Freedom

Moving Forward

“Since going backward is not the answer, how do we move forward?”

                            Riane Eisler (The Chalice and the Blade)

If you have never read The Chalice and the Blade, I recommend it. The book was first published in 1987, and is subtitled, Our History, Our Future. In it, Eisler looks at ancient civilizations, including Biblical, and chronicles how they inform our world today. It is a good look at just how far we've come—or not.

Take women's reproductive rights, for instance. This issue has become a twenty-first century talking point in the Presidential campaign. No one was more stunned than I when words began to fly, and of course, lawsuits, about whether institutions funded by religious denominations must allow their medical insurance providers to give birth control pills to women employees if they want them. The objection being that since certain religious institutions are opposed to contraception in any form, it is a strike against their “religious rights” to allow women to obtain them.

If you use the Bible as a starting point, (or currant law in some places in the world today) a woman's virginity was/is a critical issue for her family. In Eisler's words: “On a very practical level, these laws regulating women's virginity were designed to protect what were essentially economic transactions between men.” A woman who was/is found to be 'stained' could be stoned to death because she had invalidated her worth to her father or husband. Furthermore, the entire village/congregation would stone her so that the father's liability for murder was protected. A woman who is free to behave as she chooses in the sexual arena was/is a threat to the entire social fabric.

We think that we in America are far beyond this, but here we are in 2012 debating whether women should have the right to contraception. We have seven-billion people on this planet right now, and that will increase to nine billion over the next fifteen years. We must ask ourselves, what is this all about, especially in light of the fact that men's virility drugs are covered by insurance. What does it say about the status of women in our modern world?

Freedom is a very frightening thing. How do we exercise control and still be free? Can we allow all our citizens, men and women, gay and straight, black and white and brown, to be free?

                                                In the spirit,

                                               Jane