A. E. Housman predicted exactly how Oklahoma was going to suck someday

I’ve gushed about A. E. Housman here before, and, oh, how he deserves our adoration. How timely is this one?


THE laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I , and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbour to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.


Guess what I found out this afternoon? The glorious state of Oklahoma, in its medieval wisdom, is throwing its jail and gallows and hell-fire around again. It’s not enough that they’ve amended the state constitution so that it denies rights to citizens instead of granting them. Now the state legislature wants to make it illegal for a state employee to perform an abortion or provide abortion counseling. To anyone with a doctor in the OKC area, this very specifically means the OU Health Sciences Center, a major provider of health services and medical research and—herein lies the rub—funded by public money through its association with the publicly funded state university.

I have no idea what kind of abortions OUHS even performs; I would be very surprised if you could stroll in off the street and receive one there, which means these self-righteous jackasses are probably, in effect, only interfering with abortions recommended and performed by someone’s doctor for a medical reason. God, I hate it here.

Incidentally, the colleague who told me this had just left the capitol, where a legislator had broken their appointment because he had to rush to support this bill and also have, I shit you not, enough time to make the Bible study luncheon down the hall afterward. In the capitol. Catered by fucking Chick-Fil-A.

Housman, take me away.