Grand Rapids may be known as the epicenter of the religious right — and it is — but the current mayor certainly doesn’t fit that description. Mayor George Heartwell spoke at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser recently and said some things that sparked major controversy in the largely conservative area:
Speaking at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park to a crowd of about 470 people – 85 to 90 percent of whom were female – Heartwell credited Planned Parenthood of West and Northern Michigan with giving more than 6,000 Grand Rapids women access to health care and 8,300 coming-of-age teenagers information and tools to prevent pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases last year.
“What’s not to love about that?” said Heartwell, a former Planned Parenthood board chairman. “Yet every year the forces of darkness seek to deprive women” of the health care and reproductive education they get through Planned Parenthood.
“Ultraconservative political forces in league with ultraconservative religious forces have mounted a frontal assault against Planned Parenthood. This is a time like no other to rally behind Planned Parenthood. It’s time for us to fill their treasury.”
Heartwell said the “vulnerable” women and youth served by Planned Parenthood are “demonized by legislators and talk show hosts,” yet “they are our sisters and daughters and mothers and they deserve our best.”
Bravo, Mr. Heartwell. I’m sad to see he’s being criticized for this by Rick Tormala, who I know. Rick used to have a show on the same radio station that my show is on and we had several conversations over the years at the studio. He’s a former city commissioner in Grand Rapids and ran against Heartwell.
Rick Tormala, a former Grand Rapids city commissioner who unsuccessfully challenged Heartwell in a 2007 mayoral campaign, has sent the city clerk a letter that chides Heartwell as “Grand Pooh-Bah of Planned Parenthood” and mayor of “the Municipality of Moral Relativism.” At a Planned Parenthood fundraiser last week, remarks by Heartwell, an ordained minister, communicate that “virtue is a joke and vice is cool,” Tormala wrote.
“Patch potholes instead of crying about the need for condoms,” he wrote. “What kind of minister refers to people and religious institutions with legitimate concerns about contraception and abortion as ‘the forces of darkness?’
“Demonizing people who disagree with you is the kind of divisive and poisonous rhetoric that divides and polarizes a community. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
No Rick, you should. Heartwell is right. The attacks on Planned Parenthood are appalling and dishonest and the mayor is absolutely right to stand up for the organization and for womens’ rights.
20 comments
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Raging Bee
May 17, 2012 at 2:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Patch potholes instead of crying about the need for condoms…
Same admonistion back to Tormala: patch potholes instead of demonizing women.
d cwilson
May 17, 2012 at 3:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So should the guy who goes around calling people who disagree with him names like “Minister of Moral Relativism” and the “Grand Pooh-Bah of Planned Parenthood”.
The lack of self-awareness on the right never ceases to amaze me.
d cwilson
May 17, 2012 at 3:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Is “patch potholes” the new euphemism for abstinence only?
Brownian
May 17, 2012 at 3:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To borrow a sentiment expressed by the right: you don’t want to be demonised? Don’t be a demon.
dan4
May 17, 2012 at 3:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
A minister demonizes people with whom he has disagreements. In equally surprising and shocking news, vegetarians don’t eat meat and water is wet.
sqlrob
May 17, 2012 at 3:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t know of anyone who would do that. Can you point to an example of such an organization? Emphasis on the LEGITIMATE.
Yeah, thought so.
peterh
May 17, 2012 at 3:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Maybe Grand Rapids potholes are of a very venereal sort wherein one might contract an STD.
twincats
May 17, 2012 at 3:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I SnOL’d.* Guess it only counts if you’re demonizing men, then.
Cuz it’s totes okay to demonize those jezebels who want to have teh sexie times without having baybees n’ ess tee dees and stuff.
*snorted out loud
Reginald Selkirk
May 17, 2012 at 3:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
One who recognizes that concern about other people’s contraception and abortions is not legitimate.
Geds
May 17, 2012 at 4:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
tiwncats @8: I SnOL’d.* Guess it only counts if you’re demonizing men, then.
Ah, I see you picked up on the most important truth of all: “people” = “men.” Women are property with no ability to self-govern, after all.
carolw
May 17, 2012 at 5:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I offer a round of internet applause to Mayor Hartwell. Is there contact information were we could send him a “well done, sir”?
raven
May 17, 2012 at 7:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Truly amazing to see a politician with a backbone.
I can about guarantee that his hate mail just went up a thousandfold or so. Much of it written in the fundie xian dialect of illiterese.
raven
May 17, 2012 at 7:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
QFT.
Hey Rick Tormala, take your Dark Ages Oogedy Boogedy religion and shove it!!!
What I/we do with and about family planning is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS KOOK.
Go lock your wife and daughters in a closet or whatever you do for fun.
Alareth
May 17, 2012 at 8:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Off topic but of interest.
The US DoJ sent an official letter to the city of Baltimore in support of the right for citizens to record to police in pubic.
More here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/justice-dept-defends-publics-constitutional-right-to-record-cops/
Draken
May 18, 2012 at 1:37 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ultraconservative political forces in league with ultraconservative religious forces
This Venn diagram forms an almost-perfect circle.
But do I understand that Heartwell does not plan on being re-elected?
leni
May 18, 2012 at 1:51 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Just a reminder- contraception is about men’s rights too. Most of them want access to contraception too, no?
It’s a women’s issue because we have the children, obviously, but it’s a men’s issue because they are legally and morally responsible too. They might not have the final say, but they still have as much to gain. Or lose.
Really, it’s a basic human rights issue.
christophburschka
May 18, 2012 at 4:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What? Where?
Nice that someone in authority finally stands up to these clowns. Hope he gets reelected next term.
Paul Durrant
May 18, 2012 at 5:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
He is now having problems, and has apologised for “forces of darkness”
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2012/05/grand_rapids_mayor_george_hear_11.html
Pierce R. Butler
May 18, 2012 at 10:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Paul Durrant @ # 18 – well, yah, whaddyathink? The real forces of darkness take it poorly when compared to a bunch of undereducated sexually neurotic busybodies.
lofgren
May 18, 2012 at 4:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Nah, because the same people who want to take away our access to contraception are also opposed to this idea: