Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Jesse Lee Peterson, Conservative Preacher, Says Women's Voting Rights 'One Of America's Greatest Mistakes'

Jesse Lee Peterson, the controversial conservative preacher and regular guest of Sean Hannity, said in a recent video it was a mistake to allow women the right to vote.

In a video uploaded in March but publicized this Monday by Raw Story, Peterson, who runs an organization calling for Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND), said that allowing women to vote puts the United States "on a pathway to destruction."

    "I think that one of the greatest mistakes America made was to allow women the opportunity to vote," Peterson said to his congregants in the 12-minute video. "We should have never turned that over to women. There are more women out there voting than men now … and these women are voting in the wrong people. They are voting in people who are evil, who agree with them, who are going to take us down this pathway of destruction."

In the video, Peterson alluded to Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who testified before Congress that health insurance companies should be required to cover contraception. Fluke was called a slut by Rush Limbaugh, whom Peterson quotes.

"How did we get to a point where women think we should pay them to have sex? How did we get to a point they want to force us to buy them birth control?" Peterson said. "They want to have sex out of wedlock, they want to have abortions and they want us to pay for that."

Peterson has been a regular guest on Sean Hannity's Fox News talk show -- Hannity even serves on BOND's advisory board. "BOND has played an instrumental role in helping young men and women build lives which will help inspire the next generation," Hannity wrote on the BOND website. "BOND continues to fight the good fight standing for the values of God, family, and country, and are deserving of our support."

On Hannity's show last Tuesday, Kirsten Powers, a political strategist, confronted him over his comments and others he previously made about women. Powers said she would not have agreed to be on the show had she known Peterson was to be on the panel.

"You are a pastor distorting God's word for misogyny, for misogynistic purposes," she said to Peterson.

Peterson has a history of saying controversial comments. In 2009, Peterson told Hannity that he thought 96 percent of black voters were racist toward whites. In January, he said that he would send black people "back to the plantation."

"One of the things that I would do is take all black people back to the South and put them on the plantation so they would understand the ethic of working. I'm going to put them all on the plantation. They need a good hard education on what it is to work."

Original Article
Source: Huff
Author: Gene Demby 

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