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My End of the Century Nightmare |
Lets assume The Year of Their Lord is 2150. United Nations experts predict that planet earth, if present demographics hold, will then suffer a population jump to an astounding 694 billion. Presently, there are 6 billion. Hey, listen here-- all you self-reproducers, gay or straight, Wickerite cloners, IVF users, artificial insemination depositors. Dig! In a mere 150 years, we're going to be experiencing the bumps and grinds of a party that's so uncomfortably crowded that, well, you'll lose your hot date the very second you walk in. In barely 40 years--many of you will still be vigorously licking and sticking then—earth expects to host twice its current number of unconcerned people. Six billion is company, dear ones, but lets face it: 12 billion is a 'party' I'd want to pass. 'I think I've read too much Thoreau,' I'd explain. Abortion, at a party like this, might soon become one of the more benign solutions to the obvious crisis' of hunger and thirst.
"Whether its aborted fetuses or full-term babies, it's the temperature in the oven and the freshness of the spices that count." Governments, if they still exist, will sterilize and vasectomize newborns. Family Values will first become a quaint remembrance and finally devolve into an outlawed slogan.
There will be no more families. Individualism, manifesting in its scariest forms, will triumph in the day of the ascendancy
of the maxi-masses. School shootings—provided schools still exist-- will be regarded then as a quaint reduction methodology.
The nuclear family now—in December 1999-- in which there's actually a mother, a dad and an offspring —this kind of family presently comprises only a dwindling 26% of the married or once-married U.S. dwellers. But only tomorrow—on the ever-crowded avenues of earth's imperial cities, non-citizens and aliens for Mayor Giuliani's reincarnated goons to hunt and shoot will be mostly absent from the scene. There will just be a handful of 26%ers, resurrected from '99, exiled in 2033 by the aged Mayor of Megalopolis who labels them 'homeless homegrown illegals', and 'birthing-bastards every one' who have, he charges, seized the city's useless streets from a much-frightened minority to which he belongs, the live-ins. Any children not born under the strict scrutiny of the State will, he says, in this not-very-glorious time, stand a much better than average chance of being eliminated. Borders will become ever more impossible to patrol and will later disappear entirely as restive illiterate nationals, unable to locate any basic supplies in their own useless lands, move from one bare vista to another. Same-sex love, because it is non-reproductive, promises under this dire scenario, to be celebrated as the most noble of the duo-style emotional patterns, especially among the futuristic practitioners of a school of thought founded in the early 21st century, devoted to promoting self-preservationist relationship-alternatives. But reigning supreme uber all will be that self-delight, that saving grace, that greatest of joys, masturbation. Its shameless mood of self-celebration recalls Bible character Onan's spilling of his seed, for which he was immediately struck dead by Jehovah. This tale, once found in the book of Genesis, will get censored in 2079, not only because it disparages the heroic Onan but because it contains an illegal incitement to reproduction: "Be fruitful and multiply."
TV soaps will have become even more explicit, showing shirtless hunks dutifully donning a government-required-six condoms per show on Throbbing Members, an afternoon favorite .
As the enormity and horror of the population crisis unravels, opposite-sex lovers, if they show themselves unable to control their reproductive behaviors, may--in 2150—begin to be treated as (what is left of) civilization's greatest threats. But long before 2150, hopefully, brains in the Department of Defense will have developed a 100% effective condom. Some miraculous variation on RU-486, the abortion pill, may be advertised too—even as early as 2030-- and will be distributed widely at government expense, disguised as Swiss chocolate. Since at-birth vasectomies will have become the most benign and widely hoped-for solution, the Christian Reich's offering may prove less popular, though it will be widely utilized, nevertheless. It involves penile amputations in exchange for a week's supply of questionable but filling baptismal nutrients. Question: What is the current U.S. Congress doing or not doing about this looming worldwide overpopulation crisis? Do the legislators have a handle on our booming-baby non-future? Quite the contrary. A present, the Republican Congress is waging an all out battle to deny millions in overcrowded countries access to condoms and birth control pills—all in the name of abortion prevention. Did you hear about that pro-over-population rider that was attached to the GOP's back-payment on America's long-overdue United Nations debts? Why have Republican politicians been pushing so hard to stop family planning abroad? Why are they meddling with the UN. family planning programs? It's a death wish they've got, that's all. They're trying to bring about their stupid Armageddon, damn them. The United States Congress is doing the bidding of the Vatican and of various Religious Reich regiments in the United States, puritanical cultists who demand complete say-so's over what men and women do or do not do during their most intimate moments together.
This cwummy Reich includes the now-murderous Pro-Lifers—as well as shameless liars like the pro-Gary Bauer for President goons presently running the treasonous Family Research Council, which he founded, a cadre of marital misfits and gleeful Judgment Day anticipators who are standing defiantly in the way of—abortion alternative-information in well-equipped international family planning programs.
According to more astute observers, however, even non-controversial birth control programs have suffered severe financial shortages, having nose-dived nearly $200 million in a short two-year span. Worse, the U.S. Congress has greatly magnified this decline by putting most international family planning money in escrow. Thus, in 1996, only $72 million was released to family planners overseas, a dramatic decrease of 87% from the previous year, 1995. Family planning organizations abroad—those no longer receiving these supportive funds--are shutting their doors. Thanks to Religious Reich Republicans, such shuttings will result in unintended pregnancy increases, a greater number of abortions, higher maternal and infant deaths rates and, of course, far too many more births. What can you do ? Make sure your stand-ins in the U.S. House of Representatives and The U.S. Senate, know you intend to judge them harshly if they dare vote stupidly on this issue. Tell them regularly that you know that the crisis of world overpopulation is a long-term threat that needs lightning-speed attention. That means sooner than immediately. Fundamentalists and orthodox religionists want to maintain complete control over all matters involving reproduction and sexual choice. They represent not only a gloomy future but humanity's potential for self-extinction -- universal death. Each Republican rep who bows to the benighted wishes of the ever-meddling Religious Reich becomes, thereby, a hammer that drives murderous nails into our planet's coffin. Will you, dear hopefully spellbound reader, consider making overpopulation a crisis about which you'll henceforth loudly say your say? You can do this in letters to magazine and newspaper editors, in conversations with friends and in any public forum wherein you see that you can help clarify the horror of this crisis for those who would prefer to ignore it until they're dead. As it now stands, overpopulation is the one boiling kettle of worms that still simmers quietly on most back burners. It's time to push it to the front and thence to let it fall onto the public floor— splashing across every planetary issue. Orthodox and evangelical groups can be counted upon to oppose any devices that make sex—in and of itself-- pleasurable but without any reproductive consequences. I waken from my nightmares with a heartfelt hope: that widespread birth control access be touted in the media of the new millennium starting January 2. For less hysterical but even more alarming information about overpopulation issues you may access the esteemed. Worldwatch Institute's Population Page: Jack Nichols is the author of The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the Fundamentalists (Prometheus Books) |
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