in West Waterloo along University / Highway 218.  It had a popular cafeteria (known as Bishop’s), so I went there first.  Opening the door, I saw Herbert Frederick at one end of the table along with his other wife, with my sister presiding at the head of the table.  She was upset seeing me and thought I would remain in Texas to die. I found it ironic, yet appropriate as I technically died at precisely the minute I was born in Waverly, Iowa at Saint Mary’s Hospital fifty years earlier. When I had returned from Carlton Hospital, Mary Helen called once to tell me that she and her husband Ronald were praying for me and hoped I had prepared a will.  I always wondered if she spelled it praying or preying.

Years later, I moved back to Iowa in 2000, having had a quadruple bypass heart operation in 1998.  The doctors at Del Ray Beach in Florida said I would need another bypass within five years (I have never had it). I wanted to devote myself to exposing hypocrisy.

I did not bother visiting Herbert Frederick or his new wife.  They, like the rest of my family, did not bother with me.  It was if we were living on different planets. My uncle who lived with my favorite grandmother (whom I visited every summer) raped me every night with his hand clamped down on my mouth (my grandmother was too poor to afford an extra bedroom, and I too old and the wrong gender to sleep with her) had converted to Roman Catholicism after marrying a hairdresser, became fervently anti-choice and adopted the Pauline attitude on women as preached by the Wisconsin Evangelical Synod and incorporated into the Missouri Synod creed, and a ultra-conservative Republican (he is now a member of the Tea Party), would disappear as fast as he could if he saw me.  His speed was slow.   He suffers from MS and other aliments.  The only other uncle who remains in Iowa stays on his farm outside of Osage and refused to answer anytime I called. To me, they are all dead in my mind even though they may be alive in body. 

I did not return to Black Hawk County. I moved to Hardin that was not yet under the mystic of Annette Sweeney, but was still overwhelmingly very Republican.  I thought I could just ignore them all, and write, believing that  I was safe from ever having to see a relative again. I was wrong.

I did see Herbert Frederick one more time–on one day.  I received a photocopy of his obituary from an anonymous sender.  Not wanting to go to the funeral, I went to the Garden of Memories funeral home in Waterloo, just to make certain he was dead.  To quote the first line of Charles Dickens famous Christmas Carol, he was “as dead as a door nail.”

Seeing him in his coffin brought closure and peace.  I knew that he would never live again to endanger me or cause cruelty to others. Because I had known him and his spawn, of which I am one, I gave up any belief in a life after death.  This was final for me.

I remembered his barking how birth control was wrong (my parents practiced abstinence except for the three times that Herbert Frederick wanted a child and then “got it over with quickly so as not to displease god “who is ever-present [omnipresent] and ever watching: ποτέ να παρακολουθείτε or immer beobachten), that only Republicans would go to heaven if they had not had an abortion nor masturbated, and I would forever roast (like a stuffed pig [wie eine ausgestopfte Schweine in keeping with the aspersions of Martin Luther], I was told) in “everlasting fire” (Matthew 25:41)—a comment that pleased him and is found in both the writings of the mad monk of Wittenberg as well as the Koran (2:167, 3:191) a volume that Martin Luther actually read and wrote the preface to the 1543 Latin version of the Koran (cp. Westminster Confession (1646): chapter 33) as a way to condemn it after he was unable to convert Muslims to his faith that he called “True” (Evangelical).

Luther’s rant was especially anti-Semitic (cf. Luther, Martin (1543). Von den Juden und Ihren Lügen), attacked everyone who did not accept the gospels that still were not firmly decided on, and attacked “Jews, Turks, Papists” and other “idolaters”  (Luther, WA 53:569-572, in German). It was the foundation for Adolf Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, and other “dissenters”, with Hitler calling Luther his spiritual father.

Although I reject violence and politics of assassination, being human I do ponder at times on what it would be like if we did not have idiots like Akin, King, and Bartlett.  I entertain myself for a very brief minute with one cherished wish that lunatics such as Todd Akin, Roscoe Bartlett and Steven King would be raped. At least, that way, they would discover what rape really is—and it is not a sought out “pleasure” but an act of violence that can never be erased from the victim’s mind regardless of the years of psychological therapythe patient had taken (Resick, Patricia A.; Williams, Lauren F.; Suvak, Michael K.; Monson, Candice M.; Gradus, Jaimie L. (2012). “Long-term outcomes of cognitive–behavioral treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder among female rape survivors.” doi: 10.1037/a0026602 Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 80(2), Apr 2012, 201-210; Littleton, Heather L.; Grills-Taquechel, Amie (2011). “Evaluation of an information-processing model following sexual assault.” doi: 10.1037/a0021381. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, Vol. 3(4), Dec 2011, 421-429; Feinstein, Brian A.; Humphreys, Kathryn L.; Bovin, Michelle J.; Marx, Brian P.; Resick, Patricia A. (2011). “Victim–offender relationship status moderates the relationships of peritraumatic emotional responses, active resistance, and posttraumatic stress symptomatology in female rape survivors. doi: 10.1037/a0021652.  Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, Vol. 3(2), Jun 2011, 192-200; and, Paul, Lisa A.; Gray, Matt J.; Elhai, Jon D.; Davis, Joanne L. (2011). “Perceptions of peer rape myth acceptance and disclosure in a sample of college sexual assault survivors.” doi: 10.1037/a0016989. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, Vol. 1(3), Sep 2009, 231-241.)

Now that I am 67, I still remember the cries of how fat I am–a comment made even when I sought a teaching position in Peru (usually the objection to hiring me was that I was too old (and I keep becoming older), that I never married (implying that I am homosexual, but as I told the Director of Chemicals as Merk Pharmaceuticals, I dislike all people), do not have children to support (not possible being impotent, not married, etc.) and am “too scholarly” or have “published too much” (the last comment coming from the Iowa Republican Party that knew my parental heritage was strongly evangelical Republican, but knowing nothing about me: I was the head of the Hardin County Democrats before I moved out of Iowa, again).  Things never change, as all interviews ended with “you are not a team player”–true; I believe in doing what is right, not expedient–and thus I alienate leaders in academe as well as business as I cannot be bought, bullied, or coerced. 

I have only had one academic dean in the fifty years that I have taught who understood this. I will always be grateful for having had the privilege and  honor of knowing Luis Amado Barrera Arréstegui who excels with the support of his partner Jen (Jennifer) and their daughter Valkerie. He has no equal and is the best leader any university has ever been fortunate to claim.  His devotion to education, his prizing the ability of people to read and think independently and make logical judgments based on provable facts is not a part of the Republican or Tea Parties nor even in the Weltanschauung of Steven King or most of the Iowa Legislature. It eludes Mitt and Ann Romney, Paul Ryan, Ron Paul, and the troglodytes sitting in the governor’s chairs in Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Florida, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nebraska and Texas.

The Republican Party finds nothing wrong with rape and claims, like my fundamentalist father, that rape is the result of the victim causing the violence. Now with the Mormon Romney and Roman Catholic Ryan are anointed by the Republican and Tea Parties to carry their banner of hate into the November 2012 election, the Republican Party has completely forsaken women and openly denies women the right of choice (although Ann Romney tells reporters that women are “flocking to Mitt” as if he were the Good Shepherd)–that it had not done until it was cannibalized by the Tea Party and its organized and certified hate groups.  This is clearly seen in the Republican Party plank of its platform that reads:

2012 Republican Platform To [sic] Advocate Abortion Ban Without Rape Exception

But embracing a rape exception for abortion rights would put the campaign at odds with the Republican Party’s longstanding platform, the newest iteration of which will be officially unveiled at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. In spite of the massive public outcry from the right over Todd Akin’s comments, and amazement at the ignorance of Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD facing a tough fight in Maryland’s redefined sixth congressional district)  who spouted “there are very few pregnancies as a result of rape, fortunately, and incest (that he argues is very small, but a member in his Town Hall meeting noted it was an every-day occurrence” (video), the official GOP platform committee drafted a provision Monday supporting a “human life amendment” that would outlaw abortion without specifying exemptions for rape or incest. The platform reads:

Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. 

I do not agree. A fetus is not an unborn child. A fetus is a choice. No man and no other woman has the right to decide the destiny or fate of the fetal tissues within any woman’s uterus. Only the woman carrying the evolving tissue has the right to make that choice–and at any time during its evolutionary period of development.  It is not a person, it is a part of the woman’s body until when, if ever, it is born.  No fetus should ever be born if it is the product of rape, incest, or the host mother knows she cannot support it, love it, take care of it, or offer it basic necessities.  An abortion is better.  The world must go not to a zero-growth movement, but to a plan for regressive or negative population growth.  The world has too many unwanted, unloved, abused, and starving children (not just in India or China, but throughout the world), and to bring a child into a world that has used up 40% of its nonrenewable resources in the last 30 years is criminal.  At best the world’s nonrenewable resources will last only 70 years.  Today, the USA tosses out 40% of its food–none is given to the poor, the homeless, the unwanted. The same is true for other nations.

Almost single-handed, Donald Trump and the Koch Brothers are permanently destroying the water planet: Earth.  Even the water is contaminated. This does not bother Steven King or his Republican cretinous cronies in the House of Senate of the government, for they deny science and climate change as if both were bogus.  Trump is the most bogus of the group, with no knowledge of medicine or science (his bachelor degree “in science” is in economics not in environmental science–to help him manage the wealth he inherited–he did not earn it), as seen when he claimed, falsely, that vaccinations cause autism (read here and here where he illegally gives medical advice on Twitter; cp. here as his illusions of granduer and mastery of limited knowledge suggests some mental challenges). Unfortunately, after King , Trump, Inhofe and their benighted birdbrain buddies destroy everything, the people remaining on Earth cannot move to another planet.