Don't know what it is about some people that makes them want to try and control others. There's a lot of them though.
Got lots of firsthand experience with that growing up in the Snake-Handling Belt. Think Bible Belt but more insular and extreme.
Whether it was demon rum, the perils of premarital sex, the evils of evolution and abortion, or just old fashioned Satanic rituals, there was always a group of people hellbent on 'protecting' us children. They didn't really care what us children or anyone else thought about the matter though.
They were never more than a small percentage of the population but for reasons that still escape me, the adults were largely unwilling to buck them and push back and they largely got their way. We paid the piper for it too.
'Sex ed' was just photos of sexually transmitted infections, a brazen attempt at scaring us out of having sex before marriage. Worked so well that we regularly had pregnant twelve year olds and people who were grandparents at the ripe old age of 32.
'Intelligent design' would get mentioned in the same breath as evolution at school. Surprisingly, the school system regularly scored near the top of the 'worst performing' lists.
For the longest time I thought of this as a quirk of growing up in an isolated and ignored community in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The recent leak from SCOTUS gives lie to this being an isolated problem.
Roger Taney is proud of you, Samuel Alito. Who wants to make book on whether this ruling leads to a civil war too?
These next few months and years will determine whether an unrepresentative minority gets to dictate the terms of existence for everyone. Who am I kidding, that's a tradition as old as this 'land of the free and home of the brave.'
When your system of government was designed to appease slaveowners chiefly concerned with protecting their 'peculiar institution' it should be something other than a surprise when injustice is the result. This isn't an aberration, this is the system working as intended.
Abortion may be what we're talking about now but we all know it's just the starting point. I have stood and listened as a preacher ranted in one breath about abortion and in the next declared that women should be subservient to men and not have the right to vote.
Fuck you, no. I've seen the results of these petty tyrants and it's generation after generation caught in the poverty trap, prohibitions that don't apply to them, and enforced ignorance.
Had more than enough of that to last me a lifetime, so last Wednesday I joined hundreds of others in a rally and march in downtown Louisville. Socialists, communists, anarchists, even your run-of-the-mill liberals were there, it was a bit of a diverse crowd.
Many were familiar faces from other, related struggles.
After the rally on the steps of Metro Hall we took to the streets.
Even paid the Kentucky Derby crowd a visit.
We won't know anything for certain until the final ruling comes out in June, but I don't expect it to be anything good. Also don't expect people to take it laying down.
Pretty sure we'll be back in the streets again. Until then, enjoy the photos from last Wednesday.
To my comrades out there fighting the same fight, Hold the line!