you have been so fucked up by the Catholic church…

i have written a couple of compare/contrast papers on Lithuania (vs. Russia and vs. Poland, specifically). its kinda… weird, all told… so many centuries of competition with Poland… decades of abuse by Soviets (and yes, that was ABUSE.) and now… the Church again.

i don’t actally mind religion. i mind religion buying the political process. as it does in Lithuania. and here. and everywhere damnit.

Man, and I thought the U.S. had problems. =(

This is the kind of random sourceless blogging I expect to find on right-wing blogs, not here!

Yeah, that’s because I put this post up in a hurry and forgot to include the link in the opening line. I did include it in the contact information (there’s a link to the word “here”), so it isn’t actually totally unsourced. I’ll add it in at the beginning.

And Natalia, sorry for fucking up your name! That’s what I get when I type it quickly instead of coying and pasting. That’s fixed now, too.

The link above my name takes you to the Russian feminist community where this was posted. I personally had no reason to distrust the woman who posted this, since her activist contacts in Eastern Europe are solid and she’s not some spewing reactionary type. I haven’t seen anything about this in the English-language news, but I hardly ever see Lithuania in the English-language news in general. When the Ukrainian president made sexist comments about women, it didn’t hit the headlines in the West either.

Here’s a news news source in Russian, about a liberal politician’s reaction to the proposed re-definition of family. Since I can’t read Lithuanian, this is presently the best I can do.

I’d like to note that the conservatives are not in majority power in Lithuania, so the likelihood of this legislature passing is slim, from what I understand. If someone wishes to correct me on this point, it would be most welcome.

The problem is religious figures using “baby steps” to erode women’s rights. It’s a sneaky approach.

There’s no date on this information. There’s no context. There’s no link to the news source where it was found. There’s not even a link to the blog where you read it first, only a means of e-mailing the blogger who herself told you.

Without the framing information, this is nothing but scaremongering.

Also, the domestic violence law was passed over, stating that there is no domestic violence in Lithuania. Just general violence. Although two thirds of all women dying every year are killed at home.

To Mike: 80% of Lithuanians are opposed to this and abortion-ban law. There is no good reason for this kind of law. But, yes, I agree, Lithuania is a country of tradition. Tradition of women rape and abuse, violence against children and intolerance of anything that is not male, white, straight and catholic.