I hesitate to say that it’s a “great” poem (wrong word, obviously), but so powerful. I consider myself something of an abortion activist and work for a clinic and the way you’ve brought together all those arguments is painful and also sharply evocative of the sense of shame and powerlessness that unfortunately can often go hand in hand with being a woman in the 21st century. Well done.

Do you know what patter means?

Here’s how I remember the Job story. Yes, I know I can look it up on line, but I’m doing it pop quiz style, without references. People can tell me where it goes wrong, if anyone’s still interested.

God and Satan were having a conversation. I have no idea why or how, but they were. God said something like, “Aren’t my people the best? Check out how wonderful my servant Job is, how devotely he worships me, etc.” Satan says, “Sure, as long as good things happen to him he praises you.” God says, “It’s not like that.” Satan says, “ha”. This goes on until God decides to test Job to prove the point. Without running the proposed protocol by the diety IRB (ahem, excuse me, that was a 21st century add on).

Anyway, back on earth, bad things begin happening to Job. Servants keep showing up and telling about disasters that have occurred on his property, ending with the line, “And I alone escaped to tell thee.” His wife and children die. He is inflicted with painful boils. His neighbors decide he’s cursed and drive him away. He praises God anyway. God wins the bet. God tells Satan, “Devil, just come on back if you ever want to try again” (oops, different reference). God restores Job to health and wealth and gives him a new wife (or is it wives) and kids. Because, after all, one wife is much like another and Job won’t mourn the loss any more if he gets a new one, right? But I digress.

So, the diety who one presumes is the same diety that is addressing Mary, doesn’t mind abusing his followers (and killing them if one assumes that Job’s wife, kids, and servants were also followers of the biblical diety) just to make a point to his worst enemy/drinking buddy Satan. His first two commandments are not about protecting people but rather about how to worship him properly. He sends his followers wandering in the desert for years until they all die, rather than take them to the promised land as, well, promised, just because they made a friggin statue. This does not sound like someone that one could comfortably say, “Thank you for the honor, but I’d really rather only have children with my fiance. Please find another to bear the messiah” to me. But perhaps I’ve got it all wrong and really God had a good reason for testing Job, the commandments make perfect sense, the golden calf really represented something reprehensible, and Mary chose without coersion. Mythago?

Yes, that would have been the point.

Anyway, to swap up and reply to Bonnie:

“If my mother had been pro-choice, I may or may not have been around to argue with you. So what? That is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand.”

I think the problem is that you’re not assuming that your existence is the most important thing to ever happen ever. ;)

I’ll admit it’s a flip one, certainly.

When Dianne says, “I’m pretty sure the Jewish deity of the time was known for abusing his followers in this life when he was miffed or bored if nothing else,” I think of Job. Is that illegitimate?

They don’t deal with those too well.

Well, what do you expect from a second generation atheist anyway

Better than that. I thought atheists were supposed to be the rational ones. And you don’t have to be a Christian to know what the Bible says, any more than you have to believe in fairies to be familiar with A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I have always thought that line of “reasoning” to be particularly stupid. If my mother had been pro-choice, I may or may not have been around to argue with you. So what? That is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Other thought on this classic pro-life line: It could be extended to situations like, “If you just say yes to me tonight, we might conceive a kid who could be the next Mozart…saying no is the same as murdering my kid and a potential brilliant composer!” And from thence to “It wasn’t rape. She said no, but that no meant that we’d never have a kid together and that kid could be the one to cure cancer…I’m not anti-woman I just wanted to stop her from MURDERING MY UNCONCEIVED CHILD!” What do you think? Would it work as the premise of a dystopian story or too close to The Handmaid’s Tale

Feel free to delete this and my other contributions.

mandolin and robert: I apologize for provoking Robert to post on a thread where he was requested not to post by adding to a discussion I knew he would want to join in on. I was previously unaware of mandolin’s wishes and will drop it now that I do know.

Thank you for correcting the incorrect theological assertion, but you’re now assaying theological opinions. I have asked you not to post on my threads. I’d appreciate it if you’d respect that.

It isn’t immoral to have a relationship where there’s a power imbalance because of the power imbalance; it’s immoral because very few humans (if any) can resist abusing a power imbalance, and a relationship makes such abuse more destructive. It’s the destructive abuse that’s immoral.

God doesn’t abuse the power imbalance.