Statement for the OCJR Rally (Revised)

This is the statement that I made at the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice rally at the State Capitol this morning.

At a rally like this last year I spoke about varying religious beliefs concerning when human life begins. For those that are interested in that issue, here is a link.

Today I want to remind us of the dramatic political reversal that has brought us to this moment.

In 1972 Congress passed an Equal Rights Amendment that would have guaranteed that women would have rights equal as men in our society. Twenty-two states passed the Equal Rights Amendment that very year.

In Oklahoma a group of conservative Christian woman did not want to be liberated from their second class status. They organized to stop the ERA and they were successful. The success of those women encouraged conservatives to organize across the country. Ten years later, the Equal Rights Amendment was dead -- three states short of the number needed for ratification.

The defeat of the ERA in Oklahoma was the first successful political effort in the rise of the Religious Right. It encouraged many conservative Christians to get involved in politics and some of them turned their churches into cogs in a vast political machine. That political machine consolidated its base by taking over churches and denominations.

Since the year 2000, but not before, my own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, refuses to permit women to serve as pastors in their churches. Since 1998, but not before, my denomination has been telling women that they have to submit to the will of their husbands – even when their husbands tell them to do something that they know is wrong.

Now that vast political machine has taken over our state legislature.

Now that vast political machine is determined to destroy your right to privacy in reproductive health.

Now that vast political machine is legislating that doctors must conduct medical procedures on women that are unnecessary and invasive.

Now that vast political machine is working to destroy public education.

Now that vast political machine is working to destroy the safety net that protects the health and well-being of the poor, the elderly and the disabled in our society.

It is high time for another dramatic political reversal.

If, in 1972, conservative women in Oklahoma could spark a movement away from freedom from want, away from equal rights for women, and away from reproductive health, then, in 2013, the moderate and progressive women in Oklahoma can spark a movement that will prevail in securing those rights for another generation.

This rally is a good beginning, but I want to remind you that your efforts need to extend beyond the State Capitol.

This movement cannot and will not be successful until you go back and occupy your churches -- go back to the churches that many of you have either been sitting-in in silence or have abandoned.

Let the conservative Christian men and women there know that you believe that God is mad as hell at what they are doing and that you have been commissioned to tell them that God is not going to take it anymore.

I hereby commission you to go back to your churches and synagogues and mosques and houses of worship and be uppity women -- tell them that you are not going to put up with it either.