Oxymoronity
Not-Serious-As-A-Heart-Attack, the oxymoronically self-described “Christian” morality- and-politics conglomerate, has been busy tying itself into a moral conundrum of oxymoronity.
Practitioners of the new politico-religion adhere fervently to the moral dictate “Do as I do, not as I say, then hate those I decide are worthy of hate today ‘cause ignorance is bliss.”
In June 2022, member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Colorado Lauren Beobert addressed the congregation of Cornerstone Christian Center, declaring:
“The church is supposed to direct the government; the government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it and I am tired of this separation of church and state junk. That’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say…”
[We forced ourselves to watch her religio-political statement interspersed with references to Sacred Scripture. In at least one case, she illustrated her theological bona fides by inserting a word into the line of scripture she was quoting and then expounding on her theological nothing-burger. She also told a charming story of giving her life to Jesus – under the influence of a Sunday school teacher who had a “moustache” – when she was three-years-old – a story inconsistent with other histories she has recounted.]
She opened her campaign-style “message” by explaining she had “a little more pep-in-my-step” because she had travelled through the night (presumably from Washington, D.C.) to arrive for the service and spent just seconds less than fifty minutes giving a pep talk, urging her audience to become “fearless” and active in the political arena. She offered a handful of references to Jesus declaring (Luke 4:18) he had been “sent to announce release to the captive.” Yet, she made no reference to the Beatitudes (Matthew 15:1-12) or story of Jesus describing the Final Judgment with its declaration “I was hungry,… thirsty,… a stranger,… naked,… sick,… in prison… I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these my brothers, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:31-40)
In the end, however, the representative, who opened by declaring “I hate politics. I love Jesus,” was in line with the Center’s religio-political stance, obliquely attacking governmental policies/mandates/regulations regarding crowd sizes and masking in order to limit or prevent the spread of COVID-19. The Center-associated K-12 private school took the position that masking was a parental decision; according to the state Department of Public Health and Environment, the school saw an outbreak of 15 COVID-related cases and the death of a regular volunteer.
As she approached the conclusion of her address, the representative declared,
“The reason we had so many overreaching regulations in our nation is because the church complied. The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it and I am tired of this separation of church and state junk. It’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like they say it does… I will open my church and allow my people to assemble which is against the law and, if I perish, I perish. I will not mask our children in school, which is against the law, and, if I perish, I perish….”
With that, she thanked the recalcitrant, anti-masking pastor and bowed to the applause.
Strange. Representative Boebert dropped out of high school in 2004 – during her senior year - because she became pregnant – when she was 17-years-old. Her campaign website reported that she was married in 2005; other sites place the date later. She earned her GED in 2020 – a month before her first election primary.
According to the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office, the representative’s husband was arrested on January 28, 2004 [document (annelandmanblog.com)] and charged with exposing his penis to two women at a bowling alley. He pleaded guilty to public indecency and lewd exposure and was sentence to four days in jail and two years’ probation. He was booked in February 2004 on a domestic violence charge – he “did unlawfully strike, shove or kick” the future member of Congress. She apparently extracted her revenge a few months later by scratching his face and chest and trashing his residence. She was charged with third-degree assault, criminal mischief and underage drinking, according to The New York Post, January 16, 2021.
Now comes the point at which it is difficult to be kind.
This is the same member of the House of Representatives who yelled to a March conclave of red-vestured political “conservatives” meeting in Maryland “We will make sure that our schools stop confusing our babies with your groomer gender ideologue [sic]. [We’re not quite sure what that is.]. Shame on you.” At the same conference, she noted, “We need to defund wokeism. Every authorization that these [federal] agencies have that allows them to be ‘woke,’ it has to be defunded. Every ‘woke’ program has to be defunded. You have critical race theory in your school, well you don’t get federal funding anymore. That’s how I think it should be; it has to be defunded…”
When an interviewer attempted to address “the carnage in our schools and what they are trying to teach our kids,…” the representative asserted:
“There are schools that are teaching worse than just gender ideology. I mean they have comprehensive sex-ed. They’re teaching kids to have and enjoy sex – and even same-sex sex, how to pleasure themselves. This is not something elementary students should learn. Nor any students in a public school. So, these are the things we should go after and, you know, cut their funding.”
[We listened to the entire interview and this was her only mention of education.]
At another session of the same confab, Representative Boebert announced to another session of the same red-dressing crowd that she is soon to be a “gigi.”
[We scoured several dictionaries and were temporarily left believing that becoming a “gigi” meant she was going to surrender her American citizenship and become a French “earth worker,” growing crops, planting trees and immersing herself in nature or – in Latin – a virgin woman, pronounced zhee-SHEE. Turns out “gigi” is a slangy and rather insulting – to herself - reference to the fact that her 17-year-old son and his girlfriend are expecting a baby in April.]
Follow the logic here.
A 36-year-old member of Congress who became pregnant at 17 and never finished high school takes the stage at one of the nation’s leading “conservative values” powwows and declares,
"I'm going to tell you all for the first time in a public setting that not only am I a mom of four boys but come April, I will be a 'gigi' to a brand-new grandson [and she and her husband] are so excited to welcome this new life into our family.
"Now my son, when I approached him and told him, '[son’s name], I'm going to be a 36-year-old grandmother,' he said, 'Well, didn't you make Granny a 36-year-old granny?'
"I said, 'Yes, I did.' And he said, 'Well, then it's hereditary.’”
Wow! Unmarried sex and conceiving children outside of marriage is part of Christian DNA. Illegitimacy is hereditary and to be laughed about. But being gay or transgendered is a choice. That’s a Biological Sciences Today headline we missed!
Now to the oxymoronyism.
The representative then declared:
"There's something special about rural conservative communities — they value life. If you look at teen pregnancy rates throughout the nation, well, they're the same in rural and urban areas. [Not true.] However, abortion rates are higher in urban areas, and teen mom rates are higher in rural conservative areas because we understand the preciousness of the life that is about to be born."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nationwide and in urban counties the teen birth rate has dropped by about half since 2007, while falling by a little more than a third in rural counties. Importantly, the CDC noted:
“Although reasons for the declines are not totally clear, evidence suggests these declines are due to more teens abstaining from sexual activity, and more teens who are sexually active using birth control than in previous years. Still, the US teen birth rate is substantially higher than in other western industrialized nations, and racial/ethnic and geographic disparities in teen birth rates persist.”
This is not to argue questions of abortion or “pro-birth” politics. It’s about facts.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2014, before the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, 20 percent of US women had to travel at least 42 miles to access abortion services and women in rural counties in Montana, Texas, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas had to travel more than 180 miles. Bloomberg (June 24, 2022) now estimates that Americans in 26 states already (or soon will) have to travel 552 miles to get an abortion.
[The Guttmacher Institute is self-described on its website as a “research and policy organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) worldwide… [The GM] vision is aligned with a progressive and evidence-based definition of SRHR, grounded in human rights, which holds that sexual and reproductive health is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction or infirmity but a state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being in all aspects of sexuality and reproduction.”]
This is not to argue questions of abortion or “pro-birth” politics.
It’s about facts.
According to the CDC:
Pregnancy and birth are significant contributors to high school dropout rates among girls. Only about 50% of teen mothers receive a high school diploma by 22 years of age, whereas approximately 90% of women who do not give birth during adolescence graduate from high school.
The children of teenage mothers are more likely to have lower school achievement and to drop out of high school, have more health problems, be incarcerated at some time during adolescence, give birth as a teenager, and face unemployment as a young adult.
So, Representative Boebert and others wish to “defund” sex-ed programs that teach children “how to pleasure themselves” and how to avoid teenage pregnancies.
Whoa! Nobody – and we do mean nobody – has to teach young people of any age how to “pleasure themselves.” “Gratification behavior” - a term you would find in medicine and psychology - has been observed in utero via ultrasound. Touching genitals has both a pleasurable and a self-soothing effect on babies and a boy can experience a short-term erection as his body reacts to a full bladder or the feeling of air on his genitals during a diaper change or while simply discovering his body and what feels good.
Let’s be clear. The National Education Association called for teacher training programs in sexuality education in 1912 – 111 years ago. In 1940, the U.S. Public Health Service labeled sexuality education an “urgent need” and the American School Health Association launched a nationwide program in family life education in 1953.
Teaching about all the dynamics of human sexuality does not cause children or adolescents to “become” gay or straight or transsexual and we doubt that the representative and/or the father of her four sons or her son and the mother of his child learned “how to make a baby” in a classroom. Despite the probability that their human sexuality classes – assuming they were offered in their schools – focused on “how not to get pregnant when you’re 16- or 17-years-old,” they did that all on their own.
Nonetheless, the “gigi” representative and her political posse are gearing up to make what grade and high school students might learn about sexuality a Number One campaign issue over the next twenty months. It will be interesting to see how they glorify multi-generational unmarried teenage pregnancies and domestic violence.