Saturday Night Radio Drama - Hughes Travers - Lambo

Lambo 

 

Lambo by Hugh Travers is a fictionalised account of a story that stormed the airwaves and gripped the nation almost three decades ago. It is 1987: a story hits the headlines that sends an unsuspecting Irish nation reeling in shock and disgust - a story of brutality and bloodshed, of depravity and gross deception. A story of murder. Gerry Ryan has killed a lamb! Kind of. Maybe……

A co-production with Underscore Productions and RTÉ Drama On One

Featuring Michael Ford Fitzgerald as Gerry Ryan

Writer Hugh Travers

Sound Design Trevor Furlong

Sound Engineer Richard Mc Cullough

Theatrical Producer Aisling O'Brien

Director Ronan Phelan

Series Producer of RTÉ Radio Drama Kevin Reynolds

It's kind of an off beat comedy,  with one person playing all the parts. As a suggestion of what you might do all on your own with a script and a recorder.   I've given you the link to the  RTÉ Podcast page where for now it's on the top.  If you don't like this one there are plenty of others to try. 

 Hearing the shocking case that the  impeachment House Managers made so brilliantly, so convincingly, yesterday,  seeing the brilliance and diversity of the House Managers,  realizing the incredible intellectual depth and moral stature of the Democratic Caucus in the House is, SEEING THE BEAUTIFUL DIVERSITY OF THE MANAGEMENT TEAM, I am humbled and so proud to be a member of the same Democratic Party that they are members of.

Realism In Law Making Is As Important As Realism In Religion We Have Way Too Little Of Both

YESTERDAY I hope I convinced some readers that since women are the only people who are governed in a serious way by laws about abortion that, as the governed, they are the ones who have a superior right to determine what those laws would be. If you take the principle that just laws are only just by the consent of those governed by them that is in the Declaration of Independence seriously, I don't see how you can possibly not believe that is the case.  I am not going to entertain the claim that that is not true unless the one making such a claim is read to have the state nationalize their bodies in a similar manner to that discussed.

But a large number of people seem to believe that men in general and women who oppose the legality of abortion have a right to regulate the bodies and so lives of women who do not think abortion should be illegal or who decide, for themselves, that they need or want an abortion.

Whether or not there is a distinction that anyone else has a right to distinguish between the right of a woman to choose to have an abortion if she needs an abortion or wants to not bear a child, that isn't a distinction I feel I have any right to draw, no more than I would feel someone else has the right to determine anything about my body in opposition to what I want or need to do with it. If I gave people the right to dismiss a woman's right to determine how she wants her body to be, I would be morally obligated to allow them to also have that kind of a say over how I want my body to be. I know of no man who is prepared to allow the state or even a majority or plurality of voters to exercise that kind of a right over his body. Women who are opposed to abortion certainly aren't prepared to allow other people to make those decisions for them. I would hold up the accusations against the Chinese and other governments which have forced women to have abortions they didn't want to have or men who have prevented women from practicing birth control and so forced them to become pregnant as analogous usurpations of bodily autonomy and self-determination.

That people who oppose abortion believe, or claim to believe, that a fetus or even a fertilized egg cell have full status as humans cannot change the fact that women who are pregnant and who may or may not share their belief will and can exercise their ability to have an abortion. As I mentioned yesterday, women had abortions when it was seriously illegal in every state, going to extreme and dangerous measures to have an abortion,whether self-induced or, often, in the most dangerous and exploitative conditions. Often with the knowledge that they may have died in the process.  While there is debate as to whether a fetus is a person or not, certainly not an independent human beings, there is no arguing that a pregnant woman or girl is a human being whose life may well be ended by a back alley or motel room abortion.

Clearly making abortion illegal will not end abortions. That is something that the anti-abortion rights side seldom if ever are confronted with, they certainly don't choose to bring up that fact, themselves. Nor do they ever address that they are demanding the state regulate the bodies of women in ways that the men AND WOMEN who oppose abortion would never tolerate be done in the case of what they want to do with their own bodies. There have been a number of instances of women in the anti-abortion movement who have had abortions when they chose to have them but, relieved of that possibility, they then want the state to prohibit other women from making a choice they already have made for themselves or, in some cases, those in their family. I strongly suspect that certainly many, perhaps most of the politicians who campaign against abortion would, if it was their daughter or their son's unapproved of girlfriend, would probably cut themselves and their loved ones one of the exceptions that those with power and money love to make for themselves.

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But I know there are poeple who sincerely do believe that abortion is immoral and who are prepared, in the absence of the possibility of preventing abortions, take the moral position that whatever can be done to minimize the number of them as far as is possible. Being an Irish Catholic, from a liberal Catholic family, having family members who sincerely believe that human life starts at conception, I strongly believe that is probably the position of many, most if not all of the prominent Catholic politicians who the Republican-fascists, especially those among the US Catholic Conference of Bishops, love to target using the issue of abortions.

The reality is the only way to prevent abortions in most cases is the prevention of pregnancy. The idea that you are going to do that by preventing sex is even more of a stupid denial of the realities of human life than the fantasy that you are going to end abortions by making them illegal. That wasn't the case when there were serious social stigmas and penalties and even laws preventing premarital sex, adultery, and other voluntary sexual behavior, and none of those are seriously the case now. Any priest or bishop who pretends that is possible should consider the scandals among priests and bishops who secretly farthered children out of wedlock as to what a ridiculous assertion that that is going to happen is.

There is a choice, either you can stop abortions by providing people with the knowledge and means of preventing unwanted or unsafe pregnancies and the support of WOMEN to make the decisions as to when they are going to consciously become pregnant, or you can refuse to do that and be part of why the United States has such an absurdly high number of abortions, conservatives and prudes and ministers and bishops and purity crusaders probably leading to more of those than were ever done by Planned Parenthood in their entire history. That is the only real way to stop abortions, to give women the means and knowledge of how to avoid becoming pregnant, to encourage them to take that initiative, to emphasize that abortion is not an ideal choice to have to make or to choose if you can avoid the problem to start with.* Having the Supreme Court overturn Roe, having all the Republican-fascist run states outlaw abortions will only ensure that the abortions that happen will either be in other states or they will be illegal and dangerous but they will happen anyway.

I would note that men have it in their power to prevent unwanted pregnancies, sometimes more unwanted by them than the women they have sex with, but men don't have the same level of interest in this as the women whose bodies are the ones which become pregnant and whose lives are altered by it. Men have not, by and large, practiced anything like responsibility in this area, only one more reason to demote their role in law making in this area. I will point out, as a gay man, that what can be said about that in regard to straight sex and pregnancy is also sayable in terms of having responsible sex and the spread of STDs. While noting that straight people aren't any more notably responsible when it comes to avoiding the contracting and spreading of STDs either.

Face it, people are stupid when it comes to sex in most cases, promoting responsibility is an uphill battle when the fight against unwanted or inadvisable pregnancies and STDs is taken on. Pretending you can do that by having an absurd and dubious figure of religion waving their fat finger at people is as ridiculous as any QAnon fantasy. Anyone who thinks a Cardinal Burke in his absurd clerical drag, or even the less absurdly dressed men in the Catholic hierarchy have any real credibiity on this issue should check the opinion polling of Catholics who think abortion should be legal and who practice birth control - and I don't mean the fraud of the rhythm method.

What we need is realism, not absurd poses and the lies by those who strike such poses. We need that about this issue as all others.

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed "

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .

So said Thomas Jefferson, a claim of the basis of legitimate government that the signers of the Declaration of Independence put their names to and which has been ratified in any number of ways - however observed at least as much in the breech as in the observance as soon as the Revolution that the document started was won by those who sought independence for the thirteen colonies.

I am going to be doing something that I have at best no business getting involved in, though in reality some interest in, writing about the issue of abortion and how it has and is going to continue to play the role of a sticking point in American politics, perhaps the pivotal one in turning elections in the United States, certainly in the Senate, to Republican-fascism.

That issue doesn't properly appertain to me because I am a man and abortion is an issue that does not directly impinge on the life and body of any man. Only women become pregnant, only women either need or want to end a pregnancy, only women have abortions. Only women are governed by laws on abortion, men are not governed by those laws, arguably doctors who provide abortion may have a minor, secondary legitimate interest in those laws but those laws do not regulate or determine the most intimate aspects of their lives, their own bodies. Just as I think the legitimate right of the state to regulate things stops at a person's own body, the legitimate interest of the individual to determine what other adults do in their bodies stops there as well. 

 

That statement I made the title of this piece, when those men said "among Men" they really meant men, there is no reason we should limit the meaning of it in the same way.  We certainly know better than they did, just one of the advantages of time and learning from hard experience which the "originalists" think we're supposed to ignore for all time. 

 

Abortion does, though, have an enormous effect in who wins elections in the United States, the people who comprise the legislatures and executive branches of the federal and state governments, and, so, in that way all of us have an interest in the issue and how it is thought about.  I don't think most people think about it in a particularly productive way, that is as true for those who favor abortion being legal and those who oppose it.  Abortion as an issue has not gone away despite the large majority of Americans favoring the legality of abortion anymore than there is any real prospect of the Republican-fascist packed court really overturning abortion except in those states where people imagine they want it to be illegal.  I suspect that if the Supreme Court did overturn it and many states made it illegal, the effect may not be what the opponents of abortion believe it will be.  I remember when abortion was uniformly illegal, very illegal.  There were many abortions and there were many women injured and killed by them, many women who endured terrible ordeals.  Making abortion illegal has never ended abortions, it has only made them dangerous, deadly and the business of organized crime.  I don't remember the churches much being bothered by that, for reasons I'll get into. 

That phrase that I am certain any American who has any awareness of the Declaration of Independence or who holds with American democracy will certainly agree with, Jefferson's definition of legitimate governance, I certainly do agree with. He would have gone down through history as a far greater man if he had consistently held with it in his life and his career as a politician, though he would certainly have had to have had far larger numbers of American voters who would have practiced what they no doubt professed in so far as that idealistic statement claimed was a self-evident truth.  That majority or plurality was not to be found in 18th or early 19th century America, it's hardly reliably decisive in elections today.

But, then, the even more self-evident truth that only women are governed by any law made in regard to abortion and so THEY are the ones whose just consent to any such law is required to make any law in regard to abortion and that men, who cannot have abortions, cannot have the same standing to consent to laws made in regard to abortion as women do, those self-evident truths hardly make it into the discussion of abortion laws.

The Catholic Church, the Southern Baptists (whose shifting position on abortion is a whole epoch in hypocrisy, in itself) and other churches which presume to dictate the morality of abortion are entirely under the control of men.  Especially in the Catholic Church that issues is essential in understanding, among other things, why a majority of Catholic Lay People do not agree with the central authority of the Church. The glacial pace of inclusion of women in the effective decision making in the Catholic Church is so far behind that it is big news that Pope Francis has appointed exactly one woman in the entire history of the Church to have that kind of role and as of the other day it wasn't clear that the one Religious Sister he appointed will have equal voting rights with the men on that body. Clearly, women's' voices are not part of the decision making on much of any issues in the Catholic Church, that this one woman's appointment is world-wide news shows that in no way have women as a whole have never given just consent on any issue, never mind those issues that either entirely or almost entirely concern them, their lives and their bodies. In no way can any such laws, whether made by the hierarchy of any religion or secular government have the level of legitimacy that I have no doubt if you caught them unaware and put the question to them, every single cardinal, bishop, priest in the United States or throughout most of the world would assert is the very definition of legitimacy in governance or law.

The line that the Church is not a democracy is often recited by those who have no problem with it being an oligarchy or autocracy of men, of unmarried men, of men who have consciously and deliberately excluded women from decision making and law making from time immemorial.  If God didn't intend the Church to be a democracy, there is no evidence God intended it to be an autocracy, either.

The history of the United States is most comprehensible as a struggle between the words of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, the promises of equality and democracy made in it to those they sought to fight their war of independence, if you overlook the racist slanders against the Native People and some other passages of it, and the successful attempt by the slave power, the wealthy and the advantaged to renig on those promises and to install inequality and anti-democracy within the Constitution. The entire struggle for justice in the United States, the only thing that is great in our history and in our country is a struggle for the principle that government is legitimate only when it is a product of the consent of those who it governs. ALL OF US.

The United States has no state religion, its government is a secular one, something it must be to establish its egalitarian nature in a religiously diverse country. It has no higher authority than the will of The People, the just consent of those it governs. The struggle against slavery, against the genocide of the Native People, against the denial of the vote to women, the rights of workers to the product of their work, all of the many rights all of that is a struggle against the Constitution and, as The Reverend Martin Luther King jr. noted, it is The People who are deprived of justice calling the promissory note that was written and signed in July 1776 with a demand that the debt be paid. Any politician who has any legitimacy has taken it upon himself or herself to be answerable to The People on an equal basis. The churches may declare that they are not democracies and be satisfied with that, the American government should not have the luxury of not noting that any such church which excludes women from decisive decision making are not, by the definition of American democracy legitimate deciders of those decisions and dogmas and doctrines that impinge exclusively on women. The US Catholic Conference of Bishops have no moral standing to make those decisions and try to force them on the government and so, The People, of the United States. They may have standing to do so in other areas WHICH DO NOT EXCLUSIVELY APPERTAIN TO A HALF OF THE POPULATION WHICH THE BISHOPS EXCLUDE FROM DECISION MAKING, but not in the matter of abortion, by their own choice. 

I don't think there can be any just law making in regard to abortion if the fact that women are the ones governed by them is not the decisive factor in making those laws.

Anti-president Trump As The Mar A Lago Anti-pope of America's Flawed Democracy

DUE TO the wi-fi problem on my street, I was thinking of not writing anything this morning but I came across this article by Jamie Manson and was struck by this passage:

The church is in a remarkable position, one that it hasn't been in for centuries. We have a scenario that is akin to the rise of an anti-pope.

As most of us remember from high school history class, during the Western Schism, which began in 1378, there was a pope in Rome and an anti-pope in Avignon, France. But there was also a second anti-pope who took up residence in Pisa, Italy. The first Pisan anti-pope was Alexander V. He died early in his reign and was succeeded by another anti-pope, who, believe it or not, took the name John XXIII.

There have been more than 30 antipopes in the Catholic Church's history, and they typically had factions behind them who questioned the validity of the election of the pope in Rome.

Regardless of how cognizant Benedict is of what is going on around him, he has a vocal, well-oiled faction of radically traditionalist Catholics who do not accept the authority of the current supreme pontiff.

This widening fissure in the church is, of course, what comes with vesting one man with absolute, unchecked, quasi-divine power.

As can be seen from the scandalous behavior of traditionalist Catholic bishops and cardinals, Dolan, Burke, Strickland, and a large number of other American and even foreign cardinals, bishops, even priests, many of the same who have tried to set up the retired pope, Benedict XVI as an anti-pope as an assertion of the illegitimacy of good Pope Francis, are as all in on setting up Trump as an anti-president. Nothing much good came of the anti-popes of history, some of them were as corrupt as the worst in-Vatican Popes but few of them could outdo Donald Trump in his lavish corrupt depravity. While I have been extremely critical of Benedict XVI from even before he became Pope, minus the red shoes he loved to wear and his choices in other matters, he couldn't come close to Trump in corruption and vulgar disregard of Christianity.

I had thought I might comment on the substance of the article that passage comes from but I will wait to do that. I thought this should be pointed out.  I think calling Trump the anti-pope would stick in the craw of the Republican-fascists among "catholic" neo-integralists (that's Catholic talk for "white evangelicals" among us) but it would take some explanation for most people, including many Catholics who probably never heard of the anti-popes.  Calling him "anti-president" in lower case is probably more effective.