Last year I wrote an article called “Damn, I’m from Alabama” in response to the Montgomery brawl that captured the nation’s attention for weeks.
I made a bold point that Alabama was finally on the right side of history when it comes to how it is viewed by others outside the state, for once: images of black people are defending himself in the face of blatant racism went viral. However, I have to admit that after the article came out, I thought privately about how many days, minutes, seconds it would take for Alabama to reclaim its throne of stupidity with a backward and ignorant who would once again designate him as the very incarnation of the whistling Dixie. .
It took about six months.
Alabama claims to be a fiery Christian state with deep family values. And perhaps in their own eyes, no one is more Christian and has a more personal relationship with God than the good citizens of Dixie. In reality, it is a twisted version of rogue Christianity in which two-sided thinking is at the epicenter of all truth.
To lift the veil on this Christian hypocrisy, go back to January 25, 2024, when Alabama made international news by explaining how he killed a man on death row. THE the execution was a heinous, immoral and downright shocking display of vitriolic violence, incorporating a procedure that had never been used before. Of course, let’s leave it to Alabama to be the world leader in all things ignorance – or as they say in the South, get angry. Let me give you the visual: A contraption resembling a diver’s helmet was placed on Kenneth Eugene Smith as he awaited death. One might assume that Mr. Smith resembled a deep-sea diver or astronaut, except that his only exploration would be via a one-way ticket to the afterlife.
With the device placed on his head, Mr. Smith was forced to inhale nitrogen hypoxia until, as eyewitnesses reported, his body parts twisted and squirmed and he no longer exists among the living. At this point, I wonder if the jury that initially sentenced Mr. Smith to life without parole appreciated that the judge overturned his original sentence and took it upon himself to administer his version of justice for vigilantes in sentencing Mr. Smith to death.
Executing Mr. Smith in such an inhumane manner begs the question of how we can call America a civilized society.
If that method of execution isn’t enough to make a corporate entity cringe, what can we say about 30 days after breaking Christianity’s scariest covenant by killing someone, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos could be considered “children” in a ruling on suits for “wrongful death of a child” brought by couples whose embryos, frozen as part of the in vitro fertilization process, had been accidentally destroyed. This caused IVF treatments to stop in the state due to legal liability issues.
Let me quote Chief Justice Tom Parker’s reasoning behind this decision: “(Human) life cannot be unjustly destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who considers the destruction of his image an affront to him -even. »
This is what the new generation would call a WTF moment in history. Just after Alabama suffocates a human being to death, the state then spins its own narrative twist with yet another twist. How can the state kill a human being while saying that it is immoral to kill a human being? I would very much like to ask the powers that be within the State the following question: are not all human beings molded in the image of your God? Or is it a selective God who will sanction murder while tolerating it?
The IVF ruling was not even thinly veiled in its intention to cross the lines between the separation of church and state. At the center of this blatant integration of Confederate theology belies the real subtext: Alabama has a horrible history of control and hatred, riddled with white men trying to tell women what to do with their bodies.
Recently, I spoke with my advanced poetry students about the Alabama execution and the IVF decision. These young poets wanted to speak. Although many students had differing opinions on the death penalty, they seemed united in the understanding that a woman’s body is hers just as much as a man’s body is his. Many young women in my class were jaded after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but the Alabama court’s decision made them absolutely crazy. They couldn’t get over the disbelief of how someone wanted to control their body. When I asked the students to explain in a little more detail, they made it clear that these measures were draconian and archaic, the opposite of what a civilized society should look like. If I were to paraphrase the conversation, led primarily by women, it would be this: “Alabama plays God.”
In other words, the two events taken together – the methodology of execution and the decision that endangers in vitro fertilization as a method of starting a family – were enough for them to agree that it was indeed ‘a WTF moment.
This is what the new generation would call a WTF moment in history.
And then the State changed its speech again.
Many conservative Christian women across the state apparently believed, like my students, that a ruling that restricted a woman’s right to raise a family to the extent she was able would be a bridge too far. But the same hypocritical fools who probably supported amending the state constitution in 2019 to “ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn” who played a role in the decision on IVF, be just careful enough to remedy this madness with at best a temporary bandage. Thanks to their outrage, Gov. Kay Ivey might as well have been on ice skates considering how quickly she signed. a new bill granting civil and criminal immunity to IVF practitioners. But while the new law is supposed to protect doctors and providers from legal liability when working with frozen embryos, critics say it avoids tackling the real problem — the decision that first confers “personality” on embryos. I guess to gain political favor, God is going to let this issue pass for the good Christians of Alabama?
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Regarding a woman’s right to make choices that affect her body, I speak from experience: a woman I was in a relationship with became pregnant, and since neither of us was ready to raise a child, she decided to abort. Initially, I wanted to have the child and find out. She does not have. When I listened to the pain and internal struggle she was going through, I began to understand. It was his decision and I had to respect it. It changed me. I understand. As a man, I have no right to tell a woman what to do with her body.
Lately, I’ve felt like I’ve been through a portal against my will to Earth 2, a parallel universe to Earth 1. On Earth 2, society has been turned upside down, and the immoral is now the moral. Spirituality is placed on a pinwheel and spun counterclockwise, stopping randomly to decide how to control the citizens. The seasons are unbalanced. Sometimes it forgets to snow in winter, and sunny days are often shaped by gray clouds stuck in suspended animation. Birds are just as confused as humans.
All Alabama has given us is more contradictions: what is life and what is not? Who can live, and who cannot live?
Turn, turn, turn. All the Alabama state legislators who started this madness should be dizzy from all the commotion. I don’t know how they still walk upright.
