It seems to me that if the Family Research Council, the American Family Association and Focus on the Family put some effort into it, they could probably get a bill ensuring paid maternity leave for working Americans. That and maybe working on our shocking infant mortality rate would help a lot more actual families than hating gay people.
Does anyone know why this has not happened? It seems kind of obvious to me. Maybe it never comes up at their board meetings.
Baud
No fundraising opportunities there.
Tim F.
@Baud: Seriously? I would donate.
Soonergrunt
“Does anyone know why this has not happened?”
Because none of those people actually gives a flying fuck about families.
SATSQ.
Baud
@Tim F.:
No, you wouldn’t. There are surely liberal groups that fight for these issues — why would you choose to give money to a conservative group simply because they chose to not be completely hypocritical about their values?
dan
Sure, they could do that. If they wanted to do that.
debit
It’s because those babies, once born, might turn out to be gay. Like Gomert’s terrorist babies, these could be gay terrorist babies.
BGinCHI
For “family,” read “fascist.”
Insuring compliance is job #1.
Redshirt
Are there any groups with the word “Family” in their title that actually do good? Or is it all DoubleSpeak?
Yutsano
@Soonergrunt: This. Remember that whole caring about a zygote until it’s born then it’s get a jerb u lazy moocher? They embody that spirit. Of course the fact that they’re merely Republican shill organisations doesn’t help either.
Jay C
Maybe because naming an organization something like “The American Homophobic Crypto-Fascist Theocracy Association” would clutter up the letterhead too much?
Schlemizel
its a simple misunderstanding. You have misidentified the organizations:
Fascist Research Council
American Fascist Association
Fungus on the Family
Once you have properly identified them the answer to your question is quiet simple. FAMILY has nothing to do with why they exist
edit – see I am late to this party, should have known.
peach flavored shampoo
Because that might have an indirect effect in helping Blacks, Mexys, and other likely Democratic voters.
I’m sure if they could find a way to funnel all their clout into helping exclusively poor whites in Texas and Alabama, they’d be right on that.
SFAW
Because, in their view, the only REAL families are those where the Daddy goes to work, brings home the bacon, and the Mommy stays home to raise the kids. All other so-called “families” are just pretenders, and not in keeping with Traditional Values.
It’s not unlike why groups of that ilk would never support any effort to increase availability of contraceptive methods – including condoms, which do not destroy a blastocyst. It’s not about “The Sanctity of Life,” it’s about the Sanctity of Not Having Unapproved Sex.
Everything else is either window dressing or fringe benefits.
gene108
Because most of those people, who’d need that kind of maternity leave and/or infants who die young (per your link) aren’t born into families.
They are probably born out of wedlock or the mothers are just some guys “baby mama” and therefore are not proper Christian families.
By definition those groups work to protect American Christian families and not the spawn of godless sinners.
schrodinger's cat
@gene108: Actually they expect women to be barefoot in winter and pregnant in summer and not work outside the home. So the question of maternity live does not arise at all.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Because we’re foolish enough to count neonates as live births, and the rest of the civilized world doesn’t, so the numbers are badly skewed.
At least, that’s the comeback I always get when I bring it up.
NonyNony
I’m sorry, but how would this help these groups agenda to get the wimminfolk out of the workplace and back into the kitchen in any way?
artem1s
“Does anyone know why this has not happened?”
because if mommy is pregnant she should be at home and barefoot. unless she is a feminazi slut who will use her paid leave to have moar sexytime and illegitimate babies once she has had her late term abortion.
Frankensteinbeck
@SFAW:
This. Conservatives believe the world should be Leave It To Beaver. Since humans don’t work like that, their idea of ‘family’ becomes a rotting cesspool of hate and dysfunction. But hey, at least it’s between a man and a woman!
The Moar You Know
These groups are not using the term “family” in a traditional sense.
More in the “Manson family” sense.
SFAW
@Frankensteinbeck:
Fixed, so that Rushbo would not be excluded.
cmorenc
@TimF:
Because in a traditional family based on sound Christian Biblical principles, women are supposed to stay home taking care of babies and small children anyway rather than out working. You don’t need to “leave” to return to employment you shouldn’t be doing anyway while you have babies and small children.
Where exactly in the Bible is this principle laid out? Hint: look in the chapter immediately after the one where Moses rode a dinosaur.
RaflW
@Redshirt: There is the Family Equality Council. I sometimes have to remind myself when I’m shocked that they’ve released some actually pro-family statement that this isn’t a right wing front group for Christianist white patriarchy.
Bubblegum Tate
Well, I’ve been assured by many a “pro-family” wingnut that the infant mortality rate statistic is a lie because mumblemumblemumble FREEDOM!
So there’s that.
Shrillhouse
That article on America’s infant mortality rate is seven years old. Anyone have more recent stats?
I’m too lazy to look, but I’m going to go out on limb and assume the situation has not improved…
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
This x eleventy. Maternity leave just encourages women to work outside the home, which is worse than Stalin with a side of Pol Pot and Mao sauce. Besides, if you can’t afford to take time off work to look after your newborn, you probably aren’t giving them enough grift for them to give a damn about you anyway.
piratedan
@Soonergrunt: the same way that the anti-choice forces give a shit about kids, no prenatal care, no scholarship funds, no school lunches nor work programs for single moms, just have the kids and shut up…..
Grumpy Code Monkey
@gene108:
Yeah, pretty much this. It’s not so much about protecting families, it’s about protecting tradition. And in traditional families, maternity leave is simply not an issue because the wife isn’t supposed to work outside of the home once she has kids, and the husband’s job is to bring home bacon, not moon over the sprog.
And that’s not necessarily a bad way to be; if the wife wants to be a full-time mommy and homemaker, and they can afford to live on daddy’s salary alone, and they have a support system in the form of grandparents or aunts and uncles who are willing to help out, then hell, more power to them.
But “non-traditional” families are becoming the norm, not the exception. It’s getting harder to find families that can afford to live the idealized Donna Reed lifestyle. That’s threatening as hell to many social conservatives; that’s why organizations like FotF exist in the first place, to combat these changes.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
What do you mean? The 1% the GOP elite care about don’t need paid paternity leave, and the last thing they need is the help thinking that their family is more important than their wage-slavery.
The point of the culture war is to divide up the 99% so that the 1% can get their economic agenda through.
Social conservatives are the political equivalent of a cheap date. A couple of judges, maybe a symbolic law that gets struck down in court: nothing much that cuts into the budget. So they’re easily bought off.
SFAW
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
That’s only because America has turned away from Jeebus, whose own family structure is the ideal to which wingnuts think all should aspire.
Of course, wingnuts might have to get used to going to a lot of bar mitzvahs, but …
Cassidy
You guys are wrong when you’re thinking that Conservatives pine for a Leave it to Beaver world. First, everyone on that show was nice, at least in that little slice of suburbia. They don’t want nice, they want punishment. The world they want is in Timothy LaHayes
violent death and rape of all the non-Christian uber-people who deserve because they’re dirty sluts and liberalsLeft Behind series. Secondly, they want everyone to look at them and see the idealic world of LitB, but they want to live a porno behind the curtain where Mom/ June takes it like a champ and begs Mr. Uberman for more and if he can get a little extra action from Martha next door while his June stays pure and chaste as hisfucktoywife, then even better.WereBear
@SFAW: If someone could die from cognitive dissonance, they would.
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
Well, Jesus’ parents weren’t married when he was born, and he had two daddies, so I’m not sure he’s the best example of a traditional family.
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
Well, Jesus’ parents weren’t married when he was born, and he had two daddies, so I’m not sure he’s the best example of a traditional family.
Tone in DC
@Bubblegum Tate:
LULz. Statistics and facts have more than just a liberal bias. Such verifiable things are positively un-Murkan.
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
Noticed that, did you?
On the other hand, at least his two daddies weren’t having sex with each other (ETA: well, that we know of), so that makes everything a little more OK.
But “bringing home the bacon” might also be a problem.
Of course, this entire line of thought assumes that the wingnuts actually CARE about following Jeebus’s teachings. But, as Omnes and burnspbesq (and eemom?) might say: assumes facts not in evidence.
Frankensteinbeck
@Cassidy:
Yes, and no. The thing about Leave It To Beaver is that it’s a superficial worldview that has nothing to do with actual reality. You create the right external appearance, conclude that you’re a good person and other people aren’t, and then you’re free to hire your Dominican rentboy or whatever. Superficial moralities fuck people up and create hateful, self-righteous abusers who promote superficial moralities. It becomes a chicken-and-egg thing.
Cassidy
@Frankensteinbeck: We’re essentially saying the same thing. They want people to percieve them as living the LitB life, but they want to ge ttheir kink on without anyone knowing about it. Everything is a psychosexual power trip fantasy to them.
gelfling545
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: What?
Frankensteinbeck
@Cassidy:
Yeah. It all fits together, too. Treating women, minorities, and the poor like shit, adulating fictitious heroes, putting tribal conflict over supposed principles, IOKIYAR, science denial, and more – all tie intimately into this superficial morality and the hate and hypocricy it breeds. It’s one big disgusting psychological knot, and we’ve watched it feed on itself more and more actively these last few years.
? Martin
Huh. 3 organizations all spelled ‘fetus’ wrong. What are the odds of that?
Chris
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Yeah.
To Republicans, a “family” is an institution defined by the man leading and the wife and children submitting. A microcosm of society as it should be. Therefore, any attempt to allow people to deviate from that model is an attack on the things that, to them, are what make a family a family.
Cassidy
These assholes have no core “values”. They have avarice, maliciousness, and spite.
BAtFFP
@gelfling545:
I am also confused. A neonate is any newborn in the first month or so of life. Perhaps the good Sister meant something like “severely premature neonates?”
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
As I like to say, the wingnuts think that some of the words in the Gospels are in red because those parts are optional. It makes as much sense as any other explanation for their behavior.
Villago Delenda Est
These groups are made of up of Mammon worshiping vermin.
Of course paid maternal leave isn’t on their agenda, nor is child nutrition, especially for the melanin enhanced.
These are the assholes Jesus tossed out of the temple.
Roger Moore
@Cassidy:
I think this is about right. They want to be seen as righteous by their peers and that’s all that matters to them. It’s as if they’ve never bothered to read and understand Matthew 6.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@BAtFFP:
Dammit, Jim, I’m an engineer, not a doctor. ;)
I’ve always heard it used for any baby, premature or not, in the NICU. The rest are newborns. Latinate terms in the hospital, Anglo-Saxon in the home, as Sir Walter might say.
I think the claim is that other countries wait to see if a severely ill newborn survives a few days before declaring it a live birth.
Also, too, socialized medicine. Death panels aren’t just for Grandma.
John T
It’s been obvious for decades that “family” is usually just a code word for “promoting patriarchal values, especially through the vehicles of anti-gay bigotry or restricting women’s individual freedoms.” Promote policies that would benefit the stability and economic well-being of actual families (rather than just idealized families)? That’s socia1ism!! That’s secularist social engineering!!
When I moved to a certain college town a long time ago, I kept hearing my classmates talk about “Smith Family Bookstore” but I wouldn’t have been caught dead in a place like that. But then one of my professors assigned a book that could only be purchased there, so I went in and was relieved to find that it was just a bookstore (and a really good one!) owned by the Smith family, not Smith’s family bookstore.
Kyle
Because they don’t give a damn about family, or the sanctity of marriage, for that matter. Those are just marketing terms. Their goal is to harass and foment hate against gay folk. It’s never been more than that.
BAtFFP
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Ah yes. Now I am on your page. Medical/baby terms are weird like that (for the record I’m an RN, not an MD, and I *definitely* don’t do babies so I could be totally full of poop here).
Also socialized medicine kills. Except when it doesn’t; then it probably just stifles the consumer economy.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@BAtFFP: Looking it up, ‘neonate’ is definitely ‘first 28 days of life’. I suspect that it moved into common usage along with ‘neonatal unit’ as our ability to keep premature babies alive improved. Or through television. It’s certainly the only way I would have heard the term. I don’t do babies, either.
karen
They care about “children” the same way that the GOP cares about soldiers. They’re only useful as concepts, not as a reality. As long as the child is a fetus or even just a woman’s egg, they’re abstract, the “could be.” But they have no interest when the “could be” becomes something that “is.” They can project their hopes, dreams and values on what “could be.”
Think of how much the GOP says they “love the troops.” They love them as cannon fodder, heroes that are willing to die for our country. But they have no interest in them if they survive and return home damaged in some way. That’s why they shoot down benefits for vets and their families. That’s why Walter Reed hospital was so pathetically run down.
The GOP and their ilk is really big on concepts they can project their values on. But once they’re a reality, they’ve lost their usefulness.
Big R
@Redshirt: Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
Stacy
@Jay C “Maybe because naming an organization something like “The American Homophobic Crypto-Fascist Theocracy Association” would clutter up the letterhead too much?” Love it!
Reply
clarence swinney
CLINTON TO BUSH TO OBAMA
Who Dug the Deep Hole? Who Fumbled the ball?
Numbers rounded
Clinton left Bush an 1800B Budget
Bush Left Obama a 3500 Budget
Clinton left Bush a 240B Surplus as far as the eye can see
Bush left Obama a 1400B Deficit as far as the eye can see
Clinton left Bush 5,700B of Debt
Bush left Obama 11,800B of Debt
Clinton left Bush a 237,000 net new jobs created per month
Bush left Obama a 31,000 lowest number since Hoover.
Clinton left Bush 17 Million Manufacturing Jobs
Bush left Obama 11 Million Manufacturing Jobs
Clinton left Bush a 10,800 Dow
Bush left Obama an 8028 Dow
Clinton left Bush Peace on Earth Good Will From Most Men
Bush left Obama Hell on Earth Two disastrous wars. Enmity of 1500 Million Muslims
Clinton left Bush a President most highly rated of any peacetime President in Asia, Africa, Europe.
Bush left Obama the most hated President in history
Bush left Obama an Housing Tsunami and Financial Volcano
Bush left Obama, in 2008, an 8500B Bail out commitment Yes! 8500 not just 700
Bush left Obama his Takeover of Fannie/Freddie, AIG, and first bailout of Chrysler
Bush increased maximum loan by Fannie/Freddie from $153,000 in 2000 to $300,000 then to $729,000
That is how F&F got stuck with so many toxic mortgages. Bush gift to Big Bank pals.
Bush increased FDIC maximum deposit coverage from $100,000 to $250,000. Help the rich.
Dave
Huh…
I guess I misunderstood the gay-obsessed Dobson-led group name.
I had heard it was “Focus on the Anus”.
sherparick
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Yes. First, “pro-life” is all about inflicting maximum pain and slut-shaming of women. It is about scaring “good” girls away from sex and punishing the ones’ who go “bad.” It is about upholding patriarchy, and saying that women with young children to bound themselves to an obedient relationship with a man who will “take care of them” (even though the jobs where a single income could support a middle class life style are becoming few and far between). When the resulting poverty and hardships result (or rather make unforgivable) social pathologies such as violence, drug abuse, alcoholism, etc. then it can be blamed on the low “character” of the Blahs, Bronhs, and, increasingly and ironically, the white working class.
SFAW
@Dave:
Don’t forget Rushbo with his almost-omnipresent talk about “anal poisoning.”
Steve J.
Fundie Gary Bauer provides the answer:
“If we gave our voters an accurate portrayal of our ideas, that we want to cut the rate of growth on Social Security, give tax cuts to billionaires and then the values issues, the values issues would be more popular than the economic agenda of the current Republican Party,” said Bauer, citing particularly those Mass-attending Roman Catholics who have fled the Democrats.
fuckwit
Substitute “patriarchy” for “family” wherever they use it, and you have unlocked the code.
LosGatosCA
@fuckwit:
That’s very close. Check their favorite ‘family’ story:
“Tony Perkins held a gun to his head and Ronald Reagunz assured him that either his brains, or his signature, would be on the contract. That’s a true story. That’s my family research council. . .”