how to defeat dominionism

hi, ex-catholic here. i’m seeing some people saying if we just threaten them hard enough, the dominionist judges will get scared and restore our abortion rights.

nothing could be further from the truth.

two reasons:

1) the catholic justices grew up venerating martyrs. people who were so fucking serious about their faith that (supposedly) they were willing to die for it. those are the people the catholic justices look up to. the people their bedtime stories are about.

put a gun to a martyr venerator’s head and their little heart will beat with anticipation of meeting christ and saying, ‘i defended your unborn children even when a nonbeliever threatened to end my life.’

they might even grin.

because now they’re being persecuted for their beliefs. and therein lies the second reason:

2) within catholicism is this great effort to exculpate the believer from the consequences of the belief. “the bible says this. it’s not my words. it’s god’s words. THE word.” and no matter what you’re saying the bible says — even if you’re reading the words “sever my wife’s carotid artery” and someone is following your instructions — it’s THE word and it’s not your fault, it’s god’s will. and punishing you for what god wants would be, in your mind, inappropriate. you are merely following orders.

there’s even a bible story for it, and it’s as disgusting as you’re thinking it is.

(this separation between believer and belief is, you will note, the opposite of the personal responsibility conservatives preach when someone other than an oligarch asks for help.)

employing this mental shield, a dominionist — and most other christians — can insist that god wants [whatever] and be insulated from any feeling that, oh, hey, this might hurt someone. because it’s not you doing anything. you are merely an agent of the lord. and god’s will isn’t to be questioned. it’s even in a prayer: “thy will be done.”

it’s not your fault that woman who has lupus is going to die because a man impregnated her. it’s god’s will, and it’s not your job to know what he’s doing. but also, just because she’s 99.999% probably going to die, that’s no reason to kill that unborn child. you’ll pray and pray and pray, and if god doesn’t do something, that’s god’s will. ::shrug, throw up hands, declare you can’t do anything::

and again, anyone who suggests that your inaction killed someone? why, they’re persecuting you for your belief! and you win a certain number of jesus points. and you get to feel smug.

the smugness is a huge part of it.

another example: long ago, the catholic church’s position was that women and girls couldn’t be altar servers because god said [whatever]. i talked to a priest about it one day, and he threw up his hands and said he couldn’t do anything about it because it was god’s will.

when you don’t have to give a damn who gets hurt because it’s god’s will, you can insulate yourself from the emotional repercussions of causing slaughter. and that is what these justices have done.

so, having laid all this out, how do we defeat it?

the way i know of — because it’s how i stopped being a fundamentalist — is to make them want something else more.

i was raised opposing abortion. i uncritically accepted the rhetoric, including the notion that it wasn’t mine to question why god would will someone who would die if she got pregnant to get pregnant. maybe her death would do something only god knew about. but i didn’t have to worry about it, didn’t have to explain it, just had to accept that not-me was going to die because god wanted it. so i shut up and marched against abortion with my mother and opposed abortion in all instances.

then i discovered i was queer.

i entered the queer community and discovered bodily autonomy was a tenet. abortion rights were defended with the fervor of a catholic defending the holy trinity or marian doctrine.

another tenet? actual love. not rulebook love but kindness. nobody was hovering waiting for me to sin so they could point it out and earn points.

this was the place for me. but i knew i had to change on abortion. so i did.

there are other ways out too — because in dominionism’s separation of believer from belief is a key flaw: when you venerate the rules at the expense of the people they kill, you dare them to choose their lives over the sacred inflexibility of “god’s word.”

and in choosing their lives, they leave.

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