Rant about what the Religious Right does to women

(I wrote this a few years ago aimed at the Christian Right in America; most of it could apply equally to the mullahs of Iran, or of Saudi Arabia, or any "fundamentalist" religion.)

I've been volunteering at my son's school all day and just got home a little bit ago, and since I wanted to post this here anyway, I'm doing so tonight.

Now, here's my rant. I first posted it on several Yahoo lists I'm a member of, and nothing in particular I can think of provoked it, more like an endless stream of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object:

One of the things that bothers me most about the Religious Right is what they and their neuro-psychotic culture has done to women, both their own and those in the rest of society hit by the blood splatter from the Religious Right's vicious attacks on women. I ran across a song earlier today I've not heard in years, Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman", which is every bit as much of an inspirational song of liberation for all as is "We Are the Champions", the anthemn of the gays rights movement. I'm neither female nor gay, but if an injury to one is an injury to all, which I believe, then liberation for any of us is liberation for every one of us. 

Sometimes when I encounter the Religious Right’s misogyny in a way that hits me directly in the face, such the screaming-out-loud body language of a wife psychicly if not physically abused by a husband exercising his divine right to keep his spouse in her place or use her as he sees fit, which he is encouraged, even charged, to do by the Religious Right, I just want to gather up all the little canine fuckers who mark their territory with this drek, whether they be dogs or bitches, and enact a bloody vengeance against them for what they are doing not only directly to their victims, but to collateral damage such as me, my son and his generation as well, and all the other women in this country, all of whom are the Religious Right's victims even if all they do is witness what the Religious Right does to its direct victims. 

However, my arms would grow tired and my hands would get pretty cramped from either holding down the machine guns trigger or swinging the machete, then there's the fact that mass murder is kind of evil, besides which I only have to read one single news story from Iraq to remind myself of all the wonderful results that kind of violence can bring. Maybe God/Allah/Holy One or Mother Nature or The Tao or The Force or Brahman will engineer a highly lethal virus which only attacks those of zealous religious and other ideological bent as an evolutionary defense against its own destruction. Then again, thinking of all the wonderful things humanity as a whole has done for the planet, maybe religious/ideological enthusiasm IS its defense against us. 

The two cultures historically which have been the best for women were those of the Celts and of the Iroquoian nations such as the Mohawk, Seneca, Erie, Huron, etc., and especially the Cherokee, at least prior to the spread of Christianity and other acculturation after the Chickamauga Wars concluded in 1794. In Ireland, women remained on a more or less equal status with men in spite of the Christianization of the island until the English Pope allowed Henry II to impose the Holy Mother Church of Rome's will on the unwilling. 

To me, a woman isn't just something to fuck. I've not even comfortable thinking of women as anything but equal. Maybe that's why I realize that the women clinging to the privileges of the pedestal and the submission which it requires are betraying their own freedom as well as that of other women every bit as much as the bastards who have been rolling back our civil rights and liberties in the name of defending freedom and the cowards who have acquiesed in that through direct cooperation or unprotesting silent observation. And have you ever seen a pedestal? There's more room in every jail or prison cell I've ever seen, even with a person in each bunk and another in a cot on the floor than there is atop one of those. 

The Religious Right doesn't get that, never will, and still hasn't gotten over that fact even after well over two hundred years since the first major completely secular government in the history of the world was established. The women of today suffering directly or indirectly and some even participating in their subjugation by the Religious Right are taking hits the Religious Right is too chicken to make against its true foes--the Founding Fathers. 

America is about Ten Amendments--NOT Ten Commandments.