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SCHLAFLY CLAIMS PROTECTING WOMEN BREAKS UP MARRIAGES

02/02/11-by L.S. Carbonell
Conservative gadfly Phyllis Schlafly, who began her career as an anti-feminist with a book that said woman’s place is in the bedroom not boardroom, has offered her suggestion for cutting over a billion dollars from the Federal budget – stop protecting the victims of domestic violence. It is fair and accurate to call Schlafly a hypocrite. She abandoned her own family to pursue her anti-feminist/conservative career while telling all of us (my generation) that we should be content to be barefoot and pregnant.

In a February 1 column, Schlafly said, “While the U. S. House is trying to figure out how to cut wasteful and/or extravagant federal spending, member should be mindful of Reagan’s advice to begin by cutting programs that are harmful. One that fits this definition is the billion-dollar-a-year Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), now up for re-authorization.”

According to Schlafly, “The fiscal problem is that a billion dollars a year is streaming into the hands of left wing feminists to pursue their agenda, which does not include preserving or restoring marriage.”

So, in Schlafly’s view, a marriage should be preserved no matter how many trips a woman makes to the emergency room, because marriage is sacred?

Schlafly continued her anti-feminist theme with “Taxpayers’ funds are used to lobby for feminist legislation, to train law enforcement and judicial personnel in feminist ideology and in the aggressive enforcement of feminist laws, and to break up families instead of giving them pro-family and anti-substance-abuse counseling. The VAWA appropriation is only the start of its high cost to taxpayers and society. When marriages are broken by false allegations of domestic violence, U.S. taxpayers fork up an estimated $20 billion a year to support the resulting single-parent, welfare-dependent families.”

Really? How about some proof, Ms. Schlafly? How about some statistics showing a direct relationship between separations and divorces caused by domestic violence and families on welfare? How about citing feminist laws that are being lobbied for, and how the funds are getting from the government to these lobbyists? How about statistics on the success rate of domestic abuse and substance-abuse counseling? We’re waiting.

Just what is this “leftist feminist ideology” that Ms. Schlafly is railing against? The right of every woman to not be beaten, broken, bruised, disfigured, disabled or killed by a domestic partner, a spouse, a date or a total stranger. Yup – that’s communist all right.

The 1994 Violence Against Women Act, Title IV, sec. 40001-40703 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, HR 3355 was signed as Public Law 103-322 by President Bill Clinton. It provided $1.6 billion to increase investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women, enhanced pre-trial detention of the accused (since far too many men let out on bail went after the women who laid the charges), imposed automatic and mandatory restitution on the convicted and allowed civil suits to be brought by the victims if anything interferes with prosecution.

The bill was written by Sen. Joe Biden’s staff with assistance from organizations including the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Legal Momentum and the National Organization for Women, dangerous lefty-commie organizations all. Funding for the bill was re-authorized by Congress in 2000, 2005 and was re-signed into law by George W. Bush on January 5, 2006.

VAWA funds an office in the Justice Department that deals exclusively with violence against women. The Office on Violence Against Women administers grants authorized under VAWA and works to develop federal policy around issues related to violence against women. The Director is a political appointee confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The major objection to the law came from the American Civil Liberties Union that objected to the portion of the bill requiring HIV testing for suspects. They withdrew their objections when that provision was removed and now calls the law “one of the most effective pieces of legislation enacted to end domestic violence, dating violence , sexual assault and stalking. It has dramatically improved the law enforcement response to violence against women and has provided critical services necessary to support women and children in their struggle to overcome abusive situations.”

In 2000, the United States Supreme Court ruled in United States vs. Morrison that a portion of the bill was unconstitutional, specifically the civil rights remedies.

Heaven forbid the government should fund grants that support shelters for abused families or grants to teach police officers to not walk away from domestic abuse calls until they are called in to investigate a death (battered women are notorious for pulling back from filing charges.) But that’s exactly what Schlafly wants – Heaven to forbid our nation protecting our women and children because that protection might end in the dissolution of an abusive sacred marriage. In Schlafly’s view, Christ approves of beating your wife but not being thrown in jail for it because He performed his first miracle with a bucket of wine at a wedding.

Funny, I don’t remember Christ ever sanctioning the physical abuse of wives or children. In fact, didn’t He step in to stop the stoning of an adulteress? How does that fit in with your tunnel-vision view of the sanctity of marriage, Ms. Schlafly?