WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH IDAHO TODAY?

[solarbird]

Elevated to top level, found by rmd, Idaho's state legislature has a task force actively working to get women out of the workforce and into the home. First tool: making it harder to get divorced, because divorce is the work of Satan. Oh, and daycare is evil, too.

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Lawmakers look for ways to keep moms at home to strengthen families
Task force blames breakdown of traditional family for social ills

http://www.idahostatesman.com/politics/story/205994.html

Rep. Steven Thayn and his wife, Sherry, raised eight children on their family farm. She stayed home, and they home-schooled several of their children before eventually sending them to local schools.

[...]

That's why, as chairman of the Idaho House of Representatives' Family Task Force, he and others are considering controversial solutions such as repealing no-fault divorce laws and finding ways to encourage mothers to stay home with their children.

[...]

"Divorce is just terrible," Rep. Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries, said. "It's one of Satan's best tools to kill America."

[...]

Thayn does not shy from this view, calling pre-kindergarten education a "free babysitting service" and suggesting that early childhood education, day-care and Head Start may hurt families by keeping mothers away from home.

[...]

Schroeder agreed that no-fault divorce isn't going anywhere, but acknowledged that Thayn and like-minded legislators in the House are likely to again stymie Schroeder's push for day-care and early education legislation.

"That doesn't mean we won't try," Schroeder said.

[More at URL]

Comments

[solarbird]

Um... what're you on about now?

Let me make a guess: If you're talking about the deleted comments a couple of posts back, well, as I noted in replies in that post, I didn't delete them. The original poster deleted them. 2) Strictly speaking this is my own damn LJ and I can do whatever the hell I want, as per any other press.

If that's not what you're talking about, then, um... whut?

[tinlail.livejournal.com]

Given that the bill won't pass, and the people who are proposing, know that it won't pass. Apparently the issue you have is with them have the nerve to express that opinion.

[kathrynt.livejournal.com]

Honestly? If someone's trying to get something started in the Legislature, that's not just speech, that's action. This dude can rant on street corners about women staying home all he wants, but if he tries, however futilely, to make law about it, he deserves to get flak for it.

Dara, however, IS simply expressing her opinion. The nerve.

[solarbird]

What're you, bored? I'd drop the line about drowning plants, but you're not Jim, and this isn't xR.

[jessie-c.livejournal.com]

It's not an opinion, it's an explicitly expressed desire to take away freedoms. It deserves to be exposed as the danger it is.

And in case you didn't notice, that's one of the rights we have, guaranteed by our governments: the right to political action and to protest others' political actions.

[solarbird]

The strangest part is that other than the derision implied by the question in the subject line, I didn't even express an opinion. It's all statement of fact followed by their words, as quoted by the reporter. Even the Satan part is a legitimate close paraphrase; they're the ones who invoked Satan. So apparently by mentioning them, and quoting them, I'm oppressing them, which is really so very very out to lunch that when it comes back in it's still hung over from its fifteenth martini. Really, it's lost so far down in some decayed, unobservable trollworld that I can only speculate, guessing that perhaps quoting them is supposed to be abusive by being some form of enabling, perhaps some kind of stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself action - but even then, I can't be sure.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

isn't that one of the typical actions you see done by the fundamentalist right wing, though? to claim oppression as soon as any voices are raised, not necessarily even against them, but pointing out the truth behind their rhetoric?

[solarbird]

...sort of. But sort of not. They have long claimed to be oppressed by not being allowed to impose their religious views upon others in law, of course, but that's not quite the same. And they are censorous, but that's not quite they same either. (In particular, I think, because they desperately need an enemy, preferably a moral enemy, and criticism is obviously part of that.) And they are starting to claim oppression when they hear other voices that contradict their religion, such as evolutionary theory, physics, biology, sexuality (particularly sexuality) and so on, which is as close as you get to what you're saying. But that's different to political action, where you don't tend to hear that. Or, at least, I haven't heard it as a major theme.

[firni.livejournal.com]

Free speech is one of Satan's best tools to kill America.