Reverend Billy’s Revelations

Dear Reverend Billy, 

I’m furious about what’s going on with the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade. I can’t believe we’re going to have to fight all over again to defend the right to control our bodies. How is this possible?

Alexis
Park Slope

Dear Alexis,

It turned out that Roe v. Wade wasn’t as settled a law as we thought. This is a battle that Republicans will never abandon. It is made of male fear and hard religion. It is a powerful metal alloy with white supremacy and hatred and fear of the Earth. It’s the Wild West all over again, complete with bounty hunters who track down women who flee to safe states for an abortion and all those who help them.  

The attack on women’s reproductive rights is a tremor across the lives of all of us struggling for justice. And while we are busy claiming rights for all, the fundamentalists are sitting in rooms with Bibles, reading ancient texts as if they provide the best advice for modern life.  

As in: Eve was made of a rib-bone that Adam could spare and then she went and listened to a snake and ate the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. God and Adam were both hetero-normative types upset by the sensation of loss of control. God didn’t believe in climate change, either; he thought he controlled the Earth.

The form that the “fight all over again” will take, Alexis — and it’s already happening — might be like this. It’s clear from this Roe decision that there will be a widespread mobilization of reproductive mutual aid in all its forms on behalf of women and girls in need. With the wired world and the new medical discoveries, it’s possible that many women can outwit the abortion police and remain safe and in comfort. A new nation — informed to its core by egalitarian feminist values — is the answer to the brutal violence we see from hard right apocalyptic Christianity. This feminist nation would embody an interlacing of practical love throughout the land. No woman should be trapped in the Bible’s false Eden.

Women’s rights isn’t just an issue, it is living life. Fearing the power of women, buying ghost guns, believing in abusive gods, teaching your children to reject difference — this is the fear of life itself. Then it’s easy to not notice how much your life is changing. Hate makes it easy to believe that the future will accept your extraction and pollution. The Earth will evolve away from the poison — and the poisoner. Life is a brief time, our home for a while, and we protect each other as we share life.

— Rev Billy

Reverend Billy Talen is the pastor of the Church of Stop Shopping. Have a question for the Reverend? Email Revbilly@revbilly.com and unburden your soul.