Coils! In my fallopian tubes!

I finally made a decision about what gynecologist to switch to, and I’m glad I called today - the doctor in question doesn’t have availability until March. I wanted to specifically support someone who is a Circle K alumni, and the person I chose completed a Family Planning Fellowship and is certified in Essure - so I know I won’t get any pushback about me being too young and not having children.

I’m really excited about it on a number of different levels. I know I’m getting someone with amazing training, someone who won’t treat me like a nincompoop, and someone who shares the same values. Now I just have to wait until March for my initial appointment, and probably another month or two for the Essure!!

Admittedly, I worry a little about the timing of that - that’s smack dab in the middle of dragonboat season. I know that having your cervix dilated can be pretty uncomfortable, and I’m sure having foreign bodies shot into your fallopian tubes will probably cause at least some discomfort. Who knows - maybe she will recommend that I wait until after the season is over.

Roving bands of gay ninjas!

This is just to say that someone at Google must be thinking of me. I freaking love the new themes in Gmail, particularly the one with the ninjas.

Seriously: love!

Turn the other cheek…so I can slap it again

There’s been some backlash against those who supported Prop 8 in California. While I certainly don’t condone the use of violence to get your point across (and there has been some violence and destruction of property), I do absolutely stand behind the actions that some are taking to publicize the actions of those who financially supported Prop 8.

For instance, Scott Eckern resigned his position as the artistic director of the California Musical Theatre because he gave $1K to a pro-Prop 8 group and was outed and there was protest. Another guy, an owner of a SUBWAY franchise, gave $2,500 to a pro-Prop 8 group in the name of his franchise - and protesters quickly went to the corporate headquarters and asked that SUBWAY publicly state the gift did not, in fact, come from SUBWAY; add protections for sexual orientation and gender identity into the corporate policies; and give a gift in the same amount to an anti-Prop 8 group. And corporate headquarters has agreed.

Some, like the braintrust that is Chuck Norris, say that this amounts to a violation of free speech. Norris also says those damn gays should sit down, shut up, and accept the will of their evil overlords:

First, there’s the obvious inability of the minority to accept the will of the majority. Californians have spoken twice, through the elections in 2000 and 2008. Nearly every county across the state (including Los Angeles County) voted to amend the state constitution in favor of traditional marriage.

Sadly, old Chuck seems to be ignorant of the fact that our government is set up so that minorities are not held hostage to the crazy ass whims of the majority. He also failed to acknowledge that Yes on Prop 8 folks were doing a lot of bizarre and overwrought hand-wringing on television about how allow same sex marriage to stand would mean kindergarteners would be forced to learn about the intricacies of anal sex…and counting on low information voters to not question such an obviously true thing (yes, my eyeballs are rolling). But that is neither here nor there.

Look, actions have consequences. I, as someone who works in the abortion industry, know this. If I randomly decided to give $1,000 to, let’s say, the National Right to Life Committee, I would fully expect someone to call my employer and rat my ass out to the Board of Directors. I would fully expect to have my name dragged through the mud. Or if, let’s say, Starbucks decided to give corporate support to the Charles Manson Defense Fund…it should be publicized. Consumers have the right to know what causes retailers support.

We have to make our decisions about what and who we support with charitable gifts and be prepared to defend our positions. Free speech is just that: you’re free to say whatever the hell you want. But our right to free speech does not guarantee that we can say whatever we want and whoever listens has to accept it and agree with it. It is my right to free speech that tells me I can disagree…and I can let others know what you have done with your free speech in order to let others decide whether they agree or disagree.

This whole thing reminds me of the Boy Scouts brouhaha. They have the right to discriminate against anyone they want to - but conservatives wigged out when governments started revoking special privileges to the Boy Scouts because of it. How dare they? It’s a violation of the Boy Scouts’ free speech to punish them for discriminating against the gays and the atheists! How dare people stop supporting the Boy Scouts with charitable donations! Well, we dare because it’s as much our right as their right.

People are crying and whining about tolerance, and how the kings and queens of tolerance are being so intolerant. Well…you know what? Being tolerant of intolerance is stupid. Only an idiot stays married to a guy who hits her and only a moron gets mugged and then gives his mugger a hug and a cookie.

Challenge me!

I may have mentioned it before, but we have a new coach for the team. She’s someone who has been on the team for a long time, and I really like her. She’s a nice person, but she’s also totally hardcore. I just had to tell her how much I weigh and if I have any weight loss goals, and what my Winter training will look like. She emailed me back to say I should get more cardio (I no longer have a gym membership, and it’s hard for me to commit to working out at our indoor workout space during the Winter).

As luck would have it, I was able to find a cheap(ish) Concept 2 rower for the house today, so that won’t be a problem. I pick it up tomorrow!

So what that really means is that I’ll be taking the Concept 2 Holiday Challenge, the 100,000 meter challenge. That means I’m going to have to row nearly 4,000 meters every day if I want to complete the challenge. Woohoo!

Stop making sense

Post-election there’s been a lot of discussion on what this means for the anti-choice movement. WaPo is reporting today that at least some in the anti-choice movement are now shifting away from the issue of legality and working to strengthen social programs that help poor women. It’s no surprise that poor women have more abortions than those in the middle and upper class - we’ve known for years and years that not being able to afford a child is one of the prime reasons that most women have abortions.

Their efforts, they said, reflect the political reality that legal challenges to abortion rights will not be successful, especially after Barack Obama’s victory this month in the presidential election and the defeat of several ballot measures that would have restricted access to abortions. Although the activists insist that they are not retreating from their belief that abortion is immoral and should be outlawed, they argue that a more practical alternative is to try to reduce abortions through other means.

“If one strategy has failed and failed over decades, and you have empirical information that tells how you can honor life and encourage women to make that choice by meeting real needs that are existing and tangible, why not do that?” said Douglas W. Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Kmiec, a Catholic who opposes abortion, was criticized by some abortion foes because he endorsed Obama.

I agree with this new strategy. Abortion, whether legal or illegal, will never cease to occur. The only difference is that when it’s illegal, the rate of maternal mortality goes way, way up. And if you believe that abortion is murder, is it more moral to prevent one death or two deaths? We should all - no matter what side of the fence we’re on - believe in abortion prevention…through sex ed, government social programs, and other strategies (I should note that I support abortion prevention initiatives not become I think abortion is wrong, but because it’s a surgical procedure and an emotional issue for a lot of women. Why not try to prevent that?). And if providing pregnant women with more financial support is the new black with the anti-choice crowd, that’s fine with me. Have at it. I will happily pay increased tax rates to make that happen.

But it’s not all about federal welfare programs, I’d like to point out. A doctor who provides abortions told me recently that her clinic is seeing a large drop in abortion procedures - primarily because her clinic is focusing on inserting IUDs into patients at the time they have an abortion. The cervix is already dilated, so it’s a great time to get an IUD. This doctor’s clinic is not the only clinic pushing this initiative, and the evidence indicates that it’s making a big impact. 48% of women (give or take) who have an abortion have already had at least one…and so offering them an IUD at that time has the capacity to make a huge dent in the abortion rate.

I tend to think this is a good middle ground. I know that anti-choicers tend to think that ‘abortion on demand’ is the extremist Lefty position, but the fact is that the extremist position has more to do with China’s one child policy. Allowing women to choose their own destiny and make their own medical decisions rather than allow the government to make a decision one way or the other is very much a middle ground. Working hard on family planning and accidental pregnancy prevention is just smart.

No alibi

I’m feeling a bit of schedenfraude this morning at the news about Focus on the Family’s recent lay offs. There’s something kind of delicious about it. I mean, really - Prop 8 will most definitely get overturned in the courts as being un-Constitutional, and they spent so much money on it now they’re in the poor house. It was a waste of their time and a huge waste of their funders’ money.

Granted, their entire mission is a waste of their funders’ money. I think they have pretty much failed at every single thing they’ve tried to impact. They say two of their chief concerns are the “permanence of marriage” and the “value of children”. Well, child hunger rose 50% last year in the States and Focus on the Family didn’t give a flying fig about it, so that’s clearly an epic fail…and they’re fighting against loving marriages. Now true, it seems that the tanking economy will likely at least temporarily decrease the divorce rate…but when the same thing happened during the Great Depression, domestic violence rates spiked. But hey, Focus on the Family doesn’t seem concerned at all about domestic violence…so I guess that’s at least a temporary win for them.

Normally I would just feel sad for someone losing a job - prospects are pretty bleak right now. But in this case, well…if I were religious in any way, I’d consider it a judgment from on high. God, apparently, doesn’t like ugly…and Focus on the Family spreads ugly professionally.

Fly away

Having the day off after my trip to St. Louis is kind of a relief.  Granted, I had my own room this time around (we got an insanely good room rate for the conference), so it wasn’t as stressful as usual!

I didn’t get to see much of St. Louis, with the exception of getting to go to dinner with Amy (a regular commenter around here who is wonderful and funny). She drove me past the arch on the way to the restaurant, and I’m embarrassed to say I totally fell asleep for a minute or two in her car on the way back to my hotel.

The rest of the weekend was relatively uneventful, which is always great. There were several hands-on workshops during the weekend, so in a pinch I could probably now perform a first trimester manual vacuum aspiration abortion, a vasectomy, and insert Implanon. Very handy skills to have to add to my collection of ever-increasing ‘when the shit hits the fan’ skills!

Today I plan to just basically be lazy. Make some vegetable soup. Do some laundry. Maybe take a shower. And, of course, read up on all the things I missed over the last few days!

Chicken Little

Dude, are you totally sick of all the Screaming Mimis who are hunkering down (shout out to Christine - that’s her very favorite expression) for the Obama presidency?

I’ve seen some truly silly things on the internets over the last week. I’ll start with the whackadoos who are buying up guns because they are just sure that Obama is going to revoke the Second Amendment. Hey, the NRA is just doing gun store owners a solid by whipping gun enthusiasts into a big old pile of hand-wringing hysteria - people can barely afford to feed their kids and pay the mortgage, but the NRA convinced gun owners that now is the time to buy up all the $1,200+ semi-automatic weapons they can manage to get their hands on. Hey, who needs a roof over your head and food when you can live on fear, right?

And then there are the pearl clutchers who have begun an Obama impeachment effort before Obama has even taken office. Er…yeah. No doubt these are the same folk who insisted that it was traitorously un-American to disagree with the Commander-in-Chief during a time of war. Well…when that Commander-in-Chief was George W. Bush…those folk are a little prone to waffling.

Over the last week I’ve heard about people who are starting special savings accounts for when the America they love collapses and they have to move to another country (as if any other country except maybe Iran would be conservative enough)/build a bomb shelter/buy special lead panties….I’ve read about ninnies who think Obama is going to start rounding up Christians in Nazi-esque concentration camps (I’m envisioning a lampshade made from the skin of Fred Phelps)…and there have been all manner of other insane silliness.

I’ve read that conservatives just need a period of time to get shrill and panic-stricken, and then they’ll calm down and be ok. I’m not so sure I buy that. These are some seriously silly people. I can understand being concerned - even I am concerned. Not because I think Barack Obama can’t adequately handle the presidency, but because things are so bad after the last eight years of the Bush administration, 10 of the last 12 years with a Republican Congress, and the last two years with a Congress afraid to act like Democrats. So yeah, I’m concerned, too.

I remember very vividly when George W. took office. I was not happy, but I was at least willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I remember thinking, “Well…I’m sure he’ll surround himself with really smart people! How much damage could he do?” Clearly, I as overly optimistic. But at this point, there’s no where to go but up. I shouldn’t say this (because it’s really tempting fate, I know), but how could it possibly get any worse?

You can see me a mile away

My new schoolbus orangey yellow coat has certainly made me more noticeable than normal. This morning while I was at the Starbucks in the Gallery, this guy comes up to me and says, “I love your coat! You know, I was just thinking when it gets cold it would look great with a yellow and black scarf!” And then he tells me to have a nice a day and walks away.

Weird.

Several strangers have expressed love for my coat, but they could never wear something like that. I completely understand. It’s not an issue the color clashing with your skin tone or something, it’s that when you wear something like that you are really conspicuous. And most people run around just trying to blend in, to not stick out.

I don’t know if I got conked on the head when I started working at Circle K or what, but I seem to be a lot less concerned about blending these days.

It’s not like I’m going to start dressing like Mimi from The Drew Carey Show or anything…but I’ve definitely been less conservative in terms of clothing choices as of late. If I show up in orange pants, feel free to have an intervention.

My dead brother Amos, the Satanist

Like all religions, I think the Mormons have some odd practices. For instance, posthumously baptizing folks of other religions. That’s just stupid.

Holocaust survivors said Monday they are through trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a 13-year-old agreement barring the practice.

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say they are making changes to their massive genealogical database that will make it more difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for posthumous baptism by proxy, a rite that has been a common Mormon practice for more than a century.

But Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, said that is not enough. At a news conference in New York City on Monday, he said the church also must “implement a mechanism to undo what you have done.”

I think all this hilarious - I mean, so what if the Mormons baptize, for instance, me without my knowledge or consent? It doesn’t make a difference to me and it’s just a waste of time for the Mormons. I mean, really, we all become worm food when we die and there’s not white light filled with your dead relatives and no cloud-hopping with harp or rapping with Jesus about the meaning of life. You’re done, you’re over, and no amount of faith in an afterlife is going to change that (on a related note, I’ve heard that some Christians find this depressing and think I must be super depressed because of it and lead a hopeless life - I would say that this makes me want to be the best person I can be in THIS life and do as many good things while I’m here…because there aren’t any second chances to get it right later. That’s not depressing at all. It means that I’m doing things because I want to, not because I think it’ll please some invisible overlord in the sky. Hey, I’m just saying…).

But if we really want the Mormons to stop doing this kind of stupid shit, you need to fight fire with fire. I say, let’s get some Satanic group to start inducting dead Mormons into their religion. Come on, it’ll be fun! I would even temporarily convert to Satanism if it meant pissing off the Mormons. We could even send a nice certificate of Satanic membership to the dead Mormon’s family! A good time can be had by all!