Two issues have occupied much of the media lately: guns and abortion, two very touchy topics. The leaked SCOTUS decision that could gut Roe v Wade and the recent spate of mass shootings have inspired numerous headlines, opinion pieces and editorial cartoons.
The recent surges in mass shootings and attacks on reproductive rights could be among the last hurrahs of the Old Boy Network, the white, straight, wealthy, fundamentalist Protestant patriarchy that has controlled this country from Day One. The framers of the Constitution originally intended for voting rights – hell, most civil rights – to be strictly for white men who owned land. Women, people of color, and those who didn’t own land need not apply. It took a bloody civil war to end the evil of slavery, and decades of hell-raising after that to give nonwhites nominal legal equality. Women could not vote in this country till the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, and we are STILL fighting to pass the ERA, though we may be on the threshold of success.
Over the last many years we have seen the rise of “men’s rights” groups and the Incels, as well as organizations such as the Proud Boys. The anti-abortion movement has succeeded in getting harsh laws passed to strip women of reproductive choices, though courts have struck down a lot of them. Many of these extremists are anti-government (while they want everybody’s intimate lives to be strictly regulated) and strongly for more access to guns – in a country where there are 12 guns for every 10 residents. Pro-gun and anti-abortion go together hand in hand because both represent male dominance over women. Of course, not everybody is either pro-gun and anti-choice or vice versa; one can be pro-gun and pro-choice, or against both. However, many gun advocates are anti-choice, and many abortion foes lean strongly right on many other issues.
The “great replacement theory” that wound up front and center after the Buffalo massacre is typical of the vile bilge that extreme right-wingers like to spew. They fear that white people are being replaced by non-whites, which is why they feel a need to kill POCs. Why? The times, they are a-changin’. Out with the old, in with the new. That is how life always has been. All change inspires opposition and protest, all change is painful. But change and grow as a society we must.
In my essay about the Buffalo shooting I touched on the fears of the Straight White Rich Male establishment losing its grip. Extending such rights as voting, marriage, and equality before the law is not a zero-sum game. When people who are different from you gain civil and human rights, your own rights are not lessened; in fact, everybody wins.
