Wednesday, April 17, 2013

The Ohio GOP Version of Cavalleria Rusticana

Oh, those Republicans in Columbus! Here they were sitting around sort of adult-like on  the House Finance Committee to come up with a state budget bill and along came an amendment on something called "gateway sex". Quick to avoid suspicion from the religionists  keeping watch, the Committee voted 20-9 along party  lines to accept the amendment.  The majority, of course, was the team of GOP Rustics who look after everybody's sex life but their own in offering their gateway to the distant past.  .

The amendment, which restricted any mention of  non authorized sex in a school's sex education classes, is even tougher than the one passed last year in Tennessee, where students at least are permitted to hear the word contraception in the classroom. No way would that be possible under the Ohio amendment. But the Tennessee law  does deny hand-holding to students (oh,  for the simpler days when we were all at liberty to play pattycake!)  Will we next  have separate classrooms for boys and girls?

That's not all.  the GOP panel also supported defunding Planned Parenthood.  The other side is outraged by the Rustic cavalry's  obsession with sex, subliminal, simulated or whatever.   Kellie Copeland, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice, accused the finance committee  of regressing to the 1950s.   She was being kind.  Actually, it regressed to the Middle Ages, when the church went out of its way to regulate reproductive sex.  Even condemned  masturbation, which is hardly enforceable, don't you think? .

My question, fellow Ohioans:  What the hell does sex education have to do with a state budget?  Nothing at all, I'd say, which is one more clue to how the Rustics are doing  their spring plowing on everything  these days in the Buckeye legislature.










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