Youth, women, minority human rights, voting issues impacted by 2014 election results

Women's right to vote shows changes in present election and following Supreme Court decisions on First Amendment

Equal rights for women has arrived for the women of today, but yesterday's women fought hard for those rights, the right to participate equally in choosing America's leaders.  Are women in 2014 upholding the promise of participating equally in elections and how have the demographics impacted elections in the past and the recent midterm election?

According to ABC News  the major demographic trends of the November 2014 election included the following results: Most unmarried women vote for Democrats by a 61-37% margin.  But the gap is closing in this demographic group, with the 24-point margin the smallest since data was collected beginning in 1992. White men vote Republican at 63-35 percent.  This is the largest margin of white men's voting Republican, tying with the results of 2010.  Those voters under age 30 tend to vote Democratic by a 13-point margin, reported at 55-42 percent.  This demographic group, however, holds a far lesser share of the electorate, and that number has reduced since 2012, from 19% share to 13 percent in the recent election.  in far lesser numbers than in the years since 2008, down from a low of 13 percent now compared to 19 percent in 2010.  Seniors vote Republican by 56-43 percent.  This demographic group votes at a far higher rate than the younger voters, with their share of the electorate having grown to 24 percent, compared with a 17 percent share in 2012.

History records the women's rights movements to begin in earnest in the 1830's, culminating in the passage of the 19th amendment in August 26, 1920.  The movement was mixed with the struggle to abolish slavery.  It was in 1851 the famous African American abolitionist, Sojourner Truth, gave her famous speech, "Ain't I a woman," as she eloquently proclaimed not just the rights of African Americans but the rights and liberties of women as well.

The fire of the women's rights movements continued to burn for years, bringing with it strong supporters whose names are etched with steely resolve into permanent historical monuments made from their sacrifices. The names include Reverend Antoinette Brown, Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Frederick Douglas, Reverend Harry Ward Beecher, Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony, among others.

The major impetus for women's right to vote began in the 19th century, and resulted in an official introduction as an amendment by Congress in 1878. It remained controversial for 40 years until the 19th amendment was finally enacted, giving women the right to vote.

Those rights, hard fought, came early on in Oregon, one of the leaders in the women's suffrage movement, adopting the women's right to vote in 1912. The movement with its foundling days, moved to adulthood in the passage of the 19th amendment officially when it was ratified by the states in Congress.

Those early proponents of women's suffrage in Oregon swept not just women into the movement but men as well. Advocates for women's right to vote were strong in that land of the pioneers.
Later the suffragist movement was used as a stepping stone to expansion of rights for women in education and employment. It became intertwined again with the rights of African Americans in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that solidified and expanded women's rights.

This journalist, a woman born and bred in Oregon of pioneering stock, was taught early on the strength of women as they received their equal rights. My grandmother, a woman of the days before the right to vote, spoke to me, with the words of advice as well as admonition, "Do everything you can, my dear. This is the first time in the country's history women have rights to learn."

This was her encouragement for my college education, coming from a woman who had barely finished elementary school but who had watched the changes over the years. She stood as a shining citadel to me, a child of the 1940's then, someone who hadn't been able to vote as a very young woman but who treasured it when she secured it later.

Clara Diadema Matthews, my grandmother, took her voting rights seriously. She used to say, in her salt-and-peppery 'play,' "Look at your Grandpa there. He used to ask me how he should vote, and now I'm telling him. Why Franklin Roosevelt wouldn't have been elected and got us out of trouble during the depression if it hadn't been for me."

A grandmother's recognition of women's strength at the ballot box, and the future of the country, came before the Supreme Court's decision that corporations can be treated as individuals when it comes to contributions toward political campaigns.  The Court maintained corporations have the same First Amendment rights under the Constitution.  Single women and minorities constitute the higher percentage of poor voters, a demographic less likely to vote.  And the corporate executives are largely white and male, offering the major concern for Democrats, and for socially liberal policies favored by women and minorities, as the money funneled into advertising and campaigns that counter policies that have helped initiate and maintain programs addressing civil rights, voting rights, and social concerns involving health, education and the environment.  As the voting blocs continue to move to the right, it is likely some of these programs will be eroded, erasing those gains my grandmother embraced and potentially maintaining the power of the white, male voting bloc for years to come.

A Frenchman who values spiritual beauty most speaks of abortion,essential life, freedom of women

Pregnant woman

Yves Debodinance (Yvalain)---When writing information that contains the word "abortion" the word may immediately trigger certain emotions, associations of ideas, intellectual tensions, identity groups. The subject is beaten and hackneyed; the land is mined. Everything seems to have been said. The cause is understood, in one direction or the other.  So I offer instead some words of kind understanding from this Frenchman who loves women's spiritual beauty most.

The subject is not simple, and I am wary of any simplistic answers that one hears on the streets, at least in the United States. For here, in France, there is only a handful of the more extreme, fundamental views from Catholic individuals and others who gather in the streets, or kneel with huge crosses or Holy Virgin statues, holding signs about  abortion, Freemasons, Jews, gays or for the return of the monarchy.

Here I’m attempting my own synthesis of such a passionate subject. You who read my words right now, please unplug your definitive preconceptions, your emotions and your hatreds.  And while you read, play an album of JS Bach, for example “Violins and Oboe d'Amore Concertos”, and let’s continue this discussion.

Let’s put aside on ideas that cannot be resolved in one way or another, foror example, the status of the embryo. We all agree that the embryo is potentially a future human being . But who can say that it is a mass of cells that develops in the woman body or that it is more than that: already a human being in its most vulnerable form, having a soul, an even a life project willed by God? These are imaginary representations - often much tougher than any findings positively established. Science itself cannot ignore the images that populate the human mind when it comes to life. It cannot give any definitive argument in one direction or the other.

Life is a mystery, not only in its infancy. It is found that life requires favorable environmental conditions: a certain range of temperature, water, light and time. But even when all conditions are established, life does not appear. These conditions are favorable, necessary; but they do not create life. There’s no spontaneous generation, so. We check every day in our world that life comes from life. Like a torch passing from one hand to the other, life is communicated, it is given, it is contagious. And nobody knows how it all began. We can say: "this is God." If it satisfies you, ok. Personally, I think the mystery remains unsolved. I do not know how it all works and why. I even believe that it is beyond our understanding and our ability to understand. Far from exalting myself an illusory knowledge, I feel very humbled by all this mystery.

Our Earth is full of life, and that includes life underground, on the seabed, suspended in the air and of course at ground level where billions of insects leave enough room for billions of birds, mammals, spiders and other reptiles so that they can grow. Among the abundant life are human beings who, we’re told, have never been so many on our small planet. Is life in danger? According to physicists, our sun still offers a bright future, and our planet should enjoy its moderate heat and its light for several billion years before becoming uninhabitable when the sun will become a supernova, unless spread elsewhere in the meantime, life will disappear.

Notwithstanding the time that is given to us, close to infinity on a human scale (hominid appeared there 3 to 6 million years ago, modern man there are only 100,000 years) life is in danger on earth. Not because of natural disasters that have always existed and have often been the beginning of new developments but because of human violence. Man is the largest known predator.  Man does not just destroy ecosystems that are essential to life; he destroys, often without reason, flora and fauna, including those of the oceans and billions of animals each year for his consumption.

What is even more heartbreaking and incomprehensible is that man has a passion for war, resulting in the deaths of millions of human beings every year.  Even the small wars of the past have succeeded to bring about contemporary genocides, world wars, atomic bombs dropped on civilian populations, all regional conflicts that disfigure the idea that we can have about the human being and his self-called belief in the sanctity of life. The war takes many forms. The form called economic "crisis" or "war" is quite pernicious, but it is equally effective in generating a lot of misery and death of millions of impoverished populations, subject to starvation, lack of care and education. One day the capitalist doctrine will surely be condemned for crimes against humanity...

There is another war, and we have begun to realize only a few dozen years: the war against women! Until then we took for "natural" order that men arrogated many rights as they interfere with the rights of their wives or sisters. Awareness of this injustice is so new, so fragile, and so precarious that anything could destroy it. The forces that want to oppress women, for the mere fact of their biology, are still the majority in the world.

What can explain (not justify) the true hatred of women that all societies of the world are steeped? There was first, I think, that the brutality (equated to the force) has always been given more value than sweetness (equated with weakness). But this brutality is the prerogative of men, because of the visible difference of male and female body. A woman I admire very much (my wife) put me on the way of another relevant explanation: the woman has the extraordinary power to give life, something man cannot offer. This helplessness works in its way, bringing man to a certain low level in behavior and understanding.  He wants to control life, that he cannot give, and does this through the control of women whom he demands submit for his enjoyment and descent.

When old white men debate in parliament the right or not to abortion they continue, that they want to or not, the ancient posture to submit woman to male dictates, even in the deepest of their intimacy, which is certainly not a coincidence. Now let’s denounce the hypocrisies and contradictions. Neither speech, nor bigot nor consumerist materialist discourse that we hear on both sides are relevant, even if they bring all elements deserving reflection.

Now let us consider the "sanctity " of life. This argument often refers to the idea that life is sacred and must be protected. Religion is often the origin of this idea. But I think that in reality what is expressed, in regards to he behavior of our societies, is to offer a notion about who has the right to live and who does not. For, if life is sacred then we must reject everything that destroys it: preventing wars, denying death penalty and ultimately change the economic system that generates so much destruction. Actually behind the argument for the sanctity of life there is the idea that an innocent embryo has the right to live, but a bastard who does not deserve life can be put to death. In this position I can see the temptation to play God. After all, if it is God who gives life, He gives it to everybody whether innocent or bad. This is probably incomprehensible but it is a fact. So do we have the right to correct what He decided? After all the Gospel warns us not to do that: "while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them."

It seems extraordinarily hypocritical to claim to herald life and support the death penalty, war and economic systems that destroy life. And yet this is what the anti-abortions do, often from the most conservative circles of society. The fact that these areas also defend a vision of the subaltern woman, subjected to man, is obviously not a coincidence.

I truly believe that life is sacred.   I believe that not in a strictly religious way, although I recognize that there is a mystical dimension in this belief, the kind of belief in the sanctity of the human person, affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Indeed, life appears to me to be both miraculous, strong, profuse and at the same time fragile and touching in all its manifestations. Life is fragile and it’s heartbreaking to see how easy it is to crush the delicate little flower (and this symbolizes the fate that is made to many manifestations of life in the world). It is also moving to see the gentle lamb slaughtered by the butcher, the friendly dog get kicked, chicken - though presented as the model of maternal love in the gospel - confined in a cage until becoming mad, lay eggs that are immediately removed and finally shot as an object that it has never ceased to be in the spirit of our consumption society. And yet life is strong, as that small sprig of grass that grew in a gap of a concrete slab, like the blind fish that persist to live in pools of water at the bottom of buried deep caves, or the shrimp that live on the ocean floor under hellish pressures, warmed and fed through stacks of lava from the earth's core. And what about those wonderful people who survive under extreme life conditions in the torrid or frozen deserts?

Yes, life moves me deeply. And when I realized that I did not need to kill or to have animals killed to feed me, I became a vegetarian because I did not see why I had to participate in the massive massacre of animals throughout the world, while I did not need meat to live. Thus, inhabited by this love for life, I saw that my choices were consistent: vegetarianism, fight for environmental protection, animal welfare, refusal of factory farms, refusal of “sport”’ hunting (when it is not a necessity to live) and fur clothes. And of course: rejection of torture and of death penalty.

At this point I guess you might expect to see me take a stand against abortion in the name of the respect due to life. But it is not that simple. On the one hand I do not have definitive answers to questions expressed at the beginning of this article: what is an embryo? And I'm suspicious about those who draw conclusions that contains other more implicit questions. For example: who should decide what happens in the female body? Who is the master of a woman's fertility? But also: does man something to say? What is a human being?  Is he just a consequence of biological functions or a love project, a story being written? And let’s not forget the other issues such as the following: does  society help women in difficulty, the abandoned wife, the raped woman and the woman without resources? And also what about these customs, which bear the brunt of “faults” on only women: can they be revised?

Let’s not forget that other hypocrisy that sees fierce defenders of freedom deny women the right to dispose of her own bodies and decide for themselves to give birth or not.  This allows total freedom for men, but offers conditional freedom for women.  This is the scheme that has been offered for millenniums.

The conditional freedom offers confinement of women within biology. When viewed that way, it becomes a sort of curse from which men are easily freed, despite the fact they are imbued with the same clay.   For certain biology is a fantastic dimension. But the human being is much more than that, obviously. Would we define one politician or a leader of a great company by his or her biological characteristics? Of course not, because we have developed a more abstract, more moral way of perceiving the human being. Besides, we know what happens when we define the human being by that biological appearance, for that is racism. But we do not stop doing that with women. The vision supported by our societies, as far as the construction of language, is fundamentally sexist.

What is natural in man?  It appears simplistic if only explained by historians, anthropologists, psychologists and many other practitioners of various disciplines. The idea that man is a natural being is a fantasy brandished by conservatives of all societies. Obviously it suggests that God is behind this nature. And the man would be wrong to thwart his "nature." In this view there is a static vision, which comes also resonates well with the opposition to the idea of ​​evolution. Things are laid out once and for all, in a fashion in which it should not change. This fixed belief does not offer a potential for change.

In fact, man is certainly a natural being in the sense that he belongs to the nature, an environment and a biological parentage. But he is also a man of culture. And by culture we must understand everything that interacts with him, makes him grow and shapes him. This culture is already within his family, where values ​​will interfere at all levels of relationships. We know that good or bad treatment from the family have implications for the development of the child, as well as the quality of food and enough sunlight or not. From the point of view of child development, cultural parameters are as important as the natural or physical parameters. We know that the child's brain is reduced in volume due to abuse. Not that the brain, well housed in the skull, suffer specifically from the blows, but because the attacks at the child's dignity have significant psychological impact.  These induce physical dysfunction, including growth delays and development of physical and psychological illnesses that may be only happen in his adulthood. We even know that adults subjected to conditions of oppression, institutionalized contempt or deprivation of liberty, see their minds and brains affected, even if their vital parameters were not upset. They can become crazy or develop diseases that kill.

But at the same time, we see the beneficial and measurable effect of trust, kindness and attention.   When the abused child is extracted from a hostile cultural environment, he or she will be able to resume development, both mentally and physically, including the impact of the brain's suffering.  He will be able to grow again if he finds resilient tutors. He will even be able to develop exceptional qualities because of the hardships he or she went through (if those hardships have not totally destroyed him, obviously). The damaged adult can also get survive. Sometimes just speaking heals. We can say  words have become an essential part of the human being’s life. They can kill. They can also bring life.

According to nature alone, the male sows his seed and then goes away, and the female must deal with the consequences. The human being does not work like that. First he’s in solidarity with everything that happens to other beings in his environment. He feels responsible: he cares about the consequences of everything he does. Thus the man is not just content to sow his small seeds, he manages the possible consequences. Making love, we know, does not necessarily mean "life community" or "procreation project." The best would be to prevent unwanted pregnancy through contraception. That some men still oppose contraception today is unforgivable. In any case, in my opinion, it totally reveals the continuing enslavement of women that is at the heart of such positions.

But then there remain unwanted pregnancies. Sometimes, most of the time probably, these pregnancies end happily, with the pregnancy going to full term and the unexpected child welcomed. However, an unwanted pregnancy can be a real tragedy for the woman. First, the tragedy occurs because of society. A woman, pregnant at the wrong time, and out of wedlock, by a man who is not the woman's true lover, creates pressure for the woman from a society that has created rules to keep her under the yoke of men.   When she is pregnant at that "wrong time," she brings dishonor on herself, dishonor upon the family or clan, dishonor that will affect the unborn child too. And then there is the personal drama of the woman pregnant of a coward, the man who does not love her, the abuser, the one who took his sole pleasure and then left. And also this body, this biology that works by itself, which accuses her becomes part of the issue. The body reacts purely mechanically, even when there is no life plan, no desire. This body, which unintentionally destroys a (social) life, for the life of a human being, as we have seen, is not only a biological life.  It is a social life, a story, a narrative being told; and it needs a lot of nurture for all aspects of a human being life to coincide and align to foster the emergence of a new life.

Abortion is not an easy option for any woman. Whether it is legal or not, women use that option, through all times, as a last resort when they have no other solution. It is already quite dramatic that some women find themselves in such a situation, in the anguish of a body that seems to obey to external orders rather than to their own will or desire, in a society that does not provide them with alternative options to expose them to more risks of unsafe abortions, even when they are illegal.

I believe many pro-choice people would prefer not to have to resort to abortion.  So we develop and make available contraceptives, including for adolescent minors, or offer other mechanisms to prevent pregnancy, including the next morning pill.   But we also must change attitudes and customs that oppress women, so they are finally respected, develop the reception of unwanted children without blaming women who do not want or cannot raise their children. But at the same time, until all this progress is established, we must accept this desire not to give birth and protect women who express it.

This is the most humane position, since we know that the human being is nature, culture, desire, and narrative, not just biology.

If I have convinced one person to re-examine his or her position on the matter of abortion, that is good.  For those who are pro-life it is important for us all to attack all the great evils of our world that hurt life: pollution, production of too much and intolerable waste, inequitable distribution of wealth. Let’s work together against ideologies that drive people against each other, intolerance leading to murder, conflicts of interests and desires that throw people into war. Let’s convince our Chinese or Indian friends to rid themselves of habits that lead to forced abortion of millions of women and unfortunately pregnant  little girls, who are considered intolerable burdens, especially for the poor.  Let's build new hope in our societies: respect, great respect for all women, protection, listening, and let’s provide them good material conditions able to help create families with children who have chances of grow healthy, aid structures for all difficult situations (school failure, income loss, father absence, illness...) Yes, let’s treat all these evils combined to remove ignorance and indifference from our world, so that abortion is not the issue but life itself, how it is defined and lived.

Public figures reinforce cultural attitudes about women, rape and birthcontrol

                                    Iranian woman who offers an image to say "my body, my choice"

Carol Forsloff---In the United States a former Presidential candidate and preacher, Mike Huckabee, believes, in reference to women and contraception, they can control their impulses without having government-sanctioned birth control methods.   In India a woman politician offers the statement that women are the cause of rape, defending her statement as "her opinion."  How do attitudes like this influence our culture and patterns of behavior?

Asha Mirje, the woman politician in India, was quoted by the press as saying women were "responsible to an extent" for rape.  She went on to add their "clothing and behaviour" played a part in what happened to them.

Human rights activists as well as the opposition party to that of Mirje were quick to respond that Mirje"s comments were "unacceptable".  Mirjie's defense, however, was to state that this had been her "personal opinion."  Nevertheless, her opinion was public; and the consequences to the culture in a country where a rape is said to be recorded every 22 minutes is disturbing, counter the activists.

Huckabee's remarks brought an outpouring of discussion about his attitudes in reference to giving women access to no-co-pay birth control under the Affordable Care Act.  His remarks, "they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government,"offered an example of opinions that are pervasive in reference to women and sex.  Some members of the Christian right were quick to defend Huckabee's remarks, while some in the Republican party were also said to want to distant themselves from those remarks.

In the United States women are divided on the issues of contraception and abortion.  References to women's sexual responses as something they should just control in order to prevent unwanted births reinforces attitudes about sex and women's issues that have influenced the culture in negative ways, according to experts on sex, reproduction and psychology.

Ms Mirje later apologized about what she said, maintaining it was her "personal opinion." Huckabee defended his remarks by pointing to the press as being responsible for the firestorm along with the political opposition.  “I'm always flattered when people on the far left manufacture a new version of being ‘offended. They can be quite creative in finding something that hurts their feelings,”  he was quoted as saying to a Fox News host.

Experts on the matter of unwanted pregnancies maintain the burden of preventing unwanted pregnancies is a shared responsibility.  Furthermore, even though abstinence is the method of 100% guarantee as offering birth control, the shared responsibility presented includes methods of contraception as well.  But the notion of pregnancy being the woman's fault continues to be offered as the foundation for focusing on women in counseling and birth control forums.

Rape is known to be an act of violence, not of sexual response.  It is that violence that is said to be at the heart of the problem, and the lack of knowledge of what rape really is and its long-lasting impact on the woman's life and the life of her family but also on the community as a whole.

Public figures offer pronouncements that often reinforce prejudgments and lack of knowledge about sex and women, as each culture struggles with accepting responsibility for the outcomes of those remarks and women become the target of the negative impact they can bring.

Kennedy's legacy remembered as the dream still unfulfilled

[caption id="attachment_21020" align="alignleft" width="239"] President John F. Kennedy[/caption]

Carol Forsloff---How much we remember, how much we forget, about the Kennedy years. For those good old days were good in many ways but were difficult for others, before the heralding of civil rights, the poverty programs, environmental legislation and women's rights and issues that made a difference in the upcoming years, that were the dreams of the fallen President.

President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Almost everyone who was alive during that time recalls what he or she was doing at the time. Few of us, however, remember, or even think about, what we did or didn't have. The time of promise that folks remember and associated with Kennedy seemed to hold less promise for those still struggling with getting jobs with equal pay and opportunity and finding a ladder of success that would allow achievement like others.

Civil rights legislation passed in 1964. Womens rights became the hue and cry of those years, along with the rights of African Americans with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. President Lyndon Johnson was able to put into law the dreams of his predecessor, while Kennedy remained the symbol of the new freedoms. He set the tone for the accomplishments of others, and it is that tone that made the difference. But his death also brought about a change in the perception of government and faith in the future. For with the President's assassination came the questions about who, why, how he was killed and what would it mean for the direction of the country.

As the social programs came to fruition, the tone began to shift to one of shrillness, of “I want it now” and what can my country do for me as opposed to the phrase, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” The age of service and of opportunity has transformed into the Age of Entitlements instead.

The watershed moment of the Kennedy assassination meant a shift in values, but that shift came several years after the death of Kennedy. People remembered his dreams and ambitions, and so government programs developed to take care of the poor, the oppressed, and those unable to care for themselves. But as the memory of the assassination remained, the memory of the Kennedy dream has faded, replaced by the dissensions of those who follow less the dream than the Ayn Rand formula instead, of personal independence, lack of faith in anything other than oneself and the need to look out for Number 1 regardless. So as generations come and go, those children of the 60's have become the retirees of today, or the groups who looked at those Kennedy years as transitions with programs that were terminal, as the nation would prosper soon. Those who didn't were left behind in the transitions to those different views, less optimistic and more punitive, more fearful today of socialism in ways that speak more of the 1950's and the era of Joseph McCarthy then the dreams of John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy's dreams remain unrealized in the way envisioned in those years of his Presidency. The message of the day for those who remember him and grieve his loss, that we remember the dreamer and seek to honor him with our words and deeds.

In memorial is this original song, “O Captain, My Captain, “with the lyrics once written for President Abraham Lincoln, who was also assassinated and whose death also denied his dreams of equality and reversed many of them in the years to come. It is a lesson for us all, that what makes a great man are those dreams; and those who want to follow these men must not ever give them up.