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Born May 18, 1953; got saved at Truett Memorial BC in Hayesville, NC 1959. On rigged ballot which I did not rig got Most Intellectual class of 71, Gaffney High School. Furman Grad, Sociology major but it was little tougher than Auburn football players had Had three dates with beautiful women the summer of 1978. Did not marry any of em. Never married anybody cause what was available was undesirable and what was desirable was unaffordable. Unlucky in love as they say and even still it is sometimes heartbreaking. Had a Pakistani Jr. Davis Cupper on the Ropes the summer of 84, City Courts, Rome Georgia I've a baby sitter, watched peoples homes while they were away on Vacation. Freelance writer, local consultant, screenwriter, and the best damn substitute teacher of Floyd County Georgia in mid 80's according to an anonymous kid passed me on main street a few years later when I went back to get a sandwich at Schroeders. Had some good moments in Collinsville as well. Ask Casey Mattox at www.clsnet.org if he will be honest about it. I try my best to make it to Bridges BBQ in Shelby NC at least four times a year.

Saturday, June 25, 2022

From Rubbers to Casey Mattox America

     Casey Mattox is a friend from Collinsville Alabama. I was his substitute teacher in the sixth grade and now after UVA and Boston College law school, marinated in the culture issues of the religious right, he is now a lobbyist, legal consultant for the Koch Brothers.

    In  1992 or so with his pastor John Morgan and wife Gloria and several others mostly students who wanted to get a day out of class he went to Montgomery Alabama March for the Fetus. John and Gloria were devout Francis Schaefer types on the matter of abortion and for the last 40 years take three Sundays in January to indocrinate their Sunday school class and double down on the pulpit with their inerrant view on the matter.

    Problem is only one of their four sons seem to agree with them, and one married a girl whose first cousin worked for Planned Parenthood in Georgia for twenty years.One went to Duke and sought counsel of the great Methodist, Will Willimon.  Two went to UVA with Casey and one of them on the Yale Div School where he had a semester with Randall Balmer now at Dartmouth; Balmer a leader scholar of evangelical politics in America who has traced the right wing anti abortion politics to Bob Jones tax exempt resentments for being unable to  see people of color as equal to Strom Thurmond and George Wallace White Man.

    And who knows where Girl Scout Woman of the Decade, the Town Matriarch who taught one of the best home ec Departments in the state for thirty years for girls who numbered about 16 to twenty in their graduating classes. It is pretty clear where the Girl Scouts are on abortion, and I imagine Martha leans with them over her pastor and his wife. But after thirty years amongst them I can't say for certain, such are the ways of small towns and Baptist churches, critical thinking and discernment.

     Poppy Bush 41 was called Rubbers, such was his enthusiasm for birth control until Reagan and Neshoba county got a holt of him, and Lee Atwater and his N Word Memo of the early 80s . That's according to Maureen Dowd in today's scorching opinion piece in the NY Times on the Super Negro Clarence Thomas married to his whiter than white Birch Society bride Ginni. What a pair. Read the piece and see if you can do it without flinching looking away.

    My Presbyterian Hero, the Great Frank Harrington, in Atlanta the friend of Bill Self and Martin Luther Kings great friend Joseph Lowery , said The Weight of Protestant Theology comes down on the side of the Mother. That rings true for my progressive Baptist friends at Good faith Media and Baptist Global News. Also rings true for Frye Galliard and Cynthia Tucker in their recent much celebrated book on Southern Politics becoming the template for Rove and Atwater Strategies that brought us to this moment in the afterglow of Trump's America.

      I read Stansell, Holy War, New Republic ten years ago that concludes the politics of the Anti abortion movement are chocked full of mendacity. I think I got enough walking around sense to know mendacity is not a Christian Virtue.

    I got voted out of the Collinsville Baptist Church where my Mother was baptized and her side of the family goes back to the 1840s. I imagine if Casey Mattox were in town for this July Fourth, the pulpit would be given over to him for a Victory Celebration. Like they said in the Movie the Road to Perdition, it's all so fbombing Hysterical.

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