A mail-in ballot for the 2014 midterm elections in Colorado. (Kai Casey/CU Independent)
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The year is 2014. I am a white, middle-class woman of sound body and mind. I enjoy a privileged education and a full meal every night.
But I am afraid for my basic human rights.
On Tuesday night, Colorado elected Cory Gardner as its next U.S. Senator.
In his three years serving as House Representative to Colorado’s fourth district, Gardner supported seven bills that would suppress women’s access to safe, legal abortions, and three bills attempting to preserve the (eventually overturned) Defense of Marriage Act.
Gardner’s record shows, in short, that he is bent on stripping women and LGBTQ-identified Americans of their most personal and private rights. And he is not alone in his crusade. Eight of the ten anti-women, anti-gay bills Gardner supported were passed in a Republican-led House, only to be shut down by a Democratic Senate. But this week, the Republican Party gained enough seats to secure an across-the-board majority in Congress. Like-minded religious extremists will now find more success in ferreting their misogynistic, homophobic legislation through the works, backed up by stronger numbers and a special Orwellian kind of groupthink.
To be fair, Gardner very recently announced he’d had a change of heart when it comes to controlling women’s bodies, stating he wasn’t aware that some of the anti-abortion bills he supported would also have restricted access to other fundamental elements of women’s healthcare. Seeing as he co-sponsored one of the more aggressive bills, HR 358, most discerning minds might find this hard to believe.
Whatever his sudden revelations, the fact remains that Gardner has consistently acted counter to the interests of at least 50 percent of his constituency. But these dogmatic and oppressive views entail only a fraction of the legislative decisions that make up Gardner’s political profile. He’s also big on beefing up the U.S./Mexico border, protecting Second-Amendment rights and keeping Guantanamo Bay prisoners in their cells.
But for those of us with same-sex partners or uteri, Gardner’s positions on issues that determine the moral fabric of the free world become secondary to those positions that would deny us emotional and physical autonomy.
We have been told since we could walk that the Pilgrims came to America for religious freedom. This is somehow the basis on which hardcore conservatives like Gardner justify their modern-day Holy Wars. But what they forget is that the Pilgrims actually crossed the ocean to flee a dictatorial religious regime, one that told them their differing views made them criminals.
And let’s not forget that Jefferson, Adams and Franklin, children of the Enlightenment and fathers to our nation’s ideals, declared certain human rights “unalienable” – life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. These are liberties we should have secured the moment King George released his hold on the colonies. These are rights that Madison and a team of Constitutional framers thought they had established with an Amendment ensuring the mutual exclusivity of state and religion. These are not freedoms we should still be fighting for, 238 years later.
Leaders like Gardner who would sway the lives of millions according to their religious beliefs, who would appropriate relationships and organs like collateral for their passage into Heaven, should not even be considered for public office. U.S. citizens should not have to live under the terrifying shadow of a religious dogma they may or may not share.
The New World has already been claimed; we have nowhere to run now.
Contact CU Independent Opinion Section Editor Lauren Thurman at lauren.thurman@colorado.edu.
