cnn: Santorum's stone-age view of women
(CNN) -- Presidential candidate Rick Santorum is unhappy with last week's compromise over whether Catholic institutions should be required to cover contraception for their employees, arguing that birth control "shouldn't be covered by insurance at all." The issue, Santorum claims, is "economic liberty." But in the past he has made his real objection clear, categorizing contraception as "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."
Taken together with statements Santorum made in his 2005 book, "It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good," his opposition to contraception (as well as to abortion, even in the case of rape) seems part and parcel of a deep hostility toward efforts to empower women and enhance their status. He has shown nothing but contempt for what his book called the "radical" feminist "pitch" that "men and women be given an equal opportunity to make it to the top in the workplace." So perhaps it's not surprising that at the time of publication he did not list his wife as a co-author or contributor, although when asked last week about this and other comments on working mothers, he now says his wife wrote that part of the book.
Whichever member of the couple wrote the section on women, it is worth revisiting a couple of its points. Take, for instance, the book's dismissal of programs to help impoverished single mothers improve their job prospects by returning to school: "The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just wrong." Or its claim that unnamed "surveys" have shown that educated professional women find it "easier, more 'professionally' gratifying, and certainly more socially affirming, to work outside the home than to give up their careers to take care of their children."
The Santorums' apparent hostility to women's educational and professional advancement is insulting and out of touch with today's world. But it is also odd in light of their purported interest in the welfare of children. It turns out that the most powerful single influence on a child's educational success is not the mother's marital status but her own level of education and her educational aspirations for her children, according to education researcher W. Norton Grubb.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/14/opinion/coontz-santorum/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
= new reply since forum marked as read
Here's the entrance to Opus Dei's fancy new NYC headquarters -- the men's entrance.
That's right, women have to go around the corner and enter on a side street which has, shall we say, some rodent control issues.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2202661&mesg_id=2212714
