Sexists are like the Walking Dead. Oft-times, you don’t know they’re there until you hear their guttural snarl. They love to gorge on your innards and transform their victim into one of them. The latest iteration of a mindless Walking Dead legislator just happened right in my backyard.
State Senator Thomas D. “Tom” Corbin is one of South Carolina’s political “Walking Dead.” He just ‘gorged on the innards’ of every woman in America. While dining with colleague Lexington Senator Katrina Shealy, he referred to women as “A lesser cut of meat than men.” Some sites are throwing in “barefoot and pregnant” references in the same sit-down. I guess that qualifies as social gorging. Shealy was not amused. She has sat beside Corbin for the last two years in the Senate Chamber and said that this was not the first such comment. He considers his virtual hate speech to be an “ongoing joke” between them. She had previously requested that he stop.
Now, she’s gone public. While a staunch Republican herself, Senator Shealy seems to “get it” in her public support of women. Her activist CV includes board membership of a Girl Scout Council, the Presidency of West Metro Republican Women, membership of the Advisory Board of the Women of Hope of the Lexington County Medical Foundation, The South Carolina Federation of Republican Women’s 2013 Women of the Year, The Lexington County Republican’s Outstanding Female Statesman of the same year, the South Carolina State Directorship of Women in Government and last, but far from least, the South Carolina State Director for the National Foundation for Women Legislators. Could Corbin have picked a worse foil for his baboonish comments? No offense to baboons.
Corbin is not to be confused with recently retired U.S. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who has battled three different cancers in recent years. No, Tom Corbin is battling a different kind of cancer; the Republican sexist cancer of being an enemy of women. A cancer that has been allowed to metastasize to an unfathomable degree.
The state senator represents District 5, covering Greenville County and part of Spartanburg County. He’s a 50-year-old social conservative and remarkably (or maybe not) a Deacon and Sunday school teacher at Clearview Baptist Church in his hometown of Travelers Rest. There are three women on the staff of the church. I wonder if Corbin shares his “jokes” with them?
On the Clearview site, under the heading of Core Beliefs, we can perhaps find the genesis of Corbin’s cluelessness about women. Here’s a partial quote expounding on the man and women’s biblical role in marriage (quotation marks mine): “He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to “lead” his family. A wife is to “submit herself graciously” to the “servant leadership” of her husband. Wow! So maybe teaching Sunday school is where a guy like Corbin belongs after all.
As proof that repression of women is not the only indication that Corbin is as right-wing as they come, consider two pieces of legislation that he primarily sponsored.
In a blatant and potentially dangerous attempt to skirt federal law, Corbin is one of four senators to push S. 247. It’s a nullification law that forbids the federal government from interfering in something called the “Unorganized Militia.” The whole issue is best explained on the John Birch Society’s online daily website, The New American.
Then there was his anti-immigration Senate Resolution that made claims like this one: “Over fifty percent of illegal aliens currently in the United States arrived here with visas and overstayed them upon expiration. These include radical Islamic Jihad students who come here under the pretext of study only to instigate acts of terror.” So, in his mind, Corbin apparently believes most Muslim students in the U.S. are terrorists. Here’s another revealing ‘whereas’: “Whereas, the burden placed upon our nation’s governmental services, taxpayers, environment, and infrastructure is on a disastrously unsustainable path due to massive population growth directly attributable to immigration…”
Corbin is a paranoid hater of the first order. Women appear to lead the pack, while Muslims and immigrants are not far behind. And he wants to make sure that every able-bodied South Carolinian is armed to the teeth when his imagined New Testament showdown with the feds rises up in the final political Armageddon.
The senator is the archetypal extremist right-winger. Everything is black and white with him. There is no nuance in his thought processes. He’s tiresomely predictable; Project Vote Smart shows a 100% position rating from the Greenville Tea Party. The Spartanburg Tea Party hosted a ‘meet and greet’ for Corbin. He scores a meager 25% rating from Conservation Voters of South Carolina. It’s certainly off-putting given his membership of the Senate Fish, Game and Forestry Committee. As a South Carolina House member, he voted to prevent implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
Here’s a message to those cave dwellers who didn’t get the “women are equal to men” memo. It’s time to be a real man. Because the position of superiority adopted by an unacceptable percentage of right-wing males, many citing the bible as their unalterable source, is simply wrong, selfish, unfair and enormously counter-productive. There is nothing remotely masculine about adopting the role of servant leadership. Right-wing preachers and theologians fall all over themselves trying to twist the passages into acceptance. “Why that simply means man is a leader in general, not a leader of his wife,” is a popular response. The husband is still told to “love his wife and not be a dictator” is another pretzeling.
Here’s what a husband, or any man should be in relation to women. He should shout from the highest rooftops for equality in the workplace and equal pay. He should concede that reproductive decisions are hers to make. He should start by voting for women in Representative legislatures, state offices and local councils. He should see that the glass corporate ceiling is shattered once and for all. He should never lay a violent hand on a woman. Men who do are the biggest cowards and sissies among us.
Be a man! If you’re a Christian man, recognize interpretations of scripture are exactly that – fluid interpretations that change with the times and circumstances, not to mention the interpreter. As for women; vote your own mind; not how you think your man wants you to vote. Republican women, in particular, have cast votes that make no sense for the betterment of their sisters. Professional women, especially teachers; vote!!!
Give Corbin credit. There exists no better proof that the male-dominated right-wing legislatures are paving the way to destruction of women’s rights.
For those cave dwellers who didn’t get the memo.
Follow me on Twitter @demwriter
- Close Guantanamo? Don’t Rush to Judgment! - Wed, Feb 24th, 2016
- Marco Rubio Works the Friendlier Confines of South Carolina - Fri, Feb 12th, 2016
- More Questions And Few Answers After Iowa Caucuses - Tue, Feb 2nd, 2016
