Margaret Sullivan: A Grandmother on Sex, Contraception and Religious Freedom

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"Smile ? Your Mother Chose Life"

The yellow bumper sticker makes me smile. Not for its indirect meaning but because of my own story. I have always known I was conceived by my missionary parents in love and as the result of a mindful decision that the time was right for them to stop using contraception and have a baby. A choice -- to quote the bumper sticker literally but not its overtone of 'instead of abortion' -- made with premeditation and joy.

For my parents, birth control was integral to a deeply moral and religious worldview of individual responsibility for life that they lived and modeled. Their story, our family's story, serves as a much-needed counterpoint to the current hullabaloo: Denominational institutions and individually led private companies (think Liberty University and Hobby Lobby) demanding the right, in the name of "religious freedom," to impose their anti-contraception beliefs by not covering birth control under employee health plans despite the Obamacare-mandate. Never mind that this keeps their staff-members from exercising their own rights (perhaps also religiously based) to access insurance-covered birth control. Conservative politicians aid and abet them by passing laws limiting access to contraception both directly and by closing women's health clinics (think North Carolina, Virginia and Texas for starters).

Times were hard in 1931, the Depression deep. Before my parents -- people of abiding faith who met at a Student Christian Movement meeting -- were married that June, they traveled to the Margaret Sanger clinic in Chicago for contraceptives, still controversial and not widely used. Much in love, they wanted an active physical life together within marriage. But it was not a responsible time for them to have babies. Dad was a doctoral candidate. Mother had a low-paying job at the YWCA.

By 1933, degree conferred, they were sent to China as Presbyterian missionaries; Dad would teach public health and parasitology in a university. Before going, they wrote a booklet on marriage, sex and birth control for other missionaries. Their blueprint for a faithful marriage was joyful, loving, responsible sex and parenting and, in a wider moral and religious context, on teaching by example, learning from those around them and respecting all people, even those with whom they disagreed.

Unlike many Americans, they had work and an income -- not a lot, but enough. They decided it was time. I arrived the following July. Second Sister, equally planned, arrived two years later. Third Sister -- intended as the first of another pair -- was on the way in 1940 when Mother, Sister and I were evacuated in anticipation of World War II. Our brother is the circumstance -- delayed, much wanted post war child.

Physicality and, as we got older, responsible sex were simply part of unembarrassed family conversation, as much religious and moral upbringing as biology: Body parts had accurate names. Real words (not slang or innuendo) described functions. Sex, for any loving couple, was the ultimate expression of intimacy. Between a man and a woman, (the only kind talked about then, although my parents would welcome the DOMA and Prop 8 decisions if they were alive) it also was endowed with the awesome capacity of creating life. Wait, they told us, ideally for marriage, but always use contraception to avoid unplanned pregnancy.

In 1954, I was engaged to a man who shared my upbringing. My parents gave us Van de Velde's Ideal Marriage (the sex manual before Masters and Johnson and The Joy of Sex). Mother and I went to her gynecologist for me to be fitted with and get a prescription for a diaphragm. Fortunately, we lived in Virginia, not Connecticut where contraception in any form was illegal until Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965.

Nearly 59 years later, we have four children and three young adult grandchildren, all raised with the same moral framework our parents provided us. Our current mantra: we want to be great-grandparents -- but not yet. Meanwhile, safe, responsible sex is the watchword.

Along the way, we learned that contraception can fail -- our kids, we joke, were pre-pill -- and, in the heat of the moment, that sound lessons don't always lead to sound practice. We were fortunate to be healthy, stably married, able to handle the unexpected. Not every one is. When I was carrying our third child, accidental but joyfully anticipated, I was helping in a clinic in Malaya and spoke with a woman my age, bulbous with her ninth pregnancy. She had nearly died giving birth to her eighth child and wanted to make the babies stop coming. But I was prohibited from giving her information on contraception; to do so was illegal there then.

Life has no easy, one-size-fits-all solutions. So I am grateful for Griswold, Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood and Obamacare. My grandmotherly wisdom is that encouraging postponement, fostering accurate, responsible sex education at home and in schools across the country, and ensuring as well as insuring access to a wide range of contraception for everyone who wants it are vital so that unwanted babies are few and the decision to have a safe, legal abortion is rare.

In our plural society, Americans hold differing religious and moral views on these matters. I respect that and others' right to act on theirs and to preach them in churches and elsewhere. Nothing in current law prevents that. No one is required to use contraception or have an abortion.

But I expect others to respect my deeply held beliefs and right to practice and preach mine as well.

That's the rub. In too much current political posturing, the few threaten to force their vision of religious morality on all. And believe they have that right. People who glorify individual effort and demand limiting government intrusion in large aspects of national life would impose laws that allow the government and employers to make intrusive decisions in the most private, deeply personal aspects of our lives for me, my husband, our children and grandchildren. For everyone. Although women are most directly impacted, (closing abortion clinics also limits easy access to the contraception they also provide that would limit abortions) this is not just a women's issue, but also a family and societal one.

At bedrock, these groups and politicians do not respect Americans' multiple religious beliefs. Nor trust us to make responsible, moral decisions for ourselves. And why, seeing the yellow bumper sticker, I smile and cite our family's hardly unique religiously based conviction.

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Margaret Sullivan: A Grandmother on Sex, Contraception and Religious Freedom

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Get Religion Newsletters: Subscribe

"Smile ? Your Mother Chose Life"

The yellow bumper sticker makes me smile. Not for its indirect meaning but because of my own story. I have always known I was conceived by my missionary parents in love and as the result of a mindful decision that the time was right for them to stop using contraception and have a baby. A choice -- to quote the bumper sticker literally but not its overtone of 'instead of abortion' -- made with premeditation and joy.

For my parents, birth control was integral to a deeply moral and religious worldview of individual responsibility for life that they lived and modeled. Their story, our family's story, serves as a much-needed counterpoint to the current hullabaloo: Denominational institutions and individually led private companies (think Liberty University and Hobby Lobby) demanding the right, in the name of "religious freedom," to impose their anti-contraception beliefs by not covering birth control under employee health plans despite the Obamacare-mandate. Never mind that this keeps their staff-members from exercising their own rights (perhaps also religiously based) to access insurance-covered birth control. Conservative politicians aid and abet them by passing laws limiting access to contraception both directly and by closing women's health clinics (think North Carolina, Virginia and Texas for starters).

Times were hard in 1931, the Depression deep. Before my parents -- people of abiding faith who met at a Student Christian Movement meeting -- were married that June, they traveled to the Margaret Sanger clinic in Chicago for contraceptives, still controversial and not widely used. Much in love, they wanted an active physical life together within marriage. But it was not a responsible time for them to have babies. Dad was a doctoral candidate. Mother had a low-paying job at the YWCA.

By 1933, degree conferred, they were sent to China as Presbyterian missionaries; Dad would teach public health and parasitology in a university. Before going, they wrote a booklet on marriage, sex and birth control for other missionaries. Their blueprint for a faithful marriage was joyful, loving, responsible sex and parenting and, in a wider moral and religious context, on teaching by example, learning from those around them and respecting all people, even those with whom they disagreed.

Unlike many Americans, they had work and an income -- not a lot, but enough. They decided it was time. I arrived the following July. Second Sister, equally planned, arrived two years later. Third Sister -- intended as the first of another pair -- was on the way in 1940 when Mother, Sister and I were evacuated in anticipation of World War II. Our brother is the circumstance -- delayed, much wanted post war child.

Physicality and, as we got older, responsible sex were simply part of unembarrassed family conversation, as much religious and moral upbringing as biology: Body parts had accurate names. Real words (not slang or innuendo) described functions. Sex, for any loving couple, was the ultimate expression of intimacy. Between a man and a woman, (the only kind talked about then, although my parents would welcome the DOMA and Prop 8 decisions if they were alive) it also was endowed with the awesome capacity of creating life. Wait, they told us, ideally for marriage, but always use contraception to avoid unplanned pregnancy.

In 1954, I was engaged to a man who shared my upbringing. My parents gave us Van de Velde's Ideal Marriage (the sex manual before Masters and Johnson and The Joy of Sex). Mother and I went to her gynecologist for me to be fitted with and get a prescription for a diaphragm. Fortunately, we lived in Virginia, not Connecticut where contraception in any form was illegal until Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965.

Nearly 59 years later, we have four children and three young adult grandchildren, all raised with the same moral framework our parents provided us. Our current mantra: we want to be great-grandparents -- but not yet. Meanwhile, safe, responsible sex is the watchword.

Along the way, we learned that contraception can fail -- our kids, we joke, were pre-pill -- and, in the heat of the moment, that sound lessons don't always lead to sound practice. We were fortunate to be healthy, stably married, able to handle the unexpected. Not every one is. When I was carrying our third child, accidental but joyfully anticipated, I was helping in a clinic in Malaya and spoke with a woman my age, bulbous with her ninth pregnancy. She had nearly died giving birth to her eighth child and wanted to make the babies stop coming. But I was prohibited from giving her information on contraception; to do so was illegal there then.

Life has no easy, one-size-fits-all solutions. So I am grateful for Griswold, Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood and Obamacare. My grandmotherly wisdom is that encouraging postponement, fostering accurate, responsible sex education at home and in schools across the country, and ensuring as well as insuring access to a wide range of contraception for everyone who wants it are vital so that unwanted babies are few and the decision to have a safe, legal abortion is rare.

In our plural society, Americans hold differing religious and moral views on these matters. I respect that and others' right to act on theirs and to preach them in churches and elsewhere. Nothing in current law prevents that. No one is required to use contraception or have an abortion.

But I expect others to respect my deeply held beliefs and right to practice and preach mine as well.

That's the rub. In too much current political posturing, the few threaten to force their vision of religious morality on all. And believe they have that right. People who glorify individual effort and demand limiting government intrusion in large aspects of national life would impose laws that allow the government and employers to make intrusive decisions in the most private, deeply personal aspects of our lives for me, my husband, our children and grandchildren. For everyone. Although women are most directly impacted, (closing abortion clinics also limits easy access to the contraception they also provide that would limit abortions) this is not just a women's issue, but also a family and societal one.

At bedrock, these groups and politicians do not respect Americans' multiple religious beliefs. Nor trust us to make responsible, moral decisions for ourselves. And why, seeing the yellow bumper sticker, I smile and cite our family's hardly unique religiously based conviction.

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Coalition to protect religious freedoms fractured by differences in Gay rights

By Lauren markoe download
Religion news service

WASHINGTON (RNS) at a Conference full of people who defend the traditional religious values, Amardeep Singh knew that not everyone could appreciate his account of the "uncomfortable" taxi that had taken the previous day.

Singh, Rapporteur highlighted in the second national religious freedom annual Conference in Washington (May 30) Thursday, said the audience of several hundred to your taxi driver D.C. had the radio tuned to a religious commentator mentality, explaining that women become lesbians because they had been abused.

His historia de taxi, their say and the reaction to it - reveals flaws in the coalition of Americans concerned that Government and popular culture are eroding religious freedom and trying to eradicate religion from the public sphere.

"I felt uncomfortable knowing how our community, the Sikh community, is often widely stereotyped and those broad stereotypes are used so literally participate in acts of violence," Singh, director of programs at the Sikh coalition continued. Sikhs, lesbian, no group should be brushed wide, he said.

Below its target, Singh asked the taxi driver to stop, paid the fee and explained that he did not want to hear such prejudice. You have the right to listen, said said the driver, "but also I am going to exercise my right to not give you the business".

Sitting next to Singh on the podium, the Rev. Eugene Rivers III of the Church of God in Christ, listened attentively, narrowing his eyes as Singh spoke.

When he had finished Singh, rivers made it clear that it has different beliefs and draws the line of tolerance in a different place. "What the man said on the radio... really tests on the argument that in some cases the young women, in this case we are talking about lesbians, have arrived that the abuse orientation".

"The radio type can simply exaggerated the case," continued rivers, pastor of Azusa Christian Community and Senior Adviser of policy to the Church of God, Bishop President of Christ in Boston.

The panelists who came to assess the State of religious freedom in the nation accept the point that different beliefs could not occur together in anything beyond the need to protect religious freedom, and that sometimes, coalitions would present major challenges that must be met head on.

Rabbi Abba Cohen, a panelist and Vice President of Federal Affairs of Agudath Israel, an Orthodox Jewish organization, offers several examples of Jews see issues of religious freedom differently than non-Jews.

Orthodox Jews do not believe in abortion on demand, but I think that in some particular cases, Jewish law requires abortion, Cohen said. They support the right of any person to proselytize, but proselytizing may cause damage to the Jewish community, he said.

Still, taking the broader perspective, Cohen agreed with the Conference theme that religious freedom is under threat in the United States and that religious people must unite.

In another panel of the Conference, legislators and activists it spoke of the need for conservatives to court Allied Liberals to help defend religious rights and cited examples when the American Civil Liberties Union and Democrats had worked successfully with conservative religious people of the State.

Among the evidence of a deterioration of the religious rights offered during the one day meeting sponsored by the ethics and public policy Center: rule of the administration of Obama that require employers to provide coverage for contraception; the refusal of State universities several groups of students requiring its leaders to accept certain principles of faith; and companies that are allowed to relegate to the Muslim women with headscarves to jobs where the public does not see.

"We see that the religion is often treated with derision and ridicule," Cohen said. "In these troubled waters, is all hands on deck."

Muslim theologian Shaykha Reima Yosif, who wears a headscarf and he founded an organization to support Muslim women through art and education, said as an easily identifiable follower of Islam, has often been said ' go back where you come. "

The Yosif born in United States, however, said he has hope that religious leaders can set an example for the rest of the nation about the tolerance of traditions other than their own.

"He is not a priest or a Rabbi or a pastor who say those things."It is layman, he said, referring to the insults that have been thrown to her. "These ideals that we are gathered here today because we have to make sure that drain to the average American daily".

As Singh anecdote showed gay rights and same-sex marriage, they may be the most likely cause of friction as religious leaders try to assemble themselves into a force to protect religious freedoms.

Rivers said that its aims of tolerance where people obligated to accept nothing beyond what he knows as Biblical truth, or when opponents threaten their tax exempt status because of their beliefs. He said that he would be willing to go to jail to defend their religious views.

"If you make a mistake with the Bible, go to jail," he told the crowd, to an enthusiastic round of applause.

Elder Lance B. Wickman, legal adviser to the Church of Christ of latter-day Saints, took a softer direction. He had called homosexuality "a secular thing" and recognizes the protection of secular interests. But the secular-minded Americans must understand that religion is also fundamental to the identity of many people.

Too often, he said, religion is now considered a "hobby", in America, a "lifestyle choice" was limited to the home, Church, synagogue or mosque.

"It is building a new wardrobe," he said, "for the religious traditional values about sexuality and the family."

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