(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Trump and the SBC are Giving Women and "Nones" More Reason to Vote for Biden [Update: SBC Nixes IVF] [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-12 [Update 1419 PDT] The Southern Baptist Convention has just voted to oppose in-vitro fertilization: Why the Southern Baptists’ vote opposing IVF could change national politics The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest and most politically powerful Protestant denomination, voted Wednesday to oppose in vitro fertilization. The move may signal the beginning of a broad turn on the right against IVF, an issue that many evangelicals, anti-abortion advocates and other social conservatives see as the “pro-life” movement’s next frontier — one they hope will eventually lead to restrictions, or outright bans, on IVF at the state and federal levels. The article is worth reading for its highlighting of the complexities of the issue and the difficulty this will cause Republicans, and in particular for the way it shows the extremes to which the anti-abortion fanatics are going. The IVF conversation has put Republicans in an uncomfortable position as they stare down polling showing overwhelming popular support for IVF. Overwhelming, like eighty-six percent overwhelming. Next up: Contraception? -------------------------------------------------— [end update] -------------------------------------— Jessica Grose has an interesting column in this morning’s NY Times: Young Women Are Fleeing Organized Religion. This Was Predictable. While over the past half-century, Americans of all ages, genders and backgrounds have moved away from organized religion, as I wrote in a series on religious “nones” — atheists, agnostics and nothing-in-particulars — young women are now disaffiliating from organized religion in greater percentages than young men. And women pushing back on the beliefs and practices of several different faiths, particularly different Christian traditions, is something I have been reading about more and more. In particular, Grose points to the long-developing trend in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC): The Southern Baptist Church [sic], the country’s largest Protestant denomination, may be the most glaring example of this tension. As my newsroom colleagues Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham reported last year, an “ultraconservative” wing of the church’s leadership flexed its muscles and voted to bar women from its leadership ranks, ousting several churches that retained female pastors. The final vote on the issue is taking place this week at the denomination’s annual convention. This move is partly driven by a growing movement among religious conservatives to enforce “complementarianism.” There are several versions of this belief, but basically it holds that when God created men and women (who are strictly heterosexual and with no variants), he (of course, it’s “he”) assigned them equal but complementary roles: men lead, women submit, etc. In a 2021 article for Georgetown University’s Berkley Forum, Maxwell explained that years earlier, Southern Baptists doubled down on a specific vision of complementarianism “with the publication of the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, which proclaimed that wives should submit to their husbands and that pastors should be men.” And then there’s Trump. When looking at evangelical Christians in particular, Putnam and Campbell note, “While evangelicals as a group are somewhat more skeptical” of what the authors call religious feminism, “that difference is almost entirely concentrated among an extremely fundamentalist minority of evangelicals.” Since Trump emerged on the political scene in 2015, however, the voices in this minority have become louder and more aggressive. For example: Trump’s rhetorical style has “given people conservative permission to be as conservative as they want to be to say inflammatory things. And social media has allowed that to proliferate and metastasize in ways that it would not have 20 years ago, 15 years ago, even 10 years ago.” [Quoting Ryan Burge, a political scientist and author of The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are and Where They Are Going] The “nones” are now the largest single “religious” group in the US (though that growth might be slowing down). This highlights another point: One reason the religious right is trying to hard to seize control of the government is that they are losing adherents. Having failed to persuade them to their way of belief, they now want to use force — including the force that governments alone can wield — people back into the “fold.” According to the Pew Research Center article (which is from January this year), “nones” whose religion is “nothing in particular” tend to vote less and be less civic-minded, while atheists and agnostics are more active than many religious people. This points to a group we need to reach out to — with a message that voting for Biden will preserve their freedom to be “nothing in particular” while voting for Trump will force them to behave as their religious enemies want them to (even if they can’t literally force them back into the pew). While this message will resonate with both men and women, it has a particular warning for women. Grose doesn’t discuss Trump’s misogyny — which is so well-known that I’m not going to bother linking to examples (plus I really don’t want to read about them again!) — but I would say that is clearly a factor in the SBC’s and other evangelical/fundamentalists’ attraction to him. They expect that, if he gets his hands on the power of the federal government, he will use it to help them impose their historic domination over women all over them. If they get to do that, God help women. God help us all. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/12/2246286/-Trump-and-the-SBC-are-Giving-Women-More-Reason-to-Vote-for-Biden?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/