(Astrology Explored) Another elected demi-god of the the religious right throws a down a gauntlet to the majority of American women by denying women a right to speak on a house committee hearing on birth control.
This morning, Democrats tore into House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) for preventing women from testifying before a hearing examining the Obama administration’s new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees. Republicans oppose the administration’s rule and have sponsored legislation that would allow employers to limit the availability of birth control to women.
Ranking committee member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) had asked Issa to include a female witness at the hearing, but the Chairman refused, arguing that “As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness.
Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) walked out of the hearing in protest of his decision, citing frustration over the fact that the first panel of witnesses consisted only of male religious leaders against the rule. Holmes Norton said she will not return, calling Issa’s chairmanship an “autocratic regime.”
And to further add fuel to the fire, on Twitter Issa compares his campaign to the work of Dr. Martin Luther King.
As the religious right presses forth on its agenda to mold freedom of religion into a mandate that everyone should do as they say, one just has to wonder what in H E double toothpicks is going on? What in the astrology chart of the United States that gives traction to a small slice of America to force their ideology on everyone else. And just why are we kicking this ball around in house sub-committee hearings which get little coverage in the media?
Lest you think that Issa is just a glitch in the overall perfection of our system of government, listen to what Republican presidential nomination contender Rick Santorum has to say about birth control:
Santorum has long opposed contraception and has pledged to preach about “the dangers of contraception in this country,” if elected president. “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be,” he has said. The former Pennsylvania senator has also claimed that states have the right to outlaw birth control.
While the political right has been stirring the pot of “moral” issues for quite some time now, they and their close associates the Teabaggers seem to be gaining steam. Steam is a very good analogy for this situation as Neptune, the planet of illusion, deception, and spiritual ideals has recently entered the zodiac sign it rules, misty Pisces. This zodiac sign, Pisces carries the same general meanings of the planet that rules it. Slow moving Neptune as been running over the United States moon since the last election (Change you can believe in) but now it has slipped into Pisces. The last time Neptune was in the Pisces in the last part of the nineteenth century a spiritual revival moved through the country with apocalyptical pronouncements thunderously made in tent revivals. The Seventh Day Adventists formed on this time, based on their founder William Miller’s predictions of the second coming of Jesus Christ. After Miller’s predictions failed to materialize the sect reorganized with many followers either returning to their former denominations or forming others. Shakers were among this group.
Now with Neptune’s return, especially running over the democratic, freedom loving Moon in Aquarius, we see another run at the role of women (the moon) and what freedoms women should have (Aquarius). That is should be couched in cloak of religion is not surprising. Pisces and Neptune loves to throw spiritual truisms (or old wive’s tales) up for general digestion.
To be fair, our US chart with many planets in the sign of the womb, Cancer, predisposes us to overly romanticize the child bearing role of women. And our Moon makes an inconjunct to end of that stellium, Mercury, which represents not only our thinking processes but children as well. We tend to swing to extremes in our thinking about women and children without finding a happy middle. This inconjunct is part of a Yod, with Mercury at one leg and the US Natal Neptune as the other with both those inconjuncts pointing to the US Moon. As a feature of the US chart this Yod highlights the lightning rod issue of women’s reproductive freedoms.
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For instance on March 3, 1873 Congress passed the Comstock Law which made distribution of contraception information through the mails illegal labeling such information “obscene”. Jupiter the planet of laws was in the 9th house of legal affairs, directly opposing the US Moon.
Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood as Saturn passed through the US Stellium of Cancer planets and ultimately the Mercury in Cancer in 1916. Sanger saw the effects of the Comstock Law in her own family and in the working class women:
Sanger knows the tragic toll of such ignorance. Her mother had 18 pregnancies, bore 11 children, and died in 1899 at the age of 40. Working as a nurse with immigrant families on New York’s Lower East Side, Sanger witnesses the sickness, misery, and death that result from unwanted pregnancy and illegal abortion.
So now transiting Mars at 19 degrees of Virgo is diddling around the Neptune leg of the Moon, Mercury and Neptune leg of this Yod, while Neptune runs over the US Moon setting up the funding of contraception as a moral issue.
And just what is moral? Look at Santorum’s statement. Though he dances around it, its clear that women’s sexuality should be governed by a code of “how things should be” as he and his fellows imagine God declares. Such men and women are vagina ideologues try to control what we women do with our reproductive parts by using religion to deny us the financial supports that would give us reproductive choice. Moreover they seek to do it not by growing their followers in faith, but by wielding a legislative sword that subjugate all women to their will.
We’ll leave it to philosophers and pundits to bandy about what is moral. However, the women of the United States should be aware that this issue of reproductive choice is far from settled in the chart of the United States. If you want reproductive choice you, your daughters, your granddaughters and so on will need to defend it as long as the United States exists.
Image published under a Creative Commons License as delineated by Photobucket from an image from user bluewildfire8.
